For those of you following the Hardball scandal, the online community's fury elicited this response from Matthews:
MATTHEWS: "Why is [OBL] doing it? Why is he trying to track what he picks up in the internet and from the media as the lingo of the left in America, like Moore? Why would he start to talk like Moore? People misunderstood what I said last night. I think he's getting some advice from people, he's getting some lingo, some wordage that he hears working in the United States about this thing for war profiteers and he's jumping on every opportunity. Is that what you are saying Joe?"
SCARBOROUGH: "Listen, if somebody can't look at the words that Bin Laden said last night and match them up with what Michael Moore said, with what John Kerry said on Face the Nation with he said Americans were terrorizing Iraqi women and children in their homes hat night, which is what Bin Laden in effect said. What Ted Kennedy has been saying. Remember he said after Abu Ghraib that Saddam's torture came bers were turned over to -- chambers were turned over to new management, U.S. troops, that's the same thing Bin Laden hit on."
On the heels of a statement from John Kerry, massive pressure on MSNBC and Matthews from the blog community, we get an on-air reaction within 24 hours. Many will rightfully slam Matthews for this tepid non-apology apology, but the lesson here is simple: the netroots working with party leaders can put tangible pressure on the traditional media and "close the triangle."
This is a long, hard, but viable struggle and the target - as I've said many times - is not Rush or Hannity, but the "trusted" reporters, the "neutral" ones, the ones who shape public opinion precisely because they're supposed to be giving us the facts, not the GOP spin. Maybe it's credit to Matthews that he's still in that category. If he stays away from Fox-lite tactics, he might just regain our trust.
UPDATE: A trusted blogger friend (as well as commenters on this post) tell me I'm being too easy on Matthews for his response to the blog community. My focus in this post was more the fact that there was a response, and less the content of the response itself, which was slimy. But process analysis, triangles and political constructs aside, Matthews only riled the community up further and MSNBC's (and CNN's) jerk to the right continues to be a sorry sight indeed...
UPDATE 2: Moore weighs in with JIHADBALL