Why Tweety doesn't like the Big Dog

Hendrick Hertzberg on Chris Matthews, and why he doesn't like Clinton, from the New Yorker:

...it had something to do with the difference between Irish Catholic and Southern Baptist views of sin and forgiveness. As many people noticed at the time, the Lewinsky brouhaha drove not just Chris but also Michael Kelly, Tim Russert, and Maureen Dowd completely round the bend. For the Catholics, sins are to be confessed in the privacy of a closed booth to a priest who is the bottom rung on a ladder of long-established authority that runs upward through the hierarchy, the Pope, the saints, and only then to the Supreme Judge of the Universe. Forgiveness is administered via prescribed rituals sanctified by centuries of uninterrupted use. For low-church Protestants like Clinton (and Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker), confession usually comes after you get caught, is noisily public, and is so bound up with high-profile damage control that its sincerity cannot be assumed.

Comments

[Andy]

I don't know if I agree with that assessment of the reason, but it is clear that Matthews, with Olbermann, prefers Obama to Clinton.

[Hypatia]

A nice example of the decline and fall of modern liberalism – Hendrik Hertzberg announcing he will ‘max out’ to contribute to any future Chris Matthews run for political office. (I might leave the country, myself.)

I’m disposed to agree with Andy, and I think Hertzberg’s description of low-chuch Protestantism is a tad – bigoted is a harsh word, but it’s certainly condescending. Basically he’s giving Matthews a free pass on his viciousness toward Hillary Clinton because in common with many Obama fans he secretly or not-so-secretly thinks she has it coming. This is sad, especially coming from him.

I always thought the late Michael Kelly, although capable of fine reporting once upon a time, was around the bend even on his best days. And he was at least as vicious toward Al “Fidelity” Gore as he was to the misbehaving Clinton. But let it pass.

[John Petty]

Andy, no question.

Hypatia, I agree with you about Michael Kelly. I didn't want anything bad to happen to him or anything--such as being killed in Iraq--but I thought he was a poor excuse for a journalist.