Excellent analysis, 100% spot on.

Chris Matthews is hard to put into a neat little box, because he’s not an evil wingnut Republican, but rather just a dorky Villager who desperately wants to be liked by everyone.  He tries way too hard to say nice things about people and winds up saying really bizarre, creepy, and weird shit instead.  He’s just one of the most awkward television personalities there is.

As for his comment, I think it falls in the same category as VP Biden’s “clean and articulate” comment, and Harry Reid’s “negro dialect” comment - all very unintentionally offensive ways (to varying degrees) of complimenting Barack Obama.  I think Matthews actually really genuinely likes and admires Obama a whole lot, but he seems so obsessed with the fact that Obama is black that it gets downright weird.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard him say, “Isn’t it just so wonderful that we have this lovely black family living in the White House, the people’s house?” in the past year, and everytime he says it I just wanna say, “Yeah, we know, we elected a black president, it’s super awesome and historic, and you think we’re now this great post-racial society.  Would you shut up about it already?”

I do think he means well, but I think he really doesn’t get the on the ground realities of racial polarity and the massive amount racial inequity that still exist in mainstream America, our black president notwithstanding.

It sort of reminds me of the scene from the Chris Farley movie Black Sheep where Farley’s character is getting stoned with a bunch of rastafarian musicians before they go on stage at a rally.  When they are on stage he runs out and grabs the microphone and wants to show his street cred by yelling out random incoherent revolutionary slogans like “power to the people” and then out of nowhere he screams “Kill Whitey!” and everyone in the room goes completely silent and they all share a collective awkward feeling.

If I could best describe Chris Matthews in two words, it would be “that guy”.  He totally epitomizes “that guy”.  Not a patently evil or malicious person, just kind of a socially clueless dork who says completely inappropriate things at inappropriate times who doesn’t necessarily mean harm, but makes everyone who hears him say those things feel terribly uncomfortable.  I watched him interview Sheryl Crow from the MSNBC booth on the National Mall during the inauguration festivities last year, and he finished his interview with her by telling her that she was “a dish”, and she responded, “Wow, umm, ok, I don’t really know how to respond to that, but thank you, I guess.”

Count on me to hang on something weird.

I thought tanning (the skin’s natural defense of adding more melanin after sun exposure) was actually highly variable?  There’s white people who don’t, and some who do, and I know many mulatto people wh don’t change from the sun and others who wax and wane with the weather.  So… While I’d assume someone might tan, I wouldn’t assume, that they can’t get a sunburn or can actually get lighter or darker depending upon exposure.

Which is really a long-winded way of saying I have absolutely no clue if you could tan, Pam, though I have heard many people who are in your position find the question (especially if they can) offensive, because they wouldn’t want to be darker and suffer more class/race related troubles because of it.

Alas.

I’m going to predict that Chris won’t be able to live this down

Ninety percent of the time Chris Matthews is just a blowhard beltway journalist (I hate the term “villager” and will not use it), the other ten percent of the time, he has these little moments where some little lightbulb goes off in his head and he kicks ass. Like that time with Michelle Bachmann, or Kevin “Neville Chamberlain” James.Or that time during the Denver convention we he told Pat Buchanan to stuff it.

So its kind of love-hate for me.

And in case I didn’t make myself clear, his statement tonight falls into the 90 percent category. I choked on my beer when he said it the first time, it was cringe-worthy.

Yes, it was an idiotic and racist thing to say.

But seriously? Cut the idiot some slack. 

It’s not just that Matthews (as you point out) meant well. It’s also that, for Matthews’ particular type of racism (which I think is less about white privilege and more about a painfully neurotic newsreader obsessing over something he knows he’s not supposed to make a big deal over), being able to focus on the speech itself for a while instead of thinking Oh, man, a Black president. We have a president and he’s a Black guy. How cool is that? A Black president. In a landslide. What does that even mean? A Black president. What would my dad have said about this? He’s Black and he’s president.  Black. President. Black. President. Black. President. . . . [etc.] for the entire SOTU is a really big step forward.

I think it’s time to give CM the boot, not just for this, but for other statements.  Keith deserves someone better to preceed him.

