Day: March 11, 2006

Chris Matthews Blamed Church Arsons on Angry Gays

Jon Ponder

On February 3, 2006, rightwing talk show host Chris Matthews did a segment on “Hardball” in which he speculated that the arsonists behind the church fires in Alabama might be gay activists:

Maybe a more liberal person who is gay for example would feel that they’ve been terrorized by the beliefs of [a conservative] church too.

Just hunching it out, being a bit of a cop here, I’m trying to think, could it be a person who doesn’t like what they stand for? Is there any outstanding disputes on social issues, gay right, marriage—let me see—abortion? Any of those issues out front where the Baptist Church might have got an enemy it didn’t know about here, or knew about?

And…

MATTHEWS: Is there anything in the papers down there where the Baptist Church has taken a position on some social issue: gay marriage—something that’s hot—where that would have aroused somebody?

GUEST: I haven’t seen that, Chris, but it’s very viable, because, you know, we had an arson of a Unitarian church in rural Virginia back in the summer and it was right after the church, on a national level, had embraced some gay members. And then there was an attack on this church in Staunton, Virginia, so things like that can happen.

MATTHEWS: That’s why I’m thinking like that, because the more liberal churches would drive some people on the right crazy and maybe a more liberal person who is gay for example would feel that they’ve been terrorized by the beliefs of another church too. We don’t know.

It is fascinating and awful.

And dead wrong:

Law enforcement officials arrested three men March 8 in connection with a string of nine fires at Baptist churches in rural Alabama.

Benjamin Nathan Moseley and Russell Lee Debusk, both 19-year-old students at Birmingham-Southern College, said they set the fires as a “joke,” authorities said.

Liberal Punditry Is a Straight Boy’s Club

Jon Ponder

Caro at Make Them Accountable has a chart that shows the ratio of men to women in the leftwing echo chamber is about two to one.

She breaks out lists of leading personalities among radio talk show hosts, newspaper columnists, editorial cartoonists, magazine writers and editors, book authors and bloggers.

Check out the chart.

(Couldn’t help but notice that the ratio of straight to gay people on the list is probably better than 10 to one.)

Schadenfreude: the President’s Truthiness Construct Bites Him on Ports Deal

Jon Ponder

Nobody Believes Bush on the Ports Deal Even Though He’s Not Lying — For Once

The president created a construct of the enemy based on truthiness: Arab Muslims attacked us on 9/11, therefore all Muslims are terrorists.

I caught a few minutes of President Bush’s address yesterday to a convention of newspaper executives in Washington. His performance was absymal, as usual. He has more trouble reading from a script than most people do speaking extemporaneously.

But on Friday there was a new quality to his speechifying, especially when he was discussing the failed Dubai Ports World deal. He sounded a bit chastened and aggrieved:

“I’m concerned about a broader message this issue could send to our friends and allies around the world, particularly in the Middle East,” Bush said… “In order to win the war on terror, we have got to strengthen our relationships and friendships with moderate Arab countries in the Middle East.”

“Moderate Arabs?” I guess that means “Arabs who are not terrorists.” Until now it has suited President Bush’s interests to obfuscate the existence of moderate Arabs in order to build up the fictional Muslim Arab terrorist bogeyman he sent America’s sons and daughters to fight in Iraq.

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