This lengthy discussion with Paul Gottfried and Joseph Cotto of the SF Review of Books, on their “thinking man’s current events show,” was so much fun, despite the solemn subject:
Chris Matthews Ousted For Not Being A Girly Guy
Affirmative Action, Conservatism, Etiquette, Feminism, Gender, Media, Sex
Chris Matthews has always been a tough-talking, gnarled interviewer. His style is manly and abrupt. You can’t have that in the Age of the Girly Boy—where men are expected to be clones of the females with whom they work. Or, else.
Guy talk, like calling a woman, actress Kerry Washington, “a total knockout,” and commenting to one Laura Bassett, “Why haven’t I fallen in love with you yet?”—those won’t do in the age of the wimp.
Matthews also used silly hyperbole to describe Mr. Sanders’s victory in the Nevada caucuses, and he dared to question, rather than just accept, E. Warren’s version of Mr. Bloomberg’s alleged sexual misconduct.
Ageism is also a factor. A stupid society worships the stupid. Unfortunately, in our age, The Age of the Idiot, the younger the individual, generally the more ill-educated and illiterate he or she is.
Irony of ironies: Conservative-minded people (check) are more likely to defend Matthews on principle than progressives, creators of the culture that has just cancelled him.
… Mr. Matthews, 74, had faced mounting criticism in recent days over a spate of embarrassing on-air moments, including a comparison of Senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign to the Nazi invasion of France and an interview with Senator Elizabeth Warren in which the anchor was criticized for a condescending and disbelieving tone.
On Saturday, the journalist Laura Bassett published an essay accusing Mr. Matthews of making multiple inappropriate comments about her appearance, reviving longstanding allegations about the anchor’s sexist behavior. By Monday, his position at the news network he helped build had become untenable.
Accompanied by his family, Mr. Matthews walked onto the “Hardball” set inside NBC’s Washington bureau shortly before 7 p.m. to deliver a brief farewell. His longtime crew members, who had been told of his plans roughly an hour earlier, looked on stunned.
“I’m retiring,” Mr. Matthews told viewers in a solemn and brief monologue as his broadcast began at 7. “This is the last ‘Hardball’ on MSNBC.”
His sudden signoff took many colleagues by surprise — “Wait. What?” the MSNBC anchor Katy Tur wrote on Twitter — but it followed days of discussions with Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC and one of the early executive producers of “Hardball.”
Mr. Griffin, who is close with Mr. Matthews, traveled to Washington over the weekend to discuss his future in person, according to three people who requested anonymity to describe sensitive conversations.
On the air on Monday, Mr. Matthews made clear that the timing of his exit was not entirely his choosing. “Obviously, it isn’t for a lack of interest in politics,” he said, going on to apologize for his past insensitive comments.
“Compliments on a woman’s appearance that some men, including me, might have once incorrectly thought were OK are never OK,” he said. “Not then, and certainly not today.” …
… Commenting on the Nevada caucuses, Mr. Matthews compared Mr. Sanders’s victory to Germany’s takeover of France in World War II, drawing the ire of many liberals. He later apologized on-air, saying, “In the days and weeks and months ahead, I will strive to do a better job myself of elevating the political discussion.”
A day later, he was under fire again, this time for repeatedly questioning Ms. Warren about her assertion that Michael R. Bloomberg had mistreated his female employees. Ms. Warren was referring to a widely reported anecdote, and Mr. Matthews’s disbelief was criticized as sexist and dismissive.
On Friday, yet another faux pas: Mr. Matthews confused the identities of two African-American politicians, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and Jaime R. Harrison, a Democrat running for Senate in that state. “Big mistake; mistaken identity, sir, sorry,” Mr. Matthews said after he was corrected on-air. …
NEW: America Has A Con Woman In Congress—But Where’s The Law?
THIS WEEK’S COLUMN, “America Has A Con Woman In Congress—But Where’s The Law?”, first appeared on Townhall.com and is currently featured on American Greatness, where you can read it.
An excerpt:
The FBI, which Americans are meant to trust with matters of life and death, is unable—or unwilling—to confirm whether U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) perpetrated fraud by marrying her brother, Ahmed Elmi, to enable him to obtain a coveted green card, thus granting him permanent-resident status in the United States, and a path to citizenship. But the bureau is said to be “investigating.”
