Thursday, October 23, 2008

When greed and dim-wittery win control of a culture

I ready two blogs every day. One of them is the incomparable Daily Howler. Today's Howler wrestled with the thought of Chris Matthews running for the U.S. senate as a democrat. Such an idea must have inclined Bob Somersby and his staff to mutter mordant chuckles because:

Why is it astounding to think that Matthews could run as a Democrat? No one on cable devoted more effort to the wars against both Clintons and Gore—the wars which sent George Bush to the White House, the wars which produced the war in Iraq. (Your toilet-trained leaders won’t tell you this. But it’s plainly accurate.) In particular, his trashy assaults against Candidate Gore were nasty, baldly dishonest and endless.

...
Meanwhile, Matthews has been a very good boy in recent months, playing his Dem viewers for fools. Suddenly, he’s deeply concerned about Republican misconduct, as he showed in a high-minded oration on the October 8 Hardball. Suddenly, Matthews is very upset at the troubling way the GOP “de-Americanizes” Big Dems. Why, they’ve done it to everyone, he sadly lamented. They’ve done it to everyone but Gore, this big fake tragi-comically said:


...
MATTHEWS: Let’s go back to Michael [Smerconish]. He’s changing the subject. The de-Americanization of every Democratic candidate, with the exception of Al Gore, I guess, who was so home-grown from—I guess he was accused of being from St. Albans or somewhere. Michael, there is a pattern here of de-Americanizing every Democratic candidate, starting with Michael Dukakis.


Of course, Somersby had previously written about Matthews complaining of Al Gore's "un-american" looks before, and Somersby has a long memory:

Unsurprisingly, [the Don Imus] gang of panderers—Charles McCord and, of course, Bernie—laughed at every word Don said. Later, Chris Matthews guested on the program, saying of Al Gore, "He doesn’t look like one of us. He doesn’t seem very American, even." No, we’re not making this up.

Make no mistake—these people will lecture the nation on "character," but it’s they who are the "fifth column" among us. Chris Matthews is finally rich and famous, and he’ll put it ahead of the national interest every time. And which patriots put these two fools on the air? NBC, our home-grown fifth column. It’s tragic to see what can occur when greed and dim-wittery win control of a culture. As we’ve long told you—the Culture War’s over and Howard Stern won; Imus and Matthews are just his handmaidens. We’re all put in danger now by their celebrity. But rest easy. NBC now belongs to Welch and Gates, and Don and Chrissy’s roles in the overall spinning are well understood—and, we would guess, quite secure.

Meanwhile, can those "anti-Americans" be all wrong if Imus is on the air every morning? To see the fruit of a rotted-out culture, just put on Donnie every day, and watch Charles (the good "Christian") laugh and laugh.