First, I watch and more or less enjoy Keith Olbermann nightly. But he's a pompous, thin-skinned asshole and anyone who can't see that is some kind of simpleton or fool. And, increasingly, he's a dangerously deranged asshole, one who can't even use the abuse of good drugs and lots of them as any kind of reasonable excuse.
Hell, even that scumbag Jon Stewart can see through this sick fraud at this point as KO's slide into madness and monomania deepens.
I'm not a big Ed "I Was a Middle-Aged Right Wing Republican Two Days Before Yesterday and Brought My Cheap Dogmatism With Me" Schultz fan, either. Or of Saint Rachel The Overrated, for that matter.
Chris Matthews, on the other hand, I'm really liking these days.
Chris is on top of his game these days. He's a smart political animal with good instincts. Not perfect, but whose are? Plus, his understanding of American history is deep, especially our political history since the New Deal.
Beyond that, ever notice how rich his references to films and books are? It's not showy, either. It springs from a Capra/Howard Hawks/Preston Sturges/John Steinbeck idealism and love of our country or at least its possibilities when we're at our best.
And that's the reason he loves Obama, though he may love the idea of him more than the reality.
When Obama screws up, Matthews calls him on it, but plays fair, and understands the reality of this fucked up, super-majority-required political landscape, and he really, really, really wants Obama to succeed.
Matthews eviscerated Howard Dean for his "Scott Brown's win was a protest vote against no public option" lie/delusion, and then demolished loudmouth progressive darling Alan Grayson for saying the Senate could pass a progressive health-care bill through reconciliation.
Matthews demonstrated that Grayson not only hasn't a clue as to how reconciliation works but doesn't even know what it is.
Compare Chris's knowledge of and experience in politics at high national levels and the depth of his cultural knowledge to KO's and Rachel's.
First, the culture stuff. They're pretty damned shallow. All I grasp from her show in that sense is that she's a nerd & geek, and proud of it. She probably made A's in math and science. Keith, well, he likes Monty Python, Terry Gilliam's Brazil, and Catch 22. Who knows? Maybe he even read Heller's book.
As for their knowledge of American politics, well, Rachel's dates from about 1992, when Pat Buchanan's speech at the GOP convention led her to conclude with classic Village Voice-ian originality that Republicans are goosestepping Nazi stormtroopers. Keith is older, so his roots go back a little farther. Maybe all the way to Watergate.
Chris these days is on a roll and maybe even a mission.
He bites at the word "netroots" like Vlad the Impaler on a peasant. And while he's enough of a loyal company man to maintain decorum with his MSNBC colleagues, it's clear that he's intent on countering their predisposition to ridicule, smirk at, and condescend to everything that doesn't fit their definitions of "progressive."
My take on the Rachels, Keiths, and even the more intellectually substantial Katrina vanden Heuvels of the world is what it's always been--they need to be sent to re-education camps in Montana or Wyoming, where they'd wait tables or work at a gas station until they're cured.
The netroots and cable TV "progressives" remind me of a high-school flick, only without any redeeming teen sex prurience.
See, Rachel's head of the chess club and Keith edits the school newspaper and they're the king and queen of the nerds & geeks, and they're embittered for life by always getting slam-dunked in school elections by the tyranny of the jock, rich-kid, cheerleader, Heathers/Mean Girls set.
But then one day, this magnetic new kid transfers in, and, at first, he takes up with the nerds. He make straight A's and is genuinely nice, but he also plays a mean game of hoops, and he's so beautifully mocha that even the Mean Girls melt when he smiles.
So then comes the big school election, and the mean, arrogant kids run Tracy Flick for president, but the new kid runs, too, withstands the predictable dirty tricks, and wins in a landslide.
Complications arise when, once he's in office, the new kid is nice to the rich, cool kids, too, and the sour-for-life nerd/geek Jacobins take their revenge by...
(I'm having a hard time casting Ed Schultz, since he's with the nerds/geeks, but, in real life, he's old and used to play professional football in Canada. So, I'm thinking either a creepy uncle or faculty member who thinks if he helps the nerds he has a shot with one of the cute 16-year-old chicks who are into poetry and making moony, obsessive drawings of horses with big eyes.)
Update: Thank you all!! Question: Is there a record for these "HR's" or whatever you adorably batshit crazy fucks call them and seem to matter so much to you, and is there anything I can do to set that record?
Update II: This outpouring is overwhelming. Thank you, you batshit crazy loons! Luv ya! I would advertise the personalized macromay beads I sell right here and right now if that weren't exploitative! I'm going to do everything I can to get back individually to each and every one of you, but, if I can't, please...don't take it personally.
Now I know how...Susan Boyle felt!
Update III: Let's keep it going. Here are two more "progressive" type people I see on the cable teevee who are big assholes: Markos Moulitsas and Arianna Huffington! And here's the winner for top comment. From "grannyhelen":
get the utter brilliance that is.......Matthews? Beck? Hannity?
You see, you need to make 6 figures before you really understand what the workin' man relates to.
I'm so utterly refuted and, worse, exposed! That's right. Anyone who might praise Chris Matthews is obviously a Glenn Beck/Sean Hannity sycophant!
I never should have "trolled" here thinking I could fool clever ones like "grannyhelen."
Update IV: You marginal, pathetic, authoritarian, "HR"-driven, censure-loving freaks are the ones who fail. See my reply below in the comments to CA Berkeley WV. You're like finger-on-the-dial call-in radio power freaks. If you really had power, what would be next? Moscow Show Trials?