As the left and President Obama have so graciously pointed out, civility is essential to our national discourse. At a press conference in February 2009, Obama said: “I think that, over time, people respond to civility and–and rational argument.” He reaffirmed his commitment to civility by his pointed statements after Rush Limbaugh’s comments regarding Sandra Fluke.
Yet the left is not immune from incivility. In fact, the left is significantly more uncivil on a regular basis than the right. As our star defendant, we bring you the man who gets a tingle up his leg when Barack Obama speaks: MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.
Matthews has a history of insulting women. On January 9, 2008, appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” he said of Hillary Clinton, “the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around” and that “[s]he didn’t win there [New York] on her merits.”
Witness his attack December 4, 2007, on “Hardball,” “So does her attack on him [Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL)] for having had ambition as a teeny-bopper — not a teeny-bopper, a kindergartner, does she look like Nurse Ratched here?” On January 19, 2001, again on “Hardball,” he said of Michele Bachmann, “She’s allowed to be out there as a screamer, and in many cases pretty close to a nut case.” The, six days later, he added of her, “Why do you put someone like this forward who is a balloon head?”
Of course, Matthews does not speak with incivility only of women. Just this week , he said of the three major leaders in the Republican primaries that the GOP has “two RCs — Roman Catholics — running and a Mormon, so three cultists running.”
Where is MSNBC president Phil Griffin’s outrage over such uncivil behavior, especially when MSNBC is pushing harsh measures against Rush Limbaugh for a comment for which he apologized?
In a February 2012 interview with the Tampa Bay Times, Griffin stated “I’m sorry, I don’t care about journalists…I want fair-minded, smart people who understand the world and can interpret it…” In the world of the left, fair-minded is a sociopathic concept. One set of rules for everyone else, and one set of rules for themselves. And when it comes to rudeness, incivility, and boorishness, Matthews is their standard-bearer.