The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Five Million Dollar Idiot

Posted on | June 9, 2013 | 18 Comments

Leftists who get worked up about the Growing Gap Between Rich and Poor really ought to organize an #OccupyChrisMatthews movement to protest this truthless waste of TV time whose NBC contract reportedly pays him $5 million a year. If I took notice every time Chris Matthews makes a complete idiot of himself, I’d never have time to write about anything else. He’s a human Stupidity Factory, with no internal mental filter that warns him when he is about to emit a steaming heap of senseless gibberish.

Look, this isn’t about ideology. Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow are more fanatical than Matthews, and I disagree with them on damned near any issue you could name. But Hayes and Maddow — and for that matter, the insufferably smug Lawrence O’Donnell — are intelligent, articulate people. Evil, yes, but intelligent and articulate.

On the other hand, transcending all partisan differences, no one with an IQ above room temperature takes Chris Matthews seriously.

How bad is he? I’d rather watch Martin Bashir, except for the purely comic value of Matthews’s idiotic utterances. And this past week, Matthews managed to say something so incomprehensibly stupid, it was remarkable even for him. The context was the swirl of scandals afflicting the Obama administration. Matthews first suggested that criticism of Susan Rice was raaaaacist:

“Here they are, the old white guys, kicking the hell out of another African-American candidate for something.” . . .
“The discourse coming from that side, I don’t use that word liar. I don’t like it being used. Because it gets to motive and you don’t know what is in another person’s heart. How do these people get away with talking like this, I mean anywhere, even on Fox?”

Keep in mind, it was Susan Rice who went on five network Sunday shows to peddle the administration’s deliberately false claim that the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was a “demonstration” inspired by a YouTube video. What do you call somebody who tells a lie like that, if you can’t call them a liar? But never mind, Mister Tingles never quits until he has made a complete fool of himself:

“Why do they get the idea, if it isn’t ethnic — and I’ll just leave the possibility that it’s not — why do they just assume evil on the part of Obama? I mean he’s raised — his whole life has been crystal clear and clean as a whistle and transparent. We know his whole life — through all the great excellent education he’s had, the good pro-bono work he’s done through his life. He’s never been a money grubber. He’s never done anything wrong in his life — legally, ethically, whatever. His family is picture-perfect. The way he’s raised those daughters. Everything is clean as a whistle. And yet, they just refer to him as evil. They just refer to him as a liar. I’ve got to believe it’s ethnic with these people. They just got a problem with this guy being president, is there any other evidence to justify why they keep calling him a bad man? And that’s what they do.”

“I’ve got to believe it’s ethnic with these people,” that is to say, Republicans — you know, the guys who impeached President Clinton?

Leaving it to commenters to remind us of anything about Obama’s life that is not “clean as a whistle and transparent,” here’s the video:

Five million dollars a year they pay for that . . .

 

Comments

18 Responses to “The Five Million Dollar Idiot”

  1. Bob Belvedere
    June 9th, 2013 @ 7:21 pm

    Now kids, it’s important you study the sad case of Mr. Matthews very closely because it shows clearly the ravages of dipsomania.

  2. Rosalie
    June 9th, 2013 @ 7:25 pm

    I think he’s a mental case too. Seriously.

  3. BobBelvedere
    June 9th, 2013 @ 7:35 pm

    RT @smitty_one_each: TOM The Five Million Dollar Idiot http://t.co/xF0PpNQzLL #TCOT

  4. DaveO
    June 9th, 2013 @ 7:42 pm

    Only $5 million? Chris Matthews is cheap considering all the free advertising he’s given Obama, the DNC and everything anti-American for the last 10 years.

  5. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    June 9th, 2013 @ 7:52 pm

    The Democrats have a way of funneling money back to their pals.

  6. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    June 9th, 2013 @ 7:54 pm

    Now Dee Dee Meyers, she backed the wrong Democrat horse. But even she is still doing PR consulting and I suspect is bringing some decent bucks (not Chris Matthew type bucks, but probably high six figures).

  7. DavidD
    June 9th, 2013 @ 7:54 pm

    He doesn’t think people should call Susan Rice a liar because there’s no way to know what’s in her heart, but he has no problem calling all Republicans racists.

    The lack of intellectual consistency in people like Matthews is just staggering.

  8. Charles G. Hill
    June 9th, 2013 @ 8:42 pm

    Intellectual consistency first requires an intellect.

  9. Junior Samples
    June 9th, 2013 @ 10:54 pm

    Wonder how Chrissy feels about Glenn Beck making eight times as much and Rush Limbaugh making about 30 times as much as he does?

  10. HolyCowRUKiddingme
    June 10th, 2013 @ 12:09 am

    He actually gets paid? – He has no ratings!

    Who is MORE STUPID ???

    Chris Tingles or MSLSD?

  11. Adjoran
    June 10th, 2013 @ 2:04 am

    It makes no sense at all for MSNBC to be paying ANY of their hosts $5 million a year, their ratings cannot possibly justify it. Even the NYT story linked only cites unspecified “previous reports” about what his old deal was. I have to doubt it.

    Even liberal network executives don’t want to over-pay their employees. There is just no way Matthews was EVER worth that kind of money. Why would anyone pay him that? What else is he going to do, join a freak show?

  12. Adjoran
    June 10th, 2013 @ 2:06 am

    Free advertising? MSNBC has virtually no audience beyond those who already True Believer Leftists and the conservatives who watch to point out the outrages.

    Maybe Obama got $5000 worth of free advertising from Matthews. Over five years.

  13. Quartermaster
    June 10th, 2013 @ 7:48 am

    I wouldn’t assume inteligence on the part of any of teh denizens of MSNBC. Truly intelligent people aren’t evil as they realize where that leads.

  14. Sammie Jo
    June 10th, 2013 @ 9:53 am

    I guess Christine, didn’t see the pictures of Obama living the clean life as a pot smoker. lol
    We don’t know everything about him, only what he tells us with nothing to back it up.
    Cheap Chicago hustler comes to mind when I think about who Obama is.
    I’ll let you know when the black (ethnic) SUV pulls up in front of my house and the men in black (ethnic) knock on my door for my statement. lol

  15. Sammie Jo
    June 10th, 2013 @ 9:54 am

    They should paid minimum wage.

  16. Charles
    June 10th, 2013 @ 10:08 am

    If Chris Matthews makes $5M and Rachel Maddow makes $5M, does she have an Equal Pay Act claim?

  17. Scribe of Slog (McGehee)
    June 10th, 2013 @ 10:18 am

    They should be paid restaurant server wages. Having to rely on tips to pay the rent would wise them up.

  18. Chris Matthews gets paid how much? | The Daley Gator
    June 10th, 2013 @ 11:53 am

    […] Oh yeah Chris, we can see something on your face, usually insanity. I guess it is true, the big money is on TV. But I cannot fathom anyone paying Matthews anything. In my years in the restaurant/bar business I have heard more coherent talk from people who were falling down drunk. Matthews really is, as Stacey McCain describes him, “The 5 million dollar idiot” […]