Lots to chew on here. Rhetorically speaking, from Harrogate's perspective this battle is a battle in two movements, with Matthews getting somewhat out-maneuvered in the first half (though it will surprise nobody that Harrogate still agreed with what Matthews was trying to argue), and with Matthews at least bringing things to a draw with Fleisher in the second half. Harrogate always said Ari Fleisher was a masterful shit-talker, and it is manifest here that once again, he's good with the demagoguery.
Mostly at stake on the level of substance is rehashing our entry into Iraq. But they also argue about other things that might make a few Situationers' and Readers' blood race, such as whether it is honest, and for that matter whether it is decent for the Bush people to keep bragging that we "didn't get hit again under Bush's watch."
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2 comments:
Chris Matthews discussed this again tonight.
I guess all I can say is: what difference does it make now? The time for Matthews to do this was 2002 - 2003. Who cares in 2009?
And who cares about Ari except to the extent that Rob Corddry played him in W.
Solon, slight disagreement with ye. It needs to never go away, the vagaries, the mendacities, and above all the exploitative rhetorics that wound up putting this country at war. Maybe we will not learn from this either way, but if we go ahead and stop talking about it altogether, we damn sure won't learn from it.
Fleisher, Harrogate cares about him simply because he has so much blood on his hands. And has the gall to praise Matthews for being outraged at Bill Clinton's moral failings in the White House. And gets away with saying such things when really, he should be getting hit with tomoatoes wherever he goes at best, and perhaps he should even be in prison.
As for Matthews, yeah, he pretends in this clip that he questioned them during the runup to the war, but that's b.s. pure and simple.
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