Matthews Mocks Palin For Saying God Blessed America With Natural Resources

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O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee.

Has Chris Matthews heard America the Beautiful lately?  What could be more broadly acceptable than to suggest that God has blessed America with many riches?   But when Sarah Palin expressed that sentiment in a speech today, Chris Matthews mocked her.

With Michelle Bernard of the Independent Women's Forum and Joan Walsh of Salon in as guests, Matthews played a clip of Palin giving a speech on energy today in Ohio in which, discussing oil independence, Palin said: "God has so richly blessed our land with the supplies that we need." That set Matthews off.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well there you have the evangelical and the energy together: God's blessed us with energy supplies.  I mean, not that He didn't.

Walsh can be see chuckling. After she dismissed the speech as "pedestrian," Bernard praised it. Matthews then returned to his religious inquisition, addressing himself to Bernard.

MATTHEWS: Where do fundamentalists stand?  I'm not sure if you're a fundamentalist, but where do they stand on the creation of oil? Didn't oil get created by, fossil fuels, by millions of years ago in the ground or come about because of organic growth and then decay, and the generation, the creation of coal? Does anybody believe it was, the coal that's on the earth right now was created in the last three or four thousand years, as was written in the Bible, literally?  Does anyone believe that?  I guess they must.

MICHELLE BERNARD: I have absolutely no idea.  Maybe Sarah Palin does. I don't know, Chris.

MATTHEWS: I'm just curious about how these -- I know Joan you're giggling because you wonder how all these things work together in this ideological symmetry.  You have a religious belief that goes in one direction, and your politics goes in the same direction.  I just wonder whether anybody ever compares notes in these two categories. Like oil was put here as a blessed event, but maybe it was put here millions of years ago, and if so, let's reconsider some of our literary interpretations these days. Go ahead.

WALSH [tongue-in-cheek]: When she comes on Hardball, I look forward to you getting to the bottom of that. All of those questions. It's going to be great.

MATTHEWS: Well, we don't usually get into scriptural interpretation here, but we'll do the Dead Sea Scrolls should she ever show, I promise, because the chances of me getting Sarah Palin in the next week are as good as me finding more of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

If Matthews meant it—and wasn't just covering himself—when he piously appended "not that He didn't" to his opening comment about evangelicals believing God blessed us with energy supplies, then what was the point of the rest of his rant? 

In any case, guess we shouldn't be surprised by Matthews's outburst. He does, after all, support the candidate who for twenty years sat in the pews of a preacher who said "No, no, no! Not God bless America. God damn America!"

Bonus Coverage: Walsh Goes Biden

Joan Walsh, in the video clip here, on Palin's Ohio speech:

If that's the sort of thing you like, you're going to like it.

Keith Olbermann, on Palin's RNC speech:

People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.

How's This For Irony? Obama opened his infomercial tonight with this image of . . . amber waves of grain! Maybe Matthews will open tomorrow's show by wondering whether Obama was sending a "subliminable" evangelical message.

Oh no! Later in the infomercial, Obama shows a father reading a prayer to his daughter, thanking God for making "the stars up above."  Get on this, Chris! We could be electing a dangerous fanatic here ;-)

 

 

Aside: Just noticed that, along with a morning post, this item makes twice today that I've used "Matthews Mocks" in a headline. Guess that makes me an avid adulator of alliteration, and Matthews a most mocking man ;-)