Um, yeah, Chris, thanks for sharing that.  I guess we’re lucky he didn’t explain that he was surprised because blacks lack the essentials to be in management…

Sorry, Molly, but this idiot is paid too much money to be given a pass.  It’s his job to think before he speaks, even when color-commentating a live event.  He should have a strong filter between every thought that goes through his mind and what comes out of his mouth because that’s a requirement of his job.

He will be given a pass, though, because he is white, male, and part of the established seniority of the beltway MSM.  Just like a Senator, he will be shown clubbiness and after a short apology will be allowed to sweep it under the rug.

Which is bullshit.  We shouldn’t give him a pass b/c he likes Obama or b/c he thinks he’s a liberal or b/c he’s ‘one of us’.  It was a fucking stupid thing to say, and if he couldn’t filter that, what the hell else is going on in his peabrain?  Is there really no one else out there who could do a better job?

Next thing you know, he’s going to tell a female speechwriter or book writer that she “writes like a man”, and mean it as a compliment.

“Wow, President Obama, I totally forgot you were black for a moment there!”

“That’s all right, Chris, it happens to the best of us. For a moment there, I forgot you were a douchebag.”

I thought tanning (the skin’s natural defense of adding more melanin after sun exposure) was actually highly variable?

How much and how quickly is variable, but that low-level darkening you get from mild, daily exposure isn’t that much, if I understand correctly.

“It’s a meaningless comment .”

...on its own, maybe.

But it says a lot about Mr. Mathews and the (lack of) evolution among the village media RE race in these United States…

What really bothers me is that when Obama doesn’t fit into the black stereotypes, it doesn’t change Matthews’s view of black people in general; instead Obama gets to be an honorary white person for an hour.  He could have had an epiphany like, “Hey, maybe black people in general aren’t so different from white people”, but he lacked the insight to figure that out.

Yes but Catgirl, it could have been an O’Reilly like epiphany involving “wow I went to eat last night in Harlem and did you know that black people don’t scream out ‘bring me some more icetea motherfucker before I fuck you up” while eating with their feet?”  And that would be really painful too.

He’s just a jackass.  He isn’t a hatefilled racist like Pat Buchanan is, but he’s ignorant beyond belief.  It’s a shame Rachel felt she had to defend him.

Chris Matthews simply doesn’t have the intellectual grounding to talk about race.

That’s his own fault.  I bet that he’s made a point of avoiding things that might teach him about race (or gender for that matter) (reading materials, etc.), because he dismissed them as “PC” and therefore bad and worthless.

I agree with Molly.

Matthews is often silly, and I rarely watch him.  However, his special brand of political tourette’s syndrome serves a useful purpose.  Let’s face it, if he is saying it, you know a lot of people (especially of his generation) are thinking it.  He grew up in a time of much greater overt racism.  For the majority of their lives, whether or not they thought it was an injustice, entertaining the thought of a black president was irrational.  It is understandable that having now been presented with something that they thought was impossible, they have a hard time getting past it.  This is especially true for someone like Matthews who is far more interested in the personality side of politics than he is in the policy side. 

He is an ignorant person who genuinely tries to grapple with the big question of “what is America all about?”  His willingness to do so out-loud, and thereby occasionally confirm his ignorance, is oddly endearing.

Ninety percent of the time Chris Matthews is just a blowhard beltway journalist (I hate the term “villager” and will not use it)
Ben D.

I don’t know, I think the Hollywood image of Villagers conjures up the idea of fearful, xenophobic, ignorant, dirty masses that are easily prey on by tyrants and monsters as well as completely powerless and comfortable only in faceless mobs.  You know, beltway journalists.

Excellent Post, Pam. I actually missed the post speech analysis last night so didn’t know about this one till this morning. I’ve always felt Chris Matthews was a total asshole, so I’m not too surprised by his comment.

Regarding your fellow student who didn’t know that black people could tan, it totally reminded me of a high school story. Myself & a bunch of friends (black & white) had skipped school to go to the lake & party all day. I’d never even thought about whether a black person could “tan” or not until I noticed that my friend Marvin’s face was much darker except where he had been wearing his sunglasses all day. That’s when I thought to myself, “well, yeah. he’s been out in the sun all day.”

