This dude got caught with his pants around his ankles, end of story. I've watched enough "Fixed Noise" to know when an anchor is beleagering a point, or just beat the opposition's talking head into the ground, and I did not see anything of the sort on the part of Matthews.

I think someone needs to check this dude's credentials, though, and make sure he wasn't a stooge; the GOP can't be off their game THIS badly, can they?

Actually, I think it is very useful of someone to actually call these guys out on their revisionist history and flat out lies. These right wing radio talk show hosts can talk and lie incessantly to an audience on their radio shows and take no callers who will actually challenge them, like Matthews did. Would that Limbaugh and all his ilk had to go  one on one against someone who could match them on blowhard level, but actually had something of substance to say.

For the first time, probably ever, I'm liking Chris Matthews.

This isn't a monologue any more and right wingers only get more strident and ugly, their lies more extravagant, as they realize nobody buys their crap any more.

This is kind of fun to watch. I love seeing idiots revealed. But I DO hope no one gives this guy another platform.

I thought it was Chris's finest moment, frankly.  I enjoyed it.  The best thing since Mark Penn repeating "cocaine", "cocaine", "cocaine" and Trippi's head explodihg.

I don't know who books his acts, but Chris seemed genuinely surprised and appalled at what a relentless idiot the guy was.  The best part was when the guy actually tried to make up some historical knowledge and ended up saying something like...."Chamberlin appeased Hitler and because he appeased him he was not stopped from doing the things he was doing to become powerfull and do the things he wanted to do......." or something right of the top of his head.  He had no more idea what led to World War and what happened in Munich than my cat, but it didn't stop him from faking it.  

And Mathews made a very nice, and very apt, distinction that I really hadn't thought of so clearly.  What Chamberlin did (wrong) was give away Czechslovakia.   That was his mistake.  The mistake wasn't talking to Hitler.  If he had talked to Hitler and listened carefully, he would have discovered that Czechslovakia was just the beginning and he really couldn't have a rational discussion with Hitler about interests on all sides and how best to accomodate them, and he would have gone home to prepare for war.  But without talking, and taking the measure of our foes, and finding out how much is bluster, and how much is pose, and how much is legitimate interests, and how much is negotiable and how much isn't, and how much is just pure evil.....you never really know.  That's what Barack wants to do, I  think, take the measure of the leaders with whom we have conflict.  That's the first purpose of a conversation.  Then you go from there based on what you learn.  

But Mathews was able, advertantly or not, to make that point very clear.

Double idiots revealed! This James guy is clearly ready for the short bus, but then Matthews says 'Wasn't the Cole under Bush?" Uh, that would be a big fat no, Chris. October 2000. Clinton Administration.

I got no sympathy for James who is clearly a clown, but Matthews is such a gasbag and opportunist it's hard to root for him either.

As with mcgumbleton above, there are various levels at which listeners participate.  Chris Matthews audience might have some overlap with TNR's (I haven't watched Hardball in ages), but probably more that do with this guy.  So it's reasonable for Matthews to take down, quite publically, this loudmouth blow-hard.  I don't don't see one of TNR's soft\-spoken intellectual types ever getting the floor back from a clown like this.  Let a street brawler like Matthews defrock him.  It may take a while, but if enough Matthews discredit enough guys like this, they may pave the way for the more enlightened discourse you'd desire Josh.

I LOVE Chris Matthews.

So what if the guy is a bit sexist occasionally. The guy LOVES politics. And he's smart.

Peter -

Seriously??? You're technically right about the Cole, but you are pathetic. You are beyond pathetic. Let's look at what you're doing here:

1. You hate Chris Matthews because he doesn't like Hillary.

2. You watch an anti-george Bush segment where he has 99.9% of his facts right in defending the progressive position. But you take offense because this segment happens to defend barack Obama. And you can't stand for that.

3. So....being the loyal Hillary psychofant that you are....you actually cite an anti-Bill Clinton stat to undermine the anti-George Bush segment because you think it'll undermind Barack Obama. So you've actually agreed with Bush and attacked Bill Clinton in order to "bolster" Hillary's postion against Obama.

You are pathetic PATHETIC.

I think exactly the opposite. It was not fun for me to watch; it was painful, and I had to stop. But it IS useful. You need to bring the idiots out of the shadows so you can hose them down publicly so to speak. Remember there are people who still think that Obama's a secret muslim, blah blah ad infinitum. This was a public service.

