Posted on 08/19/2004 4:52:56 PM PDT by chambley1
Unreal!
http://www.michellemalkin.com/
In Michele's own words.
AMBUSH JOURNALISM...OR MY EVENING WITH CAVEMAN CHRIS MATTHEWS
By Michelle Malkin · August 20, 2004 02:34 AM
Here's a peek behind the cable TV curtain. It's not pretty.
So, my publicist arranges for me to go on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews on Thursday night to talk about my recent columns on the FBI and national security profiling and my new book. Despite the show's basement ratings, we figure it's a good opportunity to reach out to a new audience. FOX News, with whom I have a contract, has generously allowed me to appear on some competing networks to talk about the book. Thursday was the second to the last day that I could make such appearances.
A few hours before the show, a producer calls to tell me I will be on for two segments--the first topic will be the Swift Boat Veterans, the second topic will be related to the book. Fine. This is the news business. I understand the need to go with the flow and cover the hot issues of the day. I am prepared to discuss both topics.
In a pre-interview, the producer goes over general questions about Kerry's response to the Swift Boat vets, whether the charges will be an issue in the presidential debates, and the basic themes of my book and its implications for the current War on Terror. I am originally scheduled to be on with the Washington Post's Dana Milbank. This was scratched and I am informed at the last minute that the other guest will be former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown.
As I am seated at the table with Matthews, who I am meeting for the first time, he cracks a joke--and not in a well-meaning way--about how I look. (There are quite a few people who are hung up on this.) "Are you sure you are old enough to be on the show? What are you? 28?" I grit my teeth. He badgers me again with the same question. I politely answer his question and supply my age.
(I wonder how Matthews' wife, the respected TV journalist Kathleen Matthews, who hosts a show about working women, would react if informed about her husband's treatment of a fellow female journalist. I've been in the business a dozen years and would be happy to talk to Mrs. Matthews about my firsthand experience with Neanderthal chauvinism in the workplace.)
Needless to say, things went downhill, fast and loud, from there.
1) Matthews introduces me, says we'll get to the subject of my book "in a minute," and launches into a spiel about how Bush should order the Swift Boat Vets to stop running their ads. Matthews intentionally mischaracterizes me as "speaking on behalf of the Bush campaign," when he knew full well I was there (with special permission from FOX News) to talk about my book, which he had sitting right next to him on the table and which he had chatted with me briefly about before the start of the segment. I correct him. He does not acknowledge his error.
2) When I tried to make a point about how the mainstream media ought to subject John Kerry to as much skull-pounding interrogation as private citizens such as Swift Boat Vet Larry Thurlow had endured from Matthews and the Washington Post, Matthews cut me off and snorted that he had never been thought of as "mainstream." Yeah, keep snorting.
3) In response to Matthews' claim that the Swift Boat Vets campaign was orchestrated by the White House, I noted that the Boston Globe--hardly a hothouse of GOP operatives--had raised many of the same questions about Kerry's war record as the Swift Boat Vets had. No response from Matthews.
4) Willie Brown expresses exasperation over Swift Boat Vets' questions about Kerry's wounds. He says: "There are questions about the shrapnel wounds. So what else is there? How much he got shot? How deep? How much shrapnel does he have?
Note that I didn't bring the subject of shrapnel. (Got that, Keith Olbermann?) Willie Brown raised the issue.
Here is how I responded verbatim:
"Well yeah. Why don't people ask him more specific questions about the shrapnel in his leg? There are legitimate questions about whether or not it was a self-inflicted wound."
Matthews frantically stuffed words down my mouth when I raised these allegations made in Unfit for Command that Kerry's wounds might have been self-inflicted. In his ill-informed and ideologically warped mind, this transmogrified into me accusing Kerry of "shooting himself on purpose" to get an award.
I repeated that the allegations involved whether the injuries were "self inflicted wounds." I DID NOT SAY HE SHOT HIMSELF ON PURPOSE and Chris Matthews knows it.
Only someone who had not read Unfit for Command would interpret what I was saying the way Matthews did. The book raises questions by vets, many of whom were with Kerry, about whether there was or wasn't enemy fire during the Dec. 1968 incident that led to his first Purple Heart (Patrick Runyon is quoted in a Boston Globe account on p. 35 saying "I can't say for sure that we got return fire or how [Kerry] got nicked. I couldn't say one way or the other. I know he did get nicked, a scrape on the arm.") and whether the injury came from a self-inflicted wound after he caught a tiny piece of shrapnel when he fired a grenade from his M-79 grenade launcher too close (p. 36); whether or not there was "intense rocket and rifle fire" during the Feb. 1969 incident that led to his second Purple Heart (Rocky Hildreth, officer of an accompanying boat on Dam Doi Canal that day, says there was no "intense rocket and rifle fire" on p. 78); and whether the shrapnel wound in his buttocks, which Kerry says he sustained in March 1969 and led to the awarding of his third Purple Heart, was the result of a mine explosion while on a mission or from a wound from his own grenade that he set off too close to a stock of rice he was trying to destroy (p. 87). See also pages 30-31. I was trying to get to these points, but Matthews would not let me finish a sentence.
Well, guess what? This foaming jerk Matthews, who called me irresponsible and kicked me off the show admitted that a) he himself had not read the damned book, b) he was not interested in asking Kerry about the specific doubts raised by vets about his wounds, and c) he had not and would not question Kerry about these specific allegations.
"Are you saying he shot himself on purpose?" Matthews hammered. I repeated myself again clearly that I was referring to the allegations about self-inflicted wounds in the book. When I tried to explain that the vets who were with Kerry had cast a lot of doubt on whether enemy fire occurred during the first two incidents, Matthews cut me off again. "Why did you say that?" he badgered. Because, I said, I was talking about what was in the book, which he had admitted he hadn't read.
