Fox News' Hall on comments like Matthews' about Clinton: "Every woman I know" said " 'I've experienced that kind of sexism' "
SUMMARY: Discussing recent comments by Chris Matthews about Sen. Hillary Clinton, Fox News contributor Jane Hall referred to what Matthews said about "how she got elected not on her own merits, but because of his [Bill Clinton] fooling around, as he put it. ... He said she wanted to bury his [Sen. Barack Obama] campaign and what would she do with the body? That she wanted to strangle Obama in the crib." Hall concluded: "[E]very woman I know saw the media coverage declaring her dead and said, 'You know, I've been through that. I've experienced that kind of sexism.' "
During the January 10 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News contributor Jane Hall discussed recent comments about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) by MSNBC host Chris Matthews, including, Hall stated, what Matthews said about "how she got elected not on her own merits, but because of his [Bill Clinton] fooling around, as he put it. ... He said she wanted to bury his [Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL)] campaign and what would she do with the body? That she wanted to strangle Obama in the crib." Hall concluded, "[E]very woman I know saw the media coverage declaring her dead and said, 'You know, I've been through that. I've experienced that kind of sexism.' " When O'Reilly then asked, "So there was a backlash against that?" Hall responded, "Oh, absolutely."
On the previous day's edition of The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly had aired a video clip of Matthews' comment on Clinton's victory in the January 8 New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary, in which Matthews said: "Let's not forget -- and I'll be brutal -- 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 there on her merit." O'Reilly called Matthews' comments "rough" and stated: "[T]hat is a personal attack. And it is questionable whether a network should allow that or not."
Additionally, on the January 4 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, Matthews asked: "[W]hat does she [Clinton] do with the body? How does she get rid of a Barack Obama if she ever gets to beat him?" Matthews added: "How does she say, 'Now, step aside and go back to being junior senator from Illinois. Oh, you'll never be on the ticket because, hm, I have other plans. I'm going to give it to -- oh, I'll give it to [Sen.] Evan [Bayh (D-IN)]. ... I'll give it to [Ohio Gov. Ted] Strickland.' " Further, during the December 20 edition of Hardball, Matthews asked: "Is the Hillary Clinton campaign trying to obliterate Obama's candidacy? Not just beat it, but strangle it in the crib before there's any chance he catches on?" Matthews then asserted there were "[m]ore efforts today by the Clinton people to smother the Barack Obama campaign in its crib" and went on to say, "The picture is not pretty, but it could very well be deadly. The goal is to smother the young senator in his crib."
From the January 10 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:
O'REILLY: What do you think, Jane?
HALL: Well, I think the time, you know, is way past for scrutiny of Obama. I would disagree with your characterization of him. I think that any -- anybody watching this would have to say the media have been -- they have a crush. And anybody who's in New Hampshire, I think, got -- you know -- could get swept up in the enthusiasm, young people coming out, all of that, but you have to have some judgment.
I also want to say, you know, that I think the media helped Hillary Clinton indirectly. I mean, Chris Matthews, the clip you played last night about how she got elected not on her own merits, but because of his fooling around, as he put it, that was one of several things that he had said. He said she wanted to bury his campaign and what would she do with the body? That she wanted to strangle Obama in the crib.
I mean, every woman I know saw the media coverage declaring her dead and said, "You know, I've been through that. I've experienced that kind of sexism." And I think that that was also a factor.
O'REILLY: So there was a backlash against that?
HALL: Oh, absolutely.
HEY .... is it possible he really loves Hillary and wants her to win and he's doing this reverse psychology thing on the nation ??? Like by pissing people off and turning Hillary into even more of a victim than she already was, he's creating sympathy for her, therefore more votes ????? He did look a bit sparkly after she hugged him.
And I didn't hear anyone challenge him.
That would be a hoot if he was pulling a reverse play on everyone, but I get the feeling he really doesn't like her.
It is a sad state of affairs when someone at Fox, and Pat Buchanan, have made some of the most on-target statements about the New Hampshire primary coverage, of any of the talking heads.
This whole vicious hatred against the Clintons just boggles anyway. Dislike and disagreement, sure, there are plenty of reasons for that, but this white hot hatred for people whose corruption, policy mistakes and personal flaws are at worst no worse than typical politicians just floors me. And the reaction to Hillary in particular is unhinged.
