Exploding Hardball

I watch a lot of Hardball. There's tons of bluster and Matthews' self-indulgent tomfoolery can get old, but every now and then there's a debate that reaches heights of Socratic flow, thanks in large part to Matthews' facilitating, that goes far beyond anything you'll see on other cable news shows.

I thought I'd try to "explode" a segment I saw tonight about the new Obama church scandal. I tried to boil the exchanges down to their content essence. That way you don't have to listen to all the redundancy, stuttering, and what not, and just see the flow.

One thing that impressed me about this exchange: wow, did Tucker Carlson suddenly become more coherent and sensible since losing his show?

Video: Catholic priest at Obama's church screaming, "I'm white, I'm entitled, there's a black man stealing my show!" Mock weeping.

Matthews to Cillizza: The crowd loved his depiction. What was the fly in the ointment?

Cillizza: 1. The YouTube theatrics make it worse than otherwise...

Matthews: What if he weren't white?

Cillizza: Would have been worse, which leads to 2. Where it happened: it fits into a convenient narrative.

Lizza: Gotcha culture is out of hand. This independent guy has every right to say what he wants.

Tucker: This emphasizes that Obama went to a church hostile to white people, and poor whites don't like it.

Matthews: How did they show racial prejudice?

Tucker: By saying the fact Hillary is white is integral to whatever sins she committed.

Matthews: Wasn't he accusing her of thinking she was superior for being white?

Tucker: Yes, but her whiteness is central to his critique.

Lizza: How does that relate to Obama?

Tucker: Obama claims this church is where his character was forged, and this type of rhetoric is common there, and that contradicts his statements about himself.

Lizza: Obama wrote that this is the church that brought him to Christ. But that doesn't mean that anyone who speaks in that church speaks for Obama.

Tucker: Agreed.

Matthews to Cillizza: "God damn America" will be a 527 hit. How is this useful to McCain?

Cillizza: It won't be used by McCain, but what will be used from this is, "I'm white, I'm entitled." That idea doesn't sit well with folks in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania.

Matthews: Is this the gotcha culture, where pastors come out like IEDs?

Lizza: Not just pastors...

Cillizza: Geraldine Ferraro...

Matthews: She is really angry!

Matthews to Tucker: You had an interview show where you wait for that sugar plum statement to lead with. Now they seem to be popping up...

Tucker: There are no private moments. It's especially bad for Obama because he's not deeply known. He's more vulnerable to having our opinion of him changed by new information.

Uncontacted Tribes

Well, they're not exactly "uncontacted" if they've seen aircraft, are they?

It makes me wonder how or if they've seen other aircraft, and if such sightings have affected their religious beliefs. If so, I can only imagine that they consider the flying objects to be hostile. Which is pretty much true, even if the flights were made for the putative purpose of preserving their isolation.

McClellan is a Pussy (and so is the media)

Poor Scotty McClellan. He was a puppet. And good for him if he wants to reveal what a stuttering pussy of a puppet he truly was.

But the biggest crime he writes of is, indeed, the media's complicity.

David Gregory dancing on stage with MC Rove is the single most beautiful image demonstrating how widely the media spread its anus for whatever oversized propaganda dildo Bush's dungeon thugs wanted to insert.

Gregory is a stand-in for the entire Washington press corps, since he was widely seen as most willing to question the talking points. He takes it personally (as he should) when McClellan says the media fucked up.

Over on Countdown, Keith Olbermann has his outrage porn for the week, and so has been kind to McClellan; others have argued that Scotty should be commended for telling the truth (even if late) and sending a signal to future administrations not to lie. Of course, if that ever happened folks like Gregory and Olbermann would be out of a job. (At lest Olbermann, by airing McClellan's critique without challenge, doesn't come off as defensive.)

Another apologist for the status quo, David Gergen of CNN, has argued that such whistleblowing after the fact jeopardizes the security of presidential aides to give straightforward advice. Just like executive privilege, this protects those around the president from the lies they tell to advance the agenda of the single most powerful entity on the planet.

For me, it's simple: anything the administration -- any administration -- says should be assumed a lie until proven true (which is where real journalism comes in). Just because there are reporters who get paid to decode official lies, or because there are wiggle words like "outright" to put in front of "lies," doesn't change the fact that everything that comes from the government is propaganda ("manipulation of the narrative," in McClellan's words).

Using such a filter, anyone was able to see the absurdity and unproven status of what the administration was saying during the pre-invasion period. A properly skeptical press, aware of its historical role, could have prevented the Iraq invasion. Only by surrendering the drive to ruthlessly fact-check a political gang that can bring down nations, could the media fail to protect itself from the charges of a coward who finally tells the truth.