Chris Matthews Wants to Tell You Something...

 

I meant to post this yesterday, but time got the better of me. When I was watching the caucus coverage (wrap that rascal!) on MSNBC, Chris Matthews repeatedly went out of his way to intimate that Barak Obama is not from America, that he is from Kenya. (Barak Obama was actually born in Hawaii.)

He delivered his slimy sideways digs at Obama in a strange, obseqious fashion. He would gush about what a swell guy Obama is, but over and over he would throw out these weird statments that repeatedly emphasized Obama's race and nationality.

Keith Olbermann was Matthews' co-host for the event, which spanned both of their programs and beyond. It was noticible that Olbermann did not talk as much as Matthews did. Olbermann had a sort of fixed sphinx-like grin on his face throughout the program, apparently just giving Matthews as much rope as he wanted to possibly hang himself with.

The MSNBC transcripts for the shows are out now, and these are some of Matthews' quotes:

Barack Obama, son of Kenya as well as America. With Kenya in turmoil right now, to be a son of that country, to be over here as a candidate for president and to win the Iowa Caucuses is a change of American history. [...]MSNBC

And I’m thinking, well, we picked an African-American guy who is literally an African-American—his father from Kenya and his mother is from the middle part of America, one parent black, one parent white. [...]

A guy named Barack Hussein Obama from—whose father is from Kenya, war-torn Kenya right now, who has grown up in Indonesia, a good part of his youth, came to America, had a first-rate education, was very successful in politics, and here he is on a victory projectile to win the Democratic nomination, defeating the president’s wife. [...]

A man with an interesting background, his father is from Kenya, which is right now in the midst of amazing turmoil. So we’re being refreshed as to history of Kenya again. [...]

But there’s something about Obama, where he comes from, he’s almost delivered to us through Indonesia, through a Kenyan father. He’s a man of the world, a Third World, in many ways, person, not just an American. [...]

his father is from Kenya, which is right now in the midst of amazing turmoil. So we’re being refreshed as to history of Kenya again. [...] MSNBC

Yesterday morning I could only find one link that discussed the choice of words used by Mathews, and that was on Air America's website:

8:53 PM: OH MY GOD Chris Matthews just called Obama "son of Kenya" and talked about how touching it was that he could "come here" and run for president. He was born in Hawaii. [...]

9:25 PM: Chris Matthews just interrupted Huckabee's campaign manager to say that NBC is declaring the Iowa caucus for Obama, or as he said "Barack Hussein Obama from war-torn Kenya." I am not making this up. Air America

I was surprised that Media Matters didn't cover it, but they did cover Matthews doing the exact same thing the following morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe hosted by Joe Scarborough.

(You know who Joe Scarborough is, right? He the Former Republican Congressman who had to leave office because one of his attractive young aides, Lori Klausutis, was found murdered dead in his office under extremely suspicious circumstances. [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. ] He now has his own TV show!)

This morning when I checked Google I found fifteen links that talk about Matthews and his repeated attempts to bring up Obama's origins, but some of the links are actually Republican sites blasting Matthews for being too "supportive" of Obama.

I think that Matthews' odd comments sort of fell by the wayside in light of the results of the caucus itself, and of course Matthews' ridiculous fawning interview with sixth last place Republican candidate Rudy Giuliani was probably a lot funnier to talk about.

You do have to give Matthews some credit. He did manage to get through the entire evening without once mentioning certain characters from the made-for-TV movie "Roots" or the lyrics to musical theme from the introduction of the television program "The Jeffersons."