{"id":14275,"date":"2008-01-18T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-18T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14275.html"},"modified":"2008-01-18T08:30:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-18T13:30:00","slug":"chris-matthews-mini-mea-culpa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/chris-matthews-mini-mea-culpa\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Matthews’ mini mea culpa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Matthews’ record of creepy, on-air misogyny<\/a> is not exactly new, but it reached new depths last week with his small-minded dismissal of Hillary Clinton. After years of anti-woman rhetoric, this one<\/a> seemed to cross the line.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, Matthews seemed to get the message<\/a>. Or, at a minimum, his bosses<\/i> seemed to get the message, and told Matthews to apologize.<\/p>\n

For 10 days, the “Hardball” host had doggedly insisted he was just reciting a bit of history when he said on the air that “the reason she’s a U.S. senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around.”<\/p>\n

But protests against those and other remarks by Matthews reached a peak yesterday when the presidents of such groups as the National Organization for Women, Feminist Majority and National Women’s Political Caucus sent a joint letter of complaint to NBC News President Steve Capus.<\/p>\n

On last night’s program, Matthews defended the substance of his remarks that Clinton’s political career in New York was launched because of public sympathy stemming from her husband’s much-investigated affair with Monica Lewinsky. But, he said, “was it fair to imply that Hillary’s whole career depended on being a victim of an unfaithful husband? No. And that’s what it sounded like I was saying.” <\/p>\n

Noting that it would be just as unfair to attribute John McCain’s political success to having been shot down in the Vietnam War, Matthews said: “Saying Senator Clinton got where she’s got simply because her husband did what he did to her is just as callous, and I can see now, came across just as nasty — worse yet, just as dismissive.” He said he would be “clearer,” “smarter” and more respectful in discussing women.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s worth watching: <\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

The comments were certainly welcome, but are they enough?
\n<\/p>\n

Kim Gandy, NOW’s president, said last night that “Chris Matthews is a repeat offender when it comes to sexist attitudes toward women politicians. . . . I wasn’t really looking for an apology. I was looking for a behavior change, and for him to treat female politicians the same way as male politicians.”<\/p>\n

In the joint letter, also signed by author Gloria Steinem, the women cited other examples in which Matthews referred to Clinton as a “stripteaser” and called her “witchy.” When Nancy Pelosi was in line to become House speaker, the letter noted, Matthews asked a guest if Pelosi was “going to castrate Steny Hoyer” if the Maryland congressman was elected majority leader.<\/p>\n

About 30 people affiliated with the National Women’s Political Caucus picketed NBC’s Nebraska Avenue NW bureau yesterday afternoon as a protest against Matthews’s remarks.<\/p>\n

“This is a victory for all women. We are pleased that Chris Matthews has shown remorse,” the caucus said in a statement last night.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am, too, but at the risk of sounding overly demanding, I found his contrition underwhelming. For one thing, Matthews didn’t apologize willingly — he insisted for nearly two weeks that his comments were perfectly appropriate, and only backpedaled when the network started feeling the heat.<\/p>\n

For another, Matthews’ apology made it sound as if his misogyny problem was limited to one anti-Clinton diatribe. It’s not; his problem extends to other women<\/a>, and has for quite a while.<\/p>\n

What I’d hoped to hear is a sense that Matthews realizes that he’s been disrespectful to women, and that he’s finally ready to change his attitude. Instead, we heard one statement of contrition about one incident.<\/p>\n

Matthews has a pattern of behavior. I got the sense that last night’s mea culpa was, as far as he’s concerned, the end of the controversy. In reality, it should be just the initial step.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Matthews’ record of creepy, on-air misogyny is not exactly new, but it reached new depths last week with his small-minded dismissal of Hillary Clinton. After years of anti-woman rhetoric, this one seemed to cross the line. Thankfully, Matthews seemed to get the message. Or, at a minimum, his bosses seemed to get the message, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}