Matthews on Clinton "being surrounded by women": "[D]oes that make a case" for or against her as commander in chief?
On the June 24 edition of the NBC-syndicated Chris Matthews Show, during a discussion about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), host Chris Matthews asked Kathleen Parker, a syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group, if "being surrounded by women" makes "a case for commander in chief -- or does it make a case against it?" Parker answered by referring to a June 21 front-page Washington Post article about the women working as senior advisers to Clinton's campaign: "It makes a case with a certain demographic, and I noticed the picture on the front of The Washington Post the other day showed her with all these women and her crew, and did you notice, there was only one blonde out of about 15 women, so it sort of -- I thought that was very telling." Parker never explained what was "telling" about the hair color of Clinton's top aides.
Asked by Time managing editor Richard Stengel, "What are you suggesting by asking does this diminish her as a commander in chief by being surrounded by women?," Matthews replied: "No, the idea that it -- well, let me just get historic. We've never had a woman commander in chief."
As a follow-up to his question, Matthews said: "But isn't that a challenge, because when it comes down to that final decision to vote for president, a woman president, a woman commander in chief, will be an historic decision for people. Not just men, but women as well." Turning to New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller, Matthews added: "Elisabeth, you're always thinking about these things." Bumiller referred to Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher -- women who were elected to lead Israel and the United Kingdom -- and said: "[W]e all remember these women. ... I think we can get there." Matthews responded, "But we've got Patton and John Wayne on our side." Stengel then added: "That's why [Clinton] has to be so strict about the war, because it's like Nixon can go to China, the woman has to seem like she's more militaristic even than the men. And that's a part of what she's got."
As Media Matters for America has noted, Matthews -- who on his June 24 program said that he "love[s] gender politics" -- has frequently focused on gender issues when discussing Clinton. He has said that "some men" say Clinton's voice sounds like "fingernails on a blackboard," and wondered if Clinton is "a convincing mom." Matthews also claimed men "are afraid" to criticize Clinton and that "men don't knock Hillary," and he previously invoked John Wayne to suggest that Americans -- and specifically Republicans -- "want a strong, tough, sometimes a pushy, offensive leader."
From the June 24 edition of the NBC-syndicated Chris Matthews Show:
MATTHEWS: OK, let's put the gender thing in here. I love gender politics, guys. We have two women here all the time to make sure we're balanced on this show. But Elisabeth, I know you're a feminist, in the best possible sense of that word. You [Parker] probably are in a more traditional word.
PARKER: Totally. I pay my own bills.
MATTHEWS: OK, well let's talk about that. I am stunned at these last supper scenes, where the Last Supper in history was all men, every scene you see with Hillary is a lunch, and it's all women. She is advertising her sisterhood. Is that something she can use to help sell herself as a future strong person defending this country, or does it get in the way? Elisabeth.
BUMILLER: No, I don't think it gets in the way; it's the base of her support. That's how she won in New York; she won because of women. It's not elite, you know, women that she appeals to, it's much more of a broader base.
MATTHEWS: Women with needs.
BUMILLER: Anyway, but that's a source of her strength, and I don't think that being a, you know, conservative -- more conservative than others on the war -- is going to hurt that at all.
MATTHEWS: Kathleen, being surrounded by women, does that make a case for commander in chief -- or does it make a case against it?
PARKER: It makes a case with a certain demographic, and I noticed the picture on the front of The Washington Post the other day showed her with all these women and her crew, and did you notice, there was only one blonde out of about 15 women, so it sort of -- I thought that was very telling.
STENGEL: What are you suggesting, Chris?
MATTHEWS: Well what does that mean? I want to know what you're suggesting.
PARKER: Well, I don't know, but that was definitely noticeable.
MATTHEWS: What am I suggesting?
STENGEL: What are you suggesting by saying does that diminish her as a commander in chief by being surrounded by women?
MATTHEWS: No, the idea that it -- well, let me just get historic. We've never had a woman commander in chief.
