Chris Matthews keeps painting the Elena Kagan confirmation hearing as a
"culture war" between the Obama nominee and the Republicans on the
Senate Judiciary Committee. As Newsbusters reported [1] on June 28, Chris Matthews seemed to spin Monday's standoff between
Sessions and Kagan as a battle between the senator's rural,
unsophisticated Alabama roots and Kagan's Northeastern liberal academic
background.
Well, Matthews showed up in even finer form on Tuesday.
Describing Kagan as a liberal Obama prototype from the "high academia"
of the Ivy League, Matthews proceeded to frame her opponent, Sen. Jeff
Sessions, as the voice of the Confederacy.
Remarking that the
hearing has become like a "red state-blue state" battle, Matthews
claimed that "listening to Jeff Sessions is to listen to the, really,
the Confederacy; to listen to, really the conservative view of the Deep
South."
Matthews also oddly added that Republicans want to make
Kagan into a "voodoo doll" (repeating [2]
himself from the night before), an image associated more readily with
New Orleans, Louisiana, than Sessions' boyhood town of Hybart, Alabama.
Matthews pushed his "culture war" theory on the 11 a.m. hour of MSNBC
live news coverage. "Here we have a woman who has been very careful to
guard against the charge of partisanship," he said referring to Kagan,
"obviously under strong assault in that regard from the red state
senators like Jeff Sessions who would love to have a culture fight right
here on television, right?
As in, Sessions and his Republican
cohorts would rather have a spat with Kagan because of a culture rift,
than because she is a Supreme Court nominee.
Matthews and his
guest, liberal Democrat Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), also expounded
upon the conservative takeover of the Supreme Court. In fact, Matthews
admitted that he was "rocked" by how radically-right the Court has
become in the last 50 years.
Referencing recent Court decisions
on gun rights and campaign financing, Matthews lamented that "common
sense" prescriptions of gun control and campaign finance reform are
dying.
"I think that conservatives would agree with that, that
there's a movement so abruptly to the Right on issues like gun
control...the power of corporations," Matthews opined.
Matt Hadro is an intern in the Media Research Center's News Analysis Division.
