Categorical Aperitif

Were I the sort of person who believed in Signs of the Apocalypse, I would say that one is surely the fact that Chris Matthews has a TV show at all and another is that in our culture, it falls to a TV comedian to play Socrates to Matthews' lame, whiny Sophist:

I think that the saddest part of this interview (also available at C&L and AlterNet) is not the fact that Matthews is flogging a book with a shallow, sick, stupid premise ("Life is a Campaign"?!?); it's his mounting terror once he realizes that Jon Stewart is not going to play along with the usual "help me a make a pile more money by convincing the rubes that their lives won't be complete until they've spent their hard-earned money on this piece of consummate idiocy" I'm-a-celebrity-with-a-book-to-sell interview game. No: Stewart actually dares to question the worth, not just of Matthews' book, but of his whole approach to life. Oh, it is a thing of beauty to watch. Jon Stewart, if you did not exist, we would have to invent you.

It gets better, though: TDS revisits the Matthews interview and draws a scathing connection to the Blackwater story (which anyone who's been listening to Democracy Now! has known would be coming for quite some time):

I'm baffled as to why people like Matthews agree to appear on TDS at all. I mean, it's been almost three years since Jon Stewart did basically the same thing to Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson (refusing to play along with the standard media-schmoozing scripts), and it's been almost a year and half since Stephen Colbert refused to be a good little clown at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner. I've heard of slow learners, but this is ridiculous.

// posted by nash @ 2:22 PM