"Don't you wonder?" I asked.
"No, I don't," he bellowed. "It's never occurred to me."
With that, I was kicked off the second segment.
As the show broke for commercials, Matthews scrambled for his producers to see if what he said was true. And I'm irresponsible? One staffer ran to the office where I had left my copy of the book, and handed it to Matthews, who--for the first time, apparently--started flipping through it. I asked for my book back and politely said thank you. After I left, he trashed me again on the air and his scurrilous charges were repeated by his MSNBC colleague Keith Olbermann, who called me an "idiot."
I am used to playing hardball. I expect it. I am used to ad hominem attacks. I get more in a day than most of these wussies have received in their lifetimes. But what happened last night was pure slimeball and the unfair, unbalanced, and unhinged purveyors of journalism, or whatever it is they call what they do at MSNBC, should be ashamed.
What I take away from all this is that the Democrat Party waterboys in the media are in full desperation mode. I have now witnessed firsthand and up close (Matthews' spittle nearly hit me in the face) how the pressure from alternative media sources--the blogosphere, conservative Internet forums, talk radio, Regnery Publishing, FOX News, etc. --is driving these people absolutely batty.
Keep bringing it on.
***
By the way, the full MSNBC Hardball transcript is here. Matthews and Olbermann's blog bloviations are here. Olbermann expresses incredulity that I was simply reporting what the Swift Boat Vets' book says, rather than spouting off in a half-baked manner:
Ms. Malkin wouldn’t even go so far as to attribute the suspicion to herself. It was in the book.
Olbermann, alleged journalist, is smearing me because I agreed to discuss and analyze claims made by the authors of Unfit for Command and actually referred to what was in the book--rather than cluelessly spew uninformed opinions about the book a la Chris Matthews (of whom Olbermann drools, "never prouder of you, Chris.") Parroting Matthews' conspiratorial line, Olbermann ignorantly suggests that I am following orders from the Swift Boat Vets to "steer the Kerry-Shot-Himself flotsam into the mainstream media." I suggest he talk to the producer, Dominic Bellone, who booked me about the circumstances of my appearance on the show and ask whether I was dispatched by the Bush campaign or Swift Boat Vets operatives or anyone else associated with the vets' book.
The feedback e-mail for Hardball is hardball@msnbc.com.
Chris Matthews' phone number is listed in the Spring 2004 News Media Yellow Book as 202-885-4600.
Your email to Hardball was perfect! However, I'm not sure Chris Matthews cares. His rating seem to have gone up and I am thinking he's captured some of the lib viewers from CNN.
Chrissie is such a dunderhead not to see that "self-inflicted" doesn't mean something was done purposefully.
He can't hear anything but the sound of his own voice, drowning out everyone he perceives as the opposition.
He's simply pathetic.
Michelle Malkin is more than a match for his tomfoolery.
No, the senior Bush became Director in 1975, so that won't work.
He was in the late 60s still a congressman, into the early 70s. In '74, he went to China as ambassador.
You call yourself a journalist? Hard to hold any criticism if you haven't even attempted to ascertain the facts. You don't want to read "UNFIT for Command", because you might get a clue about the FRAUD of Kerry. You are UNFIT for TV, and nothing but shill for Kerry. Do us all a favor and go back to the Peace Corps, sissy-boy!
I agree, uncbob. It would habve been easy for her to say "No, I'm not saying he did it on purpose, and if you would have read the book, you would know it does not say that either." I think she could have slipped that in over Chrissy's rantings.
Go Michelle!
We'll have to watch tonight if Mathews makes fun of all the "nasty" email, but we'll be able to tell that he's secretly proud he generated so much "buzz" for his basement ranked show.
I've often wondered how "Kathleen the Queen" as Chrissie calls her, can put up with this guy. I quit watching him sometime ago. How could anyone live in the same house with him?
"...firing an RPG upon a rock.."
An M-79 grenade launcher does not fire a RPG (rocket ptopelled grenade) round.
"We'll have to watch tonight if Mathews makes fun of all the "nasty" email, but we'll be able to tell that he's secretly proud he generated so much "buzz" for his basement ranked show."
If EVERY freeper vows never to watch Hardball again, that would be the best message to Chris Matthews. Let the Lib audience have him.
Correct, Let's all ignore him. This was posted on MSNBC website. Although I do enjoy Scarborough SOMETIMES, the rest of MSNBC is hard left.
"Tremendous audience growth
MSNBC enjoyed tremendous audience growth over the course of the Democratic National Convention in Boston this week. For the full four days of the DNC, the network averaged a 1.2 rating, 951,000 households and a .6 rating 1,300,000 total viewers from 8-11 p.m. ET. MSNBC is up more than CNN and Fox News Channel in all key measures, including primetime and total day; households, Adults 25-54, and total viewers and households versus last month (July 2004), last quarter (second quarter 2004) and the same period last year (July 28-31, 2003)."
I hope this cut and paste from MSNBC site is not illegal.
Has anyone thought to ask Chrissie Matthews what his military record is?
I don't think he served, but he was certainly old enough to, having been a speechwriter for Jimmy Carter in the late 70s.
If he was born about 1950, why the heck didn't he go to Vietnam -- like John Kerry, his hero?
Is Chris doing this typical thing of projecting? Shouting down those who want the Swifties to have a voice and to right the record, because he himself was a slacker?
I had gotten an opinion piece published in the LA Daily News and had some correspondence with Linda Seebach who was also a columnist there at the time (a libertarian). She suggested the three of us go out to dinner at an Indian restaurant out in Topanga Canyon, and we did.
It was pretty cool, especially considering I'd never had anything published by anyone in any way shape or form before.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.