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Chris Matthews is widely known for his hasty–and often erroneous–conclusions about the conservatives he criticizes on his show. He has wondered if Rush Limbaugh really believes what he says and supported claims that Joe Stack is somehow tied to the "radical right".
During last night’s "Hardball", he did it again. Matthews quoted former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich completely out of context to make it seem as if he had called Obama a socialist without having any idea what the word means.
In fact, Gingrich knows exactly what the word means, and spent considerable time clarifying and qualifying his statement. These additional remarks, however, were left out of Matthews’s report in his attempt to delegitimize Gingrich’s argument without actually addressing it.
Matthews showed a clip of Gingrich on "The O’Reilly Factor" from Monday night saying, "of course" Obama is a socialist. "I don’t think that President Obama has met a government program he didn’t love and didn’t want to dramatically expand." After the clip aired, Matthews said,
…a socialist, according to Webster’s Dictionary, not Newt Gingrich, is someone who advocates the ownership and operation of the means of production and distribution by society or the community, rather than by private individuals, with all members of society or the community sharing in the work and the product.So, by that definition, Barack Obama wants the government to own and run the American economy. If you believe that, you believe Newt Gingrich.
Matthews apparently was too busy ridiculing Gingrich to play this clip from his interview with O’Reilly:
O’REILLY: You believe that Barack Obama, the president of the United States, has the same mindset as a Fidel Castro?GINGRICH: No, no, no.
O’REILLY: That he wants to seize private property?
GINGRICH: No, no, no.
O’REILLY: That he wants the government to regulate everybody’s life? Do you really believe that?
GINGRICH: Wait, wait, wait. You just took a big jump. Fidel Castro is a totalitarian Communist. I don’t believe that President Obama in any way is like Fidel Castro.
But I do believe he is an exactly in the tradition of the French Socialists or the Italian Socialists or the German Socialists. I think he’d have been very comfortable in the social Democratic party in Germany. I think he would have been very comfortable in the pre-Tony Blair Labor Party in Great Britain. I think he represents a strain of left-wing big government. Government is smart. You’re stupid. Government should decide everything. You’re not capable of it.
And let’s look at his policies. Listen to his rhetoric. This is somebody who really does believe that if you’re in private enterprise and you go out and you work hard, you’re somehow doing bad things. You know, he proposed, for example, that they’re going to have the student loans paid off if you go to work for government, but not if you go out and found your own small business. Now that’s not dramatically anti-business?…
[Y]ou had private property and you had private businesses in Germany under the Social Democratic Party, in Great Britain under the Labor Party, in France under the Socialists, in Italy under the Socialists. It’s a mixed economy. But if you’re asking the question does he think the overwhelming dominance should be government, and does he think government is smarter than the rest of us, the answer’s yes.
Matthews’s disingenuous misrepresentation of Gingrich’s statement earned him a flunking grade in journalism 101 from The Hill newspaper.
He has every right to take on Gingrich’s claim that Obama is a socialist–folks on the right have certainly done so–but he should at least refrain from misrepresenting such statements by quoting them out of context.
Upon further research and examination into the Army’s complete findings on the Fort Hood shootings, in a February 22 report, the Boston Globe’s Bryan Bender conceded that politically-incorrect conservatives were right all along – just not in those words of course.
Immediately after Major Nidal Malik Hasan murdered 13 U.S. soldiers November 5, major news networks and publication bent over backwards to omit Hasan’s Islamic identity or to excuse the killing of 13 soldiers as a result of stress or psychosis.
Report after report, interview after interview, and press conference after press conference, reporters, politicians, and government officials warned against jumping to conclusions – in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Among the Globe’s conclusions from the investigation:
In short, the Boston Globe concluded that Hasan’s Army superiors were reluctant to take action despite "careful documentation and of individual episodes dating back to 2005" because of diversity or fears of being labeled "insensitive."
The Culture and Media Institute released a report on November 11, documenting 85 percent of broadcast stories refrained from using the word "terror," and only 29 percent of evening news even mentioned Hasan was Muslim (half of which felt the need to either defend or include experts to defend Islam).
Many reporters like CBS’ Bob Schieffer are addicted to pointing out Islam does not have a monopoly on terrorism, while in equally impulsive and irrational manner, many individuals fallaciously resort to labeling any convicted white male of being Christian terrorists (i.e. Timothy McVeigh).
During an interview with Schieffer shortly after the massacre, Congressmen Ike Skelton – chairman of the Armed Services Committee – urged everyone to refrain from jumping to any conclusion, assuring Americans an investigation would reveal the nature of Maj. Hasan’s motives.
Congratulations to the liberal Boston Globe for belatedly reaching the conclusion conservatives had immediately. Meanwhile, 3 1/2 months later, the rest of the media remains uninterested.