This "obnoxious moron" apparently actually has some credentials as a Conservative talk radio host.

en.wikipedia.org/.../Kevin_James_(broadcaster)

"There are plenty of people who could represent the conservative position here with some intelligence and class"

Unless the position is trying to explain how Obama is wants to appease Bush's "Axis of Evil".

"in the end it doesn't enlighten or enrich the public discourse at all"

Au contraire! I think this is an extremely enlightening discourse that exposes one more conservative pundit/analyst for the bag of hot air he really is.

To be fair to Chamberlain, some historians have evaluated "Peace in our Time" as a best-of-a-bad-deal move.  British defenses in fall 1938 were nowhere near where they were in September 1939, even though they were pretty weak then.  Munich was a shameful humiliation but it bought a year's time to prepare for war.  Even then, the collapse in May 1940 and Dunkirk seemed to be unavoidable, as the Nazis were unstoppable.  But the refinement of radar and the development of the Spitfire fighter aircraft changed the situation crucially, and if the Battle of Britain had been summer of 1939 rather then summer of 1940, it could well have turned out differently -- and worse.

I don't know, ironyroad.  I read a counterfactual argument a while ago that seemed  to make a good  case that war would have been a feasible option in '38.  If the Nazis had to fight the Czechs on one front and the British/French on the other, it might not have been so easy for them.  The Sudetenland had all the major Czech defenses, and they would have fought Hitler if they'd  had support from the other democracies.  Plus, with the Sudetenland, the Czech steelworks fell into Hitler's lap.  Bad news, that.  

But hey, who can say for sure?

Virginia, time to switch to decaf.

I didn't mention Obama or Clinton. I said the other guy is borderline retarded. I simply made the point that if Matthews is going to give this dude the beat-down he deserves, it's probably not a great idea for him to add his own factual error to the discourse. I apologize for the audacity of pointing out a journalist's mistake.

Your third point, well, that one is just giving me vertigo. The words are all from the English language yet they don't add up to English. It's as if you've chose random words from the Jumble in an old newspaper you found in your basement.

Josh makes a decent point but I agree with some of the other commenters that exposing idiots who have a voice for the cynical political hacks that they are is also valuable.   I'm not sure the public is aware that some "experts" don't have any rational other then political manipulation for the things they say.  

Further, the guy was probably unlikely to get such an education from any of his listeners who call in.

hey ironyroad,

The other thing about '38 besides the Skoda works and the fact that the Czechoslvak army was good and ready to defend its country (unlike the Poles a year later) is that Molotov-Ribbentrop hadn't happened yet.

While maybe the Brits were less prepared in '38 than in '39.  The Russians would certainly have gotten into the game from the get go if only to take the Baltics and eastern Poland (now western Ukraine).  It is more than likely that a combination of British, French, Czechslovaks and Russians would've strangled Nazi Germany in its infancy and saved about 60 million lives or so.

If you read most accounts, the Wehrmacht was shitting in its pants that Hitler's bluff would be called.  It was the success of the bluff at Munich (and the previous ones in the Rhineland and the Anschluss) that cemented Hitler's reputation with the Wehrmacht.

Lol.   "Neville Chamberlain...  Neverlain Chamble was an appeaser".

Classic.

I don't watch MSNBC anymore, not just hardball.  I've noticed a friend and family member who watch the Hardball/Oberman combo can no longer understand/argue the conservative side of an issue due to lack of information (straw men do that to you).  

This guy is the biggest idiot that I have ever seen on an interview show. Far from being embarrased at his ignorance, he kept trying to talk over Mark Green and Chris Matthews. Just pathetic.

Reminds me of an old joke they used to use on The Bozo Show alot:

Boy, there's nothing like intelligent discourse.  And that was NOTHING like intelligent discourse.

It's like the scene of a train wreck; horrifying, but you have to look.

Irony: "Appeasement" is  not a single act and, in my view, reducing it to Munich misses the point.  Munich was only the logical conclusion and the end-game of a policy that had begun far earlier, even before the rise of Hitler, by those who, for whatever reason, sought to rehabilitate Germany and put France in its proper place.  These were the same people, beginning with Keynes, who started blaming the victorious liberal democracies for all the problems of Weimar; who sympathised with the likes of the misguided but heroic Rathenau that the problems of Germany were not cultural but rather specific to Versailles.  The sum total of these attitudes (plus abhorrence of war, quite understandable) led to the inaction of Britain and France following the remilitarisation of the Ruhr in 36 - and this is where the democracies failed to defend themselves.  This should have been the line in the sand; this is where "appeasement" bore its first ugly fruit - and the rest followed.