I could understand if Bill Clinton had been a really bad president who did seriously over-the-line things IN ADDITION to being a horndog personally, but the guy was at worst a mediocre status-quo president, unlike the trainwreck that is Dubya, and some even consider him a damn good president. I would trade, in a heartbeat, his successor and two immediate predecessors, for Bill Clinton back in the WH without even thinking about it. The fact that he was able to restore the country to some reasonable plane after the depredations of Bush the Elder and St. Ronnie of Reagan in only two terms amazes me. And seeing how quickly sugar turns to s*** under Bush the Lesser is an object lesson in how picking presidents like high school homecoming king and queen is not a good idea. I hope never to hear again, well, how much damage can one president do? It'll all sort out. And -- and-- Al Gore's a sighing smarty-pants know-it-all hall monitor. Yeaaaaaarrrrrgggghhh!!
The people who really have a legitimate beef with Clinton, the Democratic wing of the Democratic party, so to speak, at least have some rational objections. The wingnuts have none. Clinton did nothing radical lefty in his administration to inspire such visceral hatred from the right. His only crime against them was to be a successful Democrat with a "third way" mentality that kept people thinking positively about the Dems and belying the right wing propaganda. And maybe because he's getting more sex than the Repubs. I don't know. It's truly baffling and disturbing to see that kind of disconnect from reality.
Bush Derangement Syndrome is a joke. It's not derangement when you can tick off a laundry list as long as a Russian novel of serious substantive crimes against the Constitution committed by your object of dislike. What drives folks "crazy" is not Bush, but what he does, and the fact that he gets a pass for serious malfeasance. The Clinton strain of derangement syndrome is a serious mental illness. There's just nothing there to inspire that LEVEL of hostility (as opposed to there being plenty to criticize and oppose in a calm and rational manner). If anyone should be "deranged" over Clinton, it should be the left, not the right. And what's Hillary in particular ever done to inspire such an ugly reaction? I find Barbara Bush ten times more odious than Hillary, but I don't hate her or obsess over her like people do over Hillary. I try not to waste my "beautiful mind." :)
I tell you, there really is something to this backlash thing. I'm not a Hillary partisan by any means; she would have been third or fourth on my list going into that election if I'd been in New Hampshire, but my blood has been boiling for days over this totally ridiculous vicious claptrap that the media (and I don't mean Rush and Drudge and Hannity, but the so-called mainstream media) have been spewing like diarrhea over the airwaves about Hillary and the plain as day ugly sexism that oozes from these people that I never thought to see on public airwaves in TWO THOUSAND F'ING EIGHT. It was like being in junior high school in the '70s. I was about ready to go pull the lever for her just to see their heads explode. I have no problems with criticizing Hillary, but criticize her for something LEGITIMATE, damn it. Let her be defeated by her own policy deficiencies, her record, her words, whatever, but not this crapola.
In one article, several women were interviewed and they said it wasn't even just the TV people dumping on Hillary, it was the snide comments and blatant sexist jokes and attitudes that all of a sudden stood out in bold relief at their jobs and neighborhood gatherings and from relatives, etc., that really disturbed them and pushed them into the Hillary column. Instead of a Bradley racial effect, this might even have been a Hillary sexism effect, women too embarrassed to say they wanted to give Hillary a "you go, girl" boost with their vote and instead said they were voting Obama or Edwards or were undecided. Or maybe they truly were, and the pile-on sent them over the edge. The number of undecided in the polls was fairly high, and even more extraordinary were the numbers of people who reluctantly picked a candidate for the pollsters but said they weren't really firm about him or her. With that level of uncertainty going into the vote that day, the polls as they stood didn't provide much in the way of predictive ability. And any little thing could have triggered a big change in the numbers.
In a small, early primary state where people often feel much more free to make statements with their votes or vote for the fifth-string candidate or cross over to vote for a lesser evil on the other side of the aisle to deny victory to a greater evil, this kind of message voting is nothing out of the ordinary, especially when the candidate field (on the Dem side anyway) is pretty much free of batshit insane people that you have to vote against. A lot of Democrats are of the "I like all three; I have problems with all three; I'm OK if either of them wins" camp, too. People get much more strategic in their voting when it gets down to the wire and they really feel compelled to choose.
