Wide Open Thread

Air America radio has become Obama Radio. How sad- when it started, we were told it would be different from Conservative talk radio in that AA would give us the facts and trust the listeners to make decisions for themselves- there would be no creation of a “dittohead” culture on Liberal talk radio.

How things have changed! Air America is now All-Hillary Bashing, All The time. And Obama worshipping.

Heard in the course of an hour just on the Randi Rhodes show tonight:

1. Randi reads a ten-minute screed on how the Clintons are driving wedges between Latino and Black voters, Male and Female voters, etc. Then she cuts to commercial.

2. Randi says “Freedom of Speech is dead!” in reaction to the David Shuster suspension. She says that “Pimped Out” is no big deal- “part of the lexicon” (Ed Schultz said the exact same thing earlier in the day) and that the Clinton “machine” ruthlessly forced his suspension. Imagine if Shuster had said such a thing about one of Obama’s daughters? He’d be long gone by now, with the total support of liberal talk radio.

3. Randi tells a caller that of course, Florida and Michigan must “vote again” because they were “disenfranchised” the first time around. The caller says “Florida had a primary” to which Randi replies “yeah, but it didnt count, so nobody showed up!”

Um, “nobody” except the 1.7 million voters who did.

So sad. Air America radio started with such promise- now it’s every bit as anti-Hillary as any Right-Wing Clear Channel broadcast.

The “we must have Obama at all costs” cultists are pissing me off. I’m not the biggest fan of Hillary Clinton or anyone else who voted for the Iraq War, including Kerry and Edwards. However, given the current choices, I automatically recoil at this CONSTANT genuflecting for Obama over the most symbolic of motives — we MUST vote for him because he’s black and the victory of a black man gives us hope and inspiration. Why no similar “hope” and “inspiration” over the possibility of the first woman President?

Here’s what’s going on with Obama — he is NOT being vetted and scrutinized like all other candidates invariably are. Since it’s not happening now, it will have to happen later. When it does happen later and he doesn’t stand up up to it, Democrats are SCREWED.

I never thought I would agree with Pat Buchanan about anything, but he is the only guy at MSNBC who discusses Hillary fairly and respectfully. Rachel Maddow is a disappointment.

First: I hope that Hillary Rodham Clinton stays away from MSNBC. Chris Matthews’ is loathesome and his despicable treatment of Elizabeth Edwards made me see how worthless he is. Keith Olderman actually believes he’s Murrow now with all of his demented rants. Brokaw had to talk those idiots into a vague hint of humanity the last time that I watched them.

Second: Mukasey is a P.R. nghtmare for our country. He steadfastly refuses to give up on torture.

Third: I give Michelle Rhee a year at best. The parasites (Community Activists) who feed off of school districts will fire her if she closes schools. Schools are second only to the government for patronage jobs and waste.

Misleading
Sexist
News
Bully
Corporation

Stop watching MSNBC they are erroneous in their reporting and doing a HUGE disservice to the American public by their tasteless comments and biased coverage!

The reason why lots of people, preferring neither Obama nor Clinton, are now supporting Obama is that their number one issue is Iraq. When Clinton stood and applauded the Bush line in the SOTU address that the surge was working, she crossed a line that I don’t want to cross with her.

If she wins the nomination, I will gladly support her, but not quite as enthusiastically as I would Obama.

Is there not an Obama-free zone anywhere in this blog anymore?

Unbelievably tiresome!

Schuster’s comments were not only clumsy but insulting to any child who would work in a campaign for their parents. Having said that they were also done as a talk show host and not a news story. As the reporters out there go David Schuster has been just as hard hitting about the Republicans. At least he is fairer than most and I think the suspension was enough. It is time to forgive and go forward. Chelsea is now 27 years old and if she is campaigning for her Mom then she has crossed over from being the child to be protected into the public arena. I think Bush’s daughters are fair game too since they have put themselves out in the public arena now. They weren’t when they were under age. I support Hillary but as Clinton bashing goes Schuster is not such a serial offender as Chris Matthews. You should choose your battles wisely or they will come back to haunt you.

