Hardball

What's gotten into the NBC/MSNBC water?  Chris Matthews's verbal miscue on this evening's Hardball makes a triple-header of gaffes on the family of networks today.  As we've noted, Joe Scarborough kicked off the slip parade, unintentionally dropping an f-bomb on Morning Joe.  About an hour later on Today, Meredith Vieira stumbled into asking Matt Lauer a question that invoked the uncomfortable…

In response to Chris Matthews' claim that his job is to make the Barack Obama presidency a success, the Los Angeles Times Washington bureau chief Doyle McManus suggested the MSNBC host needs to see a neurologist.Although I agree that Matthews clearly has a fixation that needs attention, I'm not sure it's physiological rather than purely psychological.Regardless of the cause, the symptom was the…

Sounding like a voice-over on a movie trailer for an upcoming action blockbuster starring Barack Obama, Chris Matthews greeted viewers, on Thursday's "Hardball," with this exclamation: "The excitement begins! Barack Obama makes his first major appointments." Matthews then continued his giddiness, a little later in the show, when he raised up an electoral map, published in the New York Times, that…

If the Republicans had a few more spokesmen like Haley Barbour, the political landscape might look a lot different.  The Mississippi governor's down-home good humor and razor-sharp wit are a formidable combination. Barbour's killer combo of skills was on display on this evening's Hardball.  When Chris Matthews challenged his criticism of Obama's tax credit plan, Barbour good-naturedly backed him…

Last night Chris Matthews' beloved Phillies won the World Series, and perhaps more importantly to Matthews, Bill Clinton "passed the torch," to Barack Obama. Decked out in his Phillies red, the giddy Matthews found the whole thing, well, overwhelming, as he exclaimed over video of Obama with Clinton: That is a sight for the ages! That, I am overwhelmed by it. It is something to watch! Look at 'em…

If Obama wins on Tuesday night, Chris Matthews's mocking this morning of the notion that the polls are tightening will be soon forgotten.  But if McCain pulls off the upset, Matthews's smirking triumphalism will take its place in the halls of journalistic hubris near the famous photo of Harry Truman holding up the Dewey Defeats Truman front page.Just before Matthews came on, Andrea Mitchell ended…

Bob Shrum has made an addition to the growing list of things you can't say about Obama, because it's racist: don't you dare suggest Obama's never done anything hard.Dem Shrum issued his diktat while debating Ed Rogers, a veteran of the Reagan and Bush 41 White Houses, on today's Hardball. Shrum seized on and distorted Rogers' statement, manifestly made in the political sense, that Obama had "…

Is Chris Matthews so excited to pounce on any perceived Sarah Palin controversy that he can not get his facts straight? As NewsBusters previously reported, Matthews, in mocking Governor Palin’s alleged ignorance on the role of the vice president, stated incorrect facts on the history of the vice presidency. A further investigation finds that Chris Matthews mangled his facts over the HBO…

How over-the-top was Chris Matthews in his vituperation against Sarah Palin and McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer this evening? So much so that:Matthews twice berated an Obama representative for being insufficiently aggressive in going after Palin; Brian Williams, in the subsequent segment, chided Matthews on his emotionalism.The Hardball host was infuriated by Palin's description, in answer to a…

We are almost at halftime of Round Three of the MRC's Sweet-On-Obama Sixteen Media Bias Tournament. Only the Infatuated Four remain. If you haven't yet voted, by all means do so now.And if you have, check back often to see how your selections are faring. And as biased as they all are, much like the 1980's cinematic classic says, "There can be only one."No, not that one.

On Friday night, Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota appeared on Hardball and pounded away at Barack Obama’s associations with his long-time minister, Reverend Jeremiah Wright and bomber Bill Ayers, suggesting that the media should be investigating these associations with very anti-American voices, and that if John McCain had these associations, the media would be all over it. Chris Matthews…