As for his comment, I think it falls in the same category as VP Biden’s “clean and articulate” comment, and Harry Reid’s “negro dialect” comment - all very unintentionally offensive ways (to varying degrees) of complimenting Barack Obama.

While I don’t think we’re headed toward any sort of “post-racial” utopia, I do think a lot of this kind of stupidity is as much related to generational factors as it is to pasty white white privilege and geography. The prevalence of casual racism (and make no mistake, this is what Tweety’s comment is), even of the well-meaning and patronising sort, has a direct correlation to generation.

I can imagine the scene in the control room last night, with the Millenial interns looking puzzled, the Gen Xer writers and producers face-palming themselves, the Boomers in charge of the broadcast slow on the uptake, and the few Silent executives nodding along with Matthews.

He is an ignorant person who genuinely tries to grapple with the big question of “what is America all about?” His willingness to do so out-loud, and thereby occasionally confirm his ignorance, is oddly endearing.

I’d find it endearing in a clueless but kindly grandma. For one of the supposed deans of political journalism, it’s cringeworthy and embarrassing. The writers of “The Office” couldn’t have done better—today Chris Matthews is the Michael Scott of the MSM.

It’s a meaningless comment .

Yes—for someone cluelessly entrenched in the blind acceptance of white male privilege. Someone like yourself, perhaps.

Ursula, if he could live down that thrill he got up his leg, he’ll live down this.

I remember hearing a story of a person asked if someone was black, and saying “no, he’s normal” before realizing what a horrible thing that was to say.

It can be a good thing, because it can let people unpack those deep down thoughts about race. But it’s also like lancing a abscess, too… usually, it’s not enough to just poke a hole in it. Often, you need to get around it, and *squeeze*, and *OH SHIT* does that hurt.

If you poke a hole in it, and then immediately cover it with a bandage and try to get the hole to close, it might close up. And then the infection remains, and continues to fester.

I can imagine the scene in the control room last night, with the Millenial interns looking puzzled, the Gen Xer writers and producers face-palming themselves, the Boomers in charge of the broadcast slow on the uptake, and the few Silent executives nodding along with Matthews.

I think you may have Matthews age off slightly, assuming you’re placing him solidly in the middle of the Silent Generation… he was literally born on the line between the Silent Gen and the Boomers, in mid-December 1945.  Had he been born two weeks later, he would arguably be considered a Boomer, since 1946 is considered the first year (and the biggest year in terms of birthrate) of the Baby Boomers.

But yeah, I do think Matthews comment is as much as anything a reflection of his generational thinking.

I’m hesitant to call it overtly racist, however, because I think overt racism requires a degree of malice which I don’t believe Matthews had in the comment.  I would probably characterize it as racially insensitive or perhaps racially offensive; clearly he realized after the fact that it came out sounding really bad, but I think the fact that he was embarrassed enough by it to try to walk it back indicates that he genuinely wasn’t trying to make a racist statement.

I realize that it’s just semantics, but there is objectively a difference between this sort of comment by Matthews and Pat buchanan saying something blatantly offensive like “white people basically built this country”, which IS pretty blatantly racist.  When we characterize both things as being the same, we lose sight of the fact that there are people who are willfully malevolent in their attitudes towards minorities and people who are willfully ignorant in that regard.  Matthews is ignorant, but Buchanan is actually malevolent.

Obviously comments like the one made by Matthews are offensive enough that they need to be called out and criticized, but lumping it together with a lot of the far more intentionally offensive comments others have diminishes just how truly offensive the comments made by people like Buchanan really are.

It’s a matter of nuance, but nuance is critical in these matters; there’s a lot of gray area in racial insensitivity in terms of just how bad different things are, and I know very few white people (myself included) who have never in their lives ever had a racially insensitive thought or said a racially insensitive thing - if we’re all the equivalent of Nathaniel Bedford Forrest if we’ve ever said or done anything even remotely racist in our lives, it doesn’t allow much room for growth or progress.