PARKER: No, you start picking on her. As soon as men start picking on her --
MATTHEWS: But isn't that a challenge, because when it comes down to that final decision to vote for president, a woman president, a woman commander in chief, will be an historic decision for people. Not just men, but women as well. Elisabeth, you're always thinking about these things.
BUMILLER: It's Golda Meir, it's Margaret Thatcher. I mean, we all remember these women. I, you know, I think we can get there.
MATTHEWS: But we've got Patton and John Wayne on our side.
STENGEL: That's why she has to be so strict about the war, because it's like Nixon can go to China, the woman has to seem like she's more militaristic even than the men. And that's a part of what she's got.
PARKER: Right.
MATTHEWS: Right.
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Matthews,
Your thinking process grows by the day. If you saw a piece of paper with only 2+2 equals 4 how would you know it was a male or a female that wrote the math? The answer is you wouldn't.
The comment that you have made about John Wayne being on your side is right up there with Scalia using a fictional television character as a basis to reach a conclusion in the torture debate. Both you and Scalia are ripe for the straight jacket, but then again Cheney has just recently decided he is exempt from reality.
How nuts like the above right wingers ever got to where they did is beyond imagination.
Who cares if Clinton is surrounded by women. All I care is for them to do their job which would be more than Bush or Cheney has ever done.
Bush and Cheney wasted 8 years spending all that time doing photo opts and fear mongering and not doing their job and I don't call strumming a musical instrument while people were drowning in Katrina as being qualified as heck of a job.
Matthews, the "right winger" who never worked for any Republicans on the hill, but instead chose to work only for liberal Democrats like Jimmy Carter and Tip O'Neill? Funny.
Asking questions about the problems any woman will have trying to convince people she's tough enough to be president is perfectly normal, unless you're an hypersensitive liberal hysteric who's so far out on the far-left fringes that all media are right wing in nature.
get some new talking points. what someone did twenty years ago doesn't prove they are the same person. perhaps you've heard of former liberal democrat and union head ronald reagan?
Or the former Conservative Hit Man named David Brock who changed his allegiances and is now worshiped here as if he's God. Wait, liberals don't like God so nix that. Worshiped here as if he's the second coming of Karl Marx.
I wouldn't question the toughness of all woman, I'd just narrow it down to Hillary Clinton, and ask why on earth would we think this woman would be tough on anything? She let her hubby stray unabated without blinking an eye.
TAZ....And YOU know for a fact that she didn't blink an eye when her husband cheated, and you know all the details of their marriage?
A large percentage of men (and a growing precentage of women) cheat on their spouses, and many spouse stay with them, and tough it out. For whatever reason they stay with spouses it's THEIR choice.
Do you prefer those who run through divorces and marriages like Limbaugh and others of the self anointed "family values" crowd?
THAT being said.....TAZ, you begin your comments by telling the readers of this web site that they worship David Brock as a God, and then tell us that oh yeah...Liberals don't believe in God.
When you say things like that, anything else you write on this site can't be taken seriously because you have showed us that you are a dim witted fool.
If you want your thoughts to be taken seriously, skip the "attitude" and talk to us like an adult...that is of course you are only on here because your Jr. high school is on summer break.
Yes, I've been told that before: Matthews worked for Carter and O'Neill years ago so he probably became a Republican in the time since.
There isn't any evidence of this, but so what? It fits your argument so it's valid.
All you need to remember here at MMFA is that once a liberal Democrat says something, anything that annoys the left, just once, that person is forever labeled a conservative or a shill for Karl Rove (who apparently controls everyone in the media but the Countdown lunatic).
That way, there are no liberals anywhere and everything is Rove's fault, which is exactly how the delusional paranoids like it.
the evidence is that matthews constantly criticizes democrats and is infatuated with every republican candidate.
