Rep. Foxx calls Matthew Shepard murder "a hoax"

Good Lord. Judging from the press she's getting (and the reaction she's undoubtedly getting from Republican leadership -- at least, one hopes), I'm gonna go out on a limb here and bet that she does not make this mistake again.

Just so we're all clear on the story, this is what happened to Shepard. From an AP story dated Oct. 9, 1998 (via LexisNexis):

Shepard was found Wednesday evening by a man on a bicycle who at first thought he was a scarecrow or a dummy because of how he was tied to the fence.

He was unconscious, and his skull had been smashed with a handgun. He also appeared to have suffered burns on his body and cuts on his head and face. The temperature had dropped into the low 30s during the more than 12 hours Shepard was left outside.

From Shepard's Wikipedia page:

The beating was so severe that the only areas on Shepard's face that were not covered in blood were those where his tears had washed the blood stains away.

The men had a gun and some sort of cutting implement, yet instead of a quick kill and hiding of the evidence (or, I dunno, maybe just robbing him!), they chose to torture and mutilate the kid, tie him to a fence post, and leave him to die of hypothermia. And this horrible woman wants us to believe this was not a hate crime.

You can argue against hate crimes laws without downplaying the atrocity of hate crimes themselves. You can talk about "thought crimes" or relying on individual judges in individual cases to make the right calls or whatever, but don't try to tell us that Matthew Shepard was just some dude killed for drug money. It insults our intelligence and alienates the generation of Americans who were touched by this crime (my generation, in point of fact).

Matthews has had it

Matthews slaps around McCain surrogate and soulless spinster Eric Cantor (R-VA) on Republicans running on change:

Wow. Where has that Matthews been these last 8 years?

Chris Matthews gets burned by Barack

Burninated!

does not compute

I've written before about Chris Matthews' peculiarities as a pundit, specifically his tendency to ingest months', or even years', worth of talking points uncritically and then suddenly come to the epiphany that they were never true in response to some off the wall quip by some random wanker in the middle of a segment. Playing the role of "wanker" today is Joe Scarborough:

Clinton takes NH

Well, I feel better having blown it knowing that EVERYONE blew this one. It looks like one of two things (or perhaps both) happened:

1. pollsters noted that they underestimated Obama's performance in Iowa and dramatically overcompensated.

2. something happened today to shift the vote some 10 percentage points.

Maybe Hillary's moment of letting her guard down affected a lot of people, as well as the press' (and John Edwards') callous and misogynistic treatment of Hillary's momentary vulnerability, the revelation that Chris Matthews and the high school popularity police are going to shove her into crass gender stereotypes no matter what she does, alternating between calling her a weakling who throws a tantrum when she loses, a manipulative charlatan who intentionally turns on the waterworks to make people feel sorry for her, and a ball-busting bitch.

I can sympathize; it pissed me off, too.

I wish Obama had won this one, but in all honesty it is nice to see voters openly reject that shit. The one thing that really galls me, though, is that this probably means unionbuster Mark Penn lives on.

Bush Administration tried to cow Chris Matthews

This is very interesting, and I very seriously hope some enterprising reporter takes this up. From the Examiner (c/o ThinkProgress):

After praising the drafters of the First Amendment for allowing him to make a living, he outlined what he said was the fundamental difference between the Bush and Clinton administrations.

The Clinton camp, he said, never put pressure on his bosses to silence him.

“Not so this crowd,” he added, explaining that Bush White House officials -- especially those from Vice President Cheney's office -- called MSNBC brass to complain about the content of his show and attempted to influence its editorial content. "They will not silence me!" Matthews declared.

Are we going to have to add intimidation of national media figures to the list of the Bush Administration's unpunished crimes?

their usefulness is debatable

From ThinkProgress:

Following the conclusion of tonight’s presidential forum, host Chris Matthews immediately began to focus on the pressing issues. He offered an array of trifling analysis that included musings about Sen. John Edwards’ height, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s use of the word “girl,” and Clinton’s Chicago accent. Watch it:

I think this post is helping me see just why I haven't been all that interested in these media guys' take on any of the debates: they don't actually listen to them. For some reason, whenever Democrats (and perhaps Republicans, too) get up on stage and start talking about issues, Chris Matthews et al. don't listen to the substance of what he's saying. Rather, they're just listening for gaffes, for things that can be spun around to create drama, obviously because, according to their logic, candidates angering large sections of the populace or looking stupid attracts more "eyeballs" than candidates talking substance.

