Saturday, August 21, 2004

Michelle Malkin "Interviewed" by John Kerry's Lap Dog on Hardball

Last night while watching the Olympics, NBC took a comercial break so I did a little scrolling through the channels and was surprised to see Michelle Malkin on a show called Washington Journal on C-SPAN. I have read Michelle's blog sporadically, for no other reason that there are a lot of blogs, news, and commentaries to read through and I can't get to it all. The topic the host and Michelle were discussing instantly fascinated me. Michelle was on Hardball with John Kerry's lap dog, Chris Matthews. I read through the transcript and the guy was an utter bonehead.

Actually more like a monkey-browed jerk. Michelle can handle herself, of that I have no doubt, but Matthews was just off the wall. She was booked to talk about her book, but instead Lap Dog Matthews ambushes her about the Swifties and whether John Kerry's Purple-Heart wounds were self-inflicted. She could have easily answered the question if 1.) he'd let her (which he didn't), and 2.) he had actually read the book himself, which he didn't, and knew what he was talking about. Michelle recounts the "interview" on her blog site:

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.

And More:

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.

A caller to the Washington Jounal show said that Chris Matthews was a good, non-partisan interviewer that was aggressive with all his guests. Yeah, right. Yours truly had the following to say about Caveman Matthews when he interviewed John Kerry in April of this year, the topic being WMDs:

He digs the hole even deeper on Hardball, which should have been a good interview for him because Chris Matthews was his lap dog, asking easy questions that should have had easy answers.

No wonder MSNBC is going down the toilet.

Michelle is now going to be a regular read and added to my Blogs section. Keep up the good work, Michelle.

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