Now *THAT* Is Playing Hardball

Chris Matthews is at his best when he's embarrassing right-wing blowhards by revealing how little they actually know about the subject they are ranting about (like this great war debate from a year ago). Tonight, the topic was Bush's slanderous remarks in Israel.

One of his guests was right-wing pundit Kevin James, who proudly hailed the President's remark, insisting (loudly) that Sen. Obama is a Neville Chamberlain-esque appeasing terrorist lover. Apparently, Chris could smell the ignorance, and decided to ask James point-blank what exactly Chamberlain did. James ignores the question, continuing to scream "appeasement! appeasement!", while Matthews demands that he simply answer the question. Finally, after a few minutes of that (seriously), Matthews had it-

MATTHEWS: "You don’t know what you’re talking about, Kevin. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Tell me what Chamberlain did wrong."

JAMES: "Neville Chamberlain was an appeaser, Chris. Neville Chamberlain was an appeaser, all right?" […]

MATTHEWS: "I've been sitting here five minutes asking you to say what the president was referring to in 1938 at Munich."

JAMES: "I don’t know."

MATTHEWS: "You don’t know, thank you."

And then, in true Bush defender style, having been defeated, James pretended he had never personally accused Obama of any such thing.

This was an amusingly good 'the emperor has no clothes' moment and kudos for the politically schizophrenic Matthews for exposing it. As Matthews clarified, "there's a difference between talking to the enemy and appeasing... appeasing is giving away things to the enemy," and then he gave poor Mr. James a history lesson as he flopped around like a fish. "We are talking about people with a blank slate in terms of history here!", Matthews exclaimed! Hey Chris, history is for elitists.

True warriors know that facts are pesky things. Just talk about 'strength' and scream a lot.



[UPDATE: Time's Joe Klein asks all the right questions in regards to this latest salvo by the Bush Republicans.]