Anyway, on a broader scale than just race issues, I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of nuance in all sorts of political matters lately.  I got into a fight with somebody on DKos when a discussion came up about whether or not it would be good for progressives to support Charlie Crist running as a Democrat in the Florida U.S. Senate election.  By all objective measures, the current Democrat in that race, Kendrick Meek, doesn’t have a prayer of winning the general election, regardless of whether he is facing Charlie Crist or Marco Rubio - every poll shows him losing badly to either one, and he lacks the name recognition and the money to pose a serious challenge.  As of this week, Rubio has pulled ahead of Crist in a one on one poll among Republicans, whereas he previously led Rubio by 30 points a few months ago (Martha Coakley redux).  Crist will not be elected to the U.S. Senate as a Republican, which means that if he stays in the GOP, Rubio will get the nomination, and almost certainly go on to become Florida’s next U.S. Senator.  But if Crist switches sides and becomes a Democrat, he polls very favorably against Rubio when ALL Florida voters are polled (as opposed to just Republicans), and could beat Rubio in a general election.

If elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, Charlie Crist woul almost certainly be a bluedog type of Democrat.  Nothing for progressives to get terribly excited about.

But the question is this: if the only two viable choices are a bluedog Democrat who will be with us some of the time and a teabagger Republican who will be with us none of the time, which is the better choice objectively?

I argued that if Meek truly is as unelectable as the analysts say he is, the next best choice would be Charlie Crist as a Democrat; certainly not a very good alternative, but still arguably better than a total wingnut like Rubio.

And all of the purists howled, because some of us have become so frustrated by milquetoast politicians on our side of the aisle that we often forget that an annoying conservative Democrat is still easily better than a wingnut Republican.

Tanning:

My observation has been that not everybody tans, and not everybody burns, and not everybody who burns tans, and vice versa.  Moreover, people from Africa, as well as African-Americans, can fall into any of these categories, regardless of how dark their skin is.  My adopted kids from Ethiopia got their first sunburns here.  (I suspect they had no experience with sunburn because they had always been advised never to go out in the sun without adequate covering.)  OTOH, my African-American son tanned, although it was hard to tell because his skin was so dark (he had to show us the tan lines).

I also have a very very white son who has never had a sunburn, and one who had a lot of trouble with sunburns.

I think you may have Matthews age off slightly, assuming you’re placing him solidly in the middle of the Silent Generation… he was literally born on the line between the Silent Gen and the Boomers, in mid-December 1945.

I’m aware of his age. There are a lot of grey areas and overlap when you talk about generations and generational attitudes. This is where factors like education and geography and career come in. For example, Obama is technically a Boomer, but he exhibits a more Gen X approach. Similarly, Matthews is more of a Boomer than a Silent. But both still pull in vestigial aspects of their “technical” generation, and this is an instance of that.

I’m hesitant to call it overtly racist, however, because I think overt racism requires a degree of malice which I don’t believe Matthews had in the comment.

Racism can come from a paternalistic, patronising, and kindly place—“trying to help our little brown brothers” and that sort of thing. Yes, Tweety caught himself and is appropriately embarrassed; yes, he isn’t a nasty racist and anti-semite like Buchanan, who’s hell-bent on exclusion. And to a certain degree I’m willing to forgive people their vestigial racism based on their age and upbringing. But when liberals and progressives see racism, in whatever form, it’s our responsibility to call it out as such.

This is exactly as Pam said:  An example of the embedded sense of White Supremacy.  He meant well, but revealed his own bias in alluding to the idea that it is a shock to observe a black man* being so articulate, inspiring, and well…..presidential.

It is like back in the day when I had some unfortunate white person talking about the scariness/savagery/laziness/entitlement of black people in a moment of candor, then realizing that they were talking to me - a black person - then they’d try to correct by saying “I don’t even consider YOU black.”  Which was awkward. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*an articulate black man who is not Morgan Freeman

I’m hesitant to call it overtly racist, however, because I think overt racism requires a degree of malice

This is one of the biggest mistakes people make. Racism has nothing to do with malice. Bennett probably wasn’t malicious when he said that if you forced pregnant black women to have abortions, you’d lower the crime rate. He had an ugly, and completely unexamined, prejudice, that he was quite willing to spread as if it were true: that black folks are more likely to commit crimes. It was overt racism, but it wasn’t malicious.