Even as to Munich, I think the what-ifs are healthy but they miss the point.  The assumption of course is that Chamberlain knew what he was doing - that all this was a calculated move.  But in fact, as late as August 1940 - in the middle of the Battle of Britain - there were many Chamberlainites in the House of Commons who were willing to come to terms with Germany to save the Empire.  Alan Clark's "The Tories" - published in the 90s - rips into Churchill for getting Britain involved in a war in which it had no stake, for which it gave up the Empire and its international pre-eminence, and as a result of which the British system was turned over the socialists.  That is, forty years later, the "appeasement" mentality continued in some quarters, without regard to the might have beens of military prepared-ness and so on.

This is the same angle adopted by the defenders of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact - and every one forgets that on the very day that the Germans were pouring into Soviet territory, Stalin denied that this was happening.  In other words, the treaty was not a prelude to preparation; but an act of desperation in the 11th hour in lieu of it.

Another arrogant, blustering moron from the far right.

It's good to see Obama and Biden, and now Matthews, punching back.

Gore and Kerry would have given some effete "weak tea", intellectually smug response. And ineffective.

Now it's time to take out Cheney, Bush, and these other school yard bullies with words they understand - like bullshit.

Run 'em into the sea.

Peter: I don't much like Matthews and I found his attacks on Mrs Clinton to be totally unacceptable.  I never watch cable news in any event - gives me gas.  BUT, you gotta admit, the look on Matthews' face as the jackass was digging himself in deeper was precious.  I think his producers just read the Wiki-entry and that was the sum total of the fact-checking done on this guy.  I'm gonna send this around to my students as an example of 1) not relying on Wikipedia, and 2) when to shut your mouth when questioned.

irony, Germany's military was getting stronger, faster, than the rest of Europe's militaries by 1938, and everyone knew it. That's in large part what scared the Chamberlain government off of open confrontation with Germany. The problem was that war was by that time more or less inevitable, and the only question was the timing and place. What Chamberlain gave up in his "best of a bat sitch" bargain was his ability to establish the terms of any coming conflict. It would have been much better for all involved for the war to have started over Czechoslovakia in '38 than to start over Poland in '39.

Chamberlain's error was in believing that his treaty would prevent, rather than merely delay, war.

This is precisely why I watch Hardball. Sometimes Matthews can just interrogate somebody about something they're not prepared for. From nowhere, he'll quiz his guests, and they usually fail. That's what happened with that poor state senator from Texas, it's what happened when he demanded sources from a first-time guest, and it's what happened here. Sometimes it''s nice to see that talking heads really don't know what they're talking about.

Add me to the list of those who thought this was Matthews at his finest. If he only had on guests who were morons like Kevin James, I'd agree that that would be tiring after awhile. But he invites people of all intellectual levels to participate and I think it's useful (and, yes, fun) to beat them up once in a while, whether it's Terry McAuliffe or Zell Miller or this over-caffeinated radio jerk. Matthews has always been an equal-opportunity humiliator and that is to his credit.

No doubt the talking head will spin this as yet another attack by Eastern Elites on yokel- I mean, Ordinary Americans.

I have to say, one thing that troubles me is the deep suspicion that if W were on the hot seat, he wouldn't know the answer either.

The question is still why did Hardball's producers have this moron on the show in the first place?

If Matthews had had Bush himself on this show Dubya would probably have spewed forth even greater idiotic babbles than did James in trying to explain the context of speaking in Israel  about "the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history"(i.e., Obama=Chamberlain). At least Chamberlain acutally WANTED "Peace in our time" It is Bush, not Iran, who sounds like The Fuhrer, blustering and threatening.

When I lived overseas, the BBC was my lifeline to English-language media. And the thing I grew to love about the BBC is that the way Matthews treated this guy is how British journalists treat _all_ politicians. All of the time.

We would have a much better government if our political leaders faced this level of basic hostile interrogation on a regular basis. Not that we'd have different, better politicians, but that the politicians we do have would have a strong incentive to study and to think and either know what the hell they're talking about or know when to shut up. A British politician who said what Bush said at the Knesset would expect that, in his next interview, he would be asked to explain exactly what it was that Chamberlain did wrong.

