Let's Play Hardball

Chris Matthews is not a journalist. He tries to play one on TV, but he's not very good at it. His supposed "hard-hitting reporter" persona is about as realistic and convincing as Margot Kidder's in Superman. Chris Matthews has more in common with the Bernstein Bears than Woodward & Bernstein.

Here's a recent photo of him in which he appears paranoid:



Does he always look like that with no make-up on? Creepy...He kind of looks like this one really weird guy who comes into the video store all the time, who always wears the same stained old stuit and a really bad toupee, and who once told the manager that he "advised the heads of foreign governments" for a living.

Anyway, Chris has absolutely no idea what a journalist does or how to inform the public in any meaningful way, which is odd considering that he's a popular TV news personality and best-selling non-fiction author.

Actually, maybe it's not that surprising when you look at some other popular TV news personalities and best-selling non-fiction authors.



Right after this book signing, Bill enjoyed a delicious falafel with both of those ladies...if you know what I mean...

I know first-hand about the stupidity of Chris Matthews' book, cleverly entitled "Hardball," because I had to read it for a graduate Media & Politics class at U.S.C. Yeah, really...I took out $30,000 in student loans to drive out to U.S.C. after working for 8 hours, for the pleasure of being assigned a book I could go read for free at any Barnes & Noble store (with the additional benefit of possibly meeting Bill O'Reilly and his nun fans!)

That Media & Politics class was the largest chunk of bullshit, out of a two-year Communication graduate course composed almost exclusively of bullshit. We were all there to earn Masters Degrees or Ph.D.'s and this professor would show us old episodes of "Frontline" about how appearance was important in politics, and then assign us the Chris Matthews book as homework.

Anyway, the book is retarded, reducing politics to the level of a strategy game, where each "team" tries to "outplay" the other team. Perhaps this describes the mechanisms of politics, but Matthews has seemingly no sense at all of the real-world consequences of these "games." To him, it's all fun, like talking with your friends later about your guild's most excellent "World of Warcraft" conquests.

But it's not a game. Matthews is on TV every day talking about how fun and clever insider Washington politics can be, never once indicating to his audience that this shit really matters, that they're being lied to and deceived by the wealthy and powerful.

Check out this unbelievable excerpt from Chrissy-Poo's show on August 1st, helpfully pointed out by King Shit of the Lefty Blogosphere, Atrios.

MATTHEWS: Let me go, Paul, before you start. What I keep doing here is asking people on and off camera who come on this program, high-ranking officers, enlisted, former officers. I get sometimes, not all the time, two different versions, the version they give me on the air and the version they give me the minute when we‘re off the air.

The version they give me when we‘re on the air is gung-ho, we‘re doing the right thing, everything is moving along. The version they give me off the air is, Rumsfeld is crazy. There aren‘t enough troops over there. We‘re not taking this seriously enough, or, we shouldn‘t be there, sometimes.

If you look at the context of the conversation Matthews is having (with some rabid right-wing journalists, just returned from Iraq), he's trying to make a reasonable point...Military guys don't want to speak honestly about their experiences to the media, for fear of upsetting or embarrassing their friends and colleagues in the field.

But he unintentionally gives us insight into how he's not a journalist at all, how he's so unconcerned for telling the truth that he's perfectly happy to ignore it repeatedly and flagrantly.

He confesses, right there in the transcript, to allowing unchecked lies on his show. He'll have a guest say something directly contradictory to both (1) the truth and (2) that individual's own prior assessment, and Matthews doesn't call them on it! He just chuckles to himself, thinking about how "cleverly" this lying interviewee is "playing the game," and then goes on with the interview.

I mean, Chris Matthews has apparently had high-ranking military officials or former officials tell him that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is crazy. Now, that's not news to me. Just look at the guy. But that's still the sort of thing you'd probably report if you were a real journalist.

It all comes down to the basic fallacy on which stuff like Fox News is based. The idea that a journalist should only pay attention to "balance" in the news...I gave this person's perspective for a paragraph, now I should give this person's perspective for a paragraph.

But that's not what reporters do, reporters seek to find the truth. When you say that a journalist must be unbiased, you don't mean their article won't make any actual declarative statements for fear of offending someone. You only mean that they go in to initially write the article with a desire to be fair, and to hear both sides. Then, they will report on the facts that their investigation uncovered.

Chris Matthews knows this. He's an idiot, but he's an idiot who has been around for a while. He just doesn't care. He knows TV viewers are more likely to watch a political show if it's punchy, if it's confrontational, and if it uses a lot of sports metaphors.

So he turns stuff like a Presidential debate, a debate in which two candidates discuss vital matters of national interest, into the NBA (okay, more like the WNBA)...

"And Kerry grabs the rock, he's striding down the court...Oh, and he's rejected by Dick Cheney! In your face, dweeb! Stop crying, it wasn't a foul! You're just being a wuss, like that time you got shot but didn't really get shot and then you got that Purple Heart! And Bush comes up with the rebound, he takes out in front, it's a fast break...He shoots, he scores! Bush FTW! Four more years!"