MSNBC's Matthews cited wife of his high school band mate to explain "why Hillary likes to clap"
In two separate segments during the November 8 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews returned to the subject of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) clapping, asserting: "As her friends and foes must have noticed, I get a kick out of going after Hillary's fondness for public clapping. She does it everywhere. Every time she gets in front of a crowd of supporters, she keeps clapping and clapping and clapping." Matthews teased the first segment by saying, "Up next, we get to the bottom of why Hillary Clinton is always clapping. We're going to have some fun with that, and I mean good-hearted fun." As Media Matters for America has documented, Matthews has repeatedly highlighted Clinton's clapping -- including at least three prior mentions in the past two weeks -- and has previously characterized her clapping as "Chinese."
During the first segment, Matthews asserted that, while he was "up at my old high school the other night," he "talked to Agnes Hallis, who is married to John Hallis, who used to play French horn with me in the school band." According to Matthews, Hallis gave him "a full quartet of reasons why Hillary likes to clap." Matthews continued: "Number one: It's a polite way to show she appreciates the applause from the people around her. She's responding. Number two: It's a way to jazz up the energy in the room, sort of like being a cheerleader of the crowd. She's sort of cheering them up, getting them going. Three -- I love these last two -- it's like Peter Pan: If you clap, Tinker Bell will get better. Four: that's that old kid's song, 'If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands.' " Matthews went on to say: "Anyway, so, don't let my Scrooge attitude about clapping make you think anything less of this or take away any reasons why a person running for commander-in-chief shouldn't enjoy this campaign any way she chooses."
Matthews introduced the second segment by stating that he "had a little fun here on one of our blocks earlier," referring to his earlier discussion of Clinton's clapping. He then asserted that the "highlight" of Clinton's presidential campaign events is "her sort of finale, where she walks around the room and claps to everybody." Matthews then asked Financial Times U.S. managing editor Chrystia Freeland, "What do you make of that as a campaign method?" Freeland replied, "[W]e have to be a little bit careful ... about not picking on Hillary's mannerisms a little bit too much." Matthews then said: "Ah, those secondary characteristics are off-base. Am I being told that?" Freeland responded: "Just a little bit. I mean, there's the clapping, there was the laugh. I think there are things to pick on Hillary about, but probably the clapping wouldn't be what I'd choose." When Matthews then asked Freeland to "give me a list some day on email of ... what I'm allowed to criticize about Hillary," Freeland said: "Any policy matters; dynasty I think is OK, too."
At one point during the segment, Chicago Tribune features managing editor Jim Warren said of the Clinton clapping footage being aired by MSNBC: "[O]h my gosh, it looks like she's at Sea World in San Diego. Here comes the seal! Yikes." Matthews replied: "You're worse than I've ever been. ... Throw me a fish."
Both segments were accompanied by on-screen text reading: "Hillary's Incessant Clapping."
From the November 8 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews:
MATTHEWS: Up next, we get to the bottom of why Hillary Clinton is always clapping. We're going to have some fun with that, and I mean good-hearted fun. You're watching Hardball, only on MSNBC.
[...]
MATTHEWS: Finally, time for some fun you will only get here on Hardball. As her friends and foes must have noticed, I get a kick out of going after Hillary's fondness for public clapping. She does it everywhere. Every time she gets in front of a crowd of supporters, she keeps clapping and clapping and clapping.
Well, I was up at my old high school the other night, LaSalle in Philly, last time, and I talked to Agnes Hallis (ph), who's married to John Hallis (ph), who used to play French horn with me in the school band.
She gave me four -- make that a full quartet of reasons why Hillary likes to clap. I love these reasons.
Number one: It's a polite way to show she appreciates the applause from the people around her. She's responding. Number two: It's a way to jazz up the energy in the room, sort of like being a cheerleader of the crowd. She's sort of cheering them up, getting them going.
Three -- I love these last two -- it's like Peter Pan: If you clap, Tinker Bell will get better. Four: that's that old kid's song, "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands."
Anyway, so, don't let my Scrooge attitude about clapping make you think anything less of this or take away any reasons why a person running for commander-in-chief shouldn't enjoy this campaign any way she chooses.
Let's go to the roundtable: Jim Warren of the Chicago Tribune, Patrick Healy of The New York Times, Chrystia Freeland of the Financial Times.
[...]
MATTHEWS: Welcome back to the roundtable. I had a little fun here on one of our blocks earlier. I said, let's take a look at it together. This is Hillary Clinton's way of campaigning.
