Loudmouth Matthews Is Silky’s Bitch
What sort of manipulative bullshit is this?
The wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards called into MSNBC’s “Hardball” on Tuesday to confront Ann Coulter on her personal attacks on her husband and family.
Coulter, the controversial conservative commentator, appeared on an outdoor set with host Chris Matthews — and also with dozens of supporters and detractors waiting to ask questions. But there was another person waiting to pose a question to Coulter: Elizabeth Edwards.
According to an Edwards campaign aide, Elizabeth Edwards wanted to call into the show when she heard that Coulter would be taking questions, and she called a Hardball producer to get the phone number needed to dial into the show.
What’s going on here? Is this the fairness doctrine in action? I already have no respect for Matthews, but this incident is contemptible. What, is his producer Jenny Jones?
Well, the reference isn’t especially apt, but the talk show burlesque of ambush “journalism” is to be pitied.
I have to ask Silkiness, though, just how fungible his principles are that his wife should find it amenable to call up a trashy cable “news” program to defend him against a calculatedly hyper-partisan opinion writer. Free publicity? Check. Fundraising opportunity? Check. A demonstration to anyone watching that MSNBC and its on-air talent are the low-rent (and low-rated) whores of any liberal candidate willing to vilify conservative commentary? Check.
(Emphasis mine.)
UPDATE: Coulter now writes that Matthews’ people told her “minutes” before airtime that Mrs. Edwards might call in, so it wasn’t strictly ambush. But so what? We can’t and shouldn’t choose our interlocutors, but it still smells like manufactured spontaneity to me.
In other news, Harry S Truman once made the mistake of taking notice of a lowly opinion writer. Some guy wrote a review of Harry’s daughter’s singing and Truman responded to the poor bastard with the epistolary equivalent of a spring-loaded tin of his own filth. Go read it. Dad is pissed.
And notice that Truman spoke for himself and didn’t dump it off on Bess to handle.
