In the past five years, the list of things liberal media members claim are racist has gotten longer and longer.
On MSNBC’s Hardball Monday, host Chris Matthews said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) was making a racial slur when he told a crowd in San Antonio, “Having spent the past month up in D.C., it is really great to be back in America” (video follows with transcript and commentary):
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Cruz out of control. Let's play Hardball.
Good evening. I'm Chris Matthews out in Chicago. Let me start tonight with this. It’s a little weird, but is Chicago part of America? Is Philadelphia my hometown where I'm going to address the National Constitution Center tomorrow, is Philly part of America? Is L.A.? Is San Francisco? Is Austin, Texas?
The reason I'm asking this stupid question is because this partisan gunslinger, Ted Cruz, is out there today defining who is and who isn't an American. Remember Michele Bachmann asking the press on this show to conduct a person-to-person investigation of who in the U.S. Congress is anti-American? Well, Cruz is worse.
The same Senator who suggested the nominee for the defense secretary was taking money from the communists in North Korea now decrees what part of this country are in and which parts are out, which parts are American and which parts aren't. This is McCarthyism writ large. Disagree with this guy and be prepared for the accusations.
We are witnessing, I think, the greatest challenge to progressives to moderates and reasonable conservatives in modern memory. It's an indictment against the great majority of Americans. To compromise he says is bad. To support the law he says is wrong. To oppose his brand of right-wing politics is to stand accused by him of being un-American.
Cruz returned to his supporters this weekend where he got shouts of approval Saturday night from his most fervent backers. Here he is drawing the line between them and his fellow Senators, and, by the way, all the people represented in Washington.
So what got Matthews - who neglected to tell his audience that Cruz got an eight minute ovation Saturday! - so riled?
It turns out just one little sentence with only seventeen words:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SENATOR TED CRUZ (R-TEXAS): Having spent the past month up in D.C., it is really great to be back in America. [Laughter and applause]
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Those not watching the clip are advised that people in the audience laughed and applauded.
Can you imagine how many members of Congress through the centuries have made a similar comment returning to their states or districts after weeks in our nation’s capital?
Is that one sentence really something for liberal media members to get in a tizzy over?
Well, if you’re on MSNBC, apparently so:
MATTHEWS: Howard Fineman’s editorial director of the Huffington Post, and David Corn is Washington Bureau chief for Mother Jones. Both are of course MSNBC political analysts.
Howard, this isn't a casual reference. This “We're Americans, we white people out here in Texas, as opposed to people who live in the big cities: the ethnics, the blacks, the browns. Those people in Washington, those liberals, they're not Americans.” This guy either has a total lack of understanding of American history and the hell we went through in the McCarthy period, or he knows it damn well and is playing that card. What do you think it is: knowledge or ignorance?
Can you imagine getting all that from a man returning to his constituents and saying, “Having spent the past month up in D.C., it is really great to be back in America?”
How can that remotely represent what Matthews claimed?
Sheesh!