MSNBC regular Donny Deutsch on Wednesday apologized, via Twitter, for deriding Republican senatorial hopeful Marco Rubio as a "coconut," a racial slur which the New York Times defines as "being brown on the outside and white on the inside." (Rubio’s parents are Cuban exiles.) Over two Tweets, Deutsch announced, "In discussing Mr. Rubio, I used a word intended to describe his inexperience on the national stage."
The former CNBC host continued, "I now realize the word has connotations as an ethnic slur, & is therefore inappropriate. I apologize to Mr. Rubio & to anyone else I have offended." As first reported, with video, on NewsBusters, Deutsch employed the term on Monday’s Joy Behar Show while deriding Rubio as inexperienced. He complained, "…You almost need that blank piece of paper. That’s the new model. Like, you know, this coconut Rubio down in Florida."
On Tuesday evening, Deutsch first attempted to clarify his meaning, again via Twitter: "I said ‘coconut’ meaning simple, goofy, bananas…wasn’t even aware it could be a racially charged word."
Toyota is facing harsh scrutiny from the media and lawmakers – perhaps with justification. But there could be consequences for the U.S. economy.
And as Toyota (NYSE:TM) executives have endured two days of congressional hearings on the issues surrounding their potentially widespread defective products, the most aggressive questioners have been lawmakers from Michigan, home of the Big 3 automakers. A fact that led CNBC "Squawk Box" co-host Becky Quick to question if the federal government, with a huge stake in General Motors and Chrysler, are being a little unfair with Toyota on her Feb. 24 broadcast.
"We’ve heard from some congressmen, especially those later on in the show about the people and Congress people who are questioning Toyota at this point saying, they are doing this because the government has this big stake in GM?" Quick said. "To me, that seems a little crazy."
More Video Below Fold
Phil LeBeau, CNBC’s auto industry reporter, dismissed the notion that Toyota couldn’t get a fair hearing from the federal government, despite the potential conflict of interests.
"It is a little crazy, Becky," LeBeau said. "And I have to be honest with you – almost nobody that I have talked to who has looked into these problems at Toyota believes there is any type of a role, that government putting pressure on NHTSA [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] to come down hard on Toyota because of the government stake in GM and Chrysler. I don’t really hear that from anybody. Where I hear about it is from the crazy conspiracy people."
But both Quick and "Squawk Box" co-host Joe Kernen specifically drew attention to the rhetoric from Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., the longest serving member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
"But, I will say it’s interesting to watch some of the toughest questioning coming from Dingell from Michigan," Quick added. "That’s the point that kind of jumps out at you."
"If I was from Michigan and I had a bunch of plants in my district, I would grill this guy," Kernen said.
And despite LeBeau’s dismissal both Kernen and Quick pointed out there was a possibility that the conflict of interest might not necessarily be a because of the federal government’s stake in the automakers, but instead a regional one in which a weak Toyota would be good for Dingell’s constituents.
"You know how politics work," Kernen added. "You at least got to consider the possibility."
"The idea of the government stake – that I think is out there on a limb," Quick said. "Then again, seeing Dingell raising these questions just makes you think, ‘Of course, he’s from Michigan.’"
And this "rush to judgment" and heightened scrutiny is something Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour cautioned against in a Feb. 24 Washington Post column.
"But as two House committees and one in the Senate prepare for hearings on Toyota’s safety issues, I worry that there has been a rush to judgment," Barbour wrote. "The way that Congress and the Obama administration respond to this controversy will have real economic consequences."
With this in mind, even MSNBC’s David Shuster has taken notice of the potential harm this could do to the economy domestically. Shuster took a break from his anti-tea party movement shtick and obsession with ACORN whistleblower James O’Keefe to advise those in power there are consequence of too vigorously attacking Toyota.
"Finally, in light of the Toyota hearings today, and the hearings tomorrow, our notebook item tonight stems from my own family’s personal experience with Toyota," Shuster said. "My wife drives a 2010 Toyota Prius like this one. I’ve driven it many times. We both love the vehicle. Over the weekend Julianna and I took our Prius back to the dealer as part of a recall so they could fix the potential brake issue. The entire process took about an hour. And everybody involved was courteous, kind and professional. Everybody was also American."
And with his personal experience, he reminded viewers that a damaged Toyota has broader implications on the American economy.
"As Congress hammers Toyota, and for good reason, it’s worth remembering that Toyota employs more than 30,000 Americans at U.S. factories," Shuster said. "Another 100,000 Americans work at Toyota dealerships. They don’t like Toyota’s problems any more than we do. And as Toyota suffers and loses revenue, the American employees of Toyota may suffer as well, with job cuts and layoffs. So yes, our government should investigate Toyota’s management. But all of us should remember that Toyota employs, a lot of decent, hard-working Americans, and these people are our neighbors and members of our communities."
