News came down the wire last night that the sleazy Chris Matthews is out of MSNBC. It would seem to be obvious that an article published last Friday by GQ about his creepy sexual harassment habits finally sunk a ship that had begun to implode at sea over the last month.
After a New Hampshire debate, apparently sliding into a delusional state, Matthews said that, had Fidel Castro invaded New York (when was that on the agenda?), they would have shot him in Central Park (one can only wish), clearly a jab at the insurgent candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Then after Sanders won the Nevada primary, Matthews compared the victory to the Nazi invasion of France.
By all accounts, Matthews was a pig. Here’s a video clip of him joking about wanting access to date rape drugs before interviewing Hillary Clinton in January 2016.
Most recently and publicly, he continuously pestered Sen. Elizabeth Warren about whether one should truly believe long-standing sexual harassment complaints against Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a major topic of discussion during last week’s presidential debate. That action catalyzed political columnist Laura Bassett to write her GQ article, including in the text “There was no reason for him to harp on…[the accusation’s] veracity, except, perhaps, that he himself has made so many sexist comments over the years that he has a vested interest in Bloomberg being let off the hook.” As is the case with so many, hubris was his ultimate downfall. If he had merely limited himself to his attacks on Sanders, who his now-former employer is also gunning for, he probably would still have his job.
A spoiled patrician brat from an upper-class Massachusetts family, the Matthews notion of politics has been cheer-leading for mind-numbing neoliberal centrism over the past two-plus decades.
His pedestrian 1996 history Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry that Shaped Postwar America sings hosannas to the deep, personal bond between the two presidents (which in turns says a lot about our public notions of political saints), the obvious implication that life would be so much better if the Republicans and Democrats gave up all their differences and amalgamated into a viscous blob. (The book was published mere months before Bill Clinton came closest to doing this by signing his infamously-cruel Welfare Reform Act, whereupon the Democrican and Republocrat fusion came to its closest fruition and childhood poverty flew through the roof as a result.)
Between this and Pete Buttigieg exiting the race, this could be one great week!
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