Chris Matthews Banned
We were watching when the MSNBC host, Chris Matthews, aged 74, interviewed (interrogated) Elizabeth Warren last week and yes, we cringed. We cringed four years ago when, during a lighthearted interview with the hosts of Weekend Update, he said to Michael Che, “You’re a funny guy. Funniest guy, who do you think? Funniest black guy?”
As Jost cackled, Che shrewdly said, “Bill Cosby. That way the headline won’t be about you.”
So we weren’t surprised when Matthews called it quits (was fired) last night. Surprised by the abruptness of it all? Sure. He came on, said his piece, they went to commercial, and there was Steve Kornacki sitting in the chair. But after a few notable miscues last week, plus Laura Bassett’s essay in GQ, the straw had finally broken the political camel’s back.
Matthews, who came of age in the Sixties and Seventies, is a product of his era. His sexism and prejudice was so ingrained that I don’t think he really ever understood that he was offending people. It’s a little (a lot) like the Archie Bunker character: Archie always had a good heart, he just didn’t know how to speak to anyone who wasn’t a white male.
Also, this was an unscripted walk-off by Matthews. Maybe his NBC bosses told him he’d have until the end of the week. Or more likely, until the end of the show. Likely they figured he’d save this speech until the episode’s end. Instead, Matthews led with it and then walked out of the studio, leaving Steve Kornacki to pick up the pieces.
Ants Marching *
*The judges will also accept Ant-astic Voyage, though it messes up our DMB conceit
Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan, the co-creators of Better Call Saul, have never been more confident. They know they have the best show on regular cable and they’ve already created one of the best series, if not the best series, from the Peak TV era. They are allowing themselves and their writers as much creative freedom as possible while still sticking to the story and that creativity has best been exemplified throughout the show’s five-year run via the pre-credits intro.
Last night’s was one of their best, a veritable Planet Earth sequence, as one ant and then plenty ascend the mountain that is Saul Goodman’s upended mint chocolate chip ice cream cone. The chef’s kiss? A soundtrack of yodeling mountain climber music.
The symbolism: that cone is the last vestige of Jimmy/Saul’s purity. The ants are the dedicated criminals who have come to devour and infest what, if any, chance he ever has to be a lawyer on the up and up. As Nacho later tells him, “When you’re in, you’re in.”
Eight Is Enough
Remember yesterday’s item about the Big Ten? You don’t? Well, go find it, I”ll wait. Anyway, after the latest rankings were released, there are now two more Big Ten schools (Illinois and Wisconsin) in the Top 25 for a total of eight. Eight Top 25 schools, still none above ninth (Maryland). And Indiana, which once upon a time held the same lofty status as Duke and Kentucky and Kansas do now, is not among them. Color us a little dubious on the Big Ten. Seven of those eight schools occupy the final 10 spots in the AP poll. Plenty of good teams beating up on one another? Or just no one who’s particularly great? And the largest concentration of college hoops writers living in the Midwest, perhaps.
I’m Running Out of Coronavirus Puns
Latest milestones: More than 3,000 dead. Approaching 100,000 infected worldwide and at least 100 (known) in the United States. Although Wall Street already seems to have developed an immunity to it, as the Dow Jones climbed more than 5% yesterday.
Tuesday
Since it’s Super Tuesday, let’s pay tribute to all the other Tuesdays out there:
Til Tuesday
Tuesday Weld
Fat Tuesday
Ruby Tuesday
Taco Tuesday
Tuesday Afternoon
Tuesdays With Morrie
Thing I just learned: Tuesday is taken from the Olde English “Tiwesdaeg” , which is an homage to the day of the Norse god Tiw (or Tyr), who is an adaptation of the Roman god of war, Mars, as Latin for Tuesday was “Martis” or “the day of Mars.” And in French as you know it’s “mardi.” It’s all about war, folks.
Chris Matthews “retiring” from his TV show at this time (i.e. 8 months before the coming Presidential election) is NOT a “win for women”, it is a “win” for the GOP Nazis. Is he sexist? Do you know many men over the age of 65 that are not? Hell, most men of ALL ages are sexist, as are many women.
Matthews’ personality & on-air persona were the opposite of “warm & cuddly”. While he’s never been a top favorite of mine, I did often like his “attack style” when the object being “attacked” was one that spewed lies &/or was detrimental to America. Yes, there were occasions where I cringed at the TV, but compared to the Sociopath in the WH & his Nazi collaborators (in politics & media), Matthews is a prince.
I had not read the GQ piece until today & it is a hatchet job. Filled with accusations & innuendo but little evidence. What exactly was the writer’s motivation? To “help” Warren? To insert herself into the “MeToo movement” by a LAUGHABLE example of her own experience with Matthews alleged “inappropriate flirting” (oh, puhleaze!) with her before a TV segment? LOL! Give me a freakin break. I’d heard about this article last week & assumed her “revelation” was going to be shocking. It was SHOCKING alright – that an adult female professional journalist was SO shaken by a man clumsily trying to put her at ease by what he thinks are compliments? HE’s IN HIS 70’s! You are right in stating above that he is a “product of his era”. Does that excuse ALL behavior? Absolutely not, but there need to be more egregious DOCUMENTED offenses before the individual should be forced out of a job he’s held for years.
Penalizing someone TODAY for behavior that was viewed 10-30 years ago as not just permissible but ordinary is a tricky if not dangerous objective. Where do you draw the line? (Does EVERY woman over the age of 40 get to ‘go back in time’ & publicly accuse EVERY sexist comment & action by every male? Can we get them all fired from their current jobs? Or do we have to be members of the media or entertainment industries to do so?…) Unless the “offender” actually broke the law & there is documented evidence & sworn testimony, the accused could sue for harassment or slander. Lumping someone who comments positively (NOW seen as “inappropriate” but not so not that long ago) on a woman’s appearance with actual sexual harassers let alone ASSAULTERS is NOT the way to combat this scourge in our society. In fact, this just solidifies sexism.