Conversely, the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, had little difficulty gathering a critical mass of facts, enough to conclude that, in 2009, Omar did indeed secretly wed said sibling. The newspaper, and anyone else suggesting the same, has yet to be sued by Omar. Could the story be true?
As it happens, a Somali community leader has also outed Ilhan Omar as an outlaw. Abdihaikm Osman Nur contends that the Somali-born freshman congresswoman “had indeed married her brother.” So reported Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Despite “a lack of paperwork in war-torn Somalia,” which complicates an investigation and a definitive determination, the British tabloid dug up the requisite information that the FBI has yet to release. The young man whom Omar is alleged to have married certainly bears a remarkable resemblance to the congresswoman. They’re both … pretty (although Elmi looks happier and a lot more festive).
It was in August of 2016 that Mr. Nur, aforementioned, seconded the story first published by Scott Johnson, of the Power Line blog: Omar had married her sibling, ostensibly to allow him to stay in the U.S. As the Daily Mail had relayed, Mr. Nur took issue with Omar’s alleged marriage-cum-immigration fraud. It would appear that the British tabloid was more vested in the truth, as this patriotic Somali told it, than was the FBI.
To date, these are the facts on the fraud alleged to have been committed by a member of the U.S congress. Yet nobody is likely to do more than mutter at the striking absence of scruples in Ilhan Omar. For not only does she appear to flout the law, but she also offends sensibilities: Omar had first married Ahmed Hirsi, father of her children, in 2002. Bigamy and incest (even if the relationship is unconsummated) are cultural taboos.
Contrast Omar’s treatment in the United States with the manner in which the Dutch government treated a lesser form of immigration fraud committed by another Somali, Dutch lawmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali. …
… READ THE REST. THIS WEEK’S COLUMN, “America Has A Con Woman In Congress—But Where’s The Law?”, is currently featured on American Greatness.
UPDATE II (3/4/020): Corona Virus: No Restrictions On Arrivals From Italy, Japan & Other Outbreak Countries
Egalitarianism, Globalism, Healthcare, IMMIGRATION, Nationhood, Pseudoscience
UPDATE I (2/29/020): Of course the state doesn’t want the citizens to purchase face masks, hence the incessant, neurotic, total discrediting of N95 face masks. I made the logical point to my husband the other day to the effect that, while the virus is minuscule, COVID-19 is delivered in a larger medium of bodily fluids or spray. Some barrier to the medium in which it is delivered is better than none. Likewise, Dr. John Campbell, a somewhat befuddled British physician, is not prepared to dishonestly declare face-masks useless. Listen.
UPDATE II (3/4/020): It’s probably too late for us here in the US. But, but, can we at least dream of a government that looks after its nationals like Israel, imposing tough new travel restrictions on 5 European nations due to fears of corona virus? Details: “Israel severely restricts entry from Europe due to virus.”
Original Feb 29 Post:
The US has no restrictions on arrivals from some hot spots of the Corona Virus outbreak. Passenger screening from those source countries—Italy, for instance—is lackluster to put it mildly.
How do we know this? Not from Fox News, but from Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City.
The progressive mayor recommended that “travel restrictions … be extended to include more countries.”
“Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand. Anyone needs to be screened and if they have symptoms they need to be quarantined,” de Blasio said.
Who would have expected one of the most progressive officials in the country to voice such a sensibly conservative sentiment!
On the other hand, Fox News is cheering indiscriminately and unproductively for everything President Trump does, or doesn’t do, on the COVID-19 front. By so doing, the faithful at Fox are inadvertently harming Americans.
So, we arrive at a paradoxical position where a progressive like de Blasio is first to say what needs to be said!
Most liberal media are lamenting a reduction of travel from China and energetically conjuring counter-intuitive reasons as to why all travel restrictions somehow exacerbate epidemics.
The CDC and NIH officials have generally been mum on travel restrictions into the US, issuing only “travel advisories.”
That conservatives (other than Tucker Carlson) are not covering matters touching on insufficient screening at airports is shameful and counterproductive. It feeds into the distrust of Republican media.
Now, that’s the mindset of a pathologically liberal nation! The free flow of anything into the US must not be disrupted even when such promiscuous liberalism might be lethal.
Note how liberals use the same arguments to advocate against borders and against erecting barriers to disease transmission.
* Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images