Not to mention the fact that Mathews has admitted to voting for Bush.
taz, thanks for making my point, inadvertantly of course. it's what people are doing recently that is the issue. as for the rest of your post, it's the usual silliness. you libs this, you libs that.
if that is the way you feel about hillary,how about the former mayor of new york city,who was having affair also
That's all you got against Clinton. You need new material.
Christopher Mathews loves gender politics?
The only way that pasty-faced fay could ever pull that line off would be as a bobbed redhead with pursed lips.
Then little Chrissy could “experience” what it’d feel like “being surrounded by women”.
knowing kathleen parker's support of bush, it's a wonder she and matthews didn't have a gushfest over how manly bush is. and parker never met a democrat whose motives she couldn't impugn.
Hillary Couldn't light a candle to Golda Meir or Margaret Thatcher.
Go away you web site leach or get a non-self promotional name. Typical right wing opportunistic hypocrite trying to siphon traffic off a website he trashes people for reading.
What do you expect from these cons? they are unable to defend Bush and his lies.
Copious
The phrase is "Can't HOLD a candle to" ......
Whether or not you think Senator Clinton can't hold a candle to Margret Thatcher and Golda Meir, the intent of your comment was to was throw yet another stone at Sen. Clinton.
If you want give us your opinions, how about some documentation and comparisons to go with them....oh yeah, I've read your web site. NO research there.
I hope not. From some of my British friends, I've heard that Thatcher was horrible to the common people of Britain. Besides, Alan Moore drew his inspiration for the Sutler character from Thatcher.
MONKEYBOYIV
I agree. I wouldn't want a Margret Thatcher here..and from a show I saw recently on Sundance, she was also big on privatizing everything. I imagine the right wing would like her better than Senator Clinton. Copious often throws out pot shots, and offers little to support his comments. Copious arrived in the comments section, linking to his web site, criticizing MMFA, and offering little else.
If you've seen the website of Coprophagousdescent, you can understand why it tries to hang around here.I think it's hungry for brains.
So Matthews thinks that it might be a liability for Clinton to surround herself with women? Have he and his fellow Bush-lover Parker forgotten about Condoleeza Rice, Karen Hughes, Harriet Meiers, Christine Todd Whitman, etc? Were women a liability for Dubya?
No, Dubya was a liability for Dubya
I know you're a feminist, in the best possible sense of that word. You [Parker] probably are in a more traditional word.
A lot of Chris' thinking is right there.
Now if only Hillary used the right kind of aftershave, Tweety would swoon...
... John Wayne!?
Oh, yeah, his list of legislative accomplishments speaks for itself.
I'm not particularly a HRC supporter, but this has been bugging me for months. What the hell is Matthews afraid of in Hillary Clinton? Is she not bloodthirsty enough? Does he fantasize that she'll fall in lust with him, and then emasculate him? Does he think she has cooties?
I've got this weird notion that our public servants should, y'know, serve the public. Whether or not they're macho/triggerhappy/whatever enough for our brain-dead punditry. That particular qualification seems to elude the DC cocktail circuit.
I agree with the posters above. There seems to be a psychotic reaction to a strong woman among some of these pundit-talkers.
"well, let me just get historic. We've never had a woman commander in chief.""
Man, nothing gets by that guy, does it?
Cracked me right up.
Wait a minute- in response to his guest mentioning Golda Meir and and Margaret Thatcher, Matthews shoots back with a WWII General and a Movie Actor? What the hell does that even MEAN? How is there any logical connection there? Does Matthews even understand that George Patton was not George C Scott, and that John Wayne wasnt really a cowboy? Does he understand the difference between Image and Reality? I dont think he does. He's too busy sharing his latest man-crushes with us.
What a pathetic loser.
This guy matthews is so full of references to movie characters... not long ago, in trying to make a point that American guys are too much into guns and hunting and beer, to ever elect a woman Commander-in-Chief, he blurts out the source for his insight into the American male:
"Haven't you seen the 'Deer Hunter'?"
...as if that were a documentary or something... as if also, the average Vietnamese male spends his spare time forcing American POWs into playing Russian roulette, right chris?
