How Can Chris Matthews Hate Hillary So Publicly and Get Away With It?

Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville at 2:09 PM on January 9, 2008.

Last night, in the comments of Jeff's awesome Angry Women Back Clinton post, I said, "I'm frankly a lot less optimistic than you are that tonight's inspiring and refreshing and generally fantastic repudiation of institutional misogyny will last. It will raise its head again in this campaign. Mark my words. I'd bet money on seeing an example tomorrow."

Today:

Last night, Matthews said: "I give her a lot of personal credit; I will never underestimate Hillary Clinton again."

But by this morning Matthews had already forgotten his newfound respect for her. He said: "The reason she's a U.S. Senator, the reason she's a candidate for President, the reason she may be a front-runner, is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be Senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win it on the merits..."

In good news, the other part of my comment was this: "That doesn't undermine what happened tonight, though. It was awesome. And it was worth a good few teaspoons."

Keep talking, Tweety, you misogynist wankstain. Underestimate her all the way to the White House.

UPDATE via Richard Blair @ All Spin Zone: At the Risk of Being Redundent...

MS-NBC's Chris Matthews flew totally off the rails last night as the positive results trickled in for Hillary Clinton . It was clear that even NBC anchor emeritus Tom Brokaw was taken aback by Matthew's vitriolic rants. Note to MS-NBC boss Dan Abrams: Tweety needs some time off.

There was a period of time around 9:30PM on primary night in New Hampshire that MS-NBC pundit and host Chris Matthews rolled totally off the rails. Coverage by the network was bad enough, but when Matthews said the following (from my live blogging of the evening), I almost blew out a chip on my laptop as I transcribed his drivel:

"I wouldn't put it past the Clintons if it looked like it was moving toward a victory for Barack to pull a quick press conference while it's still vague and say it's too early to tell and go to bed with some kind of vague victory statement."

This is word for word. I'm sure there's a YouTube of this moment floating around somewhere, or perhaps on the MS-NBC transcript of the remarks.

Between Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell, there could not be a more vitriolic pair of "reporters" dogging Hillary's campaign. I mean, I know that Mitchell dislikes HRC tremendously - and it comes through so clearly in her live reporting - but someone in Matthew's position has got to exhibit a degree of restraint. His mouth should have been in restraints last night.

I'm still having a hard time processing that a network anchor such as Matthews all but accused the Clinton campaign of getting ready to stage a victory dance if it looked like Obama was going to pull out a win in New Hampshire later in the night. And the way that he spewed his venom - the look on his face, the tone of his voice - was almost frightening.

I don't know if Chris Matthews needs a vacation or what, but clearly, he needs some time off. I hope that MS-NBC boss Dan Abrams reviews the coverage today, and gives Matthews some forced time off.

There is no place for that kind of behavior (allowing a personal distaste for a candidate) to drift into network coverage. None.

Tagged as: sexism, clinton, msnbc, matthews

Melissa McEwan writes and edits the blog Shakespeare's Sister.