Vanmurs, I want to compliment you on a  terrific post.  This was a terrific point. I r eally enjoyed reading this

"What Chamberlin did (wrong) was give away Czechslovakia.   That was his mistake.  The mistake wasn't talking to Hitler.  If he had talked to Hitler and listened carefully, he would have discovered that Czechslovakia was just the beginning and he really couldn't have a rational discussion with Hitler about interests on all sides and how best to accomodate them, and he would have gone home to prepare for war.  But without talking, and taking the measure of our foes, and finding out how much is bluster, and how much is pose, and how much is legitimate interests, and how much is negotiable and how much isn't, and how much is just pure evil.....you never really know.  That's what Barack wants to do, I  think, take the measure of the leaders with whom we have conflict.  That's the first purpose of a conversation.  Then you go from there based on what you learn.  "

Keep up the good work!

Matthews' own error about the Cole bombing in this interview was more serious than his fans here are acknowledging, and not because it shifted responsibility from Clinton to Bush. In fact, it would be a fair point (and this might be what confused Matthews) to lay the failure to retaliate for the Cole on Bush, not Clinton, because the bombing happened very late in Clinton's term and the official conclusion that al Qaeda was responsible didn't come down until Bush had taken office. Faced with that conclusion, Bush apparently did nothing. By contrast, after al Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassy in '98, Clinton launched a cruise-missile strike aimed at killing Osama bin Laden. Republicans, incredibly, CRITICIZED him for this, apparently preferring that bin Laden be left in peace rather than risk seeing Clinton get credit for something. Once it was his turn, Bush never moved against bin Laden, even upon being specifically warned that he was planning to strike.

But the flaw in Matthews' thinking is the failure to connect the dots. OK, he sees that right-wing radio gasbags don't actually know who Chamberlain was or what they're talking about when they yammer about "appeasement" -- they just know it's some bad thing, and therefore must be something of which the Democrats are guilty. Fine, so he exposes that. But then he doesn't grasp that all this is politically relevant today only in the context of a right-wing noise machine that spreads "memes" like "Clinton appeased terrorists" in an equally reflexive and unthinking way. The most revealing point in the interview was when the James guy stopped shouting "appeasement" for a second and tried to cite evidence for that claim about Clinton. The evidence was "The Path to 9/11," a fictional "docu"-drama written by right-wing operatives that just made up an episode in which Clinton and his national security advisor refused to launch a strike when bin Laden was in their cross-hairs. That's (a) the opposite of what really happened, and (b) a case of a right-winger relying for proof on what other right-wingers say -- in a TV drama! (Mark Green, the other guest, was suggesting that James read Richard Clarke's book, the memoir of an actual official with a key role in these events.)

If Matthews really understood the way these people blow smoke, he would see the circularity in James' so-called reasoning and the continuity between Bush tarring Chamberlain, the right in general tarring Clinton, and Bush / McCain tarring Obama -- that it's all the same meme. The fact that he himself is confused about parts of this narrative shows how effective the right's constant shouting actually has been.

If talking to an enemy is considered appeasement, then Reagan/Bushco has been appeasing Kim Jong Il and other various Middle East dictators for a very, very long time.  And, don't forget the White house Press Secretary, Dana Perino, had no clue about the Cuban Missile Crisis!

Once again, this incident just points out the utterly disgusting hypocrisy, incompetence and cluelessness of the current occupants of the White House.

But, when did hypocrisy and incompetence ever dissuade W?

But rhubarbs, Kevin James is not a politician.  He is a know - nothing right - wing radio shouter. He should have never been invited on in the first place.  A little vetting would have told Matthew's producers that this guy is a total ignoramus.

Excellent points, JSmith.

A great history lesson, put in context.  Thanks.

I think W and McCain may have done Obama a gigantic favor by giving them this opening.  I hope they hit back....HARD.

To all who responded to my counter-factual on Munich.  Thanks, I appreciate the attention.  I wasn't trying to defend Chamberlain (and I don't know how one assesses the complex of motivations at the time) but merely to say that there have been a couple of different interpretations.  I agree that there is one major aspect that works in favor of the "war in '38" argument, and that was the potential capacity of the Czechoslovak military to inflict some serious damage on the Germans before being overrun (sheer numbers would suggest they didn't have a lot of time).  This may well have damaged the "Blitzkrieg" image that Hitler wanted to project.  However, there are two issues that I just want to throw in, that might be considered:

-- the role of the Sudeten German population as a kind of tactical demographic to "tilt" areas toward the invader before German forces got there;

-- the role of Slovak nationalist agitators, who of course used the later developments to form a pro-Nazi right-wing Catholic puppet state, and the Slovak population, who were not as committed to the Czechoslovak national idea as was often assumed.