I think a lot of women just wanted to see her campaign continue, whether they were huge supporters of hers or not, just because the media were gleefully having a hoedown over her political grave. And I have absolutely no problem with that, at least at this stage of the game, any more than I would have a problem with someone voting for Obama to encourage a black man to stay in the race under the same circumstances, especially if he had been subject to the level of racist nonsense that Hillary was enduring on the sexism front. It wasn't so much a sympathy vote for Hillary (I don't think it was the "crying" but the REACTION to the "crying" that was the motivator) but a thumb in the eye for sexism in general.
These last few weeks have been eye-openers both about how far we've come as a country on race and gender matters and just how far we THINK we have come but we haven't in actuality.
This is a test
This is a test.
I liked your point about Bush getting a pass, but I wanted to add another angle to it. With the Clinton impeachment, the Republicans pulled the entire country into this hell hole of a news story, and supposedly "tore this country a part" (the news story, not the Republicans themselves.) I've heard many times that it's too soon for our country to go through something like that again, so in my opinion, that's a big reason why Bush hasn't already been impeached. The Republicans set themselves up for this, and, IMO, is a big reason that the Democrats are showing their numbers this election cycle, while the Republicans seem stagnant.
Btw, a comment about Obama's "change" mantra. How much bigger of a change could it be to have a woman take the helm after 200+ years of male Presidents ?
His mother was white, father was an African man, not an African-American man in the usual sense. Post-divorce his mother remarried, to an Indonesian (she's an atheist and she married two different Muslim guys ????), and Barack attended private schools in Indonesia until age 10, then went back to Hawaii and attended private schools there. It's my understanding that Hawaii was one of the least racist states at the time that he lived there.
So what is it that Obama has in common with black America other than the color of his skin ?
I'm not saying he can't be sympathetic to the issues of black Americans, I just don't see him as being this automatic representative because of his color. I think Clinton can be just as sympathetic.
with your book, Uh... I mean your post.
Does anyone really care? Hillary is not going to win. But if she does the Country is going into a deeper toilet then it is now.
But what fodder for comedians. It will be 4 years of jokes.
Chris Matthews HAS gone head to head with Ann Coulter if what you mean is kissing. He loves her. As for his disgusting treatment of Hilllary, this man is seriously insecure about his own masculinity. He actually said that Hillary's male supporters risked becoming castratos in the eunuch chorus!!
Matthews regularly gets man crushes on macho candidates like Rudy, Thompson, Bush and McCain. Of course, the only one who has ever done anything really courageous is McCain. The others are only posturing but that's good enough for ol' Tweety, who ironically can't even fake being manly. What a loser. The real issue is why NBC would stoop this low.
I urge everyone to email MSNBC and complain. It's time this clown paid a price for his outrageous behavior.
After months of downplaying Barack Obama as, and I quote, "boring," he has absolutely fallen in love with the Junior Senator. I say this to make a completely separate point based on the first: Matthews is mercurial, Matthews is aggressive, Matthews is archaic in his perceived professional boundaries on the appropriate way the genders are allowed to speak to each other, but one cannot say in good conscience that he is a misogynist -- that would imply that he looks down on women, does not believe they are capable of holding professional office as well as men, or any of the other shifting coded "engrams" of male oppression that exist. His ebullient, glowing, smiling response to Nancy Pelosi becoming Speaker of the House, free of any gender burdens or typecasts would reinforce this.
As a black man raised by a single black mother to hold all people in equal regard, I personally like to believe I have been indoctrinated thoroughly in the complex sinister signs of white male domination. Chris Matthews is your crazy uncle, true, but in all honesty I can't see him standing in the way of any woman's ascendancy to power.
Now, does he hate Hillary Clinton? Yes. He hates her a lot. Of course, his anger, as he has said time and again, has more to do with her currying nepotism than her giving birth.
Talk about reading truth in tea leaves....
The cackling commentary a while back came across as quite sexist.
But the infidelity comments are cries of nepotism and mocked sympathy.
And the "smothering Obama in his crib" is a reference to the media (including Chris Matthews) and the candidates' views of a 46 year old father of two as a kid, a boy, or a child. Notice how Chris Matthews refers consistently to him as the "JUNIOR" Senator.
To be blunt, Hall's entire argument is nonsense. Which is not to be confused with it being empty. Chris Matthews dislikes Hillary Clinton, but not because she's a woman. He dislikes her because of her disingenuousness -- the First Lady of Arkansas and the United States of America runs for a Senate seat in New York? This is amusing since he blindly adheres to myths of Giuliani's gravitas and paternal guidance.