Chris Matthews is a political genius. Period.
He has a strong point of view. He's antiwar and can be harsh on the Clintons, because he knows them; though his point that she opened the door to Barack by supporting the war is The bottom line on the primary season. A student of ethnic politics, he has long censored himself about the Israel lobby, maybe because he wants to run for Senate in Pennsylvania, maybe because he is also a street-smart student of third rails in intellectual life. Too bad, when the Middle East is in flames. He knows better. None of this takes away from the fact that he's the best guy on politics on TV. He reads books and reads minds. His instant take on McCain's speech last week–the maverick stuff was to separate him from Bush, was dead-on. His famous statement that he felt something go up his leg as Obama spoke, after Iowa I think–was a Cronkite moment, a guy who wants the best for this country responding to a magnificent moment in our lives emotionally and honestly. His naked egotism has mellowed in the last year, to good effect.
Keith Olbermann is a leftwing showboat crank. (I'm a leftist but a distributor cap, not a crank.) He's got great values, but he's judgmental and predictable, he's righteous and always trying to score points for our side. I understand why Fox wouldn't want him anchoring political events. He's too partisan.The loss of Chris Matthews from the anchor's chair is truly regrettable. This guy is a master. I thought our journalism was sophisticated enough to handle him.
(P.S. Rachel Maddow is the greatest thing going on the left. Our Sarah.)
Olbermann comes off as shallow, forced and goofy on sports radio! Is he really being pushed on a new audience?
I used to enjoy Olbermann as a counterpoint to the insufferable Bill O’Rielly, but lately he’s started to get on my nerves. I think his success has given him a big head, and now he’s trying to bully people around, not unlike his nemesis. He’s also sneeringly sarcastic, which is a characteristic of most left-liberals, including Rachel Maddow. Sarcasm has it’s place, but as a permanent temperament and rhetorical style, it just comes across as shallow and immature, not unlike the left-liberals who are always engaging in it. Maybe that’s why left-liberals are as poor at governing as right-wingers: the former are in a permanent, stunted state of immaturity, and the latter are just authoritarian a**holes, like O’Rielly.
Olbermann's anger after the RNC 9-11/anti-aye rab Goldstein hate minute was probably the spine-snapping straw. Keith responded with honest indignation, and barely contained fury:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=124WAoqwKto
Powerful stuff, and falling well outside the permitted framework of our propaganda matrix, particularly on a defense-industry-owned network.
Oarwell,
where is Olbermann's profound indignation over what the Jewish Zionists are doing to the Arabs in Palestine? Where is Rachell Maddow's? As soon as one of these mainstream left-liberal media types is half so indignant about the Jewish Zionists as they are about the Christian Right, I'll be the first to congratulate them. Until that day, as with O'Rielly, thinking people should regard them all as two-bit phonies, poseurs, grandstanders and hypocrites.
In fact, their hypocrisy on the Jewish Zionist issue is even worse than the Right’s, as it makes few bones about the fact that it wants to kill Arabs and Muslims for their race and religion, whereas the left-liberals pretend they are moderate, moral, tolerant and multi-cultural even as they enable the Israelis to kill Arabs and Muslims for their race and religion, and enable the U.S. war machine to do so, as well. Why aren't Olbermann and Maddow taking on Pelosi and Reid?
Which side is the bigger hypocrite? Which side has enabled the Right to put us in the precarious position we are now in by enabling the Jewish Zionist Trojan Horse within the “opposition” instead of declaring them the enemy they are?
Goldstein was working for Big Brother, as are the left-liberals. Who signs Olbermann’s pay checks?
I' don't get this at all. there is this understanding that olbermann has "gone too far". how? when?
he's the only sensible commentator out there besides of buchanan.
From Chris Floyd's article 'Fear, Procurement, Profit: Permanent War and the American Way:
"The decades-long quest for military-enforced dominance of geopolitical affairs has been both producer and product of this ravenous system. And now, the war machine is pretty much the only thing left. It has eaten all our seed corn, and must keep prowling constantly in foreign lands to feast on the resources of others. So war and the ever-present threat of war will continue to be the driving forces of American policy, at home and abroad, both in the public and private sectors – because that's where the money is. Big money, gargantuan money, money out the wazoo. And what's more, it's free money – because most of it comes from the taxpayers, through insider sweetheart deals that very often guarantee profits for the crony contractor. No muss, no fuss, no risk – just gravy."
Did you SEE the RNC hate-fest video? It was stomach-churning, and I was surprised by Olbermann's courage in showing his disgust, which matched mine, although probably for somewhat different reasons.
As an amateur student of propaganda, I find fascinating the entire process by which "permanent war" is sold as normalcy to American viewers. It goes beyond the ancient sop to Cerberus–it is a 24 hour a day immersion in a worldview that tries, succesfully, to make militarism a necessary condition of American existence. As if we could not exist unless we were always willing to contest the hydra-headed tyrants populating the earth. Last week it was Noriega (our guy), yesterday it was Osama (our guy), an hour ago it was Sadaam Hussein (our guy), and now it is Chavez…no, wait, it's Ahmadinejad, wait, it's, its…
It's whoever won't play the U.S. corporate imperial game. Whether the Bad Men are nationalizing Anglo-American oil interests, or are threatening to sell oil in Euros, or refusing to allow United Fruit to steal land from peasants, whatever, it's always the same theme. If you don't go along with our Empire, you're a terrorist, and the next Hitler to be paraded before the rootin'-tootin' trailer-park crowd.
It's an endless process of propagandazing (oops) the American people to justify the profits of the defense industry. The Hate is piped directly into the public limbic system, via the most magnificent indoctrination tool ever devised (that would be TV).
