Of hatred and churches and, of course, "Tweety"

Well, well, well....two boys have been arrested and charged with the vandalism of all those churches in Alabama. And guess what? They say it was a "prank that got out of hand."

I remember being particularly incensed when the Church fires first hit the national news and our dear, dear friend, Chris Matthews had this to say on his show Hardball

"MATTHEWS: Is there anything in the papers down there where the Baptist Church has taken a position on some social issue: gay marriage -- something that's hot -- where that would have aroused somebody?"

CAVANAUGH: I haven't seen that, Chris, but it's very viable, because, you know, we had an arson of a Unitarian church in rural Virginia back in the summer and it was right after the church, on a national level, had embraced some gay members. And then there was an attack on this church in Staunton, Virginia, so things like that can happen."

MATTHEWS: That's why I'm thinking like that, because the more liberal churches would drive some people on the right crazy and maybe a more liberal person who is gay for example would feel that they've been terrorized by the beliefs of another church too. We don't know."

(transcript from MSNBC by way of The Rude Pundit)

Chris was ever so eager to push the blame on some gay, liberal radical that he jumped to conclusions very, very quickly. I remember shooting off an email to his at the time that said something like: "Hey Chris, here's a novel idea. Why don't you wait for some FACTS before you hang the blame on somebody."

Of course, I got the standard "auto-reply" and I doubt if Chris ever say the email.

Actually it's been a really bad day for Chris (or, as he is known in the liberal blogosphere, Tweety, because of his big head covered with blonde hair.)

The Last Chance Democracy Cafe had an article entitled Still a Skunk after all these years which documented Tweety's snearing partisanship during the 2000 election and the horrible aftermath. Here's a snippet:

At first, the major networks were all over the story — lots of talk of constitutional crisis and all that. But as the drama wore on, they naturally moved back to less civic, and more profitable, fare: The only option left to the true junkie was cable news, CNN, MSNBC and, of course, good old Fox — on second thought, let’s not even go there. So I spent a lot of time staring at Matthews (not something I would recommend) who not only left absolutely no doubt as to where he stood on the controversy — 100% with Bush — but who did so in an insufferable, contemptuous and arrogant fashion.

It gets even better.

Then, there was The Raw Story with their expose' of Tweety's Speaking engagements at primarily Right Wing or Business-Oriented venues. It seems that an idnependent researcher was able to get his hands on all the speaking engagements that Matthews has been involved in through two separate speaking bureaus. His speaking fees weren't mentioned and the Researcher tried to contact MSNBC to find out if they STILL had the policy of not permitting their show hosts to collect outside speaking fees but MSNBC gave no answers.

So it wasn't a good day for Matthews.

Good. I wish him many happy returns of this day.