If you’re Chris Matthews and you’re attempting to regain a reputation for being “fair and balanced” after famously exhibiting excitement about Barack Obama and his presidential campaign, what do you do? How about facilitating a discussion about Obama’s proposed stimulus plan with two lawmakers from the same party, the Republican Party?
That’s precisely what Matthews did during a segment on his January 27 edition of Hardball, inviting only Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada) and Representative Mike Pence, the House Republican Conference Chair, to discuss the plan.
Not enough?… How about a segment exploring whether Rush Limbaugh is the “new voice of the GOP” but once again facilitating the “balanced” discussion with two people on the right and no one on the left or even center?
(Never mind that Limbaugh has been the voice of the Republican Party for two decades and counting.) In the very same broadcast, Matthews did this as well, bringing on MSNBC analyst Pat Buchanan and right-wing radio talk show host Heidi Harris (you might remember that Harris, appearing on Hardball during the election season, had told Matthews that women vote for Democrats because they “tend to think with their hearts and not with their minds”).
Want more? How about, in the process, framing a question based on Rush Limbaugh’s assertions and posing it to these two other right-wingers while prefacing the question with the words “let’s get back to the facts here”?
MATTHEWS: Look, let’s get back to the facts here. Does he [Limbaugh] have something here by saying that Barack Obama is trying to get the Republicans to join him, or at least a handful of them, so that he can share the blame if it [stimulus plan] doesn’t work? Is that a reasonable claim?
This kind of fairness and balance not only rivals Fox News but threatens to out-Fox it.
Annie Anndoheb said on 1/30/2009 @ 8:56am PT: [Permalink]
I actually like Chris Matthews but this did concern me. At the end of the interview he invited more Republicans to use his soapbox to for this debate. And while these guys used the Democrat noun as an insult instead of Democratic, he did nothing to point that out like he has in the past. Very disapointing.
yuck…to me TV has simply become a distraction to actually participating in real change. TV=irrelevant unabashed mind control for millions of truly ignorant people. If people spent as much time growing their own food as they do digging in their butts in front of the TV it would be a different world possibly without R & D limiting the real debate.
3)
pitbullstew said on 1/31/2009 @ 7:56am PT: [Permalink]
mathews is brilliant I say, he goes to the minority party and there he finds the anti view, when the gop is in, he goes to the dems, now its the opposite.
Its a reverse logic in a way I guess?
If you want to hear the choir go to the Church, if you want to here the acapella, go to the jazz club.
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I actually like Chris Matthews but this did concern me. At the end of the interview he invited more Republicans to use his soapbox to for this debate. And while these guys used the Democrat noun as an insult instead of Democratic, he did nothing to point that out like he has in the past. Very disapointing.
yuck…to me TV has simply become a distraction to actually participating in real change. TV=irrelevant unabashed mind control for millions of truly ignorant people. If people spent as much time growing their own food as they do digging in their butts in front of the TV it would be a different world possibly without R & D limiting the real debate.
mathews is brilliant I say, he goes to the minority party and there he finds the anti view, when the gop is in, he goes to the dems, now its the opposite.
Its a reverse logic in a way I guess?
If you want to hear the choir go to the Church, if you want to here the acapella, go to the jazz club.
And to think Matthews was going to “run” as a Democrat….