I agree that Obama needs more vetting and that it better get done in a hurry cause if not he will be our nominee but Clinton has had some missteps that have hurt her campain too. If there was a fair media they would show her answer about how to get out of Iraq from one of the debates. At least she showed she had thought of the consequences and that it would be necessary to protect the Iraqi’s who have worked with us. I haven’t seen Obama show that he was thinking of the logistics at all.

Let’s don’t forget what has been going
on at MSNBC. Please voice your disapproval. We need to shut them down.

The Chelsea Clinton episode is just the tip of the ice berg. This was said about Hillary’s daughter but the things they have been saying about Hillary are far worse.

1. “the reason she’s a U.S. senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That’s how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn’t win there on her merit.”
2. More than six years ago, long before Hillary Clinton began running for president, the Philadelphia Inquirer magazine reported that, according to an MSNBC colleague, Matthews had said of Clinton: “I hate her. I hate her. All that she stands for.”
3. Even before that, Matthews told the January 20, 2000, Hardball audience, “Hillary Clinton bugs a lot of guys, I mean, really bugs people like maybe me on occasion. I’m not going to take a firm position here, because the election is not coming up yet. But let me just say this, she drives some of us absolutely nuts.”
4. Matthews has referred to Clinton as “She devil.” He has repeatedly likened Clinton to “Nurse Ratched,” referring to the “scheming, manipulative” character in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest who “asserts arbitrary control simply because she can.” He has called her “Madame Defarge.” And he has described male politicians who have endorsed Clinton as “castratos in the eunuch chorus.”
5.Matthews has compared Clinton to a “strip-teaser” and questioned whether she is “a convincing mom.” He refers to Clinton’s “cold eyes” and the “cold look” she supposedly gives people; he says she speaks in a “scolding manner” and is “going to tell us what to do.”
6. Matthews frequently obsesses over Clinton’s “clapping” — which he describes as “Chinese.” He describes Clinton’s laugh as a “cackle” — which led to the Politico’s Mike Allen telling him, “Chris, first of all, ‘cackle’ is a very sexist term.” (Worth remembering: When John McCain was asked by a GOP voter referring to Clinton, “How do we beat the bitch?” Allen reacted by wondering, “What voter in general hasn’t thought that?” So Allen isn’t exactly hypersensitive to people describing Clinton in sexist terms.)
7. Matthews repeatedly suggests Clinton is a “fraud” for claiming to be a Yankees fan, despite the fact that all available evidence indicates that Clinton has been a Yankees fan since childhood. In April of 2007, former Washington Post reporter John Harris, who has written a book about Bill Clinton, told Matthews to his face that the attacks on Clinton over her history of being a Yankees fan were false. Harris said: “Hillary Clinton got hazed over saying she was a New York Yankees fan. It turned out, actually, that was right. She had been a lifelong Yankees fan. But people were all over [her] for supposedly embroidering her past.” But Matthews doesn’t let a little thing like the truth get in the way of his efforts to take cheap shots at Clinton: At least twice since Harris set him straight, Matthews has attacked Clinton over the Yankees fan nonsense, once calling her a “fraud.”
8. Matthews has described Clinton as “witchy” and — in what appears to be a classic case of projection — claimed that “some men” say Clinton’s voice sounds like “fingernails on a blackboard.” In what appears to be an even more classic case of projection, Matthews has speculated that there is “out there in the country … some gigantic monster — big, green, horny-headed, all kinds of horns coming out, big, aggressive monster of anti-Hillaryism that hasn’t shown itself: it’s based upon gender.”
9. Matthews has suggested that Hillary Clinton “being surrounded by women” might “make a case against” her being “commander in chief.” He once asked a guest if “the troops out there” would “take the orders” from “Hillary Clinton, commander in chief.” When his guest responded, “Why wouldn’t they listen to a [female] commander in chief? Sure,” Matthews responded: “You’re chuckling a little bit, aren’t you?” When his guest responded “No,” Matthews couldn’t quite believe it, sputtering: “No problem? No problem? No problem?”
