"See if you can hit this one, Obama"
Tonight's broadcast of Chris Matthews' "Hardball" interview with Barack Obama at West Chester University in Pennsylvania has to be considered an embarrassmewnt for the MSNBC commentator. Matthews, who is fully capable of throwing hard questions at interviewees and following up when they dodge the questions, basically threw up softball after softball at Obama, who proceeded to knowk them all out of the park even though his face clearly showed fatigue from the long campaign.
In addition, the setting was clearly home field advantage for the senator from Illinois. Matthews asked the college crowd how many were for Obama and how many were for Hillary. You might as well have asked a crowd at Green Bay's Lambeau Field how many were for the Packers and how many were for the Bears. Interestingly, Matthews completely forgot to ask the crowd how many were for McCain.
At any rate, Matthews proceeded to ask Obama a series of easy questions that he has answered a thousand times, which the senator easily handled to cheers from the ga-ga-eyed college crowd. The only time Chris tried to pin Obama down, which was on the Pastor Wright issue, he missed a golden opportunity to make Obama explain why he originally denied being present during the notorious comments made by the pastor-then admitted during his "Landmark Speech" in Philadelphia that he was, indeed present when some of the remarks were made. Rather than relentlessy follow up when Obama went back to his original stance that he was not present, Matthews let the senator do a quick shuffle then changed the subject with this memorable "hardball" question:
"When did you smoke your last cigarette?"
So on it went; more softballs and more tape measure homers by Obama until, mercifully, it was over.
In the light of Matthews' past statements about his adoration of Obama, this interview should not be surprising. Yet, it leaves the inescapable impression that either Chris Matthews has a sore arm-or he should change the name of his show.
Main stream news bias? Why of course not.
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