"If she's a little elitist, let her be a little elitist!" MSNBC's Chris Matthews insisted of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a June 23 Hardball segment on a Washington Post front-pager on how Hillary "Clinton's rarefied life could be a liability in [her 2016 presidential] campaign."
"Why do people want to be fooled?!" Matthews groused moments earlier to his guests Nia-Malika Henderson of the Washington Post and Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post. "Why do the people want to be victims of fraud?" he added, seemingly hurt that Mrs. Clinton is facing scrutiny -- particularly within her party -- over her wealth and connections. "Why don't we accept them as they are, and stop making them like us?" Yes, this is the same Matthews who gleefully skewered Mitt Romney in 2012 after the leak of a video from an exclusive private fundraiser where Romney made the now-infamous 47 percent remark. As my colleague Scott Whitlock noted on September 18, 2012, Matthews gleefully opened his program that day trashing Romney's elitism (emphasis mine; listen to MP3 audio; videos follow page break):
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me start tonight with: [singing] 'If I were a rich man, Yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum.' Dumb. It's one thing to be rich and have the majority of voters convinced you're out to help the rich. Is there anything dumber to be caught pandering to your fellow rich? "Hey, buddy, give me $50,000. I'll give you dinner and tell you what I really think." And what does Mitt Romney really think about that 47 percent out there, that ones who will never-- you will never catch at a party like this? He called them a bunch of free loaders who want breakfast in bed, who want the people at the $50k dinners to foot the bill. Well, tonight the morning after, and yes, we've got more tapes of that infamous dinner to remember. That tony get together where the Republican nominee for president of the United States shared his deepest beliefs about the two kinds of people in this country, those who give, like him, and those who take and loaf and vote for Obama.
About 20 minutes later on that same program, Matthews compared the Republican presidential nominee to a fictional character from the 1960s sitcom Gilligan's Island:
MATTHEWS: Will Thurston Howell talk like we've been getting from the elite talking to the other elite, will that sell with Archie Bunker? Will that sell with a guy making 20 or 30, killing himself with two jobs to get the income. Is he going to like that talk that everybody who isn't making a lot of money is a bum?
Here's video from the June 23 Hardball:
And video from September 18, 2012:
