This is one of the most entertaining bits of right-wing talk radio lunacy ever. Kevin James, a right-wing screamer on a 12-watt nighttime AM station in Glendale, CA was pushing the official talking points on Hardball yesterday afternoon. Talking points: Obama, appeaser.
Only problem, Kevin James had very little idea of the meaning of the word, and even less of a grasp of the history pertaining to Neville Chamberlain and his appeasement of Hitler in 1938. Sensing the foghorn had a limited hard drive, Chris Matthews went in for the kill. It’s really very funny.
Please share widely!
After green told James to read Richard Clark’s book, James told him to watch “The Path to 9/11” a FICTIONALIZED made-forTV movie. If either Matthews or Green would have pounced on that obvious stupidity…first James proves he has no knowledge of history, then he tells people to ignore a book written by the terrorist expert from both the Clinton and Bush years and instead learn the “truth” from a fictionalized movie.
Frank, your statement is true but misses the point.
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p>The reality is, Green should never have gone down the path with James that he did. Telling the guy to read some book by Dick Clarke is a huge liberal/intellectual thing to do; he should have just SAID whatever was in the book, and made James respond to it. Green’s entreaty to ‘read Dick Clark’s book’ just allowed James to come back with his moronic ‘watch Pathway to 9-11’ thing and regain the initiative.
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p>Was is pathetic that James put a fictional movie on the same level as a book by a WMD expert? Of course. But that didn’t matter.
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p>The reality is, it took Chris Matthews to hammer this guy. Green couldn’t do it. Progressives/liberals/intellectual types should watch this interchange as a learning moment. The one thing Kevin James did have going for him was tenacity, a common trait among Republican loudmouths — just like Tucker Carlson had in his run-in with Jon Stewart a few years ago. imho, Carlson actually took control of that situation, if you watch the segment to the end. James might well have retrieved this situation too, had it been just him and Green. Chris Matthews, however, pulled the dialog back and put the nail in James’ coffin.
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p>Sorry to go on a diatribe, but I think the intellectual-left community needs to start learning from these moments re: how to handle televised discussions with Republicans.
“You’re problem, Kevin, is, you don’t know what you’re talking about. And the problem is, you don’t understand there’s a difference between talking to the enemy and appeasing. What Neville Chamberline did wrong, most people would say, is not talking to Hitler, but giving him half of Chekoslovakia in 1938. That’s what he did wrong. Not talking to somebody.”
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p>Awesome. Right up there with Jon Stewart on Crossfire.
That guy should be fired. I’m glad he was humiliated on a show that gets far more listeners than his own.
…yammering at each other on an insignificant network.
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p>Great schtuff.