That is to say, we don't know how Czechoslovakia would have panned out, and we can't say for certain that the year's breathing-space wasn't crucial for the Brits.

Again, we also can't deny that it was a staggering humiliation for the UK and France and a major encouragement to the Nazis, and in many ways the motivations of the players are secondary.

Behind all this is of course something else nobody has mentioned so far -- the paranoia, justified or not, about the Soviet Union, and the covert thinking that saw a strong Germany as being an ugly but effective protection against Soviet designs on Europe.

classic

Thanks, desertdog, I agree with you that it's a good opening and that Obama should take full advantage of it. About my previous post, I think I should clarify two points (for those still given to believing the right's propaganda about Clinton): First, the "official conclusion" about the Cole bombing that I referred to was not some political judgment that Clinton could have come to but didn't; I meant the FBI investigation, whose pace Clinton couldn't control (and which the Yemeni authorities obstructed). Condi Rice later told the 9/11 Commission that after Bush took office and was briefed on al Qaeda's probable role, he "made clear to us that he did not want to respond to al Qaeda one attack at a time. He told me he was 'tired of swatting flies.' " Supposedly the Bush Administration preferred a comprehensive strategy against al Qaeda, although they've had trouble pointing to anything that was actually done about that prior to 9/11.

Second, I suppose if reminded about Clinton's cruise-missile attack against bin Laden, gasbags like James would point out that it missed -- as if that was somehow Clinton's fault. That attack was a military operation, and the Joint Chiefs and the intelligence agencies signed off on it. That meant there were people involved who didn't much like Clinton and wouldn't have had any reason to protect him. Nonetheless, no one involved has ever suggested that the attack failed because Clinton hesitated or wasn't aggressive enough. It's just very hard to hit a moving target like a human being with a cruise missile. Clinton took the shot he had. Bush, by all accounts but his own, just wasn't interested in terrorism before 9/11; in its first months his administration was looking to cut its counter-terrorism expenditures and pour everything into missile defense. Anyway, my point in all this is just that by not being clear in his own mind on this part of the story, Chris Matthews managed only a half-critique of the right-wing propaganda at work here.

Anyone who gets so thoroughly embarassed by Chris Matthews (actually embarassed instead of stunned into silence by the screaming head / blowhard format of the show) deserves a nomination for the "Biggest Putz in the Universe" award.

Ironyroad: Kudos to you for introducing a little compexity into the debate. As the saying goes, history is lived forward but written backward. As armchair strategists 70 years on, now we "know" all the answers.

I presented my paper of public intellectuals earlier today, and received some very useful feedback. Some One interesting point: In Public Intellectuals: A Study of DeclineRichard Posner argued that one reason for the decline was that increased demand

I'm ready to see Chris Matthews run for the Senate seat in Pennsylavania.  It would be interesting to see if his speaking/debating style changes or if it remains the same as on his show.  I understand how a lot of people can find him annoying, and sometimes I do, but I appreciate that he is basically a politics geek who loves this stuff.

Chris Matthews: "Why are you screaming?"

I don't remember the last time I encountered such delightful irony!

What tembrach said, re vanmurs excellent comment. I especially liked:

"But without talking, and taking the measure of our foes, and finding out how much is bluster, and how much is pose, and how much is legitimate interests, and how much is negotiable and how much isn't, and how much is just pure evil.....you never really know. That's what Barack wants to do, I  think, take the measure of the leaders with whom we have conflict. That's the first purpose of a conversation. Then you go from there based on what you learn."

The ability to listen is the skill our leaders need the most in this century. The end of unipolarity will do that to a society.

tembrach and williamyard,

Thanks for the props guys.  It's nice to be able to say something apt now and again.  I am particulary honored to receive the notice of the king of wit in these parts, williamyard.  

What do they say?  You put enough monkeys in a room with enough typewriters for a long enough time, and eventually you get Shakespeare.

(My favorite part was the part about the cat.)

Not a Matthews fan, but his best sequence in a while I thought.  Not only does this moron get totally de-pantsed on Matthews's own show, Matthews gets to trot out his adjunct history prof persona--not only on his own show, but on Olbermann's show as well (with some guest host, not history-geek Olbermann himself).  He gets to look like the sane one for the first time in quite a while.

And this guy's name was really Kevin James?  Seriously, wouldn't the comedian by that name have been at least as qualified?