Matthews Yells At Tea Party Leader: Why Is ‘Balloon-Head’ Bachmann Speaking For You

[Leopolds Ghost]

The irony is, I can see what Michele Bachmann was TRYING to say, and it wasn't particularly right-wing: she was citing people like Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and John Quincy Adams to suggest that even the Founding Fathers struggled to end slavery. She merely neglected to say they failed. Matthews, however, chewed her up good:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/chris-matthews-yells-at-tea-party-leader-why-is-balloon-head-bachmann-speaking-for-you/comment-page-1/

Tea Party leader Sal Russo did not help his cause when he said, in response to Matthews' question "Do you know when slavery ended, sir? You know it ended in the Civil War, right?" -- he replied, "Some slavery ended in the Civil War..."

And then backtracked saying he meant the Civil Rights movement was ongoing.

Chris Matthews was nearly apoplectic in his questioning of Tea Party Express co-founder Sal Russo on the topic of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and her controversial re-imagining of history where the founding fathers found a way to end slavery in their lifetime. Repeatedly calling Bachmann a “balloon head,” Matthews demanded to know why Russo and the Tea Party wanted Bachmann to give a response to the State of the Union address or, more generally, why they ever wanted her to open her mouth in the first place?

Given that Russo was eager to steer the topic away from what Bachmann does or does not know about slavery, the “interview” ended up being just Matthews berating Russo with questions like “do you know how little this woman knows about American history” and “what is she talking about?” Joan Walsh was also a guest for the segment, but there was little time for her, since it was clearly much more entertaining watching Matthews scream at Russo “are you hypnotized – can you answer a question!?” whenever Russo struggled to defend Bachmann.

Caveat: Don't know much about this site, but it has a lot of interesting news videos. The comments are clogged with Right wing garbage, but then so are Washington Post forums so who can tell? The glorious unwashed majority who don't read the actual paper and aren't impressed with its half-hearted attempts to be as center-right as possible?

[Leopolds Ghost]

1. By "this site" I mean Mediaite.com, which has a video at the link. just FYI.

[Honeycombe8]

2. I think she said what she meant. And what she meant unfortunately also meant...

And what she meant unfortunately also meant she didn't research her history (or knew her history but knew she was talking to uninformed people who wouldn't know better). The founding fathers were not very concerned about slavery at all. They didn't "work feverishly to end slavery." Most of them owned slaves, and a few thought slavery was a good thing. Jefferson, we now know, even had children with one of his slaves. (Yeah, he felt bad about having slaves, but not bad enough to free them.)

The founding fathers were mainly aristocrats who enjoyed acoutrements of life much like the aristocrats of today, only they were more unconcerned about non-aristocrats than those of today. They didn't consider women and minorities as deserving of full rights. That was just the way things were thought of in those days. No, they didn't "work feberishly" to abolish slavery, ultimately doing so.

She's as ignorant as Palin.

[Leopolds Ghost]

4. It is speaking too poorly of Revolutionary era US to think that some did not TRY to abolish slavery.

Some of the Founders and the Boston crowd were WAY ahead of the public on that issue.

And indeed far more liberal / civil libertarian than most Americans, including most
liberal Americans these days (mandated corporate insurance? really?) The original
Bill of Rights proposed by Jefferson would have prohibited corporate personhood and
a standing army.

Martin Luther King talked about fulfulling the promise laid out by the Founders.

I'm sorry you're so frustrated with what was, indeed, an aristocratic autocratic era
but there were radicals back then as there are now. They did their best to advance a
plan to end slavery by the early 1800s. The resulting compromise was to end the slave trade
by then.

Where do you think the Bolivarian revolutions got their impetus to end slavery in
Latin America? The Founders were part of a radical/liberal philosophical tradition
in the Enlightenment and protestant revolts, too. Obviously, that tradition got
co-opted by corporate capitalism and the ideology of property and greed, the notion
of prosperity equaling virtue, which was the flip side of the revolutionary coin --
the people who went to war for "Liberty and Property". Their heirs are the Tea Party.
So yeah they can fairly claim to be the legitimate heirs of the right-wing in the
Revolutionary era. Radicals and liberals can fairly claim to be the legitimate heirs
of other, more well-remembered founding fathers who would want nothing to do with
the current corrupt elected officials.

[Honeycombe8]

6. We're talking about the handful of founding fathers. And no, they didn't

"work feverishly" to abolish slavery, ultimately succeeding, as Bachman stated.

A few made some statements that they were against it, and one strove to rely less on his slaves (his version of activism, I guess). And I think Jefferson, besides raping his slaves and keeping them bound to him for their lives, I think ultimately freed them before he died. I think.

Slavery was not a huge topic in 1776, like it was in the 1800's (when, by then, the founding fathers were all dead).

[Leopolds Ghost]

9. The liberals wanted the Const. to end slavery. The (poor) compromise was to end slave trade.

This is in the Constitution and yes it was an issue even back then, for people who cared about the causes they were fighting for (admittedly few but they were ONLY in the aristocracy -- there was no working class progressive movement in the US at the time -- there was a libertarian movement of settlers but they mostly just didn't want slavery in their territories). That's why the French abolished slavery in THEIR revolution a short time later. Of course, none of this has to do with attitudes toward equality. Abolitionists up to and including Lincoln (before he met Douglass, at any rate) "fervently believed" that blacks and slaves were 3/5 of a man, they just regarded slavery as inhumane treatment. Jefferson's main concern was where would the freed slaves live, since he assumed they would have to be shipped back to Africa (as indeed the Liberian colonist movement organized by Abolitionists tried to do).

[Leopolds Ghost]

10. Then again, the libertarian types of the Rev. war era were far to the left on many issues.

Libertarianism as a movement has been co-opted from the original civil-libertarianism or left-libertarianism (as opposed to the authoritarian policies of a state that tried to mandate the purchase of tea) and corrupted to mean capitalist libertarianism (the tea-party movement, which as we see is having a hard time distinguishing the crypto-racists from sincerely radical conservatives who merely have blinders on when it comes to the subject of slavery and race.)

[a la izquierda]

23. Better define what liberals meant back then...

it wasn't remotely the same as it is today. I tell my students this when I teach Latin American history: they must throw their 21st century "ideas" about liberals and conservatives out the window. The words meant totally different things over time and space.

[rfranklin]

21. Actually, Jefferson only freed a few of them...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_slavery

Jefferson freed only two slaves while he was alive. He freed Robert Hemings in 1794 only after Robert paid £60 with borrowed money. Jefferson reluctantly manumitted James Hemings in 1796.<56> Jefferson freed only five slaves in his will, and they were all male Hemings: Joseph (Joe) Fossett, Burwell Colbert, Madison Hemings, John Hemmings, and Eston Hemings....

In 1827, an auction of 130 slaves took place at Monticello. The sale lasted for five days despite the cold weather. The slaves brought prices over 70% of their appraised value. Within three years, all of the Black families at Monticello had been sold and dispersed.<55>

[ThatPoetGuy]

5. She did refer to John Quincy Adams...

(although she referred to him at first as Thomas Adams). When the Africans from the Amistad were put on trial, John Quincy Adams volunteered to represent them. For four days he argued eloquently that slavery was un-American, laying out a series of statements and ideas about humanity, freedom, and the nature of America, arguing that these grand notions do not permit human beings to enslave other human beings. It was a grand and passionate defense, and it won the case. Adams' speeches and ideas laid the groundwork for much of the later Abolitionists.

J.Q. Adams may not have done much during his presidency, but he was by far the greatest ex-president in history.

[Honeycombe8]

7. That's true. But that's not what Bachman said. She said....

the founding fathers worked hard to abolish slavery. They did not. Period.

Not that I would have expected them to. There were a hell of a lot of things going on in those days. Slavery was just one of them. And the founding fathers were mainly aristocratic men who relied on slaves. Not all of them.

Most of them may have been against it. Felt bad about it. Would've voted against it, if given the chance. But that's not what Bachman said. She was incorrect in her facts.

[Leopolds Ghost]

11. Yeah, that's true. Isnt that true of all politicians. "Felt bad about it. Would've voted against it"

But ultimately didn't (or voted "Present") because they "knew the vote would fail", so why look like a fool speaking the truth when they can look wise speaking happy falsehoods about national greatness and keeping our powder dry?

[Leopolds Ghost]

8. She referred to him as Thomas Adams?

:lol: Maybe because Jefferson and his father died on the same day... who knows how she makes those connections. To paraphrase the end of A Scanner Darkly, maybe some flicker of recognition, some misfiring synapse triggers a memory...

[qb]

3. Thank you for the summary. I prefer reading to video links.

As a Minnesotan, it is satisfying to see a national figure expressing thoughts similar to mine about Bachmann.

[slay]

20. +1

yes i wish everyone would give a summary of video links - is nice polite informative thing to do.

[WilliamPitt]

12. It's an excellent site

TPM cites them all the time.

On edit: I seem to be wrong, at least in part, about this site. But TPM does use their work quite a lot, and that carries a great deal of weight with me.

[Leopolds Ghost]

13. Why are the comments posters there so right-wing?

Comments run 50-40 extreme right vs. moderate center-left, which is odd enough, but then the ratings indicate massive numbers of radical righties lurking on the comment threads.

I guess they got tired of Free Republic's graphic layout.

[WilliamPitt]

15. I never read comments on any article site

so I can't say anything about that aspect. But I trust TPM down to the ground, and they use mediate all the time.

My 2 cents.

[blogslut]

14. I gotta disagree with you on that

Their writers are horrible and fact-checking? Pfft!

It's Dan Abrams pouty little I-got-kicked-off-MSNBC vanity site. The only excellent things about it are the icon graphics and the job search tool.

[WilliamPitt]

16. Perhaps I need to learn more about them

I've never spent much time on their actual site, but TPM - which I trust implicitly - cites their articles all the time.

Perhaps that's a bad thing, and I should know better. But I trust Mr. Marshall and TPM completely, so...

Could be a pick-and-choose phenomenon.

[blogslut]

17. Places I trust link to Politico

I'm not stating that Mediaite is completely disreputable but rather that one should salt the rim of the glass before downing the shot.

[WilliamPitt]

19. Fair enough.

Thanks.

:toast:

[Leopolds Ghost]

25. The articles and video links themselves seem mostly even-handed and broad-based

As evidence that mainstream news outlets wouldn't run media analysis pieces about Chris Matthews attacking a conservative unless it was to criticize him for doing so (like the Washington Post's repulsive media critic, the man who took it on himself to bring down Dan Rather and lied to the American editorial boards about the results of the WaPo/Times full count of the Florida 2000 election.)

[Rex]

18. The Teabaggers are trying to prove a point.

You don't have to be intelligent to be in a major position in politics. I believe GWB proved that for 8 years. You can actually ignore the truth, even when someone asks you why. This has become the power of batshit crazy people that stare at the moon all night. Remember, we can have either freedom or tyranny...she is that deep doncha know.

[Myrina]

22. Interesting: Bachmann is their new 'face', not Palin!

Even though Caribou Barbie has been their biggest mouthpiece and paid motivational speaker (until Tuscon).

[Leopolds Ghost]

26. The Republican establishment was looking for an excuse to put a fork in Palin.

Thankfully they found one. (or perhaps not, a Palin-Obama race in 2012 would be evidence of interesting times, albeit apocalyptic if Palin should won)

[justiceischeap]

24. I'd just like to point out to Michelle Bachman the following: Slaves built DC

And they weren't freed until almost 100 years later. IF the founding fathers really did not want to allow slavery, they could have done it but they didn't. Period. Just like you jugheads in DC today, if you weren't busy looking into other camera's and spouting misinformation about history and kissing the ass of your wacky far right base, you might get some real work done. But you don't.

[calimary]

27. Anyone see Rachel's expose of this sal russo money-hungry fraud?

His "Tea Party Express" is set up mainly to serve his own bottom line.