That said, I agree that Matthews probably wasn’t overtly racist. I think he just pulled out a completely unexamined prejudice and never realized that he held it until it popped out.

And there’s two things you (the generic “you”) can do in a situation like this: you can get angry that people will make a big deal about it, and hate them for making you look bad… or you can realize that you were holding an ugly set of thoughts, and realize that you never realized it because of how toxic our culture is about race, and decide that you want to stop being part of the problem.

In short, you can either blame someone else, or you can accept responsibility, and learn from it, and grow from it.

The course you take is a big measure of how much of an adult you are. Now we get to learn something about Matthews (and a lot of other people, no doubt).

(NB: if anyone’s curious, we learned about Bennett too. Do the words “epic fail” mean anything?)

As a proud Generation Xer, I think he blew it. If he’d said I forgot she was a woman tonight
say if HRC was giving the SOTU.*  It’s the same old,same old: that only white, upper class men are truly able to lead people and get things done. I think it is good that he said it though. The more these little slips that aren’t overtly racist come out, maybe it will enlighten people about the assumptions that are made about others. (For years I had internalized sexism, and still need to check myself on it)

*I’m not playing the Oppression Olympic game, just trying to “flip” things around.

This is one of the biggest mistakes people make. Racism has nothing to do with malice.

Well not always, but they frequently go great together.

It’s not even necessarily that Matthews thinks only white men can run things.  It’s that he lives in a world where “white” and “male” are the norms.  Anything else is “other”, even if you think there’s nothing wrong with that.

Obama gave a much better SOTU than W ever did, least of all b/c he can speak English like a native.  Matthews’s comment about forgetting Obama was black has nothing to do with Obama.

It has to do with the unexamined privilege of the world Tweety inhabits.  He really is stuck with “white” and “male” being norms, and when women and minorities do something well it bucks right into that unexamined privilege.

What the hell does Matthews mean by “black”?  Ignorant?  Illiterate? Ill-spoken? Brawny not brainy? Obsessed with ‘black’ issues? 

That’s the unexamined part: what did Matthews mean by “black”?  At the very least, it was “other”.  During the speech, Matthews forgot Obama wasn’t “other”: he accepted him as “normal”, which for him, unfortunately, includes “white” as part of its definition. 

He didn’t mean to demean him or hate him or bring him down or criticize him.  He wasn’t trying to oppress him with the remark.  But it was racist and ignorant in the sense of unexamined privilege.

And it’s that same privilege of being white and male and, therefore, “normal” that will prevent him from losing any status on the station at all.

Remember, the man is paid millions to do a job, and he utterly flubbed it here.  He will have no real consequence for this act b/c he’s an Established Beltway Pundit—which also means white and male.

He deserves to be called on this.  It’s not anywhere near the league of Buchanan or Lott or Thurman or Limbaugh, etc., b/c his comment wasn’t mean to demean or exclude.  But just b/c Tweety means well, doesn’t make it okay.

I guess where I’m forming my opinion on this specific matter comes from an excellent recommended diary I read a few weeks ago on Daily Kos by an African-American diarist using the moniker “dmitcha” entitled Racism: A Primer.

It came in the immediate aftermath of the disclosure of Harry Reid’s comment from 2007, and a surprising revelation among a lot of black academics was that Reid’s comment, while certainly racially insensitive, was largely considered objectively true in the black community - America probably would not have elected Barack Obama had he been “more black”.  The Right desperately tried to exagerrate the offensiveness of Reid’s comment to make him out to be as virulantly racist as Trent Lott, and some GOP troll even argued that Reid’s words were MORE racially offensive than Lott’s comment that America would have been better off if a segregationist had been elected POTUS.

The DKos diarist posited the argument that there are subtle, but important, distinctions that need to be made between racially insensitive comments, racially offensive comments, and racist comments, and that when we discuss racism in absolutist all-or-nothing terms, we make having any meaningful conversation on the matter between people of different races nearly impossible.

