Longing for Diversity

I just realized that Lawrence O’Donnell and Chris Matthews are not the same  (smug and annoying) person. I’m not attentive to names, so I’ve been wondering why this boring fellow was appearing on TV so often. And now it turns out there are actually two of them.

Sheesh.

21 thoughts on “Longing for Diversity

  1. You do know that Rachel Maddow is a different person, right? (She’s the skinny one with the dark hair.)

    I agree, all loony lefties look alike.

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  2. Yes, this is particularly loony, he wrote it for the show The West Wing

    What did liberals do that was so offensive to the Republican Party? I’ll tell you what they did. Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act.
    What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things, every one. So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, β€˜Liberal,’ as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won’t work, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor.

    Of course, only a lunatic would refuse to defend Israel to the last drop of American blood.

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    1. “Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote.”

      That’s really offensive.

      “Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act.”

      This, too.

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      1. β€œLiberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote.”

        That’s really offensive.

        β€œLiberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act.”

        This, too.

        I have no idea why these are offensive to anyone. They are just statements of fact. Conservatives like Ted Cruz, John Kasich, et al most definitely did not get these things accomplished.

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        1. Women won the right to vote as a result of hard and long struggle. African Americans won their civil rights as a result of hard and long struggle. Nobody came to them and handed them anything.

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          1. No one said anything about handing anybody anything. It was LIBERAL women and a few LIBERAL men allies who did this. Conservative women did not contribute to it at all. Probably by definition. And they had to get the constitutional amendment approved by LIBERAL men in Congress and state legislatures.

            Something similar can be said for African Americans.

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            1. As a woman, I find the erasure of the word “women” from the discussion of fighting for women’s rights offensive. And I can guarantee that many African Americans will not like this formulation of the fight for civil rights either.

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              1. Bellamy just means, liberals and liberals in government finally accepted some rights for women, minorities, labor, etc.; conservatives struggled against & still do

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              2. I can only respond to what people actually say and not to what somebody imagines they might have wanted to say.

                It’s curious that such a clumsy, trivial quote is provoking this much discussion. It’s just an Internet meme and not a good one at that. Why are people so attached to it?

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            2. I’m always amused when immigrants start telling African-Americans what they should be angry about, like they wouldn’t recognize condescendence after being exposed to it for 4 centuries running so far.

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              1. Kinda condescending to state that you guarantee many African-Americans would not like the simple truth, that it was liberals in the House and Senate that passed the CRAs in the 1960s, and that they were signed into law by a liberal POTUS.

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              2. So you do see the difference between “I can guarantee” and “I tell them they should”? That’s great to hear.

                As for the history of the Civil rights movement, there is a lot of information on it online.

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  3. I agree they are both annoying. But I prefer Lawrence O’Donnell between the two. He’s more sedate. I find Chris Matthews unwatchable.

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      1. Matthews has always been a marble mouthed wanker who weirdly goes on about bipartisan comity under Tip O’Neill with Reagan. But nobody was as irritating as Keith Olbermann.

        I don’t bother with MSNBC anymore. It actually LOST ratings during this election season when everyone else gained.
        I’ve actually cut way back on any political related programming. It’s very boring to hear them blabber out the contents of their heads in a never ending loop and ask the same idiotic questions and receive the same answers. I mean, if I want logorrhea from people, there’s Twitter.
        Shit, I want someone to ask my “internet of things connected to guns that misfire when hacked into a crowd that are also protected by trade agreements and arbitration agreement EULAs” hypothetical just to see candidates think on their feet.

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  4. MSNBC has lost its moral compass. It used to be a reliably progressive source of news. Not leftist enough to balance out the people on Fox News, but reasonable. Now they are more and more boring. But I still like Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow. It is beyond disgusting that they got rid of Ed Schultz and Melissa Harris-Perry.

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    1. “It is beyond disgusting that they got rid of Ed Schultz and Melissa Harris-Perry.”

      I only just started watching, so I don’t know these journalists.

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  5. Melissa Harris-Perry is a Professor of Political Science at Wake Forest University who had a two hour show on Saturday and Sunday mornings from 10:00 until 12:00. She is absolutely brilliant.

    Ed Schultz still does his show on the internet.

    Both were in-depth commentators rather than merely reporters.

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