Chrystia, you've got to talk about this, because it is a sort of a gender-related issue. Every time we see Hillary Clinton at an event -- it's usually at lunchtime -- there's lots of supporters around. It's a well-choreographed event, and the highlight is her sort of finale, where she walks around the room and claps to everybody. What do you make of that as a campaign method?
FREELAND: Well, you quoted your old high school friends talking about Tinker Bell and "if you're happy as you know it, clap your hands."
MATTHEWS: Right.
FREELAND: So, it's really hard for me to top that kind of creative analysis. I would have to say, it doesn't bother me.
MATTHEWS: How about if you want Tinker Bell to live, you clap. How about that one?
FREELAND: I do think that we have to be a little bit careful also about not picking on Hillary's mannerisms a little bit too much. So --
MATTHEWS: Ah, those secondary characteristics are off-base. Am I being told that?
FREELAND: Just a little bit. I mean, there's the clapping, there was the laugh. I think there are things to pick on Hillary about, but probably the clapping wouldn't be what I'd choose.
HEALY: Well, there's one thing, Chris --
MATTHEWS: Well, give me a list -- Chrystia, give me a list some day on email of whom -- what I'm allowed to criticize about Hillary. And how --
FREELAND: Any policy matters; dynasty I think is OK, too.
MATTHEWS: Oh, OK. Yeah, I'll be sure to keep that in mind. Jim Warren, what do you make of this as a cultural phenomenon? If you're watching us from overseas, you say, "Is this what Americans do at political rallies? Oh, it's interesting."
WARREN: Well, I mean, she can't copy me and stick her hands into her pants pockets. So, there's not much left to her. And given the repetity of her life, 10 thousand different appearances a day -- oh, my gosh, it looks like she's at Sea World in San Diego. Here comes the seal! Yikes.
MATTHEWS: You're worse than I've ever been.
WARREN: Anyway.
MATTHEWS: Throw me a fish. What do you think, Patrick --
HEALY: Well, I think it's --
MATTHEWS: -- of this new way of campaigning. There's Jerry McIntee of the -- of AFSCME giving his big endorsement and she's clapping the endorsement, I guess.
HEALY: Yeah, I mean it's sort of like --
MATTHEWS: Here he is doing his pointing there.
HEALY: It's the -- like the [former Rep.] Tip O'Neill [D-MA] line about, you know, ask for every vote. Don't take anything for granted. I mean, that's at least the way that they see it. She's like -- she's trying to connect. She's always trying to sort of engage with the audience, show a little bit, you know, sort of her humor, like, you know, and that's how they -- you know -- and she's -- also, I've got to say, I mean I go to a lot of her events, and she's up there, you know, holding a mic, you know, for an hour, and she talks about how she doesn't get enough exercise.
MATTHEWS: Yeah!
HEALY: So, maybe just like moving her body around, you know, makes her feel a little bit lively.
MATTHEWS: Circulation. It's sort of like an Ellen DeGeneres thing here.
The leg bone's connected to the hip bone...
Let's see - her laugh, her cleavage, her hair, her accent, her pantsuits, her clap... pretty soon, Tweety'll run out of things to criticize about her.
No telling what Matthews will do if somebody catches her farting...
You just wait till he gets another chance to sniff her ol' man's zipper. I think he'd do that for free!
Chris Matthews = G.E Lapdog
Matthews seems so obsessed with this clapping garbage.
What a god damned idiot.
i have a better caption:
"matthew's incessant stupidity"
he's just one of jack welch's overpaid "lost boys", in a desperate search for a reason to exist. eventually his kind, like the dinosaurs before them, will become extinct.
no great loss.
...and he was so lucid about the hyperpartisanship of the electorate too.
"It's sort of like an Ellen DeGeneres thing here."If that's not gay-baiting, then nothing is. This guy has major problems-- he's a maniac. Like a motor-mouth little kid, and it's extremely unbecoming.
Chris Matthews has had it in for the Clintons - yes, I mean both of them - since the Lewinsky business. After repeatedly showing video clips of her clapping, he is now saying he's having "a bit of fun" with this. Baloney, he's still propaganizing against the Clintons. A psychologist said once: You're not paranoid. if they're really after you. Matthews is really after the CLinton's.
I have been an avid viewer of the Chris Matthews Show. I felt for a long time he has shown some bias towards the Republicans. After every debate between George Bush and John Kerry, he always seemed in awe of the President's performance even though it was apparent to all those who watched that John Kerry was handling the questions with so much more finesse. Now, he has decided to show his bias against Hilary Clinton. He attacks her at every opportunity. It is true she is the front runner and has to expect criticism but how many of her male opponents have been criticized for their clothing, clapping etc. Just tonight on a rerun of the Tonight Show, Barack Obama came out clapping a la Hilary and I can guarantee no one will take notice. It is about time that people see Chris Matthews as a reporter who wants Guiliani to win just as he showed his preferences to George Bush. I hope after these horrible six years, he regrets his positioning. However, if you listen to him now, he isn't quite so supportive as he was during the last campaign. He may be politically quite astute but he should keep his comments focased on the issues and not the mannerisms of any one candidate.
"Number one: It's a polite way to show she appreciates the applause from the people around her. She's responding."
Understandable. No story there.
"Number two: It's a way to jazz up the energy in the room, sort of like being a cheerleader of the crowd. She's sort of cheering them up, getting them going."
Of course. Part of the atmosphere, trying to get people excited. Nobody else does this?
"Three -- I love these last two -- it's like Peter Pan: If you clap, Tinker Bell will get better."
Um, what? Did someone skip their medication today?
"Four: that's that old kid's song, 'If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands.'"
And a flashback into someone's childhood.
So there you have it;two perfectly reasonable explanations for the clapping, and two completely random concepts associated with clapping. How about that "The Guess Who" song, "Clap for the Wolfman"? Is that relevant to this in-depth analysis? Maybe she thinks there's a lycanthrope in the audience. Maybe she's thinking about her upcoming campaign against gonorrhea. Maybe she's practicing for TV advertisements for "the clapper".
I don't care for Hillary, but this sort of thing makes me almost want to support her just for spite. If you really get this bizarre over her mannerisms, let's put her in office just to aggravate you.
I enjoyed this:"FREELAND: Any policy matters; dynasty I think is OK, too." I think I would have been a little more sarcastic, but the point was made. Let's focus on things that actually make a difference to people who don't waste their time obsessing over trivialities, shall we?
Buffoon Matthews gave himself away the other day during one of his rabid tirades against Clinton when he 'inadvertently' said he was part of the "GE TEAM" .. yep, he actually said it .. and boy is it true and that 'team' is of course Williams and Russert and Matthews: THE NEW AXIS OF EVIL. This rapid buffoon called Matthews is nothing more than a little monkey with it's little hat on at the end of cord attached to the organ music that is being played by his masters at GE, dancing to their tunes. These evil pigs are just as responsible, if not more, for the destruction of our once great country called America. If it were not for the corporate controlled media the evils that have taken over our country in the form of all Repiglicans and the Corporations that own them, make them dance to their tunes, could not happen. We have a 'elite media' of millionaire 'journalists' who simply do the bidding of the corporations that own them. Thus a 'media' that has a prearranged game plan to lie, deceive, and manipulate public perceptions on behalf of the corporate agendas. Stooges like Matthews, Russert, and Williams have been bought and paid for. They , and the corporate media that they represent, should be charged, tried, and convicted for purposeful, criminal, fraud committed against the American people. They should be frog marched out of the protection of their corporate studios and right into prison.
More props to Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler:
Elsewhere, this is called “insanity;” in the U.S., it’s now known as “journalism.”
[link to www.dailyhowler.com]
Here's the correct link:
[link to www.dailyhowler.com]
This will soon be called PLAN VD, and that is nothing to CLAP about.
"Matthews seems so obsessed with this clapping garbage."
Because they have nothing substantive to say but feel compelled to speak regardless.
"MATTHEWS: Circulation. It's sort of like an Ellen DeGeneres thing here."
WTF?
I read this as Mathews has been "called" on his obsessive reporting on the clapping. Called on it by his boss, his omsbudsmen, and the media. So now he lightens it up, says we are going to have some fun and procedes in his own way to "spank himself" a la Rush Limbaugh. He gives some excellent points which make his earlier obsession look plainly stupid.
How else can one explain the following statement ?
Matthews went on to say: "Anyway, so, don't let my Scrooge attitude about clapping make you think anything less of this or take away any reasons why a person running for commander-in-chief shouldn't enjoy this campaign any way she chooses."
I can't even watch this guy anymore. I really like him early on in the Iraq war. He seemed to be the only one asking ANY questions at all, and I thought his coverage of the build up, and his mostly anti-Iraq War guests, was pretty good.
Now - he's Rudy's lap dog... or maybe McCain's. But for a gy who claims to play "hardball" and to get tough with these guys... Ugh. What a joke. He really has neither shame nor pride I guess.
It's a shame though because UNLIKE O'Rielly, Hume, Beck, etc... I can remember a time when this guy was actually pretty good.
Matthews gets a real "kick" out of going after Hillary for clapping too much, for laughing too hard, for breathing too much etc, etc....When's he gonna go after Mr. Guillianis' bizzare life? The crossdressing, the flip flopping, the strange private life....... Isn't he the frontrunner on the other side?