Is Chris Matthews feeling pressure to keep up with the Olbermanns when it comes to flinging invective at conservatives?  On this evening's Hardball, discussing Dick Cheney's statement—-made at a dinner at which he received an award—that Pres. Obama is dithering on Afghanistan, an apparently incensed Matthews spluttered [unexpurgated in the original]:

"What G--D--- award . . . are they giving these guys?"

Chris Matthews, on Monday’s "Hardball," accused the right wing of achieving an "orgiastic level" of excitement in its rooting against Barack Obama to deliver the Olympics to Chicago. Matthews, joined by the Chicago Tribune’s Clarence Page and CNSNews.com’s very own Terry Jeffrey, opened his show by declaring that the "Right roots against America," as seen in the following opening: 

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Anti-American? Let’s play Hardball! Good evening, I’m Chris Matthews in Washington. Leading off tonight, the right roots against America. Remember how Republicans questioned Democrats' patriotism during the Bush years? How you were either with Bush or with the terrorists? So what do we make of the glee some prominent Republicans felt when Chicago and President Obama lost its Olympic bid. It's one thing to argue politics and policy, what's good and what's bad for America, that's what we do right here on "Hardball." It's another thing to root for America to fail....Here is a conservative group getting the news from, about the Olympic bid this Friday. Let's listen. [audio available here]

Terry Jeffrey walked away the winner on Hardball this afternoon. Despite being double-teamed by Chris Matthews and Salon's Joan Walsh, the editor-in-chief of our sister publication CNSNews.com had the others admitting that the Obama admin has gone too far with the cult-of-personality way it's pitched the president's speech to schoolchildren.

But that didn't prevent Matthews and Walsh from unsubtly accusing PBO's opponents of racism, archly claiming that the motive for the opposition to the president is his "background."

On Monday’s The Situation Room, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer interrupted a back-and-forth discussion on the presidential campaign between Democratic strategist Donna Brazile and CNS News editor-in-chief Terry Jeffrey for a live video feed of rock musician Bruce Springsteen at a Barack Obama campaign rally in Michigan: "I want both of you to stand by because Bruce Springsteen is singing right now at a Barack Obama rally in Michigan, and I can't help but want to listen a little bit. Listen to ‘The Boss.’" Just before this mid-conversation interruption, Jeffrey made a point about how "there's a lot of people in this country who believe the media wants Obama to be elected president, and part of doing that is tearing down Sarah Palin." It’s kind of funny that Blitzer helped Jeffrey prove the first part of his point only seconds after he made it [see video at right].

Earlier in the discussion, at about 50 minutes into the 4 pm Eastern hour of the CNN program, Blitzer brought up new CNN poll numbers that indicated that the number of people who think Sarah Palin is qualified to be president has dropped since early September 2008. He asked Jeffrey, "Why has it gone down?" Jeffrey then made his first point about the media bias: "I think since Sarah Palin has been nominated, she's taken quite a beating from the liberal press." He then described how he thought those poll numbers didn’t matter, and that "quite frankly, I think if she was at the top of the ticket, they would be doing better."