-by NoahAbout 20 years ago, I was looking for something to watch on the telly while I ate my dinner and I happened upon the Chris Matthews Hardball show. It was the first time I had ever seen in it and to this day, I simply turn the sound down or switch the channel whenever his show comes on. Why? Simple. First impressions mean a lot. That night Matthews was interviewing Newt Gingrich and it was anything but hardball. Since that night, I've called the show exactly what it is: Nerfball. Chris Mathews interviewing Newtie was no interview. It was a lovefest of nudge-nudge and wink-wink between two conservative geezers that were old beyond their chronological years; old and in the way. They might as well have been twins rejoicing after being separated for years. The cloying banter on the part of Matthews was a sickening aural plague. Matthews asked the softest questions, all teed up for his buddy Newt to hammer over the fence to the glee of both. MSNBC might as well have been showing us two semi-demented guys talking politics in the lunch room of a nursing home. Neither man had a grip on current day reality, and that was 20 years ago. It was like Hannity and Giuliani are these days, except it was hard to tell which one was Hannity and which one was Giuliani. It was at least that bad. It was, as they say, some really sick shit.For a long time after that, I saw Matthews rail against progressives on other MSNBC shows, especially whenever election time rolled around. Progressive was a word that he spat out. Even when he feebly tried to hide his contempt, it showed. Even when he tried to cloak himself in his supposed northeastern liberal roots, it showed. He'd long outgrown his so-called "liberalism." Besides, his brand of liberalism was the dated and establishment kind, a co-option kind that was very prevalent in the 1960s when Kennedy Democrats decided to try on the trappings of being more "with it." It was pretty phony then. I saw that first hand. I called it opportunistic liberalism. Anything for a vote. And that was 50+ years ago. Matthews is the embodiment of that. He didn't evolve. He stayed in one place and atrophied while many of us moved on. We progressed. He became a living fossil. Due to his calcification, what Matthews became then, now often appears, in comparison to modern progressives, to be what Barry Goldwater and John Birchers were way back then. The same charge can be directed at politicians like Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Michael Bloomberg and any Republican you care to name. They are all people from another time, another century, and they are not what we need.Hello! What time is it? We don't need media people or politicians who are so stuck in the past. It doesn't have to do with age but with intellect. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren didn't stop growing 50 wears ago and they are of the same generation. Yours truly is only a few years behind. Some people have moved into the 21st century. Others feel more comfortable in the past, the reality that they know. They fear the future but, damn, we are now 20 years into a century that we shouldn't even call new anymore. Hillary Clinton didn't get it in 2016. Matthews doesn't get it now.Matthews has made an effort to fake it. A few years ago he at least tried to hide behind a facade of tolerance for progressives. At MSNBC, he had stuck his finger into the air and detected a gentle breeze flowing left and went with it, at least on face value. As they say, follow the money, and he did, but Bernie Sanders is more than that weak facade of Matthews could bear. On Saturday, as the Nevada Caucus results came in, Matthews snapped for good. He came back out of his Consevervadem closet, bowing the door of the hinges practically screaming, comparing Sanders, a Jewish man, to Hitler's Nazis who stormed into France shortly before he was born:
It looks like Bernie Sanders is hard to beat... I think it's a little late to stop him, and that's the problem... I'm reading about the fall of France in the summer of 1940. And the general calls up Churchill and says 'It's over.' And Churchill says, 'How can it be? You got the greatest army in Europe. How can it be over?' He said, 'It's over.'
Over at CNN, former Obama administration official Van Jones spoke for his fellow bubble dwellers when he said:
Nobody thought six months ago that we would be sitting here with Bernie Sanders on his way to the nomination. He's on his way to the nomination. Something could happen to stop him. Somebody may have some marbles to throw at the stairs or a banana peel. They better find it. Because this guy is off and running.
It's not really over, of course, but to people like Matthews and the equally calcified Democratic National Committee led by Tom Perez (Think of him as this year's Debbie Wasserman Schultz), it is, or at least they fear it is. Bernie isn't one of their proscribed, pre-approved choices. He's not a member of the club. He's only what, in their eyes, too many voters, so far, want. Damn voters! How dare they have opinions! The DNC and their media hacks like Chris Matthews treat Bernie winning as their worst nightmare and, looked at one way, he is. Bernie is such a threat to their gravy train and safe, status quo that they've launched themselves into a state of panic when, in fact, they should be embracing Senator Sanders as a gift. In order to win, you need enthusiastic voters. That's what Trump has and you have to match enthusiasm with enthusiasm or else you don't have a chance. In order to survive as a political party and have a future, you need young people and Latinos coming in your door, and that is what Bernie is rounding up and delivering. He is a gift and the lords of the party gnash their teeth and wail. They are pathetic and they are dangerous, not only to us but the very existence of the party. Their hate for Bernie could deliver not just the nomination to a flaccid Conservadem euphemistically called a "moderate," it could also deliver the election to Trump whether Senator Sanders ends up with the nomination or not. Obviously, that would be fine with korporate America and their shills like Chris Matthews.The Matthews outburst wasn't just a moment of crankiness and twitching fear, it was also a moment of moral bankruptcy, and, speaking of moral bankruptcy, as I write this on Monday afternoon, MSNBC has not fired Matthews on the spot. They haven't reprimanded him. They haven't even commented. Any silence between the Matthews outburst and the time you read this not shows us the true colors of MSNBC's parent company, COMCAST. Anything they may do now is too little too late.Matthews isn't exactly alone at MSNBC of course. While the channel is better than the overtly right-leaning Wolf Blitzer led CNN and totally wacko nutjob outlets like FOX "News," and Sinclair, not to mention Drudge, Breitbart, and Trump favorite Alex Jones, there are others at MSNBC who share in Matthews's panic, a panic that has the DNC spinning like the head of that poor little girl in "The Exorcist." Give it another month and they will sound like her too. Since COMCAST took over MSNBC, there has been an obvious move right to the extent that many of us ruefully joke that the channel has become MSDNC, a bland merger of MSNBC and the DNC. Warning #1 to the DNC Establishment Suits and their media minions: You keep saying Bernie isn't a Democrat but you ignore the fact that his voters are and he's more of a real democrat then you've ever been. Warning #2: Bland wallpaper news and commentary doesn't beget any more support or enthusiasm than bland wallpaper politicians. You might as well bring back Mike Dukakis and Walter Mondale.Among the worst of the bubble dwelling offenders at MSNBC are former Conservadem $enator Claire McCaskill of Missouri who all but clutches her pearls every time Bernie's name comes up. There's the execrable Chuck Todd who has been living in a doorless Republican closet his whole pointless career. There's Katy Tur who doesn't seem too happy at all about the way things are going in the Democratic primaries. There's Nicole Wallace who at least openly admits to being a Republican who doesn't like Trump. However, she was George W. Bush's Communications Director so that bears close attention. Then there's Joy Reid. Reid is the most disappointing of all of them other than Matthews himself. Reid not only has a history of homophobia but she has taken to immaturely openly and loudly sighing when her guests speak up in favor of Sen. Sanders. She reminds me of Al Gore in the first Bush-Gore debate when he sighed, smirked, and made faces at everything Bush had to say. At least Bush deserve and earned the disrespect. And let's not forget the guy who runs the whole thing, the perfectly named Andy Lack who has made a career out of being forced out of one Korporate CEO job only to land in a new one. He's perhaps most infamous for his farcical and clueless tenure at Sony Entertainment.Meanwhile, Howie has tweeted out a poll where followers can voice their choice of who at MSDNC should walk the plank first. Matthews has a commanding lead but why stop with him?