10. Matthews has wondered if she is unable “to admit a mistake” because doing so would lead people to call her a “fickle woman.” He has said that Clinton is on a “short … leash” as a presidential candidate, lacking “latitude in her husband’s absence” to answer a question. He has, at least twice, called Hillary Clinton an “uppity” woman — both times, pretending to attribute the phrase to Bill Clinton. But, as Bob Somerby has explained, there is no evidence Clinton has ever used the term.
11. One of Matthews’ favorite topics is Clinton’s marriage. After The New York Times ran an article purporting to count the number of nights the Clintons spend together, Matthews’ imagination ran wild, and the MSNBC host couldn’t get the Clintons’ marital life out of his mind. At one point, Media Matters counted 90 separate questions Matthews asked guests about the topic during seven separate programs; the number undoubtedly grew after we stopped counting. In the middle of one of Matthews’ bouts of obsessive speculation about how often the Clintons are “together in the same roof overnight, if you will,” Washington Post reporter Lois Romano asked him, “[W]hat is your obsession with logistics here?” In response, Matthews snapped at her: “Because I’m talking to three reporters, and I’m trying to get three straight answers, so I don’t want attitude about this. It’s a point of view — I want facts. Tell me what the facts are, Lois, if you know them. If you don’t, I don’t know what you’re arguing about.”
12. Matthews has claimed: “[T]he reason she’s a U.S. senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around.” John McCain’s political career got started after he left his first wife for a wealthy and politically connected heiress, married her, and ran for Congress. But Chris Matthews doesn’t suggest that the reason McCain is a “U.S. senator … a candidate for president … a front-runner” is that he “messed around.” Even Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly said Matthews’ comments about Clinton went too far: “I mean, it’s rough business what these people over there [at MSNBC] are doing. We don’t do that here. We would never say that Senator Clinton got her job because her husband messed around. I mean, that is — that is a personal attack. And it is questionable whether a network should allow that or not.”
Matthews periodically gets it into his head that the most important question in the world is whether Bill Clinton will be a “distraction” or whether he will “behave himself.” He badgers Clinton aides about the question and warns that Bill Clinton “better watch it.” He asks if Clinton will be a “good boy” or be guilty of “misbehavior.” Matthews is not so subtly referring to Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. But curiously, he doesn’t have the same concerns about McCain or about Rudy Giuliani, as I wrote nearly a year ago.
Think about this for a second: Chris Matthews is holding it against Hillary Clinton that her husband cheated on her. But he doesn’t hold it against John McCain and Rudy Giuliani that they cheated on their spouses. Matthews seems to think women are to blame when their husbands have affairs — and men who cheat on their spouses are blameless.
And then there’s Matthews’ fixation on Hillary Clinton’s “ambition.” In December 1999, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson appeared on Hardball to discuss Clinton’s Senate campaign. Matthews asked Wolfson eight consecutive questions about whether Clinton was “ambitious.” Finally, Matthews said, “People who seek political power are ambitious by definition,” leading Wolfson to tell him: “if you say so. If it will make you happy, I’ll agree.” If Matthews has ever displayed as much interest in the “ambition” of male candidates like John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, or Mike Huckabee, he has done so in private.
And, in the midst of his years-long assault on Hillary Clinton, much of it either directly based on her gender or on a sexist double standard, Matthews has the audacity to accuse Clinton of being “anti-male” and to insist that “she should just lighten up on this gender — ‘the boys are coming to get me’ routine.”
None of this should surprise us. Chris Matthews acknowledged his feelings about Hillary Clinton long ago: “I hate her. I hate her. All that she stands for.” And “she drives some of us [guys] absolutely nuts.”
But Matthews’ questionable treatment of women extends beyond Hillary Clinton.
Matthews has described House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “scary” and suggested she would “castrate” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. And he has wondered how she could disagree with President Bush “without screaming? How does she do it without becoming grating?”