Overall, I think Chris Matthews has done a lot more GOOD for the political discourse in this country than any of his alleged sexist, boorish behavior is bad. (At least until I read actual sworn testimony).
And let me ask you jdubs, a journalist, what did you think of Bassett writing a sentence where she links Bloomberg’s alleged gross, disgusting remarks about women to Matthews in the SAME SENTENCE? Did MATTHEWS ever utter these remarks? She INTENTIONALLY is smearing her subject with accusations against someone else! That is bullshit & NOT “journalism”!
Susie B.
Part of me wonders why Chris M. didn’t just apologize to this woman on air and move on. But here’s what the bigger part of me thinks…
1) This didn’t happen in a vacuum. I imagine dozens of MSNBC female guests could share similar stories. Again, he’s not Weinstein or Lauer, he’s just a raving chauvinist and sexist. And I imagine this isn’t the first time NBC bosses have dealt with this complaint.
2) It’s time. He’s 74. He made two big gaffes last week besides the Liz Warren moment. Everything just coalesced in this moment.
3) I’ve watched Matthews for years. He interrupts female guests almost nightly, if not every night. He does so with male guests, too, but anecdotally I’d say not even half as often. Smart guy, intense guy, often an incredibly insightful guy. But at the end of the day you just always get the feeling he thinks of women as eye candy first, and humans with brains second.
I remember back in the 1990s SNL had this skit where the catchphrase was “Inappropriate!” The whole idea was that it was satire on the nascent PC movement. That someone with a good heart and who was well-meaning otherwise could just utter something so inappropriate because he or she had no idea how offensive it was to their target. I was thinking of that sketch today (can’t find it on YouTube). Sort of reminds me of Matthews.
If he were 55 or 60, I’d feel worse about this. He’s 74 and while he’s still very engaged, he just kept giving NBC too many reasons to drop him. This past week was the last straw(s)
Interrupting a talking female in a meeting or interview has been the MALE M.O. for decades if not hundreds of years. As mentioned here several times over the years, I began working in the early 80s & had just read a book about male-female interaction & power dynamics, etc & there was an entire chapter on how men constantly interrupt/talk over women in meetings. By 1985, I had just gotten a job where I went to a lot of meetings & met with numerous outside company reps. At the time, the ‘industry’ was heavily male so most of the reps I met with were male (including my boss). The book was 100% accurate & I made it my MISSION to “turn the tables” & lemme tell you – they COULD NOT HANDLE IT! Some had actual physical reactions (coughing, fidgeting, etc). Others just sat & stewed like little brats. I learned a lot from these interactions & one big one was that interrupting someone else is a pure POWER move – not only does it ‘weaken’ the target, it makes the perpetrator FEEL powerful. And it was addictive. I now constantly have to fight against the urge to “talk over” others in all situations.
By around the early 2000s, my job’s industry included more women (about 60-40 male/female) so the blatant sexism began to wane but it’s still there as it is in almost every job where men outnumber the women (& even many where they are the minority). One of my fave memories involves a meeting in the late 90s; of the 15 people in the meeting, most were men but they all came with female “junior” associates. I was the “lead” for my company in the meeting & also had a “junior” female assistant. The visiting lead guy almost instantly & inadvertently revealed his lack of knowledge & humility. I took utter delight in chopping him down, one pointed question (which I knew he wouldn’t know the answer) & comment at a time. None of the female “associates” in the meeting said a peep during the entire presentation/meeting until after the guys temporarily left to go to the bathroom or get coffee. Once they were out of the room, the women all stood up & clapped for me. They all said they had “never seen anything like it” & looked at me with awe. I was stunned as I didn’t do anything that I hadn’t been doing for the past 10 years. 🙂
Women breaking through & advancing in the corporate world has been a long slog. And for most of these women, dealing with REAL sexism/chauvinism/sexual harassment had been almost a daily occurrence for DECADES. And to read a whiny “trumped-up” charge of sexism about a man who was no worse than 90% of the men I dealt with for years & to get him forced out of job he held & held well for decades? For f*ck sake, if she was so “uncomfortable” at the time, why didn’t she SAY anything?! He was NOT her boss! This was not 1985, not 1995, nor even 2005. THIS is the OPPOSITE of FEMALE POWER!
Perhaps Matthews is worse than he appears on TV but I have yet to read anything that I find ‘beyond the pale’ (so to speak). I do realize that I probably give him a larger leeway because his political view is closer to my own than the Neanderthals on Fox (for example) & also because he has a whip-smart wife who was a reporter & then anchor for many years at a Washington DC local TV station. In the back of my mind was always the thought that he has to be one of the good guys if he was able to stay married to Kathleen Matthews.
Does anyone want to hazard a guess as to what Susie B’s “industry” is?
Related: I once worked somewhere where they made us do weekly conference calls. I hated it. Writers don’t really need to be on conference calls with other writers. Anyway, our editors decided it would be a good idea for another writer (relatively well-known) and I to do a regular video back-and-forth debate thingy. And during this conference call we’re taking two sides of an issue and he keeps interrupting me. Not once, not twice, but multiple times. Finally I say, “If you’re going to keep interrupting me, I’m not going to take part in this.”
And he said, “Well, if you want to be soft…”
This was on a phone call with at least 8 people. It took about 7 seconds for everyone to realize that this debate show was never going to happen. A couple weeks after that I had to appear with him and a 3rd contributor on a video thing. On that one he insulted and bullied the other guy so badly that our bosses told him to apologize. That’s just who he is. I’m glad I don’t deal with him any more.