You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry

Posted by Andrew Tobolowsky on 05.20.2008

Chris Matthews, Kevin James, and America's Dark Path

This is an angry column. Why not? I'm allowed.

There are three things I want to say first, because I don't plan on stopping along the way. One is that I'm a political moderate with liberal leanings. I know; moderates don't exist anymore. But I am. That's sort of the point of this column. I am tired of being lumped in as a clone of a group of people who, in my experience, are actually quite heterogeneous.

The second is that my beef is not with ALL republicans. Yes, the irrational people I will be speaking of tend to be republicans because I tend to write as a democrat. But in no way do I consider "irrational" to be a synonym with "disagrees with me." There are many people who-civilly-disagree with me, whom I quite respect. I have no problem with being dis-civilly disagreed with, but I tend to ignore those as unproductive. They also tend to use capital letters, which I disagree with as a stylistic choice.

Again, this is kind of the point. The trouble I have at this moment is that there appears to be a fairly large group of people who refuse to admit, despite enormous amount of evidence, that anyone who espouses liberal views is NOT required to wholeheartedly ascribe to an entire agenda which, they believe, 1) exists 2) is entirely comprehensive. This is presumably because the republicans DO sell a whole bill of sale which also describes clearly what we democrats are, and it's not particularly complimentary. Of course.

There is no handbook. And sometimes, you just like what one guy's saying a little bit more than what the other guy is saying. This is called compromise. When you don't believe the other side is pure, diabolical evil--when you don't believe, in fact, in the myth of an other side—you do that, sometimes.

Third point: I am continually dogged by the sneaking suspicion that there are far more rational people out there than irrational, but they're sitting there quietly watching the rest of us shoot our mouths off. This helps me sleep at night, but is also why I never dare to condemn an entire group of society wholesale. I know you're out there, and I got your back.

Alright. While I've been a columnist here-- just over three months now-- I've been exposed to a lot of different people, with different types of ideas. But there's one group I'm at this point pretty much willing to blame for everything that's wrong with America, everywhere, including but not limited to the economy, the war, intolerance in society, misinformation, long lines at the movie theatres, the fact that roller coasters are never as fun as you think they're going to be, and a 43% decrease, in 2008, in the collective cuteness of kittens.

Let me start with this:

In some circles at any rate, much ado has been made about Chris Matthews' smack down of Kevin James, the Conservative radio talk show host for his lack of basic information concerning…you know, the things he was talking about. Many people have seen it, quite justly, as a smackdown of all those republican talking heads who don't care about things like facts or relevant information.

Now, I'm not going to exclude liberals from this particular group but your reds are by far your worst offenders.

As anyone who has ever read me before would know, if anyone has, I spend a lot of time wondering where all of the irrational anger suddenly prevalent in American politics came from. The two halves of America (and yes, I realize that pie can be legitimately split into as many parts as you want, but I'm going dem and republican for the moment) legitimately despise each other at this point, they really do. It wasn't always this way.

So I watched Chris Matthews take Kevin James apart with a certain amount of glee. Then I watched it again. There was something compelling about it, and a lot of it was the way in which James so perfectly embodied what so many people are frustrated with.

For those who haven't seen it, basic synopsis is this: Recently, in honor of the 60th anniversary of the creation of Israel, President Bush compared Hamas to Hitler and Obama—because of his publicized willingness to hold talks with groups that are not in favor with the United States—to Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister of England whom many people held to be partially responsible for the rise of Hitler because of the policy he pursued which has since been pejoratively referred to as "appeasement".

Now our boy Kevin…Kev…comes on the show, yelling as loud as possible, because God knows your points are only as good as the volume of your voice, about how if Bush WASN'T talking about Obama with his Neville Chamberlain comparison, he SHOULD have been, because what Obama's trying to do is exactly the same…

Now Chris starts out slow. This is delicious. He starts out real slow, he asks Kevin why suddenly the Republicans are trying to make this next election about Israel, why suddenly this is our hot button issue. But Kev won't answer because, of course, he's not listening. He just keeps going on with what he's trying to say, how Obama's an appeaser, how the White House should have come down even harder on him, and on and on until finally Chris brings him up short. He asks him, as what he calls a "history check", what exactly Neville Chamberlain did that made people so upset.

Kevin then proceeds to read straight from the Republican handbook on how not to answer a question. Step 1) while not at any point implying that he KNOWS the answer, he refers to what Obama's doing, loudly and repeatedly, as the "exact same thing". When that doesn't work, step 2) Go with what you know, loudly and repeatedly. Neville Chamberlain was an appeaser he says. He practiced appeasement. How, says Chris. Step 3) Come up with some kind of catchy slogan which, by its catchiness, will not require things like facts, or truth. He tries repeatedly to complete the sentence, "He energized and legitimized"—as if either of those words had any actual meaning—"Hitler's actions."

Cue image of Neville Chamberlain giving Hitler red bull, thumbs up.

Finally Chris points out that what Kevin doesn't know, but is the truth, is that Neville Chamberlain's "appeasement" didn't lie in his TALKING to Hitler it lay in his giving up half of Czechslovakia to him. The fortified half, incidentally. Talking by itself is not appeasement. Then he kicks Kevin's ass off the show.

So I watched it a few times. Something hit a little too close to home about it. It was the line he kept trying to say, "energized and legitimized" Hitler's efforts. He got that from somewhere, or he wrote it the night before, right? But he still didn't know what exactly Chamberlain had done. This is actually incredibly typical.


Basically, I blame Karl Rove and Roger Ailes, Owner of Fox News for pretty much everything. The Republicans in congress hadn't had power for a long time before Rove came along, so he comes up with this strategy. On every single level, local up, republican candidates are going to start painting their opponents into a corner. Before that there were different things about politics that sucked, but nobody had tried so hard to de-legitimize the other side by trying to paint them as dangerously naive morons… because in a country where the other side is almost always around 50% it doesn't pay to entirely ostracize the other side. The only way that strategy works is if you get power and never have to give it back. From that place you can make the other side look as ridiculous as you want, but unfortunately you can't get away with it if you do something as stupid as start the Iraq War. Swing and a miss. Fine.

Step 2 was Roger Ailes giving talk shows to all these moronic frat boys who know you can win the argument just by making someone else look like a jackass, and inviting people to be in on a joke. It's ad hominem and it's supposed to reduce the other person's credentials beyond the boundaries of believe ability. That's how John Kerry became a "flip-flopper". It's exactly the same as Neville Chamberlain being an "appeaser" who practices "appeasment" where, no matter what happens, so long as you don't meet anybody like Chris Matthews you can just say thing like "who cares what you say? You're an appeaser."

This is a common phenomenon of course. I said fratboys, but I only halfway meant it. It's more in the Revenge of the Nerd sense, and I need a term; I've met some lovely frat folks in my time. But I do distrust homogenous groups of like-minded people, so I'll keep saying fratboy, and you'll know I really mean the Alpha Betas that are the Republican elite.

You get better at life, more reasonable, more open-minded by being exposed to things outside of what you know. I don't need to cite examples, because that's a pretty obvious one. Alternatively in closed societies, it's pretty easy to pretend that no one else has a valid opinion. In fact, it's good clean fun. It's the adult version of those guys who, if a girl has a valid opinion they don't know to respond to, might say something like "Why don't you go back to the kitchen." Technically, they're usually joking, but the effect is the same. De-legitimization. She becomes the butt of a joke rather than a person with a valid opinion. That opinion no longer exists, however good it was.


This is essentially what the republican higher ups has spent the last eight years trying to do to the concept of "liberal". It IS exactly the same as fundamentalist Christians. They know what's right because they've been told it by smug people who don't have an ounce of doubt and lack of doubt is currency in a world that doesn't come with a manual.

Now there's a whole generation coming into its own that's had its narrow-minded ignorance celebrated as a powerful tool for the creation of the republican voting bloc, so, just like frat boys in the house of one of those bad frats, they suddenly think it's not shameful to have all those little gross sexist, racist, narrowminded beliefs because there's a club they belong to which agrees to them. They don't have to worry about finding people who will put up with them, because the whole thing works en masse. It lets those people come out into the sun, and they find each other. Hey, it's all part of the package. Problem is, it only works as long as you can keep the walls of the frat house standing.

So we have a selection of talking heads of whom Bill O'Reilly is by far the smartest--there's a thought to give one pause--Kevin James, Sean Hannity, Anne Coulter…and they keep building the same sand castle. You keep getting the answers to questions you haven't asked yet before you even know whether to ask them. They sound right because they sound sure.


And so you know everything about me, don't you? I'm a democrat. We all know what that means.

Apparently, ALL democrats are people who love social programs.. Because God knows that if the Republicans made sure to feed their swill to everybody buying all the way down the ladder, the Dems must have too. It's what being a Dem means, right?

Absolutely-bloody-not.

And of course, democrats are people who love to raise taxes. If you're a dem, you must want to raise taxes. Because, hey, it's in the dem platform. So all of us must wholeheartedly accept it without reservation. Right?

Absolutely-balderdash-monkey-not

A political election is a two pronged choice. If you could vote the way you believe on EVERY issue, I guess you would, but you'd need about 10 different candidates, wouldn't you. One guy believes a whole lot of things, the other guy, presumably, also. You choose which one comes closest to what you think. It ain't a perfect world.

The Republican tactic apparently starts like this: simple sentence of something that "everybody knows". These sentences are bred in atmospheres where nobody questions, so they become fact well before it can be revealed that they lack the basic requirement of fact, namely, being factual. For example, I recently had someone demand on the foot of my column where I got the basis of the fact that Democrats end wars. It was the Democrats—along with the Republicans they allowed-- that started this war, which is absolutely true and sort of like saying it was your mother and your father who made you. So where was I getting the idea that Democrats end wars? Not where I was getting the idea that Obama or Clinton is going to end the war, the idea of candidates, rather than fronts for the agenda, doesn't seem to exist.

As it turned out of course, my facts came from this particular information: Both Democrat candidates plan to end the war. The Republican candidate doesn't. So that was just something that I took to mean the democrats, in this case, will end the war. I realize this is a leap. But no, you're right, they aren't the party that ends wars. Technically speaking, I don't think either party is. Some people start wars, other people stop them. ‘Spect most of it has to do with global circumstances at the time. For example, it is hard to fight or end a World War II when Hitler hasn't been born or has already died. These things you just can't do anything about.

Do I hate republicans? Of course not, and if you think that you've missed the point here. I'm fighting for the right of the individual, and against the idea that the party is the be-all, end-all… I certainly hate a certain breed of republican, just exactly like I hate the breed of liberal that runs on entitlement. Yes, they do exist, that's why they've been used to characterize the whole mass of us.

But America is only a binary system on paper. Every one of the millions of us disagrees with his or her candidate on certain issues; for everyone there's a measure of compromise involved. It's a struggle to get what you really want, and to get there, we need people who can work together, not people who think the other side is a bunch of close-minded bullies OR whiny liberals. And you know what? I think this election is going to be the start of turning that around. Remember, the frat house mentality only works when you're on the winning side.

That America is as fed up with this kind of thing as I am will presumably be evident in November, but is, of course, already evident in the democrats winning back the Senate and that either a black man or a woman could have or does have a real fair shot at beating as old and white and rich a man as this country has produced, and though they won't believe me now, they're pretty much going to have to soon. And we've got a whole host of things we want to get done, and you're not going to like most of them. You can either treat us like people who are willing to listen to you—as you listen to us—or you can harden those divides until, when we win, whether this time, the next time, or down the road, we are positively gleeful when we shut you out.


But the truth is, that in turn will only last until you can crawl back in, and shut us out in revenge. We didn't have to get here, but we are here, and if you don't open your damn ears it's going to get well worse. The way I see it, we have two options here. Either we admit a basic individuality, a fundamental reachability even to those whom it would be easier to consider our sworn enemies. Or else the United States will be two brothers trading licks from now until the end of time.

Oh, I know, it really did work. Works in college, too. It probably could have lasted much longer, if George Bush hadn't been such a moron. Nothing makes converts like success. But they we are too, or more appropriately here. And these situations, if nobody tries to change them, only go one direction, and believe you me, you are not going to like being on the losing end of it. So open your eyes, and if you think we're wrong, say so without gloating, yelling, or cursing. We might just hear you and respond politely. It may catch, and who knows what will happen next?

So let's start by assuming that when I write something, I'm saying all of the things that I mean, and you can disagree only if you disagree with something I ACTUALLY mentioned…or else you'd better be damn sure you know just what Neville Chamberlain did.

Or, on the other hand, it's war forever and if the next four years are ours, it will most definitely be payback time, whatever the future cost. So you choose which way you want to go. Better late than never.

(Give us our cute kitties back, or the government gets it.)