The oil side of the game is pretty much over for the Seven Sisters, for big Anglo-American oil–read 'Bad Money' for the full story there. 80% of world petroleum is now controlled by state-owned oil companies. The Saudis are cutting their own deals with China and Russia. The Age of American Empire is ending, not with a whimper, but with a bang, as we try to keep the corpse breathing with new electrovoltage infusions of bogeymen and bombs.
Israel, to me, is a side issue. The situation in Palestine is dreadful, but so is the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and soon in the Pashtun provinces of Pakistan. Obama, Biden, Xena, it doesn't matter. Things were much worse in Vietnam while we were bringing democracy to their land. Same show, different foliage. Not to discount the Palestine situation, but I don't it's determinative.
The core issue is Imperialism, and the lie of "perpetual war for perpetual peace." War, and the psychopaths who clamor for war, are the enemy. The drooling Bill Kristol and the loathsome Bill O'Reilly are Siamese spawn of the same human-hating psychopathy, serving faithfully as paid propagandists of the Warfare State. Kristol might be driven by a different agenda, but the message is always the same: more blood, more death.
As I've written before, it is, quite literally, a satanic alchemy, transmuting blood into gold.
Oarwell wrote: "Israel, to me, is a side issue. The situation in Palestine is dreadful, but so is the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan"
But Israel and Jewish Zionism were the keystone to making Iraq possible. There is absolutely no way America could have invaded Iraq without the presence, propaganda troops, and sub-text of Israel brought to the table by U.S. Jewish Zionism.
Western imperialism was bad enough, although in retreat, when it was being conducted by phony Christians. And other than Vietnam (which can be plausible argued was a legitimate anti-Communist enterprise) we had never done anything on the scale of Iraq.
Jewish Zionism has given imperialism a second wind — and it has brought the evil enterprise to a whole new level: lying America into a war, institutionalizing torture and collective punishment in Iraq (in emulation of the Jewish state), the propagation of anti-Arab and anti-Islamic bigotry in conjunction with “the war on terror,” (another Zionist-emulated formulation), and none of this even mentions the authoritarian approach to government initiated domestically in the U.S. (which thankfully hasn’t yet gone as far as the Neocons no doubt envisioned) that the former Trotskyite Jewish Zionists brought to the table.
“The Jews” shouldn’t be scapegoated for all of this, but nor should the Jewish Zionists be given a pass. ALL of the guilty must be made to pay, in proportion to their crimes. There’s no “take-backs” with atrocities at this level.
Phil–here's Glennzilla on the "liberal" Matthews:
"Perhaps nothing demonstrates this absurd dynamic more than the painfully inane perception that Chris Matthews — for years a prime target of liberal media critics — is some sort of "liberal." That's the same "liberal" Chris Matthews who, over the years, has said things like this:
I like [George Bush]. Everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs, maybe on the left . . . We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. . . . Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day?"
Ed–here's Olbermann on Pelosi and the Dems financing of the "unspeakable" war on Iraq:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwtPbaxtcIs
I'm glad to see that Oarwell is back. He's not as funny as I am but he makes a lot more sense.
But I think that Ed is right that Israel is important for its effect on US. And also its political dynamics are like a miniature US.
Oarwell,
still waiting on that link where Olbermann criticizes Jewish Zionism. Does it exist?
Also, still waiting for Olbermann's indignant resignation from the "defense-industry-owned network." After all, aren't child-killing bombs underwriting his paycheck?
Oh, I get it. In post-Christian America, it's good P.R. to pose as a humanitarian, but don't ever let morality and principle get in the way of the bottom line. See, materialism is what it's REALLY all about. Left-materialist humanitarian poseurs know it, Right-materialist Capitalists know it. Let's just all enjoy our time in the belly of the beast and not make too many waves. Faux-dissent is alright…but never take it too far. Don’t want to make the money masters TOO uncomfortable, do we?
Chris Moore, what happened to your Libertarianism Defined section.
Actually I would like to understand the paradox or why your demand for freedom feels to gravitate so heavily towards authority and/or the Christian God, who from my limited point of view is not always so forthcoming with his advice.
Dead on, Ed.
More in your face Olbermann-types are what is sorely needed right now….
Just to clarify, I was referring to Ed's bit about materialism and faux-dissenters.
Clearly I don't agree with Ed's view on Olbermann, however.
Seems I was a bit hasty in commenting before reading throughly.
"Western imperialism was bad enough, although in retreat, when it was being conducted by phony Christians. And other than Vietnam (which can be plausible argued was a legitimate anti-Communist enterprise) we had never done anything on the scale of Iraq."
How can the genocide in Vietnam be plausibly argued was a legitimate "enterprise"?
Dead on Oarwell, but I think you do underestimate the influence of zionism in all this mess…
I have to agree with Ed that whether or not you like Olbermann's style (and most of what we've been saying here has been about his high-camp style), you could never say that the guy ever represented the slightest threat to the powers that be. I hope no one was waiting for the former sports announcer to ever do something principled like resign.
Basically he was carving out a market niche for himself in the traditional liberal way (and I use the term in its disparaging, Air America sense): lots of red team/blue team, Dems/Repubs, good guys/bad guys faux politics: pro wrestling dressed up in suits and ties — basically the exact mirror image of "conservative" talk radio. Unfortunately for him and us, it's been quite a while since this left/right paradigm has had much bearing on the real issues we're facing.
For example, his comments about Matthews seemed to imply that a good liberal would never let himself like a Republican on a personal level. It's all heroes and villains — politics as soap opera. At its best its irrelevant, at its worst its an intentional diversion.