It snowed in Baghdad yesterday.
In a scene straight out of solemn black and white stories of cease fires at Christmastime, residents of the war torn city marveled at the beauty of the white crystals falling, even if they melted upon hitting the torn apart streets. It hasn't snowed in Baghdad for as long as anyone can remember.

We are living in strange times, my friends.

This past week has been backwards crazy like that; on the heels of Olbermann's O'Reilly puppet theater the other night, in which O'Reilly unsuccessfully messes with Obama security, and then reports of Hannity being chased through NH by Ron Paul supporters, stirred up because Faux News didn't allow Paul to participate in the debate... Along came Dan Abrams complaining that he felt lately that Hillary was being shoved at us by the media! Oh really? The sweet indignation of just realizing what has been happening all along.


....and now Obama is suddenly the second coming!? What was Dan thinking when he was the program director of this very station and he supported the chronically low ratings of Scrappy-doo-Tucky-Carlson, the Libertarian fool, and the non stop rantings of Tweety Matthews, acting as if Hillary was a done deal and there was no point in even discussing other candidates. So sure were the M$M pundits about Hillary, that I started switching it off, because I am just fucking weary of being told what to do by pasty white men.

Yeah, Abrams' outrage rings a little hollow. NOW Dan is with us, in the face of the big bad M$M machine? Well, its possible, I suppose, since MSNBC is maybe the best of the worst of the M$M, but God, who in their right mind allows the likes of Willie Giest to ascend to the role of snide janitor, much less sidekick to the repugnant Morning Joe, and who kept Carlson employed against the usual formula of ratings and sponsors? I wasn't a fly on those walls, but if appearances mean anything, Tucker rode along on his relationships rather than ratings, long after it was clear that any retooling could help him in any way, and once the suits got involved there were slap-downs of Tucker and the "rumors" that Tuckie was on his way out (...also, didn't Tucker thank his 10 viewers on air, and then get reprimanded for it by the bosses?)

Granted, they have got Rachel Maddow on every show in a row, just about every night! (and, having quietly shot a pilot already, maybe she can get Kent Jones a gig there...he is sorely missed on Rachel's AAR show!) One good move doesn't clean the slate, but if they do start to build a decent lineup based around Keith, with Rachel taking the nine o'clock slot, it could be great programming for the upcoming Democratic majority! If New Hampshire is any indication, the snotty conservative pundits who used to have a stranglehold on all of the airtime they wanted, haven fallen from favor, along with their masters in the White House...

After writing the above rant the other day, I was surprised, pleased, and honored to receive an invitation to join Jill's newest project: a blog called Sweet Jesus I Hate Chris Matthews!
Not only was I pleased that she would consider my pitiful missives that are coming pretty irregularly lately, but also I'm kinda thrilled that we are all on the same page about this thing. I spend alot of time wondering if I'm just a crazy fool who was born at the wrong time, in the wrong world, and when I get any sort of confirmation of my sanity and/or remaining humanity around me, I feel so much better! Thats what got me started writing this opinion sort of stuff (and who watches more MSNBC than me??) and thats whats allowed me to go on through the morass of the Bush years and the press playing along like some sort of hired PR team.

And, it wasn't only me and Jill; it was also the entire newscycle, that left old Chris, by last Thursday, saying things like "the popular feeling is that the media...well, me actually..." influenced the outcome of the elections.... So, after years of being a sort of political kingmaker, in servitude to whosoever's stock was going up, and manipulating the American people by playing along with the farce that is his shtick; that no one could have known that any one thing or another was gonna turn out badly in this nightmare called the Bush years; no one could have known? I knew! So many of us knew! How come there were printed bumper stickers, way back then, that said "ATTACK IRAQ? NO!!," (to which has been added a new horrific array of other versions and countries,) right here in my neighborhood?

And regardless if who Tweety Matthews has ever written a speech for or been on staff with, it is an inarguable fact that he, and most of the other M$M pundits were decidedly leaning towards the talking points that were coming out of the White House in their reportage of the news leading up to this fiasco, and ever since. Its not even like any of the press would have had to look far or confirm all that much of the reams of information that was being dumped in their laps, already having been researched and confirmed. The only would have had to put their jobs on the line to report it.

So, when Tweety Matthews and his producers felt it prudent to give the stage to Michelle Malkin, as if she deserved to be on any show further towards the mainstream than the Jerry Springer Show; when they chose to allow old Tweety to literally drool on Ann Coulter, as if this is the kind of woman that anyone (especially a college crowd, which he was entertaining that week,) should aspire to be like some mean trannie with an ax to grind and books to sell, its so far beyond the pale, and begs some programming and social questions at the very least....Unless, of course, MSNBC aspires to be more like Fox News.

The pale? Well, here is a guy who finds all of this politics stuff so fun and interesting, like alot of us do. He rubs his hands together and turns all red, practically jumping up with anticipation of the upcoming primaries and what they could possibly mean. But somewhere along the line, he seems to have disconnected with the reality of what he is doing ,and what it means in the life and death struggles of not only our soldiers around the world, but of the growing number of Americans who are suffering due to the economy and our lack of health care.

So, even with the turn back towards the middle, and the network's seeming attempt to start to show a little deference to what is actually happening in the country, there is still a bit of problem with the ongoing bipolar swings of not only Tweet, but the bunch of them. When you start to wish that all pundits could be as stable as old Pat Buchanan (even if you disagree with him,) you're in trouble. When you start to think from time to time that Morning Joe has a point or two right, you're in big trouble...but across the board, we all think that something is wrong, and getting wronger, with Tweety.

On the heels of this week, came word that Timmeuh Russert is going to give Hillary an entire hour on Sunday; and entire hour! Not only was Timmeuh featured on Hardball to promote this hour, but Tweet went on about how it was going to be the hardest hitting, most important interview in the whole wide world!! And this, as part of the umpteenth time that Tweety was musing on how Hillary should and would concede; bow out of the whole show, gracefully...you know, back off.

It makes me think of how Kos has supposedly been trying to manipulate the republican primaries by having dems vote for Romney...met by such outrage! Such venom!...on both sides....But How are we supposed to view a 1 hour "hard hitting" commercial for Hillary to display her newest self? And how are we supposed to take an entire segment of Timmeuh and Tweet's delight at being able to present her newest self?

Crazymaking; after so many months of beginning every interview with anyone even remotely involved in the election process with a question like "With Hillary as the obvious candidate of choice for the democrats, what do you think of....?" Then planning her fall...now he views this interview as the most historic, interesting, and hard hitting thing to ever happen!
Either he is just trying to go with the flow as he sees it day by day, he is seriously bi-polar and not in control of which way his mania is leading him on any particular day, or this has all been a plan to try to shape the discourse....And, if so, I don't think that its working. Its clear anyway that he is not all that fond of Hillary...or women in general.

The feeling that I'm getting is that in the shadow of being so wrong all the time lately, fearing that his power is slipping as a new generation of more liberal pundits makes their way into his world, and the reality of electing a woman as president looms large, he is very confused about how to act, but is sure that he must keep being the boisterous Chris Matthews that he always was. Whats clear is that something is wrong. Ive watched him almost daily for years, as something that I turn on in the background while I putter in the evening, and something that my entire family watches, and there is something amiss there.

Look for Tweety to pull out some of his personality to match Hillary's new campaign of showing people more of who she is emotionally. I want to start a pool about tears; the tears of Hillary, the tears of Tweet, the tears of all the clowns! (cue: circus music)

c/p RIPCoco
c/p Sweet Jesus I Hate Chris Matthews!

Labels: Chris Matthews, MSNBC, Tim Russert