Oh God! Chris Matthews Hates Bobby Jindal

Why is it that those who make a living speaking into microphones don't seem to understand the basic principle of how the things work? When you say something out loud into a live mic, people can hear it! Well, leave it to MSNBC's Chris Matthews, among the most boorish commentators in the history of punditry, to forget how the whole TV thing is done. After Keith Olbermann's introduction of Bobby Jindal, and the Louisiana governor was making his way to his own open mic, Matthews let out a not-so-Freudian slip. Watch:



Generally, pundits like Matthews wait until after a given speaker delivers his or her remarks before uttering "Oh God!" or "That was terrible!" (which Jindal's robotic, sophomoric speech certainly was) but that's too old school for Mr. Hardball. Seriously, the reason I have always disliked Matthews is that he just doesn't seem to have much of interest to say (and he's written books to prove it). I'm not entertained by the way his mind works, whatever his politics. No, I didn't bother to watch what Matthews offer his postmortem when Jindal had actually finished giving his we're-a-party-like-it's-1999 oratory. Instead, I listened to somebody who is actually smart, David Brooks:

"You know, I think Bobby Jindal is a very promising politician, and I oppose the stimulus because I thought it was poorly drafted. But to come up at this moment in history with a stale 'government is the problem,' 'we can't trust thhe federal government'--it's just a disaster for the Republican Party. The country is in a panic right now. They may not like the way the Democrats have passed the stimulus bill, but that idea... that government is going to have no role, the federal government has no role in this... it's just a form of nihilism. It's just not where the country is, it's not where the future of the country is."