The Chris Matthews Show; Groucho Marx Takes Us To War

In between watching March Madness and NASCAR I try to spend half hour on Sunday with my favorite lefty talk show host, Chris Matthews. The gymnastics he performs as he tries to protect Dear Leader always makes for great sport.

This weekend on his syndicated show, The Chris Matthews Show, he was especially entertaining. Before he accused Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour of being racist because he wants to say he’s from the south to draw contrast to President Obama in a possible Presidential runoff (seriously–you’ve got to see it to believe it,) he worked overtime to try to make it look like Obama was a victim in the war in Libya. Twice Matthews brought out the point that Obama “doesn’t use force lightly.” Amazing there, Chris—which President does take the use of US military force lightly? Maybe you think James Madison was flippant in fighting the War of 1812? How about Lincoln in 1860? Of course, we know you believe Bush went to war with Iraq because he wanted to settle a little family feud between Saddam and his dad. Dubbya must be the President you think just goes to war on a whim, certainly your Dear Leader would not–in fact, he was pushed into this war in Libya when he really didn’t want to go, or so we heard times on your Sunday show.

“He didn’t wanna go,” Chris said to Howard Fineman, one of the parade of libs who regularaly appear on the show. Fineman gave more cover for POTUS when he called Obama’s reluctance to go to war as, “Marxist—as in Groucho Marx,” meaning that Obama just really wasn’t sure what to do here, so he just went along with the flow and followed the mood of the moment in Washington.

Fineman meant this as to absolve Obama of responsibility. Great, maybe next Obama will use Groucho’s philosophy on going to war while he was running Freedonia in Duck Soup. Watch this clip and replace the Ambassador of Sylvania for Gadafi and you may have Obama’s reason for going to war. Just for good measure Fineman also said Obama was “ambivalent” towards going to war. “The President was resisting it,” Fineman added. Groucho resisted until he cooked it up in his head that the Ambassador was “dissing” him.

Obama as a victim is a favorite theme of Matthews’ as I pointed out in a recent column.

Helene Cooper of the New York Times chimed it about the “good war versus the bad war,” as if Iraq was bad and Libya is good. Helene, we know what that is code for. I’m sure the Libyans being blasted to smithereens by our Cruise missiles ordered by Obama are happy to know that both you and Obama think this is the good war. She also talked about how “ambivalent” Obama was about going to war (twice.) There’s that story line again. Poor Barry—all these people around him making him do something he really didn’t want to do in the first place so that when it all blows up on him, he can shake his head and cry, “poor, poor pitiful me.” She piled it on, “I don’t think he necessarily wanted to do this at first.” Quite the leader you have built there.

Then Matthews and Cooper dissected how the war with Libya is “gender related.” The women in the State Department (Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice) made Obama do it. Seriously. Dear Leader is being shoved around by “the girls,” as Elizabeth Bumiller (also of the New York Times) called them.

So, we can conclude that the Most Brilliant Leader in the History of the World didn’t want to go to war, but was talked into it, went at it like Groucho Marx, and through all his ambivalence a bunch of girls made him do it. This was just in the first 10 minutes of the show–then the blasting of Barbour began. Really—if you don’t watch this show regularly, you are missing a ton of fun on Sundays, it’s not as comical as A Night At The Opera, but close.