Just this week, Matthews claimed there isn’t a plausible female presidential candidate “on the horizon” because there aren’t any “big-state women governors” — but Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell, and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius all run states with populations comparable to male governors who have recently run for president, including Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Bill Richardson. How large a state does a woman have to run before she qualifies as a plausible presidential candidate to Chris Matthews? One that is twice as large as Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts? Three times as large?
Last October, Matthews mused aloud about a hypothetical couple trying to decide who to support for president. In Matthews’ mind, the wife just wants to see “the first woman president.” According to Matthews, the husband has to explain the math to his wife: “[T]he husband says, ‘You know, dear, you know, this is going to kill our tax bracket. You know that tuition thing we pay every couple of years for the kids, every year, we can’t do that if we get a higher tax bracket. We have to pay more money.’ ”
After the Des Moines Register endorsed Hillary Clinton earlier this year, Matthews suggested that the paper’s “female editors and publisher” succumbed to “lobbying” by Bill Clinton.
Matthews has repeatedly focused on the physical characteristics of his female guests. He recently began an
interview with conservative radio host and author Laura Ingraham by telling her, “I’m not allowed to say this, but I’ll say it — you’re beautiful and you’re smart.” He ended the interview by saying: “I get in trouble for this, but you’re great looking, obviously. You’re one of the gods’ gifts to men in this country. But also, you are a hell of a writer.” Note that Matthews said Ingraham is also a good writer — apparently, to Chris Matthews, there is no reason for men to care about whether a woman can write, only about how she looks.
Matthews’ comments about Ingraham came only a month after he told CNBC anchor Erin Burnett, “You’re a knockout,” adding: “It’s all right getting bad news from you.” Matthews also told Burnett: “Come on in closer. No, come in — come in further — come in closer. Really close.” Matthews made such a spectacle of himself during the exchange that The New York Post said “it sure looked” like Matthews had been “perving on CNBC hottie Erin Burnett on live TV the other night.” Matthews explained that he had merely been “kidding around.”
During MSNBC’s April 26, 2007, coverage of the first Democratic presidential debate, Matthews discussed the “cosmetics” of the evening. In doing so, he complimented Michelle Obama’s pearl necklace and declared that she “looked perfect,” “well-turned out … attractive — classy, as we used to say. Like Frank Sinatra, ‘classy.’ ”
Matthews also appeared to argue that many viewers would be basing their decisions about the candidates on how, in Clinton’s case, the candidate was dressed, or, in the case of the male candidates, how their spouses were dressed: “Some people are, by the way, just watching tonight. They stopped listening a half-hour in, and they noticed how pretty she is — Michelle — and they said, ‘I like the fact he’s [Barack Obama] got this pretty wife. He’s happily married. I like that.’ They like the fact that Hillary was demure, lady-like in her appearance.” When NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell interjected, noting “You’re talking about two … lawyers,” who went to “Harvard and Yale,” Matthews defended himself, saying, “Cosmetics are a part of this game.”
Nor is any of this new: In August 1999, Matthews hosted notorious liar Gennifer Flowers, during which he told her: “I gotta pay a little tribute here. You’re a very beautiful woman, and I — and I have to tell you, he knows that, you know that, and everybody watching knows that; Hillary Clinton knows that. How can a woman put up with a relationship between her husband and somebody, anybody, but especially somebody like you that’s a knockout?” After Flowers told him “Gosh, you make me blush here,” Matthews replied, “[I]t’s an objective statement, Gennifer. I’m not flirting.”
In 2000, Matthews responded to linguist Deborah Tannen’s explanation of then-presidential candidate George W. Bush’s efforts to appeal to women voters by saying, “So is this like the political equivalent of Spanish fly? That these seductive number of words you just drop out there and women just swoon.” That led another Hardball guest, Lynn Martin — a Republican — to point out, “You wouldn’t suggest he’s seducing men.”
Chris Matthews has been treating female guests as sexual objects for years. He has been judging women — senators, presidential candidates, the speaker of the House — on their clothes and their voices and their appearance for years. He has been referring to women as “castrating” for years. He has been applying double standards to male and female candidates for years.
This is who Chris Matthews is. He is a man who thinks that men who support women politicians are “eunuchs.”

