Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

BY TAYLOR MARSH

You just can’t make this stuff up. So when it flew out of Chris Matthews’ mouth
yesterday on “Hardball,”
I just about fell off the treadmill. Talking about Barack Obama with E.J. Dionne:

MATTHEWS: Let‘s not deify this guy in any area, because deification is a dangerous move in American politics. DIONNE: Amen. I agree. MATTHEWS: Funny you should use that word. Amen. We all agree.

Chris Matthews of leg tingling fame, not to mention Hillary bashing infamy, now wants to make sure we don’t deify Senator
Obama?

Let’s review, shall we?

“…The feeling most people get when they hear a Barack Obama’s speech. I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often. … Seriously. It’s a dramatic event. …and that is an objective assessment.” – Chris Matthews

Ah yes, remember all the Chris Matthews “objective assessment” moments? Yeah, me neither.

And don’t forget Matthews talking about the headlines that would be seen
’round the world as he pontificated before Obama won Iowa what would happen everywhere.
Via Media Matters:

MATTHEWS: Well, I think the biggest story if Obama wins tonight will be Obama around the world. I mean, the newspapers in Europe will start printing their headlines around midnight our time tonight, and I’d like to see copies of them if we’re still on the air. Because I think the idea of a guy who has a Kenyan father, at a time when Kenya is in such turmoil, a man with a real third-world background — and I mean that very positively, because this brings us back into the world. It will be taken by the American people as a 180 on Bush.

But by all means, now that Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, let’s not
“deify this guy.” Because after all, “deification
is a dangerous move in American politics.”

Log this under media irony of staggering journalistic porportions.

Prepare for the next Chris Matthews tingle, which will undoubtedly come when a clip of John McCain’s biography is unloaded this fall. It’s not like he hasn’t done it before. Again, via Media Matters:

MATTHEWS: You know, when he was a prisoner all those years, as you know, in isolation from his fellows, I do believe, uhm, and Machiavelli had this right — it’s not sentimental, it’s factual — the more you give to something, the more you become committed to it. That’s true of marriage and children and everything we’ve committed to in our lives. He committed to his country over there. He made an investment in America, alone in that cell, when he was being tortured and afraid of being put to death at any moment — and turning down a chance to come home. Those are non-political facts which I think do work for him. When it gets close this November, which I do believe, and you likely agree, will be a very close contest between him and whoever wins the Democratic fight. And I think people will look at that fact, that here’s a man who has invested deeply, and physically and personally in his country.

Media love is as fleeting as it is false. Live by it. Die by it.

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