In case you weren't sure, Chris Matthews wants viewers to know: Conservative opposition to Barack Obama is made up mostly by racist "haters." In a two minute rant on Thursday's Hardball, Matthews used the "hate" label eight times. The anchor sneered, "There are too many people on the American right who hate the very notion of Barack Obama in the White House. It grates on them."
Matthews smeared, "Have his haters ever stopped hating him? When we got bin Laden...?" The idea that conservatives didn't celebrate the death of the 9/11 mastermind is absurd. The host prefaced, "You can say it's not about race or whatever. You can say it." He then launched into examples that supposedly prove conservative racism. (Not giving credit for the President's nice children, his marriage.)
Matthews concluded, "And I don't have to be the one to tell you, we live in a country where a good chunk of the country hates its elected president, and won't really, I mean really, tell you why."
Is the MSNBC anchor unaware of how George W. Bush was treated by the left? Liberals made a fetishistic movie about murdering him [1]. That sounds pretty hateful.
A transcript of the July 25 segment is below:
5:58 PM EDT
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me finish tonight with this. I said it before and I'm now saying it again: There are too many people on the American right who hate the very notion of Barack Obama in the White House. It grates on them, just as it thrills, even now, tens of millions of others. They hate not just his politics, but him. Think about all the days we have known him, from way back when he gave that breathtaking speech to the 2004 convention. Was there ever a time in all the days and weeks and months and years since that his haters in on the right have stopped in their tracks and said, "well, good for him. I like the way he did that." Think hard. Have his haters ever stopped hating him? When we got bin Laden, when the stock market doubled, doubling every 401k, making all those haters richer, twice as rich as they were when Bush left us stranded with a drooping, scary economy.
Did they ever look up and say, even hesitantly, "well, I'll give him this one." No, no, no. You can discount it all. You can say it's not about race or whatever. You can say it. But think about this: In all the criticisms from the haters about African-Americans generally, all the years of your life, and think about this man's life, about how hard he has worked, how he has achieved so highly at school, how he has married so well and so faithfully, how he has fathered two great daughters and kept them protected, protected them, been a truly great father to them, been a true partner in his marriage, treated his office with such respect and dignity, has never once let us down with his personal behavior, and yet they hate him.
They really do. And I don't have to be the one to tell you, we live in a country where a good chunk of the country hates its elected president, and won't really, I mean really, tell you why. It's the same reason they spend their time thinking of clever gimmicks to keep so many people from voting. Anybody disagree? That's Hardball for now.
-- Scott Whitlock is the senior news analyst for the Media Research Center. Click here [2] to follow him on Twitter.