I'd bet anything that, when matthews mentioned Gen. Patton's name above, it was George C. Scott's image that appeared in his delusional mind.
I don't know if George C. Scott ever spent a day in the military... I know John Wayne didn't... but nevertheless, they're the stuff that chris matthew's National Security dreams are made of.
I once knew a girl like Chris Matthews. She was very nice, but had no internal monologue. So whenever she opened her mouth, we'd hear a complete explanation about how she felt and thought about whatever happened to be on her mind at the time. Usually she was fun to listen to, at least for a little while.
Chris Matthews is the same way, except the contents of his mind are creepy and frightening, not amusing. He's got some kind of weird fixation on strong, hyper-masculine "daddy" figures like Patton and John Wayne. You don't have to be a shrink to wonder why exacly a sixty-something man is so obsessed with these "he-man" father figures...
"why exactly"
You can just tell that Matthews is trying to convince his guests, his audience, and the entire country that HE is as masculine as the guys he constantly swoons over. He is constantly talking about "street toughs," "tough Irish boys," and "cowboys" as if he is living in some weird alternate reality he read about in some history book. I swear, Matthews thinks that everyone who lives west of the Mississippi is roping calves and riding the range, and everyone who lives in East Coast cities is wearing knickers, playing stickball, and forming ethnic gangs. Add in the fact that he drools over the prospect of "deadlocked, brokered conventions" and you get the idea that Matthews is doesnt know what year it is or has any grasp on reality at all.
It was in a comic book that he read about his fantasy world.
But Hillary's got Xena, Warrior Princess! And Elektra! And Aeon Flux!
Our country couldn't be in safer hands!
Leaving aside the questions of gender bias and quasi- (or not) bigotry in Matthews remarks, I just have to note what an extraordinary experience it is to actually read the transcript of one of these bobblehead shows. The sheer incoherence of thought, the inanaity of the questions and the vacuity of the answers is astonishing.
How these people ever managed to graduate high school is a mystery. But clearly they must never review their own words in the print transcript or their heads would implode from shear embarrassment. One would hope.
Why would Matthews bring up Patton and John Wayne? Neither one was ever elected President, or even ran for President. What does the color of the hair of women in a picture have to do with anything? What would Parker say if all the woman had blond hair? Would that have been an occasion for blond jokes?
The Republican machine if really running out of ideas when the most they have to criticize Democratic candidates for is the color of advisor's hair or how much a candidate spends for a hair cut. At the same time the noise machine is going wild over how great Republican candidates look or how they smell.
This is a long way down from when Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt ran for President. Both ran on major issues: slavery and trust busting.
Clearly, a macho man like Tweety feels Hilary would be much better served if she had a group of Midwestern, deer-hunting, crotch-scratching, whiskey-drinking he-men as her advisers. But, can you blame him? The sight of them could then recapture for him that scrotum-tingling thrill that he has, in the past, had to rely on Republican presidential candidates for.
The "only one blond" remark was quite a head scratcher, I do have to admit. Only one blond? Huh?
And then it hit me.
It proves that they're not secretly working for Faux News.
...And by the way, it's "historical" not "historic." Nothing about Tweety is historic.
"But we've got Patton and John Wayne on our side."
Matthews has some major man-love for Rudi.
Matthews love anyone who's in his studio.
Peggy Noonan says Hilary has to "prove she is a woman". Now Tweety knocks her because she is "surrounded by women". The noise machine does not have to make any sense-just be loud.
Bill Clinton was always surrounded by women too.
And your point is?
Haven't you heard the saying "people in glass houses don't throw stones". The only Republican candidate running who could possibly have a "clean" record regarding his marriage is Mitt. Who knows if Mitt stays in the race long enough we might find out his record isn't clean either.
Bill Clinton was President from 1992 till 2000. Get new material, this is old news.
I am not sure what to think of Matthews comments, he sure has a history of agression against the Clintons.