Chris Matthews Needs to Be Fired

Aside from being a useless shill, in the past couple of days, he’s viciously mocked gays with nasty slurs, and now he has compared Michael Moore to Osama bin Laden.

On Hardball today, Chris Matthews compared Michael Moore to Osama Bin Laden while discussing the newly released tape with Joe Biden.

Matthews: I mean he sounds like an over the top Michael Moore here, if not a Michael Moore. You think that sells...

Unbelievable bullshit. Peter Daou:

"Bin Laden sounds like Clint Eastwood" -- "Bin Laden sounds like Ron Silver" -- "Bin Laden sounds like Rush Limbaugh" -- "Bin Laden sounds like Bill O'Reilly"-- "Bin Laden sounds like Mel Gibson" -- "Bin Laden sounds like Bruce Willis" -- "Bin Laden sounds like Michelle Malkin"... Imagine the outrage on the right and in the press (but I repeat myself) if a major media figure spat out those words. Well, on Hardball, Chris Matthews just blurted out that Bin Laden sounds like Michael Moore. Simple: Matthews should apologize. On the air. This has NOTHING to do with Michael Moore and everything to do with how far media figures can go slandering the left. And last I checked, Michael Moore didn't massacre thousands of innocent Americans.

This has NOTHING to do with Michael Moore and everything to do with how far media figures can go slandering the left. Absolutely right. And last I checked, not only did Moore not massacre thousands of innocent Americans, but it was Bill O’Reilly who offered up San Francisco to al-Qaida:

O'REILLY: And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.

Did Chris Matthews—or any prominent media figure—suggest that O’Reilly sounds like Osama bin Laden? Of course not.

The playing field is not even. The rules of the game are not even the same for both sides.

And now that the Left is finally beginning to wake up and realize that we can’t just continue to ignore the eliminationist rhetoric, the marginalization of the progressives, and the steady stream of vitriol designed to demonize mainstream liberalism, the Right’s best counter is to reinforce the fallacy that a figure like Michael Moore is as dangerous for America as Osama bin Laden.

And the fact that Michael Moore is not as dangerous for America as Osama bin Laden is only half of the lie. The other half is that Michael Moore is part of the institutional Left, which he isn’t. Michael Moore is a filmmaker, and a media personality at best. He’s not entrenched in the political process. He doesn’t, for example, sell access to “unnamed members of Washington’s Power Elite”—and doesn’t have that access himself. He doesn’t host a cable news show, and is rarely asked to be a guest on one, and he certainly hasn’t been asked to guest host, like Pat Buchanan. From the looks of it, he has appeared on Hannity & Colmes once, the O’Reilly Factor once, Charlie Rose once, Real Time five times, and The Daily Show four times. By way of comparison, Ann Coulter has appeared on Your World with Neil Cavuto twice, Hannity & Colmes sixteen times, the O’Reilly Factor six times, Real Time six times, Larry King Live once, At Large with Geraldo Rivera once, Fox and Friends once, and has co-hosted The View once. Did you get that? Ann Coulter has been on Real Time with Bill Maher, considered a liberal program, more times than Michael Moore. That’s the same Ann Coulter who has argued that the most effective way to talk to liberals is with a baseball bat, that her “only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building,” that we need to “execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too,” and that the only debate about Clinton should have been “whether to impeach or assassinate.”

And yet someone with less media access than Ann Coulter, who does not enjoy regular access to (or even recognition from) prominent Democrats, who has never remotely said something as inflammatory about the president as “the only debate should be whether to impeach or assassinate,” is construed as being as dangerous to America as Osama bin Laden by a major media figure.

Kudos to John Kerry for being the first Dem to issue a response and attempting to redirect this appalling conversation:

You'd think the only focus tonight would be on destroying Osama Bin Laden, not comparing him to an American who opposes the war whether you like him or not. You want a real debate that America needs? Here goes: If the administration had done the job right in Tora Bora we might not be having discussions on Hardball about a new Bin Laden tape. How dare Scott McClellan tell America that this Administration puts terrorists out of business when had they put Osama Bin Laden out of business in Afghanistan when our troops wanted to, we wouldn't have to hear this barbarian's voice on tape. That's what we should be talking about in America.

(A personal perspective on Michael Moore from The Green Knight.)