Acerbic spouting of hot-button talking points gone wrong

Radio Talk Show Host Called on the Carpet Over Knowledge of History, Vocabulary

The Chris Matthew's show resembles it name in the following segment. He decides to "play hardball" with Kevin James... (NOTE: The link went down - it has been redirected and should work now.)



Why he and others don't do this for other similar simplistic, empty-headed rhetoric all the time I don't know, but good on Mr. Matthews.

Let me be clear. I am not a historian and I am embarrassed by my lack of knowledge in a variety of areas. I am not wanting to put down or attack Mr. James. I have and will continue to make mistakes and potentially miscommunicate or give an opinion on things which I later find to be seriously flawed or not properly thought out. In that sense I can empathize with Mr. James, particularly when under the pressure of trying to put forward an argument on a nationally televised program. I have no problem with people criticizing liberalism, conservatism, particular political parties, positions on topics such as abortion, environmentalism, indigenous rights, YEC, ID, evolution, theism, atheism, Humanism, Christianity, Buddhism etc, but we need to give each other much more credit and make an effort to get passed the binary reactionism and simplistic dichotomies that use the limited polemic vocabulary of the derisively divisive demagogues. We need to take our arguments and positions much more seriously and have a thoughtful discussion backed by a solid education and an attempt to understand, even if we cannot agree, those with whom we debate. Just a thought.


PS - On a related topic, it has been noted that when Bush (apparently misleadingly) cited a United States senator from 1939 commenting on the invasion of Poland (“Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler. All of this might have been avoided") that senator was a Republican from Idaho named William Borah. You can read about Borah in an article by the The New York Times, an article on Salon.com, or other sources you can verify on your own indicating that Borah was sympathetic to Hitler and that Borah's quoted lament may have reflected a concern over what he perceived as a strategic failure on the part of the German military rather than out of an appeasing sentimentality.