One reason why such differentiation is necessary is because without it, deeply racist people can take the more innocuous (but still offensive) comments of others who don’t share all of their deeply held racist beliefs and paint them as equivalents, and thus strengthen the communication divide between black and white people.  Case in point, the claim by Republicans that what Harry Reid said about Barack Obama was the equivalent of what Trent Lott said about Strom Thurmond in terms of racial offensiveness.

I do agree that failure to call out even the seemingly less offensive comments stifles our ability to make progress, and as such I fully support calling out the offensive nature of comments like those made by Matthews; we shouldn’t be hesitant to say that what he said was improper, and objectively offensive in a racial context.  I just don’t like making it an absolutist thing, where everything is either classified as “racist” or “not racist”, when the truth is that most statements invoking race are either “not at all racist”, “barely racist”, “somewhat racist”, “very racist”, or “extremely racist”, with a million shades of gray in between.

He definitely exposed his white privilege and racial ignorance in his statement, but I don’t know that he revealed a wanton malice towards black people.  And the distinction is important because his comment is the sort that would likely evoke an eyeroll and a response of “Bless your heart” in many areas of the African-American South, whereas comments like “White people basically built this country” made by Pat Buchanan would probably evoke a more visceral sort of anger and hostility, because they are more wantonly offensive.

I guess my point is this: if the most offensively racist comment I hear in 2010 from any major media pundit was the one made by Chris Matthews last night, then I would say that America has made great strides indeed.  That doesn’t mean we should be willing to accept even that level of racism in our society, but if that is the most racist sentiment we had to live with in America, we would be way ahead of where we actually are.

Anyway, Matthews hosted a special on MNSBC last week called “Obama’s America: 2010 and Beyond” with African-American black radio personality Tom Joyner, and it was presented as a forum on race in an auditorium at a historically black college in Texas.  The entire premise of the show was race in America, and he seemed very open to acknowledging the unfair dominance of white privilege in America - that we are still a terribly unfair country in terms of racial equality.

He even said that America’s single biggest moral failure after the Civil War was the fact that we never fulfilled the promise of reparations, and that the biggest reason that inequality is still so obscene is because white America never gave black America a fair starting point of true equality when we abolished slavery.  He even seemed open to the idea that we should give reparations today, even though we’re 150 years too late, and the mere mentioning of the word “reparations” tends to send most white Americans into an apoplectic frenzy.  Given that comment, I have trouble seeing him as a terribly racist person, because I don’t know of many racists who essentially argue that we still have a moral imperative to pay African-Americans reparations for the sin of slavery.

Anyway, I highly, highly, highly recommend the DKos diary I referenced above.  It is intelligently written by a clearly progressive and proud woman of color, and it is unapologetic about the prevalence of racism in our society, and the terribly immoral inequality it presents for all POC in America.  It came across as something that I could see being written by the brilliant Melissa Harris Lacewell, Princeton Professor of African-American studies:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/12/1638/02844

Bottom line, DTG, the comment was racist, and would have been whether it came from a malicious bigot like Limbaugh or a clueless non-bigot like Tweety. It was not in any way a substantive discussion of race, just a lazy and thoughtless comment freighted with all sorts of stereotypical assumptions about the black man. This is all anyone’s been saying.

Someone or other pegged this embarrassing incident perfectly, by saying that what Matthews really forgot for a moment was that he, Matthews, was “white”.

Matthews has been having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that we have a black president. He’s been saying stuff like this for over a year now so while I noted the comment and shook my head & said “Oh Chris Matthews”, I wasn’t shocked he said it. I’m not a regular watcher but I’ve heard him make a lot of comments in this vein. During the election he wondered if Barack Obama would gave an easier time if he was Barry Dunham. On election night he marvelled that Barack, Michelle, Sasha, and Malia were our first family & asked Eugene Robinson what it felt like as a black man to see a black president. I kind of felt his comment about the SOTU was less about Obama & more about himself. I think he is proud of the country for voting in a black man & proud of himself for being ok with it.

Hmm, disregard my first comment, I am less sure at this point.