According to Chris Matthews, pro-Second Amendment Americans are weird, not "normal," "obsessed" and probably racist. In a segment on Thursday's Hardball, the cable host played a new National Rifle Association ad attacking Democratic Senator Joe Manchin. Matthews lectured, "The gun people, they think about nothing else. And they never change their minds, never change their attitudes and never change the frickin' subject."
Talking to fellow liberal Ron Reagan, the anchor mocked, "How do you keep an interest among normal people that keeps up with that intense, almost, well, obsession that the gun people have?" Unsurprisingly, Matthews jumped to tarring pro-gun-rights Americans as racist. The new NRA commercial features clips of Michael Bloomberg and Barack Obama. The MSNBC host judged, "Ron, do you think there might be a soupcon of ethnic gaming in this, the pictures they put in there? Obama and Bloomberg?"
Matthews concluded that the NRA's goal in showing pictures of the African American president and the Jewish mayor was because "it might just turn off people in West Virginia."
Reagan eagerly agreed, "Obama looked awfully dark in that picture. Didn't he?"
Or, perhaps, could the reason be that Obama and Bloomberg don't support the Second Amendment, as far as the NRA sees it?
On April 11, [1] Matthews sneered that pro-gun senators are just like "Jim Crow" racists.
A partial transcript of the June 13 segment, which aired at 5:25pm ET, follows:
HARRY REID: The fight is not over. It's just beginning. I want to be very, very clear, though. In order to be effective, the bill that passes the Senate must include background checks and not a watered-down version of background checks. We're not going to let the forces of an extreme minority water down and damage the content of this bill.
MATTHEWS: You know, Ron, I know where you stand. You've been very strong on this. And I wan to ask you, this is a self-deliberative question: People have long-distance running mentalities, and sprint mentalities. And I think the people have been for gun safety, like you and I, have been guilty of being pretty good at the sprint. Bobby Kennedy gets shot. I wrote a letter to my congressman. Never wrote one any other time. Didn't do any good, maybe, but I wrote the letter and then, a couple months later, I'm thinking about the Vietnam War or something like that. The gun people, they think about nothing else. And they never change their minds, never change their attitudes and never change the frickin' subject. How do you keep an interest among normal people that keeps up with that intense, almost, well, obsession that the gun people have?
...
RON REAGAN: The NRA needs to be just as demonized among 90 percent of at the public, as obama is demonized among the, you know, ten percent or so of the fanatic, you know, gun buffs.
MATTHEWS: Ron, do you think there might be a soupcon of ethnic gaming in this, the pictures they put in there? Obama and Bloomberg? Maybe a soupcon, a little spoonful of throwing in the ethnic part? It might just turn off people in West Virginia. I mean, I'm just thinking what game they're playing there?
REAGAN: Obama looked awfully dark in that picture. Didn't he?
-- Scott Whitlock is the senior news analyst for the Media Research Center. Click here [2] to follow him on Twitter.