Matthews Withdraws His Bond Villain Death Wish For Limbaugh

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Chris Matthews, on Wednesday's "Hardball," backpedaled from the James Bond movie-like death sequence he depicted for Rush Limbaugh that he made on the MSNBC airwaves on Tuesday morning. As Newsbusters' Mark Finkelstein first noted, Matthews imagined a cinematic death for the radio talk show host: 

"Rush Limbaugh is looking more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebody's going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he's going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet. But we'll be there to watch. I think he's Mr. Big, I think Yaphet Kotto. Are you watching, Rush?"

Fast forward to Wednesday night and Matthews offered the following clarification during the "Sideshow" segment on the October 14 "Hardball" [MP3 audio available here]:

MATTHEWS: And speaking of the right. Got some concerned e-mail today – I never know what I'm gonna get – about my comparison yesterday of Rush Limbaugh to Mr. Big. Remember him? Played by Yaphet Kotto in the great James Bond movie. Anyway I said I was thinking of Mr. Big or actually Rush Limbaugh got thinking of him, whom James Bond said – you'll know the quote here and why I thought of it – "He always did have an inflated opinion of himself." Well it was a movie reference with which I am very proud to relentlessly give you. But in this political atmosphere I shouldn't have gone into such detail about Mr. Big's demise at the end of that movie, about that CO2 capsule, especially in reference to Rush. And certainly I shouldn't have speculated, even metaphorically or cinematically, about that happening to Rushbo in the real world. By the way we got word from ESPN late last night that Rush Limbaugh will be dropped from that group bidding to buy the St. Louis Rams.