Tweety's Mea Kinda Culpa - A Good Start

It's not easy having to be honest with ourselves, especially past a certain age. Our mindsets are established, the world is arranged in certain patterns based on our experiences, preferences and best analyses. We acquire a filter through which events get sorted and interpreted. In order to trust our own instincts and tendencies, we have to believe in own fundamental goodness.

It's very difficult to have your own words and actions brought to your attention and be shown a heaping, meticulously-documented pile of evidence that, after what we thought was a lifetime of good intentions, perhaps we aren't as open-minded and open-hearted as we thought we were.

Chris Matthews presents us with a unique case. He is not as obviously partisan as, say, Hannity or Olbermann. At times, his political compass seems to point in all directions. To a conservative, he can seem disgustingly lefty, and to us at DK, he seems appallingly conservative. Most journalists see bipartisan flak as proof that their public postures are right in the middle, where they ought to be. But Matthews really does seem utterly apolitical, that he cares nothing of the aims and goals of politicians and cares only of the political sparks they set off. He relishes only The Game. This Political Junkie is ironically apolitical.

When Chris Matthews says that through all the political mudpits he has wallowed in over the years, all the amorality required to view loathsome perspectives through any but the most craven political lenses, through all of the shoot-from-the-hip, devil-may-care, non-PC, even purposefully provocative things he spews out with breakneck speed, that...

What I've always counted on in all the wild, speeded-up conversations on Hardball, and elsewhere on television, is my good heart.

... this strikes me as quite sincere.

Chris Matthews, as well as all the Hannitys and Olbermanns, and all of us who presume to spout our opinions here on DK and elsewhere on the Web, all of us start with the assumption of the goodness of our own heart.  No one thinks he is a sexist, and so when caught making a creepy, leering comment to a colleague, he is likely to explain it away as a well-intended compliment.  No one thinks he is a racist, and so when caught referring to an African-American colleague as clean and articulate,he may not be aware of the loaded nature of that backhanded compliment, until he is made to realize that it would never occur to him to extend that compliment to a White colleague.

It is all the more difficult to keep these little id demons tucked away when one's style is wholly dependent on speaking without filtering oneself at all.  That's fine when you're Howard Stern and all you really think or talk about is hot lesbian sex, but when your business is political analysis, you are tap dancing on minefields every day.  Which of us could talk straight from the top of our heads, without any filters, every day on every touchy subject in the political spectrum without occasionally betraying an ignoble thought?  And so to this extent, I have a certain amount of sympathy for what Chris Matthews is going through.

Where I start to lose some sympathy for Matthews is where he says

Some people whom I respect, politically concerned people like you who watch this show so faithfully every night, people like me who care about this country, think I've been disrespectful to Hillary Clinton, not as a candidate, but as a woman.

and

Was it fair to imply that Hillary's whole career depended on being a victim of an unfaithful husband? No. And that's what it sounded like I was saying and it hurt people I'd like to think normally like what I say, in fact, normally like me.

He throws a bone to the viewer -- "politically concerned people like you who watch this show" -- but he has never cared what his viewers think.  He who, in an interview on The Daily Show, referred to focus groups, comprised of actual viewers, as "peasants under glass."  To a certain extent, a person in his position can't take all the criticism he receives to heart or he would be utterly paralyzed to speak.  He can't be blamed for shrugging off the inevitable criticism.  But he has never showed much interest in viewer reaction in the past, so it's hard to believe it's motivating him now.

No, what's clear is that the criticism started hitting home when he got criticism, not from viewers, probably not from his producers, certainly not from us proles at The Daily Kos -- he got flak from "people he respects."  Perhaps Mika Brzezinski, who immediately countered
his infamous Hillary comment on the spot.  Perhaps he took Rachel Maddow's comment to heart, that the Internet buzz identified him as "a symbol of what the mainstream media has done to Hillary Clinton," even if he dismissed the comment at the moment.  Perhaps it was criticism from other colleagues and politicans and staffers and pundits and pollsters and spokesmen -- you know, people Matthews respects -- that made him look inwardly at his true intentions.

But whoever influenced him to take a second look at himself, I think he did so with some sincerity, and even some humility.  This was clearly not a speech Matthews wanted to give, but it seems to me that he did so with an open heart, like the good Catholic boy he sees himself as entering the confessional.

Like I said, it's a good start.  But when he starts doubting his heart, he runs a great risk, because if he can no longer shoot from the hip, if he has to start acknowledging his inner prejudices, he might have to start thinking before he speaks.

Perish the thought.