Thursday, January 15, 2009

The soi-disant "Scholar of Freedom"

After Bush's Farewell Address, Chris Matthews gave the most insightful sustained commentary on Bush that I've seen on television. It's a brutal diagnosis that I wasn't expecting from Matthews. I know he has generally progressive sympathies, but he's not usually quite this blunt in his on-air assessments of the Bush Administration. I think that, after Bush's self-satisfied litany of delusion tonight, Matthews just couldn't stand it anymore. He sounds more than a little disgusted.

Does it still count to "speak truth to power" when the power only has four days left? Regardless, I'm glad to hear it.

5 comments:

Jill said...

"tragedy of the last 8 years"...that pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?

Anonymous said...

Fosco, I am disappointed in you. Does your hatred of George W. Bush make you automatically agree with others that do as well?

In this clip, Chris Matthews makes two blindingly idiotic points:

First, that Bush surrounded himself with people smarter than him in order to form policy. Who else could Bush surround himself, given that Matthews believes that people less intelligent than Bush are pretty scarce?

Second, the "notion" that the "Arab streets" are incapable of being democratized, that "those people" can't be dealt with and we were better off dealing with their despotic leaders. Are only some people worthy of self determination? Does Fosco really believe, as Matthews does, that only certain people (definitely not "Arabs") are worthy of freedom? Say it ain't so, Fosc-o!

Keith Olberman and Chris Matthews have, with their sophomoric invective, turned MSNBC into the irrelevant laughingstock it is today.

The BeeMaster

FOSCO said...

@BeeMaster: "irrelevant laughingstock"? Hmmm. Maybe not for the coveted A25-54 demographic, which MSNBC's "sophomoric invective" regularly wins--over both FoxNews and CNN.

Not to mention that Matthews, Olbermann, and Maddow have recently landed some of the more important interviews with the most influential people in Washington (who now just happen to be Democrats...).

Talk to me about "irrelevant" at this same time next year when FoxNews tries to hype a "retirement interview" with George W. Bush or lobs another Hannity softball to America's least favorite governor...

As for Matthews's points about democracy in the Arab world, I'll have a post on that in a bit.

Wait. Why do I have to do word verification? Well, it's "experg," which I can define by way of analogy:

truth:truthiness::expert:experg

Anonymous said...

From the NOT right-leaning Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/07/msnbc-drops-keith-olberma_n_124678.html?page=62&show_comment_id=15451443

My favorite portion:
_________________

All the drama made MSNBC a punch line when top NBC anchor Brian Williams appeared on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" last week. "Is there no control?" host Jon Stewart asked him. "`Is it `Lord of the Flies?'"

A sheepish Williams said that every family has a dynamic of its own.

"But does MSNBC have to be the Lohans?" Stewart said.
__________________

The BeeMaster

FOSCO said...

@BeeMaster: Right... Because the on-air personalities at FoxNews and CNN have never had public spats. That would be unseemly!

And gee, if "The Daily Show" makes a joke about someone/something, that person/thing must be a "laughingstock." Oh wait. What does that make Bush? Cheney? Rumsfeld? Rick Warren? Hmmmm.

Whether or not Olbermann and Matthews hate each other, MSNBC is still not "irrelevant" (as per my earlier points on ratings and political influence).

Hate it all you want, but MSNBC may well wield the same influence with this new administration that FoxNews did with the previous one.