This is as good a time as any to step back and take a look. The Left vs Left these days is remarkable. As much as we would like to Not be part of a right-wing authoritarian agenda, the authoritarian part seems to sneak up on us; which in some cases gives us, guess what, a left-wing authoritarian agenda.

Monty Python nailed this concept in ‘Life of Brian’, where instead of doing battle with the Romans, the People’s Front of Judea is battling with the Judean People’s Front.

A few points.
#I’m here because there’s no where else. That’s not meant to insult No Quarter. There’s Taylor Marsh, The Common Ills (and all their community sites), The Daily Howler and that’s about it unless you want open season on Hillary.
## Gypsy, when was it okay to comment on the Bush twins? When they were adults? They were adults when their father was running in 2000. It’s interesting the way that’s always ignored. They were never Chelsea or for that matter Amy Carter. They weren’t children growing up in the White House. They were grown women before their father was ever sworn in but the fact that Gypsy doesn’t get that goes to how much leeway is given to the children of Republican politicians.
### I don’t care what Gypsy or anyone wants say about Morning Joe, Schuster’s a reporter. He’s governed by different rules, even if he goes on Deal or No Deal, than others. Those rules are in writing at MSNBC.
He was offensive and disgusting. Find a Republican presidential candidate critcized for pimping (any variation of the term over the years) their child to get into office. You won’t.
#### The issue about Air America Radio is really important and I’m glad it was raised and so many were sharing examples. I agree with everything said. There is something very disgusting going on in the alleged media. Ava and C.I. wrote about Democracy Now at The Third Estate Sunday Review

http://thirdestatesundayreview.blogspot.com/2008/01/tv-democracy-sometimes.html

and they note how someone campaigning for Barack Obama was brought on one week as an objective observer and then, the next week, brought back to attack Gloria Steinem during which she reveals she’s been campaigning for Obama. The host, Amy Goodman, knew that and never told the audience “This woman is campaigning for Barack.”
More recently, The Third Estate Sunday Review did a piece on the state of independent media
http://thirdestatesundayreview.blogspot.com/2008/02/editorial-state-of-independent-media.html
which notes 20 columns at Common Dreams last week on the Democrats. Guess what? 4 were neutral. 1 was by Tom Hayden who endorsed Obama already so he’s just pretending to be neutral. 2 were on John Edwards. The remaining 13 were praising one candidate, Obama.
This is a campaign against Hillary and it’s coming from Air America Radio, Democracy Now, The Nation and all these other people who are supposed to be ‘helpful’. I think that’s really important for us to pay attention to. Bob Somerby’s talking about the MSM which does matter. But in terms of fueling hate towards Hillary among Democrats, that’s not from the MSM, that’s from AAR, etc.

Maybe the problem is that when so many liberal/progressive people were lamenting the lack of a level playing field in the media what they really wanted was the playing field slanted in their direction. Hypocrisy is hypocrisy no matter what side of the aisle it’s coming from.

I did not know that Hillary is such a powerful person that had she voted no on the Iraqi resolution, then everybody ( or at least 2/3) who voted yes on the same resolution would now vote no with her. And add to the fact that it was still a Repub dominated Congress.

To me, even if she had voted no, that Iraqi resolution would have still passed.

I love this when Hillary said this during the last debate in LA: “It took a Clinton to clean up after the 1st Bush mess and it will take up another Clinton to clean up after the 2nd Bush mess.”

As far as I know this is the first time David Schuster has made a inappropriate verbal slip in all the excellent reporting he has done on MSNBC. I have written that I’d like MSNBC to replace Chris Matthews with Schuster. Chris Matthews makes obnoxious sexist remarks almost daily. So, as far as I’m concerned MSNBC has taken appropriate action to chastise Schuster and people should shut up and get on with it. In all the talk radio shows I listen to (liberal) it seems the people calling in to complain about anything are the Hillary Clinton people. I see desperation in the Clinton camp, and people are being taken out in their wake.

What about all the trash talk coming from Tucker Carlson? How about all the mean questions that Tim Russert throws out? Get real, and leave David alone now.

CalGal -

I don’t care if David Schuster wants to be properly labled as a Barack Hussein Obama fan and Hillary Rodham Clinton hater and appear on Bill Maher or some other idiotic show.

But he doesn’t belong on a network as a regular journalist reporter. A rank editorialist perhaps.

“What about all the trash talk coming from Tucker Carlson? How about all the mean questions that Tim Russert throws out? Get real, and leave David alone now.”

You seem to be unaware that all of the above are under fire for their endless sniggering sexism. They should suspend all of them, and fire Chris Matthews.

http://mediamatters.org