Lori Ziganto of Hot Air watched the Chris Matthews special on the rise of "The New Right" the other night and found it, well, typical of the sort of intellectual fare that Chris serves his audience every night at MSNBC.
Here's Ziganto's lede:
Last night, MSNBC aired a Chris Matthews special, labeled a documentary, called The Rise of the New Right. I decided to take a quick break from my radical right wing extremist acts like bitterly clinging to my guns and my Bible, whilst fiendishly drawing Hitler moustaches on Obama photos, to watch it. I know. Apparently, I'm a glutton for punishment.
However, while absolutely infuriating, it was simultaneously hilarious and almost took my mind off the distressing shortage of windmills in this country. Almost immediately, two things became rather apparent. Firstly, MSNBC's NewSpeak definition of "documentary" is evidently "blatant fallacies and pure propaganda".
Secondly, it's quite clear that Chris Matthews' leg 'tingle' has moved into his brain, or what passes for some semblance of one. Either that, or he's merely decided to embrace his cuckoo pants. Plus, he's a big, fat liar. I feel no qualms about saying that, since Matthews spent a full hour demonizing me and people like me as violent, irrational racists. In fact, the entire show could be summed up like this:
Racists. Birthers. Guns! Evil scary militia groups that have the same "Don't Tread on Me" flag!!! Chanting "USA, USA" and being fond of the Constitution and, you know, liberty is super scary and ominous. Also, racist. And violence fomenting. Plus, racist.
You see, now Community Organizing is evil and dissent is no longer Patriotic. Instead, that now signifies some sort of marauding mob of nefarious radicals who are doubleplusungood. President Obama said "I want you to talk to your friends and neighbors; I want you to argue with them and get in their faces", but that was okay because George Bush. Or something.
It's not okay when the right peaceably assembles, voicing opinions articulately, in full and coherent sentences and using facts and rational thought, because we aren't supposed to even know how to read! Plus, we don't base things on feel-goody Utopian ideas of kitten whiskers, fairy dust and magical windmills. We sneaky right wing-nuts embrace real world ideas like individual success is a good thing and that people do not need the government to run every aspect of their lives and businesses. Oh, the horror.
If you think her words a little strong you should see the stuff she quotes from Matthews. Anyway, read the rest of her review. It's very good, especially where she rebuts Matthews' fear of right-wing violence.
At one point she quotes a tweet she received that she says sums up the whole show:
JennQPublic summed it up best when she tweeted "If I was writing a parody of a Chris Matthews special, it would sound just like this Chris Matthews special." Exactly. It was almost a self-parody and included every tired, lame, outright false and, frankly, insanely delusional leftist narrative regarding conservatives.
When people have no ideas to offer against their opposition they sometimes seek, by smear and innuendo, to discredit them, and then they complain, as Matthews often does, about our debased political discourse. Perhaps it's time for Chris Matthews to follow Helen Thomas off into the journalistic sunset. What he has left to say that's true is not particularly important or interesting, and what he says that's important or interesting is not particularly true.
RLC
