Tweety Loses It

Chris Matthews went off on right-wing Rep. Jack Kingston on Hardball today. Crooks and Liars has the video. I've been confronted with this particularly ludicrous talking point, that we were in South Korea and Germany for 60 years, so what's wrong with being in Iraq a little while? The difference is that those weren't hot shooting wars where multiple bomb attacks kill dozens, and photographers have to be banned from violent areas lest they actually report on what's happening. Matthews unloaded on Kingston:

Matthews: Will the people of Georgia support ten more years of American involvement, military involvement in Iraq?

Kingston: Well, people know we're still in Germany and in South Korea…

Matthews: Yea, but..no no no no no. I won't let you get away with that. That's not a fair comparison. We do not have a war in South Korea. There's no German that's fired on an American since 1945. That's not a fair comparison…That is not an acceptable argument! These comparisons to previous eras…it's lazy thinking, Congressman. It's the kind of propaganda that does not help this country understand the situation. You stepped into a dishonest comparison. Some people come on this show over and over again saying things that-JUST-aren't-true.

The only thing I disagree with there are the words "some people."

And as long as we're chronicling talking-head shouting matches, I just saw Sean Hannity go after Christopher Hitchens because Hitch refused to say that he was sorry for Jerry Falwell and his family. I don't understand why we make a fetish out of that "I'm sorry for his family" phrase, even if it is to be directed at someone as contemptible and hateful as Jerry Falwell. Steve Benen has the goods on who this man really was. I wonder, would he have been sorry for, say, Isaac Mizrahi's family? Harvey Firestein? Matthew Shepard? Maybe in words, but certainly not in deed. So what do the words really matter? Also, NOBODY needs a lesson in courtesy from Sean "some things are worth dying for, like keeping Nancy Pelosi out of the Speaker's chair" Hannity.