Thus when, as with most debates, there were no big gaffes, the press has nothing but the most banal observations, usually calling the debate a draw or calling it for the frontrunner with some vague "they seemed more poised" argument.

To Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer and the CNN crowd, the debate apparently sounded like this:

John Edwards: "Blah blah blah, blah blah pretty hair blah blah, blah trial lawyer blah!"
Barack Obama: "Blah blah Hussein blah, 1st black president blah, blah blah I'm not experienced blah."
Hillary Clinton: "Blah blah Giordano's, blah blah blah Polish sausage, blah blah DA BEARS! blah."

when Ann Coulter gets invited on your show

this is the conversation your viewers get subjected to. But it's ok, because she sells books.

It's hard to imagine why anyone would care what a ghastly person like her has to say.

back to Chris Matthews

It appears that Matthews' new hobbyhorse is the apparent hypocrisy of liberals who do not support Libby's commutation and yet also decried the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Matthews' logic here, however, is flawed for the reason that usually gets him into trouble: his knowledge of politics is a lot wider than it is deep. Interestingly, unlike David Broder, who glosses over the details, Matthews frequently loses sight of the forest through the trees. Perhaps he just has to spend so much time listening to spin that it's hard to keep him perspective properly oriented.

Libby's commutation=Clinton's impeachment is wrong for 2 reasons:

1. Bill Clinton was never convicted. Chris Matthews has on multiple occasions brought up this canard about how 50 Republicans voted to impeach him, but it's irrelevant because 50 other senators, plus the VP, voted to acquit (and as we've seen, getting 50 Republican senators to vote for something unjust is not exactly the hardest thing in the world to pull off, especially when they think it will benefit them politically). Civil charges, meanwhile, were not pursued (h/t Media Matters, .pdf).

2. There was no underlying crime. Clinton supporters have been on the rampage about this for years, and they're completely consistent on this point: Clinton lied about cheating on his wife, and adultery is not illegal. Outing an undercover CIA agent is a felony. That Fitzgerald chose not to prosecute Karl Rove and/or Dick Armitage for the leak itself is irrelevant, as prosecutors do sometimes choose not to litigate crimes for a variety of reasons. The act of outing a CIA agent is a felony, and it has been attested again and again, by Fitzgerald himself and by various of Plame's former superiors, that she was undercover and working on Iranian WMD at the time of her outing. Ergo, Scooter Libby lied to cover up a crime, whereas Clinton lied to cover up an embarrassment.

It really takes deliberate obtuseness (or way too much time spent listening to other people's bullshit) not to understand this very simple point.

he helps the bad guys

Another one of Matthews' more lucid moments. It's a relatively obvious point, but since no one else is saying it, props to Matthews (h/t TPM).

Matthews uncorks

Chris Matthews is a real character to watch. His show is one of the tried and true examples of the new "Newspeak" form of media on cable TV; it seems like he and his guests are regularly guilty of some of the worst offenses when it comes to "conventional wisdom" absurdities (what Atrios calls "high Broderism") and dissemination of rightwing talking points as "news," but Matthews has a memory and intellect big enough that, to borrow an idiom from The Matrix, "he keeps trying to wake up."

Every once in a while, it will occur to him that what his guest is telling him doesn't make sense with fact X that another guest told him.... and come to think of it, fact X really is just a euphemism for fact Y that was debunked long ago... and while we're here, ya know fact Y really implies philosophy Z, which you can't believe if you also believe in tenet A which every American believes... and suddenly Matthews does a big dramatic "BURRRR....BURRR....DOES NOT COMPUTE" moment on some poor protofascist who came onto his show thinking he could add another level of nonsensical rightwing code to Matthews' long ago hacked program.

an eye-opening quip from Chris Matthews

Getting actual information and informed commentary from today's national press is a funny thing. Guys like Chris Matthews have been in "the biz" for aeons and you know they have the ability to provide us with the kind of necessary institutional memory that allows us to, say, monitor the ideological drifts of major newspapers. Despite that, however, it must be some huge faux pas in Washington for media types to admit that any journalistic publication is even capable of ever beginning to skew rightward (though hyperconservative wackos can allege liberal bias sans evidence all day long without ever getting called on it), or otherwise they're all so awash in ideological blindness that it's become all but impossible to identify rightwing bias when they see it, so it's a bit mind-blowing to hear Matthews come right out and, as a side comment, say this: