On the January 8 edition of National Public Radio's On the Media, discussing the media's coverage of the New Hampshire primary, co-host Brooke Gladstone stated: "[T]here was an interesting piece of analysis on Campaign Desk, which offers continual coverage of the coverage on the CJR [Columbia Journalism Review] website, and it suggests that the vote for [Hillary] Clinton in New Hampshire was in some way a vote against MSNBC's Chris Matthews, as the sort of breathing, saliva-spewing symbol of a general media dump on Hillary. When we talk about groupthink, is he the leader of the pack?" Guest Christopher Hayes, Washington editor for The Nation, replied: "I think he's one of them. I mean, he's certainly the most voluble of the bunch." Hayes later said of Matthews: "I think that he's ascended to the level of kind of icon of the frustration that people have with the media, particularly the media's relationship with the Clintons."

The post on CJR's Campaign Desk to which Gladstone was apparently referring was authored by CJR writer Liz Cox Barrett and titled, "The Anti-Chris Matthews Vote: And how it sparked some media soul-searching (though not from Matthews)." In the post, Barrett documented several quotes from Matthews and asked: "So was there, in fact, what amounts to an anti-Chris Matthews vote that emerged in New Hampshire? And if so, why might Hillary Clinton have been the beneficiary?" Barrett added, "Here are a couple of thoughts on those questions," and linked to a Salon.com article by staff writer Rebecca Traister headlined "The Witch ain't dead and Chris Matthew is a ding-dong" and a blog post by Atlantic associate editor Matthew Yglesias that discussed Matthews.

Prior to the segment featuring Hayes and Gladstone, co-host Bob Garfield also discussed the media's coverage of Clinton: "Even the unsinkable Chris Matthews, MSNBC's towering monument to certainty, seemed a little shaken up, almost a new man. Here he was on Tuesday." Garfield then aired an audio clip of Matthews' statement during MSNBC's coverage of the January 8 New Hampshire primary that "I give her [Hillary Clinton] a lot of personal credit. I will never underestimate Hillary Clinton again." Garfield then said, "Well, maybe not entirely new man. Here he was the next day." Garfield then aired Matthews' statement the following day that "the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around."

At the end of Garfield's segment, which also included audio clips of CNN host Lou Dobbs, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric, and NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams discussing the media's coverage of the New Hampshire primary, Garfield asserted: "And that is a course on how the media screws up. In fact, it's not just one course; it's a whole meal -- from soup to nuts."

From the January 11 edition of National Public Radio's On the Media:

BOB GARFIELD (co-host): OK, last week we started the show with politics despite a pretty thin media angle because, come on, it was the Iowa caucuses. But this week, we're doing it again; only this time, I swear, with a much, much better media story. And by "better," I mean a pitiful, pathetic, New Hampshire primary pundit implosion -- a historic, Dewey-defeats-Truman pie in the face, the creamy remnants of which TV stars including CNN's Lou Dobbs, CBS' Katie Couric, and NBC's Brian Williams are still scraping off their kissers.

[begin audio clip]

DOBBS: The savants, the pundits, all of the political experts need to do a little, a little seeking of forgiveness because everyone was so wrong in this, and breathtakingly so.

COURIC: We'll be hearing more from those ubiquitous pundits and polls in the weeks ahead. But Iowa and now New Hampshire should remind us all: In the end, the only voice that really matters belongs to the voters.

WILLIAMS: Give us a few weeks. We'll promptly forget the lessons of this debacle in polling predictions and primary politics. We will all live to screw up another day, though our performance in New Hampshire will be hard to beat.

[end audio clip]

GARFIELD: That was NBC's Brian Williams stating the painfully obvious: They will live to screw up another day because campaign journalism, and especially political punditry, is all about prognostication -- a savory soup of polling data, history, and supposed expertise, which is all well and good, except that the electorate doesn't necessarily eat the soup. The experts are still sorting out the polls. Is the sampling unrepresentative? Did the sample lie? Did the human factor -- actual living, breathing voters deciding on living, breathing candidates -- rudely ignore the inevitability of a Clinton defeat? Even the unsinkable Chris Matthews, MSNBC's towering monument to certainty, seemed a little shaken up, almost a new man. Here he was on Tuesday:

MATTHEWS [audio clip]: And I give her a lot of personal credit. I will never underestimate Hillary Clinton again.

GARFIELD: Well, maybe not entirely new man. Here he was the next day:

MATTHEWS [audio clip]: And I'll be brutal -- the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. ... That's how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win there on her merit. She won because everybody felt, "My God, this woman stood up under humiliation."

GARFIELD: And that is a course on how the media screws up. In fact, it's not just one course; it's a whole meal -- from soup to nuts.

GLADSTONE: Christopher Hayes, Washington editor for The Nation, is fresh off the campaign trail. He joins us now, sleep deprived and we hope with his guard down. Chris, welcome back to the show.

HAYES: Thanks for having me back, Brooke.

GLADSTONE: So there was an interesting piece of analysis on Campaign Desk, which offers continual coverage of the coverage on the CJR website, and it suggests that the vote for Clinton in New Hampshire was in some way a vote against MSNBC's Chris Matthews, as the sort of breathing, saliva-spewing symbol of a general media dump on Hillary. When we talk about groupthink, is he the leader of the pack?

HAYES: I think he's one of them. I mean, he's certainly the most voluble of the bunch. And I think also the amazing thing about Chris Matthews is that when he gets something in his sights, he just won't let it go. And so, sometimes, instead of interviewing, whatever idea he just came up with, he just sort of throws it out and says, "Isn't that true? Right? But isn't that true?" And then if they try to deviate from the line, he cuts them off and steers them back.

GLADSTONE: You know, it does seem that he's gotten a lot of the press in the wake of New Hampshire. Is it simply that because his narratives seem to be so immovable once set, that he's just, as you say, an example of the extreme campaign reporter?

HAYES: Yeah, I think that's exactly it. I mean, I think that he's ascended to the level of kind of icon of the frustration that people have with the media, particularly the media's relationship with the Clintons. I actually think that going into Tuesday, before the actual primary had happened, my thought was that the biggest story that I was seeing was this crazy degree of schadenfreude on the part of the national press corps directed towards the Clintons. I mean, it was almost like they were gathered on the shores as the Titanic was sinking and kind of sadistically waving at the people scrambling for life rafts. And it was so palpable. It kind of brought people back to the late 1990s and Ken Starr and Monica Lewinsky. And that's a real raw emotional place for your average Democratic primary voter. And I've talked to a lot of people who are not Hillary Clinton supporters at all and they felt this desire to kind of defend the Clintons and to kind of tell the media to buzz off.

On the January 13 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, host Tim Russert challenged Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) on her vote in 2002 giving President Bush the authority to use military force against Iraq, asking her: "Do you wish you had read the National Intelligence Estimate, which had a lot of caveats from the State Department and the Energy Department as to whether or not Saddam Hussein really had a biological and chemical and active nuclear program?" Russert has asked similar questions of other Democratic presidential candidates who voted for the Iraq war resolution. Yet in two separate interviews on Meet the Press, Russert did not challenge Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) assertion that "every single intelligence agency in the world believed he [Saddam] had weapons of mass destruction"; he did not ask McCain if McCain wishes he had read the NIE, which was made available to all members of Congress before the vote, according to The Washington Post. During the June 5, 2007, Republican presidential debate, McCain admitted that he did not read the NIE before the 2002 vote on the Iraq war authorization. Russert also aired a statement from Democratic strategist Donna Brazile criticizing former President Bill Clinton for using the phrase "fairy tale" in reference to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), but not her subsequent comments that Clinton had "clarif[ied] his remarks" and that she "take[s] the president at his word."

The upcoming January 15 Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas will be moderated by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, "[j]oined by" Russert and Today's Natalie Morales. Media Matters for America has noted numerous instances of misinformation from Russert and Williams, including asking Democratic candidates questions based on misrepresentations and falsehoods. Moreover, following the October 30, 2007, debate in which 14 of the 30 distinct questions Russert asked the Democratic candidates were either directed to Clinton or to other candidates about Clinton, several media figures asserted that Russert and Williams had acted as Clinton's "opponent[s]."

Russert's double standard -- Dems and McCain

During the January 6 edition of Meet the Press, Russert asked McCain, "Looking back at the beginning of the war, back in March of 2003 ... if you had known then, if the intelligence came out and said, 'We know that Saddam Hussein does not have biological, ... or, or chemical, or a nuclear program' ... would you still have voted to authorize the war?" In his response, McCain said, "I'd love to get into thousands of historical hypotheticals with us. But what we knew at the time and the information we had at the time that every single intelligence agency in the world believed he had weapons of mass destruction." Similarly, during the May 13, 2007, edition of Meet the Press, Russert asked McCain, "In hindsight, was it a good idea to go into Iraq?" but did not challenge McCain's reply that the invasion of Iraq "was certainly justified" because "[e]very intelligence agency in the world, not just U.S., believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction."

As Media Matters documented, while Russert failed to ask McCain about the caveats in the NIE, he had previously challenged two other Democrats -- former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) and Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) -- over their 2002 votes giving President Bush the authority to use military force against Iraq, citing the NIE "caveats." In those interviews, Russert mentioned the "caveats" in the October 2002 NIE in which the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) dissented from the intelligence community's majority judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. On the February 4, 2007, edition of Meet the Press, Russert challenged Edwards on his vote to authorize military force against Iraq, asking him, "Why were you so wrong?" and later noting that "the [October 2002] National Intelligence Estimate that was given to you, and now made public, had some real caveats." Russert then quoted from a conclusion reached by the INR in the 2002 NIE: "The activities we have detected do not add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what [the INR] would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons." In addition, on the April 29, 2007, edition of Meet the Press, Russert asked Biden regarding the prewar intelligence: "How could you, as a U.S. senator, be so wrong?" Russert said that "there are a lot of caveats put on the level of intelligence about the aluminum tubes and everything. General [Anthony] Zinni ... said when he heard the discussion about the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam had, he said, 'I've never heard that' in any of the briefings he had as head of the Central Command."

Russert's quotation problem

During his January 13 interview with Hillary Clinton, Russert aired a statement Brazile made on the January 8 edition of CNN's The Situation Room regarding Bill Clinton's assertion that Obama's characterization of his position on the Iraq war was "the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen." On the January 8 Situation Room, Brazile asserted: "As an African-American, I find his words and his tone to be very depressing." After airing the video clip, Russert added, "So these are people who are not supporters of Obama, who are listening." But Russert did not note that on the January 11 edition of The Situation Room, Brazile said, "President Clinton went on several nationally syndicated black radio stations today to clarify his remarks. Look, I take the president at his word, that he was not being condescending; he was not being insulting. Rather, he was pointing out Senator Obama's previous statements on Iraq and where he perhaps might stand now." Brazile added, "I think the president understands now that when you use those words some people take offense. But we know Bill Clinton. We love Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton has soldiered in the fields for people of color."

In addition to falsely purporting to show Brazile's full comments on the issue of Bill Clinton's remarks while omitting Brazile's subsequent remarks, during the same interview with Clinton, Russert played a truncated quote from Bill Clinton and falsely asserted that he was showing viewers "exactly what President Clinton said." Referring to January 7 comments Bill Clinton made about Obama, Russert told Hillary Clinton: "It just isn't Senator Obama who is taking offense. This is exactly what President Clinton said in Dartmouth. Here is the tape." Russert then proceeded to air video of Bill Clinton saying: "Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen." In fact, Russert did not show viewers "exactly what President Clinton said." He did not show what Clinton said immediately before the "fairy tale" quote, when Clinton referred to Obama's statements from 2004 about the Iraq war. Indeed, The New York Times' Mark Leibovich noted on January 13 that in using the words "fairy tale," Clinton "was referring specifically to the perception that Mr. Obama was totally pure in his opposition to the Iraq war." In addition to showing the truncated video, Russert read an excerpt from Bob Herbert's January 12 New York Times column, in which Herbert claimed that Bill Clinton "sa[id] of Mr. Obama's effort: 'The whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.' "

Russert also read from a January 11 Times article that purported to quote a comment Hillary Clinton made about civil rights, and Russert noted Herbert's assertion that Hillary Clinton had "tak[en] cheap shots at, of all people, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr." But the Times article that Russert read truncated Hillary Clinton's actual statement, omitting from the quote her reference to President John F. Kennedy and "[t]he power" of King's dream.

Russert's "quotation problem" is not limited to his January 13 interview with Clinton. During his November 11, 2007, Meet the Press interview with Obama, Russert asserted that "critics will say you've not been a leader against the [Iraq] war," then read a quote he attributed to Obama: "In July of 2004, Barack Obama: 'I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports. ... What would I have done? I don't know,' in terms of how you would have voted on the war." However, in citing Obama's comment "What would I have done? I don't know," Russert did not quote the very next sentence of Obama's statement, which was, "What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made."

Further, two of the questions Russert asked during the October 30, 2007, Democratic presidential candidates debate were based on falsehoods: He misrepresented debate exchanges on Social Security and fabricated a quote he attributed to Clinton to accuse her of having "one public position and one private position" on the issue of raising the cap on income on which Social Security taxes must be paid. He also falsely claimed that a 2002 letter written by Bill Clinton to the National Archives "specifically ask[ed] that any communication between [then-first lady Hillary Clinton] and the president not be made available to the public until 2012." Several media figures have since uncritically used Russert's false assertion about Clinton's letter to the National Archives in reporting on the Clintons' records, as Media Matters documented (here, here, here, and here).

Other Russert/Williams misinformation

Two of the questions Williams asked during the April 26, 2007, Democratic presidential candidates debate were also based on falsehoods. He falsely suggested that the so-called Feingold-Reid Bill would mandate that all U.S. troops be withdrawn from Iraq by "about a year from now," when in fact, the bill would have allowed the continued deployment of U.S. troops in Iraq for three "limited purposes." Williams also quoted former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's (R) claim that "America will be safer with a Republican president," before asking Clinton, "How do you think, Senator, it happened that that notion of Republicans as protectors in a post-9-11 world has taken on so?" In fact, at the time, several recent polls had found that Democrats had an advantage on the issues of national security and foreign policy.

On the February 11, 2007, edition of Meet the Press, Russert advanced the false notion that Democrats rarely discuss their faith, telling Washington Post columnist David Broder that during Obama's presidential announcement speech, "My ear heard something that I had not heard from Democratic candidates in some time. Up front, Senator Obama began his speech with references to his faith, and then came back to that same issue in the speech." In fact, numerous prominent Democrats have publicly discussed their faith, including Edwards, who had discussed his United Methodist upbringing with Russert on Meet the Press the week before.

From the January 13 edition of NBC's Meet the Press:

RUSSERT: It just isn't Senator Obama who is taking offense. This is exactly what President Clinton said in Dartmouth. Here's the tape.

BILL CLINTON [video clip]: Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.

RUSSERT: Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina, who's neutral --

CLINTON: Mm-hmm.

RUSSERT: -- said this: "To call that dream a fairy tale, which Bill Clinton seemed to be doing, could very well be insulting to some of us."

CLINTON: Tim, let me -- let me just stop you right there.

RUSSERT: But, no --

CLINTON: No, wait a minute.

RUSSERT: No, I didn't stop you. Let me just go through --

CLINTON: No, but you did not give the entire quote and so --

RUSSERT: No, but you --

CLINTON: The entire quote was clearly about the position on Iraq.

RUSSERT: But I'm --

CLINTON: It was not about the entire candidacy. It was not about the extraordinary, you know, abilities.

RUSSERT: But Congressman -- but Congressman Clyburn has been covering this race. Donna Brazile, herself a longtime activist in the Democratic Party, this is what she said. Here's Donna Brazile.

DONNA BRAZILE (Democratic strategist) [video clip]: As an African-American, I find his words and his tone to be very depressing.

RUSSERT: So these are people who are not supporters of Obama, who are listening. Now, let me just go to the Martin Luther King thing because you had your opportunity to talk about this at the beginning of the show and I just want to lay this out for our viewers. This is how The New York Times categorized it: "In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Mrs. Clinton tried to make a point about presidential leadership. 'Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of '64,' Mrs. Clinton said in trying to make the case that her experience should mean more to voters than the uplifting words of Mr. Obama. 'It took a president to get it done.' " Again, Congressman Clyburn: "We have to be very, very careful about how we speak about that era in American politics. That bothered me a great deal."

[...]

RUSSERT: Again, learning from a mistake. Do you wish you had read the National Intelligence Estimate, which had a lot of caveats from the State Department and the Energy Department as to whether or not Saddam Hussein really had a biological and chemical and active nuclear program?

CLINTON: I was fully briefed by the people who wrote that. I was briefed by the people from, you know, the State Department, the CIA, the Department of Defense; all of the various players in that. And many people who read it -- well, actually, not very many people read the whole thing because we were getting constant briefings. And people -- some people read it and voted for the resolution, some people read it and voted against the resolution. I felt very well briefed. And it wasn't just what the Bush administration was telling us in the NIE; I went way outside of any kind of Bush administration sources -- independent people, people from the Clinton administration, people in the British government. I looked as broadly as I could at how to assess this.

And if, of course, you see the vote as I saw it, as opposed to how it's been characterized, I thought it was a vote to put inspectors back in, to make it very clear that Saddam Hussein wouldn't be able to go off unchecked. If those inspectors had been permitted to do the job that they were set up to do, we would have avoided war. It became clear in retrospect, Tim, once people started writing books and information came out of the administration, the president had no intention of letting the inspectors do their job. That's not what I was told by the Bush White House. That's not what we were told in constant briefings from high-level Bush administration officials. That's not what the president told the country in his speech in Cincinnati shortly before the vote. If you remember, he said this vote was the best chance to avoid some kind of confrontation.

From the January 11 edition of CNN's The Situation Room:

WOLF BLITZER (CNN host): Bill Clinton made some waves this week on the eve of the New Hampshire primary when he complained that the portrayal of Barack Obama's Iraq war stance was, quote, "a fairy tale." Today, the former president went on the Reverend Al Sharpton's radio show to explain what he meant. President Clinton says he wasn't talking about Obama himself or Obama's campaign. Listen to this.

BILL CLINTON [audio clip]: First of all, that's not true. I have given hundreds of speeches on Hillary's behalf on this campaign. I don't believe I've given a single one where I did not applaud Senator Obama in his candidacy. It's not a fairy tale. He might win. I think he's a very impressive man, and he's run a great campaign. I was addressing a specific argument that had never been brought up in the debates.

BLITZER: So if Bill Clinton said what he meant, meant what he said, why is he out there today having to clarify his so-called "fairy tale" remark?

Joining us from New York, our CNN contributor Carl Bernstein. He's the author on the book on Hillary Clinton entitled A Woman in Charge -- the book now out in paperback. And with us here in Washington our CNN contributor and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile.

Let me ask you, Donna. What do you think? Did the former president resolve this matter? Did he, you know, sort of clarify exactly what he meant?

BRAZILE: President Clinton went on several nationally syndicated black radio stations today to clarify his remarks. Look, I take the president at his word that he was not being condescending; he was not being insulting. Rather, he was pointing out Senator Obama's previous statements on Iraq and where he perhaps might stand now.

Look, Wolf, this is a very exciting moment for Democrats. It's a historic moment. If Dr. King were alive he would be excited to see at least the Democratic Party offering an African-American man and a white woman as our two top choices for the presidency. Not to take anything away from Senator John Edwards, who Dr. King would also applaud for raising the issue of poverty in this race.

I think the president understands now that when you use those words some people take offense. But we know Bill Clinton. We love Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton has soldiered in the fields for people of color. And I think at this moment, we're going to let things just lie and just go on and continue to compete for all the votes out there: black, white, gay, lesbian, women, men, rural, everybody -- 'cause that's what the Democrats do.

From the January 6 edition of NBC's Meet the Press:

RUSSERT: Looking back at the beginning of the war, back in March of 2003 --

McCAIN: Yep.

RUSSERT: -- if you had known then, if the intelligence came out and said, "We know that Saddam Hussein does not have biological," --

McCAIN: Mm-hmm.

RUSSERT: -- "or, or chemical, or a nuclear program" --

McCAIN: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

RUSSERT: -- would you still have voted to authorize the war?

McCAIN: Well, obviously, given information that we have changes your decision-making process. But Saddam Hussein was still a threat. The sanctions were breaking down. There was a multibillion-dollar Oil for Food scandal in the United Nations. The -- every day American airplanes were being shot at. Saddam Hussein had used and acquired weapons of mass destruction in the past, and there was no doubt there was going to be in the future. The problem in Iraq, my friend, was not whether we went in or not; it's the way it was mishandled after the initial invasion.

RUSSERT: Yeah, but, Senator, it's an important question because President Bush --

McCAIN: It's an important --

RUSSERT: President Bush has said --

McCAIN: Yeah.

RUSSERT: -- "Even if I knew he did not have biological, chemical, or nuclear program" --

McCAIN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

RUSSERT: -- "I still would go into Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein." Would you have?

McCAIN: I -- yes, but the point is that if we had done it right, it's been well chronicled in many, in many books, you and I wouldn't be even discussing that now. The mishandling after the war. Look, I met with a high-ranking former Al Qaeda operative in Iraq recently. And I asked him, "How did you succeed?" He said, "The lawlessness after the initial invasion and Abu Ghraib." And so they were able to recruit people because of the disorder and the mishandling. So you would not be asking me if it hadn't been mishandled, you would've said -- because we succeeded and established a stable Iraq - you'd have said, "Aren't you glad we went in? Because Saddam Hussein, one of the most brutal, most terrible dictators in history, who fought in several wars, used weapons of mass destruction, invaded his neighbor, is now gone from the world scene." That's what you'd be saying.

RUSSERT: But I think there'd be a real debate with the, with the -- amongst the American people if we were told he did not have biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons.

McCAIN: If frogs had wings -- look, Tim, we can talk about lots of hypotheticals. Would we have, would we have stopped Saddam Hussein from going into Kuwait back in '91 when, when he went in? Would we have, would we have said that the Chinese aren't going to cross -- would we have known -- if we had known that the Chinese were going to cross the Yalu in the Korean War, would we have done it differently? I'd love to get into thousands of historical hypotheticals with us. But what we knew at the time and the information we had at the time that every single intelligence agency in the world believed he had weapons of mass destruction. So --

RUSSERT: So bottom line, the war was not a mistake?

McCAIN: The war, quote, the invasion was not a mistake. The handling of the war was a terrible mistake.

On the January 13 edition of the syndicated program The McLaughlin Group, while discussing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) presidential campaign, host John McLaughlin asked guest, conservative radio host Monica Crowley: "Let's go to the big enchilada, who is, of course, Hillary. What did you think of Hillary's performance?" Crowley responded: "Yes, well, you know, she's like Glenn Close at the end of Fatal Attraction. You think she's dead and then she sits bolt-upright in the bathtub."

In director Adrian Lyne's 1987 film Fatal Attraction, Glenn Close plays Alex Forrest, a woman who begins stalking her co-worker Dan Gallagher and his family following a one-night-stand. In the film's climax, Alex attempts to kill Dan's wife, Beth, with a butcher knife while she's preparing for a bath. Dan hears the attack and wrestles Alex into the bathtub, appearing to have drowned her until Alex suddenly springs from the water, wielding the knife at Dan. Alex is then shot by Beth, who had gone to get a gun Dan bought to protect the family from Alex.

Crowley also stated, referring to a campaign event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, during which Clinton's voice broke as she talked about why she is seeking the presidency, "Look, I think that both [Newsweek contributing editor] Eleanor [Clift] and [MSNBC contributor] Pat [Buchanan] are correct when they say that the moment was probably authentic on her part, and she certainly leveraged it to her advantage." McLaughlin pressed: "No setup question? ... No counterfeit there at all?" to which Crowley responded: "Well, look, I think she has been told to soften her approach. She's been told to wear softer colors, and I think she saw an opening where she could speak in the softer Jackie Kennedy-esque tones and if an emotional moment came up, grab it -- and she did."

From the January 13 edition of the syndicated program The McLaughlin Group:

McLAUGHLIN: Let's go to the big enchilada, who is, of course, Hillary. What did you think of Hillary's performance?

CROWLEY: Yes, well, you know, she's like Glenn Close at the end of Fatal Attraction. You think she's dead, and then she sits bolt-upright in the bathtub. Look, I think that both Eleanor and Pat are correct when they say that the moment was probably authentic on her part, and she certainly leveraged it to her advantage --

McLAUGHLIN: No setup question?

CROWLEY: -- because -- well --

McLAUGHLIN: No counterfeit there at all?

CROWLEY: Well, look, I think she has been told to soften her approach. She's been told to wear softer colors, and I think she saw an opening where she could speak in the softer Jackie Kennedy-esque tones and if an emotional moment came up, grab it -- and she did. But now, she's turned the race essentially into an X versus Y -- an X chromosome versus a Y chromosome race -- where she is appealing constantly to women. She did again this weekend.

On the January 11 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Michael Savage referred to Media Matters for America as "a homosexual, fascist website." He continued: "Let me explain who Media Matters is. ... It's run by a bunch of fascist homosexuals. They're the brownshirts of our time." The brownshirts were Nazi storm troopers who aided Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Savage made his comments while discussing a lawsuit he has filed against the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Savage also claimed that Media Matters was "founded by [Sen.] Hillary Clinton [D-NY]." As it has repeatedly noted, Media Matters is a progressive nonprofit organization unaffiliated with any candidate or political party.

Savage has attacked Media Matters on several occasions, calling the organization a "hate group"; a "group of gay Mafioso"; "the homosexual Mafia"; and "a gay smear sheet." Additionally, on the June 12, 2007, broadcast of his radio show, Savage compared the "progressive movement" to the Nazi storm troopers, saying, "[T]hey are the brownshirts of today."

Talk Radio Network, which syndicates Savage's show, says that Savage is heard on more than 350 radio stations. And according to Talkers Magazine, The Savage Nation reaches more than 8 million listeners each week, making it one of the most listened-to talk radio shows in the nation, behind only The Rush Limbaugh Show and The Sean Hannity Show.

From the January 11 edition of Talk Radio Network's The Savage Nation:

SAVAGE: It fell in my hands. I didn't choose this fight. I never liked CAIR, but I never figured they were going to be my enemy, but, like everyone else, it's not my problem. Well, then, they made themselves my problem. They attacked me. They went after all my advertisers. They learned good from their friends at Media Matters, that rat-bum -- it's a homosexual, fascist website. Let me explain who Media Matters is. It was founded by Hillary Clinton. It's run by a bunch of fascist homosexuals. They're the brownshirts of our time.

When are you gonna wake up to the fact that liberals are not liberal? When are you gonna wake up to the fact that the liberals are the new fascists. They are the brownshirts! And they're gonna take this country over the cliff if you don't stand up to them and stop them. That's why I'm putting myself on the line. And if you think it's a joke, it's not a joke.

I walk with my head swiveling. I look over my shoulder. I live as though I am the hunted one. And that's because you are not the hunted one. That's because you are a coward. And that's because your government doesn't protect its citizens.

On the January 10 broadcast of his nationally syndicated Fox News Radio show, John Gibson aired a clip of recent remarks by MSNBC's Chris Matthews concerning Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) that "the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around." Before airing the clip, Gibson declared Matthews' comments "mind-blowing" and added, "[T]hose women out here who called me a sexist last night, you listen to this and you tell me who the sexist is."

During the January 9 broadcast of his radio show, Gibson characterized Clinton's manner of speaking as a "screech" and said that "in a great bit of Clinton jujitsu, she used the Oprah Winfrey rule," which he described as: "You know, speak softly. Be vulnerable ... Shed a tear to beat the guy who had Oprah on his side. Wasn't that fabulous?" Later during the January 9 show, a caller complained that Gibson's comments were "extremely sexist." Gibson asked if the caller was voting for Clinton, and an associate producer, identified only as "Christine" on the show, said the caller had hung up. Gibson replied: "Now, isn't that just like a woman? ... That is the equivalent of walking out of the room and slamming the door."

Gibson on January 10 also referred to the purported "Oprah-fication of the presidential race" after reading from an article in the Houston Chronicle that claimed that "[w]omen who've spent years in Texas politics said yes, they believe Hillary Clinton when she came perilously close to shedding a tear on the campaign trail earlier this week."

From the January 9 broadcast of Fox News Radio's The John Gibson Show:

GIBSON: Did Hillary really win because she was emotional --

CLINTON [audio clip]: It's not easy.

GIBSON: And vulnerable.

CLINTON [audio clip]: It's not easy. And I couldn't do it if I didn't just, you know, passionately believe it was the right thing to do.

GIBSON: And teary. Here it comes.

CLINTON [audio clip]: You know, I have so many opportunities from this country.

GIBSON: So many.

CLINTON [audio clip]: I just don't want to see us fall backwards.

GIBSON: [feigning crying] Oh, me either. Me either.

GIBSON: Maybe Hillary just discovered she has a voice other than that screech we normally hear. Maybe it was nice to hear Hillary speaking softly. And maybe women related to that.

CLINTON [audio clip]: I come tonight with a very, very full heart. And I want especially to thank New Hampshire over the last week. I listened to you and in the process I found my own voice.

GIBSON: Well, I think there's a falsehood buried in that. "Over the last week, I listened to you." No, no, she listened to herself. She listened to all those tapes of her screeching.

CLINTON [audio clip]: That was to equip us to do what needed to be done in reforming Social Security the right way. Reforming Medicare and Medicaid the right way.

GIBSON: Ow.

CLINTON [audio clip]: Making investments --

GIBSON: Ow.

CLINTON [audio clip]: -- in clean, alternative energy. Dealing with global climate change.

GIBSON: Ow-w-w.

CLINTON [audio clip]: Making health care available and affordable to --

GIBSON: Ow!

CLINTON [audio clip]: -- every single American!

GIBSON: That hurt!

CLINTON [audio clip]: That's what that was for!

GIBSON: Ouch! I need health care now. My eardrums!

ANGRY RICH (executive producer): I need to blow my brains out.

GIBSON: So, somebody said to her, "Hillary, speak softly."

CLINTON [audio clip]: I felt like we all spoke from our hearts and I'm so gratified that you responded. Now together, let's give America the kind of comeback that New Hampshire has just given me.

GIBSON: She learned something there. I mean, you know, she just was not as screechy. And of course, what's the ultimate irony of this is that people are going around saying Oprah Winfrey's going to win this for Barack Obama. And in a great bit of Clinton jujitsu, she used the Oprah Winfrey rule.

AUDIO CLIP: Hi, Oprah.

GIBSON: You know, speak softly. Be vulnerable.

ANGRY RICH: Cry.

GIBSON: Shed a tear to beat the guy who had Oprah on his side. Wasn't that fabulous?

[...]

GIBSON: The tears of a clown, baby. Was it the tears that did it? Kim in Michigan, what do you think?

CALLER: You know, I think what you said is just extremely sexist.

GIBSON: Why?

CALLER: You know, I drove all the way up from work and I'm listening to this about Hillary and the interview --

GIBSON: Yeah?

CALLER: -- and this or that about cleaning the closets out. And, you know, if it was George W. exercising or jogging, or on a fishing trip, or Dick Cheney hunting, that's OK to be talked about, but when you ask a woman what she would rather do or she does for a hobby, it's all of a sudden feminine.

GIBSON: Do you believe it? Do you believe she cleans her closets?

CALLER: You know, why not? Who cares? It could be a way she deals with stress.

[crosstalk]

GIBSON: And by the way, Kim, how am I being sexist? She went on that show, and she said these things. She wanted to get to you and say these things.

CALLER: But you know what? I don't vote Democratic. I'm Republican and I wouldn't vote for her because of her politics anyway.

GIBSON: Well, but, I mean, you know your friends will, right?

CALLER: But you know what? It's the way you did it, just to kind of get our reaction. That's just the whole way society thinks --

[crosstalk]

GIBSON: Is there or is there not, Kim, an Oprah effect in this society.

CALLER: You know what? I don't pay attention to it, to be honest with you. I'm too busy working to sit home and watch all that garbage.

[crosstalk]

GIBSON: Well, you think you're most women, or you think that you're in the minority?

CALLER: You know, I think I'm the majority. Women are out there working nowadays.

GIBSON: Then why does she have a billion dollars a year from a show aimed at women?

CALLER: You know, because -- I guess, I don't know. I can't explain that.

GIBSON: Well, but that's my point, Kim, is you may be one of those women that I hear talk show hosts talking about now that don't fit in what I'm talking about. They're out there working, they're not paying attention to this. My wife has never seen an Oprah show. Ever.

But I'm telling you, they're there. And you know who they are, and you know as well as I do that this was, this was a moment that a lot of women bonded with.

CALLER: You know, I don't think so. I think people are just out there, and they're following her 'cause of her politics. And I really like the way you say "one of those women." You know? I don't know, I --

GIBSON: All right. Well, let me put it this way, Kim: Have you ever seen the Oprah show?

CALLER: Yeah. When I'm away on vacation.

GIBSON: What do you see in the audience?

CALLER: Women. Of course.

GIBSON: One of those women. Those are the women I'm talking about.

CALLER: Oh yeah, and there's not a man out there that doesn't watch Oprah, right?

ANGRY RICH: There's not a real man.

GIBSON: Yeah, right.

CALLER: Come on, there's a lot of men out there that watch Oprah.

CHRISTINE: There are men out there that watch that show. They're in the audience, too. I see them.

GIBSON: Oh, I know what kind of men those are.

AUDIO CLIP: Gorgeous.

ANGRY RICH: -- from San Francisco.

CALLER: Yeah, there you go. There are 200 women in the audience, out of all the people that watch it, no man ever watches it. Come on, guys. Now you're just being silly.

GIBSON: Well, listen -- no I'm not being silly. That show is aimed at women, Kim. You are in denial if you think it's not. You are in denial if you think that Oprah is a billionaire because she appeals to men.

CALLER: You just insinuated that if you're a man that in some way, shape, or form, you're one of those men that watch Oprah.

GIBSON: I did.

CALLER: Yeah.

GIBSON: I know -- we know who we're talking about here.

CALLER: Oh yeah, you sure do.

GIBSON: Well, you know --

CALLER: You can't reason with people like you. And that's exactly the reason why the country's in the state it's in.

ANGRY RICH: It's your fault, John.

GIBSON: Are you voting for Hillary?

CHRISTINE: She hung up.

GIBSON: She hung up.

ANGRY RICH: She's in denial, John.

GIBSON: Now, isn't that just like a woman?

CHRISTINE: You're really digging yourself into a hole.

GIBSON: That made her mad.

CHRISTINE: You made her mad.

GIBSON: That made her mad. Kim hung up on me because she didn't want to discuss it anymore. That is the equivalent of walking out of the room and slamming the door.

CHRISTINE: There's nothing wrong with what she said. She was right on. She made her point and she didn't feel like talking to you anymore.

From the January 10 broadcast of The John Gibson Show:

GIBSON: Meantime, Hillary said today in this quote, "Maybe I have liberated us to actually let women be human beings in public." As Mary Matalin said today on my television show, her new campaign theme is "Four more tears! Four more tears!" What, Christine?

CHRISTINE: It's clever.

GIBSON: It is good, isn't it? Hillary expands on her Oprah-fication project, fully embracing it: "Maybe I have liberated us to actually let women be human beings in public."

AUDIO CLIP: Hi, Oprah.

GIBSON: She is woman. You will not hear her roar. She will instead speak softly and shed just the teeniest of tears.

There are some of those who haven't got the memo. I mean, I actually thought this was unbelievable and I think so many things that Monkey Man says are unbelievable. But for Chris Matthews to say the following was just mind-blowing. You -- those women out here who called me a sexist last night, you listen to this and you tell me who the sexist is.

MATTHEWS [audio clip]: I think the Hillary appeal has always been somewhat about her mix of toughness and sympathy for her. Let's not forget -- and I'll be brutal -- the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it.

She didn't win there on her merit. She won because everybody felt, "My God, this woman stood up under humiliation," right? That's what happened. That's how it happened. In 1998 she went to New York and campaigned for Chuck Schumer as almost like the grieving widow of absurdity, and she did it so well and courageously --

GIBSON: Ow.

MATTHEWS [audio clip]: -- but it was about the humiliation of Bill Clinton.

GIBSON: Geez, that hurts. Man. Can you -- I know people ignore him because he says so many idiotic things.

AUDIO CLIP: Ha!

GIBSON: But just supposing I had said something like that last night, that she really was voted into office in the U.S. Senate and is going to win the presidency because her husband fooled around on her.

BILL CLINTON [audio clip]: It's all my fault.

GIBSON: I mean, confirming all of this is, here's a Houston Chronicle. Now, this is well, well out of the way of the Washington-New York-L.A. political treadmill. This is Houston. And two female reporters writing for the Houston Chronicle, Jeanine [sic: Jeannie] Kever and Claudia Feldman, are doing this story about the tears. And they say, "Women who've spent years in Texas politics say the tears were for real. They believe Hillary Clinton when she came perilously close to actually shedding a tear. 'I saw the tears. I connected, and I'm sure a lot of women did,' said Sylvia Garcia, a Harris County commissioner who supported [New Mexico Gov.] Bill Richardson. 'At that moment, she wasn't a candidate being handled, she wasn't following her talking points. She was just herself, excited and passionate.' " Once again, the Oprah-fication of the presidential race.

"Lyn Ragsdale, dean of Rice University's School of Social Sciences, predicted Clinton will steadily gain support from women as the campaign moves to bigger states.

"But even among women who are backing other candidates, Clinton's display of emotion resonated.

" 'I guess I've spent my whole adult life trying to get women in public office, including me,' Ragsdale [sic: Sissy Farenthold, "a former state legislator and two-time candidate for Texas governor"] said. 'The tears, I guess I can't help but relate and think of my own experiences.' "

I said it last night, and you were so mad at me, but:

AUDIO CLIP: Gibson was right. Again.

In a January 14 Washington Post article, staff writers Anne E. Kornblut and Perry Bacon Jr. joined other media -- including journalist Marjorie Valbrun in a January 13 Post op-ed -- in truncating a comment by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) on the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, omitting a portion of her remarks in which she referred to President John F. Kennedy. The Post wrote: " 'Dr. [Martin Luther] King's dream began to be realized when President [Lyndon] Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act,' [Clinton] said, adding that 'it took a president to get it done.' Critics read that as playing down King's importance in the civil rights movement." But as Media Matters for America has documented, Clinton's full quote was:

CLINTON: I would point to the fact that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality. The power of that dream became real in people's lives because we had a president who said, "We are going to do it," and actually got it accomplished. [emphasis added]

Kornblut and Bacon excluded Clinton's reference to Kennedy despite reporting later in the article that "Clinton defended her remark about King" -- during a January 13 appearance on NBC's Meet the Press -- where "[s]he said she was responding to a speech [Sen. Barack] Obama [D-IL] made comparing himself to both John F. Kennedy and to King":

Clinton defended her remark about King, made the day before the New Hampshire primary, in a sometimes contentious appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday morning. She said she was responding to a speech Obama made comparing himself to both John F. Kennedy and to King, and she elaborated on her view of King's role as a change agent.

"Dr. King had been on the front lines. He had been leading a movement," Clinton said. "But Dr. King understood, which is why he made it very clear, that there has to be a coming to terms of our country politically in order to make the changes that would last for generations beyond the iconic, extraordinary speeches that he gave. That's why he campaigned for Lyndon Johnson in 1964. That's why he was there when those great pieces of legislation were passed. Does he deserve the lion's share of the credit for moving our country and moving our political process? Yes, he does. But he also had partners who were in the political system."

On the January 13 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources, host and Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz claimed that in a 2004 Chicago Tribune article, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) "said there wasn't much difference between his position and George Bush's position on the [Iraq] war." But Kurtz left out three key words from Obama's quote in the Tribune -- "at this stage" -- as well as the context of his remarks provided in the Tribune article, both of which indicate that Obama was discussing how best to stabilize Iraq from mid-2004 onward. Obama was not, as Kurtz suggested, asserting agreement with Bush on the war itself. The July 27, 2004, Tribune article quoted Obama as saying: "There's not that much difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage" [emphasis added]. The article went on to note that Obama "opposed the Iraq invasion before the war. But he now believes U.S. forces must remain to stabilize the war-ravaged nation -- a policy not dissimilar to the current approach of the Bush administration."

From the July 27, 2004, Chicago Tribune article:

Barack Obama, who will deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, said Monday that he believes the Iraq war will be the deciding factor in the presidential contest, but that he does not think there is a great difference "on paper" between presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and President Bush on the issue.

Instead, Obama, the U.S. Senate candidate from Illinois, said he believes the Bush administration has lost too much credibility in the world community to administer the policies necessary to stabilize Iraq.

"On Iraq, on paper, there's not as much difference, I think, between the Bush administration and a Kerry administration as there would have been a year ago," Obama said during a luncheon meeting with editors and reporters of Tribune newspapers. "There's not that much difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage. The difference, in my mind, is who's in a position to execute."

[...]

Obama, a state senator from Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, opposed the Iraq invasion before the war. But he now believes U.S. forces must remain to stabilize the war-ravaged nation -- a policy not dissimilar to the current approach of the Bush administration.

The problem, Obama said, is the low regard for Bush in the international community.

"How do you stabilize a country that is made up of three different religious and in some cases ethnic groups, with minimal loss of life and minimum burden to the taxpayers?" Obama said. "I am skeptical that the Bush administration, given baggage from the past three years, not just on Iraq. ... I don't see them having the credibility to be able to execute. I mean, you have to have a new administration to execute what the Bush administration acknowledges has to happen."

From the January 13 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources:

KURTZ: So, does Clinton have a point about the Obama coverage?

Joining us now to talk about the media and the campaign, and pundits behaving badly, in Springfield, Massachusetts, Rachel Maddow, who hosts The Rachel Maddow Show on Air America Radio. And in Seattle, Michael Medved, host of The Michael Medved Show on the Salem Radio Network.

Michael Medved, what about Bill Clinton's point that the press hasn't really scrutinized Obama's record on Iraq or, some would say, on much of anything else?

MEDVED: Well, I think that's probably a valid point, because Obama has been such an, quote, "exotic new face," fresh. And I remember when Joe Biden said that he was clean and articulate. People don't really know what to make of him entirely, and then there was that whole rock star factor that you were talking about before.

But frankly, I truly don't know if the Clinton campaign should welcome the idea of going back and looking at people's positions on the war in the past, because however ambiguous Obama's position has been -- and it has been -- it was not in favor of the war as Hillary Clinton's was. So, if you're going to argue about who was against the war first and how much were they against the war, this is something that actually hurts Democrats, both Obama and Clinton.

KURTZ: Just to provide some context, Rachel Maddow, the former president referring to two interviews that Obama gave in 2004. One, he told The New York Times he didn't think the case for war had been made, but he didn't know how he would have voted had he had access to classified information at the time, because he was not in the United States Senate. And one with the Chicago Tribune which he said there wasn't much difference between his position and George Bush's position on the war.

Now, the press has covered this a bit, but, you know, about 1,000th of the attention devoted to Hillary choking up.

MADDOW: It's true, they haven't covered this as much. But also consider the context that I think Barack Obama's appeal, certainly his bipartisan appeal, his sort of general election appeal that he's been making, is not necessarily fundamentally about his record. I mean, he hasn't been in public office that long. He's not necessarily running on his record.

He's running on -- trying to make the case that he represents a clean break from the politics of the past. That's the contrast that he's tried to set up, in terms of his campaign: that he's not Hillary Clinton, that he doesn't represent the past, he doesn't represent the battles of the '90s. And so, because he hasn't necessarily been running so much on his record, I think that in part explains why that hasn't been the grounds on which he's been covered.

On the January 13 edition of the NBC-syndicated Chris Matthews Show, host Chris Matthews appeared to offer another reason for his view of where Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (NY) stands in the Democratic primary when he said: "I personally don't see how she loses at all running as the woman candidate." He added, "Most Democratic voters are women." Several days earlier, on the January 9 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, Matthews said of Clinton: "Let's not forget -- and I'll be brutal -- the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win there on her merit. She won because everybody felt, 'My God, this woman stood up under humiliation,' right? That's what happened."

Matthews' comment that "I personally don't see how she loses at all running as the woman candidate" came in response to panelist and National Public Radio host Michele Norris' statement that Clinton may be able to reach out to voters "[w]hen she talks about breaking those glass ceilings and starts trying to connect with other women, who have felt that, who have, you know, butted their head and their shoulders up against those glass ceilings." Norris continued: "[T]hat may be a real opportunity to say, 'You know what, I understand what it's like.' "

From the January 13 edition of the NBC-syndicated Chris Matthews Show:

NORRIS: She has an opportunity right now, if you look at the way that so many women said that they responded to that moment where she showed some emotion and they saw something different. When she talks about breaking those glass ceilings and starts trying to connect with other women, who have felt that, who have, you know, butted their head and their shoulders up against those glass ceilings, that may be a real opportunity to say, "You know what, I understand what it's like."

MATTHEWS: I personally don't see how she loses at all running as the woman candidate. Most Democratic voters are women.

GLORIA BORGER (CNN senior political analyst): Well, she's now talking it about being a woman, and in that last debate she said, "Look, guys, I embody change. I'm a woman. He's not the only person who looks like change. I look like change." But I think Hillary Clinton has a really difficult problem here because as a woman candidate, she bent over backwards to show us how tough she was. Don't forget, this is a woman we've been watching for more than a decade. We think we know who she is already. OK? So she bent over backwards to show us how tough she is, and now she's going the other way to show us how likable she is. "Oh, you hurt my feelings." That was a brilliant line.

MATTHEWS: Wait a minute. Are you suggesting contrivance?

BORGER: Oh, you think? A little bit.

MATTHEWS: No, I'm wondering. I don't think it was contrived. Do you?

BORGER: I think the tearing up was absolutely real, but now I think we're at a point where this is contrivance, because it works for her, and I'm not saying that in a bad way.

In his cover story for the January 21 issue of Newsweek, editor Jon Meacham mischaracterized quotes by former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY). Discussing January 7 comments by Bill Clinton, Meacham reported as fact that "Bill Clinton appeared to dismiss [Sen. Barack] Obama's [D-IL] campaign as 'the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen,' a remark that infuriated many African-Americans." Similarly, in a January 12 Washington Post article, staff writers Anne E. Kornblut and Shailagh Murray wrote: "Bill Clinton ... appeared to dismissively describe the campaign platform of hope and change offered by the strongest black presidential contender in history as the 'biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.' " In fact, Clinton was referring to Obama's statements about his position on the Iraq war; he was not talking about the Obama campaign as the "biggest fairy tale." Indeed, in a January 13 piece for The New York Times' Week In Review section, reporter Mark Leibovich noted that in using the words "fairy tale," Clinton "was referring specifically to the perception that Mr. Obama was totally pure in his opposition to the Iraq war."

Both Meacham's Newsweek article and Kornblut and Murray's Post article reported that Clinton discussed his remarks in a January 11 interview on The Al Sharpton Show. Meacham wrote that "Clinton called Al Sharpton's radio show to clarify, arguing that the 'fairy tale' remark was limited to Obama's claim that he would have opposed the Iraq War if he had been in the Senate in 2002-03 despite expressing some doubts to The New York Times in 2004." The Post article reported: "In a call-in interview on Al Sharpton's radio show, Clinton said he had meant only that Obama's statements about his position on the Iraq war are a 'fairy tale,' because Obama (D-Ill.) had voted to fund the war upon arriving in the Senate after saying he opposed the invasion." But neither Newsweek nor the Post noted that Clinton's remarks to Sharpton were consistent with his original comments at the January 7 campaign appearance.

Further, the Newsweek cover story, a Washington Post op-ed by journalist Marjorie Valbrun, and a New York Times article by Adam Nagourney and Patrick Healy all truncated a comment by Hillary Clinton on the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Meacham wrote in Newsweek that "Hillary Clinton noted that while Martin Luther King Jr. marched, it 'took a president' -- Lyndon Johnson -- to get civil-rights legislation passed and signed." Valbrun wrote: " 'Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act,' Clinton said. 'It took a president to get it done.' " Valbrun added, "In other words, 'I have a dream' is a nice sentiment, but King couldn't make it reality. It took a more practical and, of course, white president, Lyndon Johnson, to get blacks to the mountaintop." And Nagourney and Healy reported: "This was what Mrs. Clinton said on Monday: 'Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.' "

However, each of these pieces omitted the middle portion of Hillary Clinton's quote, in which she referred to President John F. Kennedy. Following is Clinton's full quote:

I would point to the fact that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality. The power of that dream became real in people's lives because we had a president who said, "We are going to do it," and actually got it accomplished. [emphasis added]

Indeed, Nagourney and Healy's article gave no indication that anything had been omitted from Hillary Clinton's comments, quoting two different parts of Clinton's statement as one continuous quote without ellipses. As Media Matters for America documented, The New York Times has repeatedly cropped Clinton's civil rights comments.

Nagourney and Healy's Times article did report that Bill Clinton used "the phrase 'fairy tale' in talking about Mr. Obama's views on the war in Iraq."

From the January 7 campaign event with Bill Clinton, as transcribed by Congressional Quarterly:

QUESTION: Thanks. One of the things that Senator Obama talks about a lot is judgment and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the recent criticism of Mark Penn, who is Hillary's chief strategist, who's been criticized for being somewhat out of touch with reality.

For instance, he circulated a memo about Iowa, saying "Where's the balance," [sic: bounce] and then the next day, there was a 12-point jump for Obama.

CLINTON: He was wrong. He was wrong about that, because the balance [sic] always occurs on the second day, not the first day. It always occurs on the second day, not the first day.

But since you raised the judgment issue, let's go over this again. That is the central argument for his campaign. "It doesn't matter that I started running for president less than a year after I got to the Senate from the Illinois state senate. I am a great speaker and a charismatic figure and I am the only one that had the judgment to oppose this floor [sic: war] from the beginning, always, always, always."

First, it is factually not true that everybody that supported that resolution supported Bush attacking Iraq before the U.N. inspectors withdrew. Chuck Hagel [NE] was one of the co-authors of that resolution, the only Republican Senator that always opposed the war, every day, from the get-go.

He authored the resolution to say that Bush could go to war only if they didn't cooperate with the inspectors and he was assured personally by [then-National Security Adviser] Condi Rice, as many of the other Senators were. So, first, the case is wrong that way.

Second, it is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, enumerating the years and never got asked one time, not once, "Well, how could you say that when you said in 2004 you didn't know how you would have voted on the resolution? You said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war and you took that speech you're now running on off your Web site in 2004 and there's no difference in your voting record and Hillary's ever since."

Give me a break.

[applause]

This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen. So you can talk about Mark Penn all you want. What did you think about the Obama thing, calling Hillary the "Senator from Punjab?" Did you like that? Or what about the Obama handout that was covered up, the press never reported on, implying that I was a crook, scouring me, scathing criticism over my financial reports.

[Former independent counsel] Ken Starr spent $70 million and indicted innocent people to find out that I wouldn't take a nickel to see the cow jump over the moon. So you can take a shot at Mark Penn if you want, it wasn't his best day. He was hurt, he felt badly we didn't do better in Iowa.

But, you know, the idea that one of these campaigns is positive and other is negative, when I know the reverse is true and I have seen it and I have been blistered by it for months, is a little tough to take. Just because of the sanitizing coverage that's in the media doesn't mean the facts aren't out there.

[applause]

Otherwise, I do not have any strong feelings about that subject.

[laughter]

Go ahead. I've got to take a question back here and then I -- go ahead.

From the January 21 issue of Newsweek:

In New Hampshire, Bill Clinton appeared to dismiss Obama's campaign as "the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen," a remark that infuriated many African-Americans. "When has 'black' and 'fairy tale' ever been mentioned in the same sentence?" asked Todd Boyd, professor of African-American and Critical Studies at the University of Southern California. "That was just insulting, and he needs to be very careful." Clinton called Al Sharpton's radio show to clarify, arguing that the "fairy tale" remark was limited to Obama's claim that he would have opposed the Iraq War if he had been in the Senate in 2002-03 despite expressing some doubts to The New York Times in 2004: "What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made." And when Hillary Clinton noted that while Martin Luther King Jr. marched, it "took a president" -- Lyndon Johnson -- to get civil-rights legislation passed and signed, the comment prompted some Obama supporters to say that Clinton was minimizing King. By late last week, South Carolina Rep. James E. Clyburn felt compelled to issue a statement calling for a ceasefire: "I encourage the candidates to be sensitive about the words they use. This is an historic race for America to have such strong, diverse candidates vying for the Democratic nomination." John Lewis, the Georgia congressman, civil-rights veteran and perennial optimist, said, "I hope we will put these issues of gender and race to rest and return to the marketplace of politics."

From the January 12 Washington Post article by Kornblut and Murray:

The comments have come from Clinton (D-N.Y.) and several of her most prominent surrogates, including New Hampshire ally Billy Shaheen, who made insinuations about Sen. Barack Obama's admission of past drug use, and Clinton's husband, Bill Clinton, who appeared to dismissively describe the campaign platform of hope and change offered by the strongest black presidential contender in history as the "biggest fairy tale I've ever seen."

[...]

Bill Clinton spent much of the day trying to explain his remarks and regain the confidence of a community that historically has provided some of the Clintons' strongest support. In a call-in interview on Al Sharpton's radio show, Clinton said he had meant only that Obama's statements about his position on the Iraq war are a "fairy tale," because Obama (D-Ill.) had voted to fund the war upon arriving in the Senate after saying he opposed the invasion.

From Valbrun's January 13 Washington Post op-ed:

Clinton herself has made racially tinged comments that could be taken as either insensitive or patronizing. The most widely noticed was in her efforts to dismiss Obama's talk of "hope" and "change" as empty idealism. In doing so, she offhandedly diminished the important role played by Martin Luther King Jr. in pushing America to meet its promise of equality for millions of black Americans. "Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act," Clinton said. "It took a president to get it done."

In other words, "I have a dream" is a nice sentiment, but King couldn't make it reality. It took a more practical and, of course, white president, Lyndon Johnson, to get blacks to the mountaintop. Of course no black man could have hoped to be president 44 years ago. And, for that matter, neither could any woman.

What was Clinton thinking? King's name is sacrosanct in most black households, and for poor and struggling blacks whose lives have yet to reflect King's ideals, "hope" is more than just a notion. Clinton managed to insult a beloved black leader in her eager attempt to insult a rising black leader.

From Nagourney and Healy's January 13 New York Times article:

Mr. Clyburn said he was disappointed by what Mrs. Clinton had said and by former President Bill Clinton's use of the phrase "fairy tale" in talking about Mr. Obama's views on the war in Iraq.

[...]

This was what Mrs. Clinton said on Monday: "Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done." At a later stop, she said that her remark had not captured what she had sought to portray.

Mrs. Clinton seemed prepared to address the question Saturday the second she stepped in front of reporters, and she went into the attack as soon as she was asked about Mr. Clyburn.

During a January 13 interview with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) on NBC's Meet the Press, host Tim Russert played a truncated quote from former President Bill Clinton and falsely asserted that he was showing viewers "exactly what President Clinton said." Referring to January 7 comments Bill Clinton made about Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), Russert told Hillary Clinton: "It just isn't Sen. Obama who is taking offense. This is exactly what President Clinton said in Dartmouth. Here is the tape." Russert then proceeded to air video of Bill Clinton saying: "Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen." In fact, Russert did not show viewers "exactly what President Clinton said." He did not show what Clinton said immediately before the "fairy tale" quote, when Clinton referred to Obama's statements about the Iraq war. Indeed, The New York Times' Mark Leibovich noted on January 13 that in using the words "fairy tale," Clinton "was referring specifically to the perception that Mr. Obama was totally pure in his opposition to the Iraq war." In addition to showing the truncated video, Russert read an excerpt from Bob Herbert's January 12 New York Times column, in which Herbert claimed that Bill Clinton "sa[id] of Mr. Obama's effort: 'The whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.' "

Russert also read from a January 11 New York Times article that purported to quote a comment Hillary Clinton made about civil rights, and Russert noted Herbert's assertion that Hillary Clinton had "tak[en] cheap shots at, of all people, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr." But the Times article that Russert read truncated Hillary Clinton's actual statement, omitting from the quote her reference to President John F. Kennedy.

Quoting from the January 11 Times article's description of what he referred to as "the Martin Luther King thing," Russert claimed to "lay this out for our viewers":

RUSSERT: So these are people who are not supporters of Obama, who are listening. Let me just go to the Martin Luther King thing, because you had your opportunity to talk about this at the beginning of the show and I want to lay this out for our viewers. This is how The New York Times categorized it. "In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Mrs. Clinton ... tried to make a point about presidential leadership. 'Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of '64.' Mrs. Clinton said in trying to make the case that her experience should mean more to voters than the uplifting words of Mr. Obama. 'It took a president to get it done.'"

In fact, Clinton's actual quote -- made during a January 7 interview with Fox News' Major Garrett -- contained the reference to Kennedy below in bold, something that both the Times article and Russert omitted:

CLINTON: I would, and I would point to the fact that that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality. The power of that dream became real in people's lives because we had a president who said, "We are going to do it," and actually got it accomplished.

From the January 7 Dartmouth campaign event with Bill Clinton, as transcribed by Congressional Quarterly:

QUESTION: Thanks. One of the things that Senator Obama talks about a lot is judgment and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the recent criticism of Mark Penn, who is Hillary's chief strategist, who's been criticized for being somewhat out of touch with reality.

For instance, he circulated a memo about Iowa, saying "Where's the balance," [sic: bounce] and then the next day, there was a 12-point jump for Obama.

CLINTON: He was wrong. He was wrong about that, because the balance [sic] always occurs on the second day, not the first day. It always occurs on the second day, not the first day.

But since you raised the judgment issue, let's go over this again. That is the central argument for his campaign. "It doesn't matter that I started running for president less than a year after I got to the Senate from the Illinois state senate. I am a great speaker and a charismatic figure and I am the only one that had the judgment to oppose this floor [sic: war] from the beginning, always, always, always."

First, it is factually not true that everybody that supported that resolution supported Bush attacking Iraq before the U.N. inspectors withdrew. Chuck Hagel [NE] was one of the co-authors of that resolution, the only Republican Senator that always opposed the war, every day, from the get-go.

He authored the resolution to say that Bush could go to war only if they didn't cooperate with the inspectors and he was assured personally by [then-National Security Adviser] Condi Rice, as many of the other Senators were. So, first, the case is wrong that way.

Second, it is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, enumerating the years and never got asked one time, not once, "Well, how could you say that when you said in 2004 you didn't know how you would have voted on the resolution? You said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war and you took that speech you're now running on off your Web site in 2004 and there's no difference in your voting record and Hillary's ever since."

Give me a break.

[applause]

This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen. So you can talk about Mark Penn all you want. What did you think about the Obama thing, calling Hillary the "Senator from Punjab?" Did you like that? Or what about the Obama handout that was covered up, the press never reported on, implying that I was a crook, scouring me, scathing criticism over my financial reports.

[Former independent counsel] Ken Starr spent $70 million and indicted innocent people to find out that I wouldn't take a nickel to see the cow jump over the moon. So you can take a shot at Mark Penn if you want, it wasn't his best day. He was hurt, he felt badly we didn't do better in Iowa.

But, you know, the idea that one of these campaigns is positive and other is negative, when I know the reverse is true and I have seen it and I have been blistered by it for months, is a little tough to take. Just because of the sanitizing coverage that's in the media doesn't mean the facts aren't out there.

[applause]

Otherwise, I do not have any strong feelings about that subject.

[laughter]

Go ahead. I've got to take a question back here and then I -- go ahead.

From the January 13 broadcast of NBC's Meet the Press:

RUSSERT: When we arrived in South Carolina yesterday, this was The State newspaper, and the headlines that greeted us. And let me share it with you and our viewers: "Clinton Camp Hits Obama, Attacks 'painful' for black voters. Many in state offended by criticism of Obama and remarks about Martin Luther King." Bob Herbert, in The New York Times, a columnist, weighed in this way: "I could also sense how hard the Clinton camp was working to undermine Senator Obama's main theme, that a campaign based on hope and healing could unify rather than further polarize the country. So there was the former president chastising the press for the way it was covering the Obama campaign and saying of Mr. Obama's effort, quote, 'The whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.' And there was Mrs. Clinton telling the country we don't need, quote, 'false hopes,' and taking cheap shots at, of all people, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We've already seen Clinton surrogates trying to implant the false idea that Mr. Obama might be a Muslim, and perhaps a drug dealer to boot."

What is this all about?

CLINTON: Well, beats me, because there's not one shred of truth in what you've just read. And I regret that, because obviously a lot of people have been, you know, given information or an impression that is absolutely false.

First, with respect to Dr. King, you know, Tim, I was 14 years old when I heard Dr. King speak in person. He is one of the people that I admire most in the world, and the point that I was responding to from Senator Obama himself in a number of speeches he was making is his comparison of himself to President Kennedy and Dr. King. And there is no doubt that the inspiration offered by all three of them is essential. It is critical to who we are as a nation, what we believe in, the dreams and aspirations that we all have. But I also said that, you know, Dr. King didn't just give speeches. He marched, he organized, he protested, he was gassed, he was beaten, he was jailed. He understood that he had to move the political process and bring in those who were in political power, and he campaigned for political leaders, including Lyndon Johnson, because he wanted somebody in the White House who would act on what he had devoted his life to achieving.

[...]

HILLARY CLINTON: And let me address the point that Bill was making. Because again, I think it's been unfairly and inaccurately characterized. What he was talking about was very directly about the story of Senator Obama's campaign being premised on a speech he gave in 2002. And that was to his credit. He gave a speech opposing the war in Iraq. He gave a very impassioned speech against it and consistently said that he was against the war, he would vote against the funding for the war. By 2003, that speech was off his website. By 2004, he was saying that he didn't really disagree with the way that George Bush was conducting the war. And by 2005, -6, and -7, he was voting for $300 billion in funding for the war.

The story of his campaign is really the story of that speech and his opposition to Iraq. I think it is fair to ask questions about, "Well, what did you do after the speech was over?" And when he became a senator, he didn't go to the floor of the Senate to condemn the war in Iraq for 18 months. He didn't introduce legislation against the war in Iraq. He voted against timelines and deadlines initially. So I think it's important that we get the contrasts and comparisons out. I think that's fair game. You know, I think that we don't want anyone, any of our supporters, anyone - and that's why in my campaign, anytime anybody has said anything that I thought was out of bounds, they're gone. You know, I have gotten rid of them. I have said that is not appropriate in this campaign. You know, when Senator Obama's chief strategist accuses me of playing a role in Benazir Bhutto's assassination, there's silence. So let's have one standard.

This is an exciting and historic campaign. One of us is going to make history, which is thrilling to me. I've worked all my life on behalf of civil rights, and women's rights, and human rights. And so I want a good, vigorous campaign about the differences between us and our various qualifications and experiences to be the president that America needs.

RUSSERT: It just isn't Senator Obama who is taking offense. This is exactly what President Clinton said in Dartmouth. Here is the tape.

BILL CLINTON [video clip]: Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.

RUSSERT: Congressman James Clyburn (D) of South Carolina, who's neutral, said this. "To call that dream a fairy tale, which Bill Clinton seemed to be doing, could very well be insulting to some of us."

HILLARY CLINTON: But Tim, let me just stop you right there. Now wait a minute.

RUSSERT: I didn't stop you.

HILLARY CLINTON: No, but you did not give the entire quote.

RUSSERT: No, but you --

HILLARY CLINTON: The entire quote was clearly about the position on Iraq. It was not about the entire candidacy. It was not about the extraordinary --

RUSSERT: But Congressman Clyburn --

HILLARY CLINTON: -- you know, abilities.

RUSSERT: But Congressman -- but Congressman Clyburn has been covering this race. Donna Brazile, herself a longtime activist in the Democratic Party, this is what she said. Here's Donna Brazile.

BRAZILE [video clip]: As an African-American, I find his words and his tone to be very depressing.

RUSSERT: So these are people who are not supporters of Obama, who are listening. Let me just go to the Martin Luther King thing, because you had your opportunity to talk about this at the beginning of the show, and I want to lay this out for our viewers. This is how The New York Times categorized it. "In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Mrs. Clinton ... tried to make a point about presidential leadership. 'Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of '64.' Mrs. Clinton said in trying to make the case that her experience should mean more to voters than the uplifting words of Mr. Obama. 'It took a president to get it done.' " Again, Congressman Clyburn, "We have to be very, very careful about how we speak about that era in American politics. ... That bothered me a great deal."

In a January 13 article on the upcoming Nevada caucuses, Washington Post staff writers Paul Kane and Alec MacGillis wrote, "In New Hampshire, [Sen. Hillary Rodham] Clinton [D-NY] fared best among working-class and middle-class voters, while [Sen. Barack] Obama [D-IL] did better with higher-income voters and in college towns -- a demographic that Clinton at one point mocked as people who 'don't need a president.' " Kane and MacGillis did not report the origin of the Clinton quote. A Media Matters for America review of Google and the Nexis database found an article from the Muscatine (Iowa) Journal that reported that Clinton said at a December 31 appearance: "Rich people don't need a president. They have been doing fine, and have been having a run of luck with George Bush." The Muscatine Journal article also reported that Clinton said: "Children need a president who cares about them and their futures." But Media Matters could find no reports that quoted Clinton saying people "in college towns" don't need a president.

Nexis and Google searches also found that media outlets -- including The Washington Post's blog The Trail -- reported that Clinton said on December 20: "It's tempting anytime things seem quieter for a minute on the international front to think that we don't need a president who is up to speed on foreign affairs and military matters. Well, that's the kind of logic that got us George Bush in the first place" (emphasis added).

From the January 13 article in The Washington Post:

The unusual venue has set the scene for a different confrontation between Obama and Clinton, the two front-runners, than occurred in Iowa or New Hampshire.

In New Hampshire, Clinton fared best among working-class and middle-class voters, while Obama did better with higher-income voters and in college towns -- a demographic that Clinton at one point mocked as people who "don't need a president."

But in Las Vegas, Clinton, a senator from New York, is supported by many hotel and casino executives, while Obama has the backing of two key unions -- the Nevada chapter of the Service Employees International Union and the culinary workers, which announced its endorsement Wednesday after fierce lobbying from all three Democrats.

As blogger and media critic Greg Sargent noted, a January 11 New York Times article by Carl Hulse truncated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton's January 7 comments about civil rights, omitting Clinton's reference to former President John F. Kennedy. A January 9 New York Times editorial, as well as a January 7 blog post by Sarah Wheaton on the Times' politics blog, The Caucus, and a January 7 blog post titled "Clinton and Obama, Johnson and King" by Politico senior political writer Ben Smith, also omitted the reference to Kennedy. Each of these pieces quoted Clinton saying that "Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964" and that "it took a president to get it done." But each of them omitted the middle portion of Clinton's full quote, which was: "I would point to the fact that that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done" [emphasis added].

As Sargent also noted, the full quotation including the reference to Kennedy appeared in a January 11 post in The Caucus.

Smith later repeated Clinton's full comment in a separate post on his Politico blog titled "Clinton, Kennedy, King" and updated his earlier post to provide a link to the later post.

In a January 7 interview, Fox News political correspondent Major Garrett asked Clinton if she would react to a portion of a quote from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama: "False hopes? ... Dr. King standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial looking out over the magnificent crowd, the reflecting pool, the Washington Monument: 'Sorry, guys. False hope. The dream will die. It can't be done.' " Clinton said:

I would, and I would point to the fact that that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality. The power of that dream became real in people's lives because we had a president who said, "We are going to do it," and actually got it accomplished.

The Times article, editorial, and January 7 Caucus blog post as well as Smith's January 7 post titled "Clinton and Obama, Johnson and King" all omitted the words "when [Johnson] was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried."

From the January 9 editorial:

In Mrs. Clinton's zeal to make the case that experience (hers) is more important than inspirational leadership (Mr. Obama's), she made some peculiar comments about the relative importance of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson to the civil rights cause. She complimented Dr. King's soaring rhetoric, but said: "Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. ... It took a president to get it done. "

Why Mrs. Clinton would compare herself to Mr. Johnson, who escalated the war in Vietnam into a generational disaster, was baffling enough. It was hard to escape the distasteful implication that a black man needed the help of a white man to effect change. She pulled herself back from the brink by later talking about the mistreatment and danger Dr. King faced. Former President Bill Clinton, who seems to forget he is not the one running, hurled himself over the edge on Monday with a bizarre and rambling attack on Mr. Obama.

From the January 11 article:

In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Mrs. Clinton, who was locked in a running exchange with Senator Barack Obama, a rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, over the meaning of the legacies of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., tried to make a point about presidential leadership.

"Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964," Mrs. Clinton said in trying to make the case that her experience should mean more to voters than the uplifting words of Mr. Obama. "It took a president to get it done."

Quickly realizing that her comments could draw criticism, Mrs. Clinton returned to the subject at a later stop, recalling how Dr. King was beaten and jailed and how he worked with Johnson to pass the landmark law. Clinton advisers said her first remark had not captured what she meant to convey. And they said she would never detract from a movement that has driven her own public service.

From the January 7 post on the Times' The Caucus blog:

Only a few hours later, she brought up the civil rights legislation herself in remarks to a Fox News correspondent.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama have been in a running feud arising from her suggestion at Saturday's debate that he was raising "false hope."

Mr. Obama responded that Mr. Kennedy did not decide going to the moon was a false hope and that Martin Luther King, Jr. did not see ending segregation as such.

"Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act," Mrs. Clinton said when asked about Mr. Obama's rejoinder by Fox's Major Garrett after her speech in Dover. "It took a president to get it done."

Smith's January 7 blog post titled "Clinton and Obama, Johnson and King" in its entirety:

Clinton rejoined the running argument over hope and "false hope" in an interview in Dover this afternoon, reminding Fox's Major Garrett that while Martin Luther King Jr. spoke on behalf of civil rights, President Lyndon Johnson was the one who got the legislation passed.

Hillary was asked about Obama's rejoinder that there's something vaguely un-American about dismissing hopes as false, and that it doesn't jibe with the careers of figures like like John F. Kennedy and King.

"Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act," Clinton said. "It took a president to get it done."

Clinton didn't explicitly compare herself to Johnson, or Obama to King. But it seems an odd example for the argument between rhetoric and action, as there's little doubt which figure's place in history and the American imagination is more secure.

"The power of that dream became real in people's lives because we had a president" capable of action, Clinton said.

The interview was taped, and I listened in. It's set to air later today.

UPDATE: Here's the video.

UPDATE: In Salem this evening, Hillary seemed to be seeking to repair the impression that King hadn't done political work, and to contrast King and Obama.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a movement - he was gassed, he was beaten, he was jailed - and he gave a speeh [sic] that was one of the most beautifully, profoundly important speeches ever delivered in America, the "I have a dream" speech.... And hten [sic] he worked with President Johnson to get the civil rights law passed, because the dream couldn't be realized until it was legally permissible for people of all races and colors and background to be recognized as citizens.

UPDATE: More on what she said, here.

On January 7, TPM Media editor and publisher Josh Marshall wrote that "the edited quote that's circulating from The Politico is misleading."

In his final update to the post, Smith linked to a separate January 7 post responding to Marshall that contained the full quote from Clinton.

On the January 11 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News political analyst Kirsten Powers and host Bill O'Reilly discussed Media Matters for America's coverage of MSNBC host Chris Matthews' recent comments about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), that "the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around" O'Reilly asserted that "Media Matters is a big propaganda machine, and they're ripping up the far-left people at MSNBC. And I, for one, am shocked and appalled." In response, Powers stated that "what [Media Matters is] doing is going after Chris Matthews for attacking Hillary, and I think it's a very fair criticism," adding that she has "been appalled at the way [Matthews] treats Hillary Clinton." Later in the segment, Powers asserted, "what Chris Matthews said was totally inappropriate."

On the previous day's edition of The O'Reilly Factor, as Media Matters has noted, guest Jane Hall, a Fox News contributor, also expressed disapproval of remarks like Matthews'. She noted Matthews' comments about "how [Hillary Clinton] got elected not on her own merits, but because of his [Bill Clinton] fooling around, as he put it. ... He said she wanted to bury his [Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL)] campaign and what would she do with the body? That she wanted to strangle Obama in the crib." Hall then stated, "[E]very woman I know saw the media coverage declaring her dead and said, 'You know, I've been through that. I've experienced that kind of sexism.' " O'Reilly asked, "So there was a backlash against that?" Hall responded, "Oh, absolutely."

Additionally, on the January 9 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly himself criticized Matthews' remarks as a "personal attack," adding that "it is questionable whether a network should allow that or not."

From the January 11 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: "Impact" segment tonight: There is a split in liberal America. The far left seems to like Barack Obama, and the less far left favors Hillary Clinton. Perhaps the best example of this is Media Matters, the smear machine that spits out anti-conservative propaganda on a daily basis. Those people are now after Democrat Chris Matthews because he's brutally criticized Hillary Clinton.

On another front, the insane left -- Daily Kos -- tried to convince Democrats in Michigan to disrupt the Republican primary there. Now, traditional Democrats can't be happy about that.

[...]

O'REILLY: With us now, a woman who stands for -- I don't exactly know what, but I'm sure she does. Fox News political analyst Kirsten Powers. Ooh, ooh, you got this little -- and I want to point out to everybody in a fair and balanced way -- the Republican's right hasn't really, you know -- Rush Limbaugh is hammering Huckabee pretty brutally --

POWERS: Yeah.

O'REILLY: -- but other than that, this isn't the warfare we're seeing on the left.

POWERS: Oh, see, I don't think that's true. I think that all of the sort of movement conservatives, the National Review types, those people are very against Huckabee. There's been lots of complaints about him, and you saw even Fred Thompson -- I mean, he was giving --

O'REILLY: Yeah, but that was a debate, of course.

POWERS: -- but he was giving voice to something that a lot of conservatives feel and that you will see on the blogs.

O'REILLY: Are you going to sit there and tell me that the vitriol in this is equal? You just heard Roseanne Barr. Now, Roseanne Barr, doesn't she run he Democratic National Committee?

POWERS: Yeah, exactly. What does she have to do with the Democratic Party? I mean, I don't -- if she was representative of what was going on, then I think you would have a fair point, but who listens to Roseanne Barr? I can tell you how many people make a decision based on what she says: zero. Zero.

O'REILLY: Media Matters is a big propaganda machine, and they're ripping up the far-left people at MSNBC. And I, for one, am shocked and appalled.

POWERS: Yeah, well, I mean, what they're doing is going after Chris Matthews for attacking Hillary, and I think it's a very fair criticism. I mean, I shouldn't admit to this, but I watch his show because I'm a political junkie, and I've been pretty appalled at the way he treats Hillary Clinton. I mean, it's very, very biased --

O'REILLY: It's not just him --

POWERS: -- biased against --

O'REILLY: -- it's all of them over there.

POWERS: --biased against -- but he in particular is so pro-Obama and so against Hillary that it's just -- it's very unfair. And some of the things he says about her, I think, really cross the line.

O'REILLY: OK, now here's the wider question. After this is all over, do they reconcile, these nuts? Do they come together under either a banner of Hillary Clinton or a banner of Barack Obama?

POWERS: They will definitely reconcile, and I think you're exaggerating what's going on.

O'REILLY: You do?

POWERS: I don't think there's anything --

O'REILLY: You think I'm exaggerating?

POWERS: Yeah, I don't think there's anything unusual going on. I think what's happening is you're seeing a vigorous debate going on in the Democratic Party, which is supposed to happen in a primary, Bill --

O'REILLY: I know --

POWERS: -- and there's nothing unusual about it.

O'REILLY: I know you're best friends with the cowardly lion and Toto.

POWERS: Oh, yeah, right.

O'REILLY: I know you live there in --

POWERS: Please.

O'REILLY: -- a very, very nice condo in the land of Oz.

POWERS: Uh-huh.

O'REILLY: But if you're going to sit there and tell me that it's not unusual for a Media Matters, which is dedicated to killing me and anybody else who's not a loon on the left, OK -- you're going to sit there and tell me that they're ripping up MSNBC, and that's not unusual?

POWERS: Well, MSNBC isn't --

O'REILLY: Of course it's unusual.

POWERS: You're talking about people coming in and uniting -- MSNBC has nothing to do with it. Chris Matthews has nothing to do with it. The people who are the activists and the bloggers, the ones that are also -- who are complaining about Chris Matthews as well, and some of them are on the Obama side and some of them are on Hillary's side.

O'REILLY: But what I am telling you is --

POWERS: -- and some of them are on the John Edwards side.

O'REILLY: -- the bitterness is unprecedented. You didn't see it with Al Gore. You didn't see it with John Kerry -- on the left I'm talking about. You didn't see this kind of bitterness. Come on, get in the game, Powers.

POWERS: I don't, because I think -- I just -- Bill, I think you're exaggerating what's going on. I don't think Roseanne Barr or, you know, Chris Matthews define what's going on.

O'REILLY: OK, David Geffen --

POWERS: Ultimately --

O'REILLY: -- the big money man --

POWERS: Ultimately, sure. David Geffen has a problem with the Clintons.

O'REILLY: -- Clintons are liars.

POWERS: He has a problem with the Clintons. OK.

O'REILLY: I'm not exaggerating, I'm reporting.

POWERS: But the idea that the Democratic Party is somehow fractured, I mean, they're more united than ever.

O'REILLY: They're more united than ever?

POWERS: Yes, absolutely.

O'REILLY: They're gouging each other's eyes out.

POWERS: But it's a primary. It's a primary. That's what happens in primaries. Democrats aren't crowning people. They're having a vigorous debate.

O'REILLY: But it didn't happen in 2000 and 2004.

POWERS: They're having a vigorous debate, and I don't think people were as excited about the candidates. You have two, in particular, really strong candidates.

O'REILLY: So they're overly excited, maybe.

POWERS: Well, people are very passionate about Obama --

O'REILLY: Who do you support, who do you like, Hillary or Obama?

POWERS: I like both of them.

O'REILLY: You like both of them?

POWERS: Yes.

O'REILLY: So what does that mean? You -- when the New York primary comes, you live in New York, you got to rip your ballot? Are you going to vote for both?

POWERS: Well, are you going to tell everybody who you're voting for?

O'REILLY: You're going to get arrested. Then we're going to bail you out.

POWERS: Are you going to tell -- are you going to tell everyone who you're voting for?

O'REILLY: What?

POWERS: You going to tell everyone who you're voting for?

O'REILLY: No.

POWERS: Yeah.

O'REILLY: But I'm asking you who you support at this point.

POWERS: Well, I'm not - you know, I'm probably more inclined towards Hillary, but I like both of them, and I would support both of them. I think they're both really good candidates.

O'REILLY: You like John McCain, too, right?

POWERS: I like John McCain. I would not vote for John McCain, though.

O'REILLY: You like me, right?

POWERS: Um, let's not push it.

O'REILLY: Powers, I like both of them. All right, so you're -- right now, and you can change your mind, I'm sure.

POWERS: Right. Well, that's the thing. I mean, I don't --

O'REILLY: All right.

POWERS: I don't -- it's like I said, I'm inclined in that direction.

O'REILLY: So you're in the Hillary camp.

POWERS: Yes.

[...]

O'REILLY: All right, so all in all, you have come on the program and speaking to millions of people now. You're saying that there's nothing unusual about this hatred between the far left and the moderate left.

POWERS: There's not hatred. It's not hatred.

O'REILLY: It's not.

POWERS: No, it's not. It's just --

O'REILLY: Saying that the woman deserves to be a senator because her husband messed around? That's not hatred?

POWERS: OK, Roseanne -- but that's -- what Chris Matthews said was totally inappropriate.

O'REILLY: That's not hatred?

POWERS: I don't know if it's hatred. I think it's totally inappropriate. I think it completely crossed the line, but I don't think that it's hatred.

O'REILLY: All right. Always good to see you, Kirsten. Thank you very much for coming on.

POWERS: Thank you.

In his January 12 New York Times column, columnist Bob Herbert, referring to January 7 comments by former President Bill Clinton, wrote, "So there was the former president chastising the press for the way it was covering the Obama campaign and saying of Mr. Obama's effort: 'The whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.' " But Herbert did not report that Clinton denied that he had said Obama's campaign was a "fairy tale" on the January 11 broadcast of Syndication One's The Al Sharpton Show. In a clip aired on the January 11 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, Rev. Al Sharpton asked Clinton, "You had said that Senator Obama's campaign was a fairy tale. How -- how do you respond to that?" Clinton responded: "First of all, it's not true. I have given hundreds of speeches on Hillary's behalf in this campaign. I don't believe I've given a single one where I did not applaud Senator Obama and his candidacy. It's not a fairy tale." Additionally, ABC News reported that Clinton said on The Al Sharpton Show that Obama's "campaign" is "clearly not a fairy tale": "Now that doesn't have anything to do with my respect for him as a candidate or as a political figure in this campaign. He has put together a great campaign. It's clearly not a fairy tale; it's real."

On the January 11 edition of Hardball, Salon.com editor-in-chief Joan Walsh commented on Clinton's original comments and his explanation of those comments on the Al Sharpton Show. Walsh said: "I don't think it was a wise remark, but specifically the context of what he was saying was that the -- the notion that Obama had always been steadfastly opposed to the war was the 'fairy tale.' Not that his candidacy was a fairy tale. And that's pretty clear in the longer clip of the Sharpton interview."

From Herbert's January 12 New York Times column:

I was not one of those who thought, during those frantic, giddy, sleepless few days leading up to the New Hampshire primary, that Mr. Obama was on his way to a blowout win.

When I mentioned my skepticism to reporters at an Obama rally in Derry on Sunday, everyone insisted he was romping to victory. "Double digits," said one reporter.

This certainty was based on poll results and the size and enthusiasm of the Obama crowds. But poll results have been unreliable for decades when it comes to black candidates and white voters. And I wrote in a column that ran on election day that whenever Senator Obama would ask how many people in his overflow crowds were still undecided, about a third would raise their hands.

I was not predicting an Obama defeat. I just had a strong sense that the news media, feeding on itself, had lost sight of reality and that the election was bound to be close.

I could also sense how hard the Clinton camp was working to undermine Senator Obama's main theme, that a campaign based on hope and healing could unify, rather than further polarize, the country.

So there was the former president chastising the press for the way it was covering the Obama campaign and saying of Mr. Obama's effort: "The whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen."

And there was Mrs. Clinton telling the country we don't need "false hopes," and taking cheap shots at, of all people, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

From the January 7 campaign event with Bill Clinton, as transcribed by Congressional Quarterly:

QUESTION: Thanks. One of the things that Senator Obama talks about a lot is judgment and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the recent criticism of Mark Penn, who is Hillary's chief strategist, who's been criticized for being somewhat out of touch with reality.

For instance, he circulated a memo about Iowa, saying "Where's the balance," [sic: bounce] and then the next day, there was a 12-point jump for Obama.

CLINTON: He was wrong. He was wrong about that, because the balance [sic] always occurs on the second day, not the first day. It always occurs on the second day, not the first day.

But since you raised the judgment issue, let's go over this again. That is the central argument for his campaign. "It doesn't matter that I started running for president less than a year after I got to the Senate from the Illinois state senate. I am a great speaker and a charismatic figure and I am the only one that had the judgment to oppose this floor [sic] from the beginning, always, always, always."

First, it is factually not true that everybody that supported that resolution supported Bush attacking Iraq before the U.N. inspectors withdrew. Chuck Hagel [NE] was one of the co-authors of that resolution, the only Republican Senator that always opposed the war, every day, from the get-go.

He authored the resolution to say that Bush could go to war only if they didn't cooperate with the inspectors and he was assured personally by [then-national security adviser] Condi Rice, as many of the other Senators were. So, first, the case is wrong that way.

Second, it is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, enumerating the years and never got asked one time, not once, "Well, how could you say that when you said in 2004 you didn't know how you would have voted on the resolution? You said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war and you took that speech you're now running on off your Web site in 2004 and there's no difference in your voting record and Hillary's ever since."

Give me a break.

[applause]

This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen. So you can talk about Mark Penn all you want. What did you think about the Obama thing, calling Hillary the "Senator from Punjab?" Did you like that? Or what about the Obama handout that was covered up, the press never reported on, implying that I was a crook, scouring me, scathing criticism over my financial reports.

[Former independent counsel] Ken Starr spent $70 million and indicted innocent people to find out that I wouldn't take a nickel to see the cow jump over the moon. So you can take a shot at Mark Penn if you want, it wasn't his best day. He was hurt, he felt badly we didn't do better in Iowa.

But, you know, the idea that one of these campaigns is positive and other is negative, when I know the reverse is true and I have seen it and I have been blistered by it for months, is a little tough to take. Just because of the sanitizing coverage that's in the media doesn't mean the facts aren't out there.

[applause]

Otherwise, I do not have any strong feelings about that subject.

[laughter]

Go ahead. I've got to take a question back here and then I -- go ahead.

From the January 11 ABC News article:

The former president explained to [Al Sharpton Show host Rev. Al] Sharpton that his comment was not a swipe at Obama reaching for the White House but rather a reference to the fawning press treatment Obama has received. In particular, Clinton is incensed that the press has not focused on Obama's 2004 acknowledgement to the New York Times that when he spoke out against the prospect of war he was "not privy to Senate intelligence reports."

"We went through 15 debates," Clinton told Sharpton, "and the Obama campaign made the argument that his relative lack of service in the Senate was not relevant because he has better judgment than all the Democrats because he'd always been against the Iraq war in every year."

"I pointed out," Clinton continued, "that he had never been asked about his statements in 2004 that he didn't know how he would have voted on the war resolution, and there was, at that time, no difference between his position and President Bush's."

"Look," Clinton continued, "there could be a perfectly good explanation for it. Maybe, he just meant, that once it was done, everybody wanted it to work, including the UN. But the point is, it disproves the arguments that he was always against it, and everybody else was wrong and he was right. So I said, 'that's what those debates were for, and how many of you knew those two facts, in the audience?' And I said, 'So that story is a fairy tale.' Now that doesn't have anything to do with my respect for him as a candidate or as a political figure in this campaign. He has put together a great campaign. It's clearly not a fairy tale; it's real. And I have gone out of my way not [to] express any personal disrespect for him or his campaign, even when they've been fairly critical of me and Hillary."

From the January 11 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews:

MATTHEWS: Let's look at a little squall -- skirmish that started just at the end of the week. Here's former President Clinton -- Bill Clinton calling into the Reverend Al Sharpton's radio show today, Friday, attempting to clarify his comment about the Barack Obama campaign being a "fairy tale."

[begin audio]

SHARPTON: You had said that Senator Obama's campaign was a fairy tale. How -- how do you respond to that?

CLINTON: First of all, it's not true. I have given hundreds of speeches in Hillary's behalf in this campaign. I don't believe I've given a single one where I did not applaud Senator Obama and his candidacy. It's not a fairy tale. He might win.

[end audio clip]

MATTHEWS: Well, I don't know what we make of this. The definition of "is" comes to the surface again. Bill Clinton saying he didn't call it a "fairy tale." Everybody on planet Earth heard him call it that.

CHUCK TODD (NBC News political director): Yeah -- no -- look, they have some problems in the African American community [inaudible].

MATTHEWS: The Clintons do.

TODD: I've gotten a bunch of calls -- I've gotten a bunch of calls today, and it's shocking, of all -- I mean, the Clintons have been --

MATTHEWS: What was the remark that hurt the community, at least the way we're reading it right now?

TODD: It's the "fairy tale" remark that's really hurting. And Sharpton, he put out a press release to say, "I'm having former President Clinton on, and I'm going to ask him about the 'fairy tale' comment." You had [Democratic strategist] Donna Brazile, unaffiliated in this right now, completely unaffiliated, so a very much sort of this - this --

MATTHEWS: A big DNC figure, obviously.

TODD: Exactly. This is where it's having reverb, inside that DNC world. And so it's sort of in Washington, sort of the insider African-American leadership class, very upset about this. [Rep.] Jim Clyburn [D-SC] comes out in The New York Times and basically issues a warning shot: not only may I endorse Obama, but I'm going to do it and take a shot at the Clintons at the same time. It's --

WALSH: But I --

TODD: It's something that makes -- it just gives them an extra political headache.

WALSH: We need to be fair, though, to President Clinton here. I don't think it was a wise remark, but specifically the context of what he was saying was that the -- the notion that Obama had always been steadfastly opposed to the war was the "fairy tale." Not that his candidacy was a fairy tale. And that's pretty clear in the longer clip of the Sharpton interview.

So it still probably wasn't a wise thing to say. We don't want to hear "fairy tale" about Obama, but it was about his war stance, not -- not his candidacy. So let's get that right.

On the January 11 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, Chris Matthews -- host of MSNBC's Hardball -- discussed the statement regarding Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) he made on the January 9 edition of Morning Joe, which Media Matters for America documented: "the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around." Barbara Walters criticized Matthew's statement on the January 10 edition of ABC's The View, saying that "I was brought up and I'm very careful here -- as you know, I've been on with you for a long time, not to give my personal opinions. I had thought people in news didn't do that. Forget it! The way to get ratings, come out and slam." On the January 11 Morning Joe, Matthews responded to Walters, saying that his statement was an "assessment of history," not an "opinion." In response to co-host Mika Brzezinski's assertion that Clinton "worked to put her husband in office, she played a huge role in her husband's candidacy and her presidency, and her experience does play to an extent as to why she won [her 2000 Senate election in New York] as well," Matthews said that "Mika is right. You can argue a lot of factors go into these things." But on the January 9 edition of Morning Joe, Matthews said that Clinton "didn't win there [New York] on her merits."

On the January 11 edition of Morning Joe, Matthews expanded on his January 9 comments:

MATTHEWS: OK, well, let me try to recount the tape. The fact is, I was talking about -- and you can play this later to confirm all this. I was explaining Hillary Clinton's unique appeal to the American people, and how -- remember, Mika, I said sitting next to you, her appeal has always been a combination of her toughness and some kind of sympathy for her and the situation she found herself in as a woman, as a wife of President Clinton.

Back in 1998, in the midst of the terror of the fact that he was involved with that intern, he was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, he faced conviction by the U.S. Senate. In the midst of all of that, in the fall campaign of 1998, Hillary Clinton got out and heroically went out and campaigned for Chuck Schumer in New York, among other candidates, but it was really the Schumer campaign where she made her name. If you go back and look at the newspapers, which I did last night to confirm all this, you will find glowing accounts, especially in USA Today -- I picked it up on the front page -- by Kathy Kiely, a great reporter, about it was her poise in standing up in the midst of that humiliation, where she was able to go out and campaign politically and show her strength in New York state, up and down that state for Chuck Schumer. Which within two to three days after that election, she gets a call from Charlie, Charlie Rangel, our friend up there, the New York congressman from Manhattan, urging her to run. The story ran -- it was her poise in the campaign, in the midst of all this humiliation, that made her a candidate for the Senate.

Now, if you don't accept the history, then accept the syllogism. Had Hillary Clinton not been a United States senator right now, because of that election, would she be a serious candidate for president? Well, you can argue that that's an opinion issue, but you can't argue that she's a United States senator because of the fact in which, in humiliating circumstances, she showed her toughness and elicited one whale of an amount of sympathy from people for having the guts to go out and campaign in the midst of all that humiliation. I know it's ironic; life is ironic. But the irony here is that Hillary Clinton would not have been a U.S. senator, and would not have been really -- eligibility to run for president, had that humiliation not been thrown upon her, and had she not, with toughness and by eliciting a lot of sympathy, come back from it. Those are the historic facts, Barbara, and the other woman. Those are the historic facts. I understand how you play to a crowd. I know how talk radio works, which is the way a lot of programs work, where you find something to argue about. But the historic fact is that Hillary Clinton's -- the odyssey of her career -- in fact, that's the way USA Today portrayed it, actually. The irony, the odyssey is that, in standing up for herself in the midst of all that humiliation, because of what her husband had been caught doing, she was able to become a heroic figure in New York state and be asked by the politicians to run for office.

Those are historic facts. I don't need to have an argument about opinion. We can argue about that. This is not an opinion.

Brzezinski responded to Matthews, saying that she thought Matthews "need[ed] to take it back a step further":

BRZEZINSKI: And Chris, I completely appreciate your take on this. I think it's valid, and I completely disagree with Barbara Walters and how she characterized what you said. But I also like a good debate, and I think you need to take it back a step further, because I agree with you, there was a sympathy factor. There was potentially a huge sympathy factor in New Hampshire, so we've seen it before. Having said that, if Laura Bush was humiliated by her husband and then ran for Senate two years later, she would not win. Hillary Clinton laid the groundwork before she was victimized, before she was humiliated. She worked to put her husband in office, she played a huge role in her husband's campaign and her presidency, and her experience does play to an extent as to why she won as well. So I think what you say is fair, I just --

Matthews replied that "[t]hey're all factors, they're all ingredients, and they're all true," adding: "But if it hadn't been for that weird accident of history that threw her out to the people in a way in which she had to be heroic just to stand there." Later in the interview, Matthews said that "Mika is right. You can argue a lot of factors go into these things. But clearly, the accident of history was that she was put under incredible duress back in 1998 during the impeachment trial." But in his January 9 appearance on Morning Joe, Matthews did not acknowledge "a lot of factors" that might have led to Clinton's election, saying of Clinton, "Let's not forget -- and I'll be brutal -- the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win there on her merits. She won because everybody felt, 'My God, this woman stood up under humiliation,' right? That's what happened." In response to Brzezinski's statement, "there has to be more to her than being a victim," Matthews did say "I agree."

Further, Matthews asserted that "because of what her husband had been caught doing, she was able to become a heroic figure in New York state and be asked by the politicians to run for office," and repeatedly claimed that he was offering the "historic facts," not his "opinion." But in her 2003 autobiography, Living History (Simon & Shuster), Clinton wrote that almost a year before she campaigned for Schumer, and subsequently received the phone call from Rangel, the then-chair of the New York state Democratic Party told her that if then-Sen. Daniel Moynihan didn't seek re-election, "I hope you run." From Page 483 of Living History:

Another surprise soon followed. Three days later, Friday, November 6, Senator Moynihan taped an interview with New York television legend Gabe Pressman announcing that he would not run for a fifth term. The interview was to be aired on Sunday morning, but the news leaked early.

Late on Friday night, the White House operator patched through a call from Representative Charlie Rangel, the veteran Congressman from Harlem and a good friend.

"I just heard that Senator Moynihan announced he is going to resign. I sure hope you'll consider running because I think you could win," he said.

"Oh, Charlie," I said. "I'm honored you would think of me, but I'm not interested, and besides, we have a few other outstanding matters to resolve right now."

"I know," he said. "But I'm really serious. I want you to think about it."

He may have been serious, but I thought the idea of running for Senator Moynihan's seat was absurd, although this wasn't the first time it had come up. A year earlier, at a Christmas reception at the White House, my friend Judith Hope, the chair of the New York Democratic Party, mentioned that she didn't think Moynihan would run again. "If he doesn't," she said, "I wish you would run." I had thought Judith's comment was farfetched then and I still thought so.

I had other things on my mind.

Matthews also asserted, "I made a point with Mika that if anybody would actually watch the tape of Morning Joe that morning, I wasn't criticizing Hillary; I was analyzing it with you; you disagreed. If think if we had had this conversation, it would have been more fulfilling of the question." He added: "I just wish people wouldn't look online and get some item from Media Matters or one of these blogs, and just -- and say, 'Well, here's something I can argue about.' "

From the January 11 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe:

SCARBOROUGH: Let's go right now to the phone, and we're joined by our own Chris Matthews. Chris, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

MATTHEWS: Good morning, Joe.

SCARBOROUGH: Chris, we gotta show -- we gotta play you a clip from the esteemed journalists at The View. They're talking about you. Roll the clip.

[begin video clip]

BEHAR: Chris Matthews -- you know Chris, right, from MSNBC? This is the statement he made. He said "the reason Hillary Clinton is a United States senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is that her husband messed around."

WALTERS: I was brought up and I'm very careful here -- as you know, I've been on with you for a long time, not to give my personal opinions. I had thought people in news didn't do that. Forget it! The way to get ratings, come out and slam.

BEHAR: It's almost like a pile-on of these men against her, and I think they're going to get the real backlash for it. It's really an inappropriate statement, in my opinion.

[end video clip]

SCARBOROUGH: You know, Chris, we don't want to take sides, so I will not bring up the fact that Barbara Walters, a journalist, told [House Majority Leader] Nancy Pelosi [D-CA] she wanted to have sex --

BRZEZINSKI: OK --

SCARBOROUGH: -- with Nancy Pelosi's husband. I also will not bring up the journalist Barbara Walters told [country singer] Faith Hill she wanted to have sex on air with [Hill's husband and country singer] Tim McGraw. Instead, I'm just gonna ask you the straight question: Does Barbara Walters have a point?

MATTHEWS: No.

SCARBOROUGH: OK, let's talk about politics.

MATTHEWS: No, let me --

BRZEZINSKI: Wait.

MATTHEWS: Let me just clarify this with Mika, who I think is trying to get to the truth here. First of all, you have to accept, is history a reasonable basis on which to make a statement? We're not talking about opinion here. In fact, do you have the tape of what I said on your show that gave these people something to talk about?

BRZEZINSKI: I actually watched it online, Chris, and they cut out the part where I disagreed with you.

MATTHEWS: Oh, I know that part. I know how they communicate. I thought we could do it the right way and show what I actually said with you, Mika, that morning we talked about it.

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah, well, look, Chris, I thought --

MATTHEWS: Do we have that tape?

SCARBOROUGH: No, we don't have the tape right now.

MATTHEWS: OK, well, let me try to recount the tape. The fact is, I was talking about -- and you can play this later to confirm all this. I was explaining Hillary Clinton's unique appeal to the American people, and how -- remember, Mika, I said sitting next to you, her appeal has always been a combination of her toughness and some kind of sympathy for her and the situation she found herself in as a woman, as a wife of President Clinton.

Back in 1998, in the midst of the terror of the fact that he was involved with that intern, he was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, he faced conviction by the U.S. Senate. In the midst of all of that, in the fall campaign of 1998, Hillary Clinton got out and heroically went out and campaigned for Chuck Schumer in New York, among other candidates, but it was really the Schumer campaign where she made her name. If you go back and look at the newspapers, which I did last night to confirm all this, you will find glowing accounts, especially in USA Today -- I picked it up on the front page -- by Kathy Kiely, a great reporter, about it was her poise in standing up in the midst of that humiliation, where she was able to go out and campaign politically and show her strength in New York state, up and down that state for Chuck Schumer. Which within two to three days after that election, she gets a call from Charlie, Charlie Rangel, our friend up there, the New York congressman from Manhattan, urging her to run. The story ran -- it was her poise in the campaign, in the midst of all this humiliation, that made her a candidate for the Senate.

Now, if you don't accept the history, then accept the syllogism. Had Hillary Clinton not been a United States senator right now, because of that election, would she be a serious candidate for president? Well, you can argue that that's an opinion issue, but you can't argue that she's a United States senator because of the fact in which, in humiliating circumstances, she showed her toughness and elicited one whale of an amount of sympathy from people for having the guts to go out and campaign in the midst of all that humiliation. I know it's ironic; life is ironic. But the irony here is that Hillary Clinton would not have been a U.S. senator, and would not have been really -- eligibility to run for president, had that humiliation not been thrown upon her, and had she not, with toughness and by eliciting a lot of sympathy, come back from it. Those are the historic facts, Barbara, and the other woman. Those are the historic facts. I understand how you play to a crowd. I know how talk radio works, which is the way a lot of programs work, where you find something to argue about. But the historic fact is that Hillary Clinton's -- the odyssey of her career -- in fact, that's the way USA Today portrayed it, actually. The irony, the odyssey is that, in standing up for herself in the midst of all that humiliation, because of what her husband had been caught doing, she was able to become a heroic figure in New York state and be asked by the politicians to run for office.

Those are historic facts. I don't need to have an argument about opinion. We can argue about that. This is not an opinion.

BRZEZINSKI: OK. No, no --

MATTHEWS: This is an historic assessment.

BRZEZINSKI: And it's also --

MATTHEWS: And if Barbara Walters wants to debate history and politics and what's happened in this country in the last 50 years, if she wants to go on Jeopardy! and see what she knows and what I know, I'll take her on.

BRZEZINSKI: Listen --

MATTHEWS: If any of the women on that show want to take me on on historic, political information, let's have a -- let's raise some money for charity; it'd be kind of an interesting way to do it. Let's talk political history, let's talk facts -- not opinion, facts -- and I'll take them on.

BRZEZINSKI: Look, Chris, I don't -- I --

MATTHEWS: I'm serious about this. I don't like being criticized for an historic assessment, and I don't like people calling it opinion, because it's not opinion. It's not opinion, it's historic fact. Go back and look at the records, get your Nexis-Lexis out, get your Google out, study the headlines of when she was elected to the Senate, the circumstance in which she was able to gain attention in New York state. And if anybody wants to argue that she could be a serious candidate for president had she not been, is not now a senator, that's an argument of opinion. I don't think anybody would make that argument.

BRZEZINSKI: And Chris, I completely appreciate your take on this. I think it's valid, and I completely disagree with Barbara Walters and how she characterized what you said. But I also like a good debate, and I think you need to take it back a step further, because I agree with you, there was a sympathy factor. There was potentially a huge sympathy factor in New Hampshire, so we've seen it before. Having said that, if Laura Bush was humiliated by her husband and then ran for Senate two years later, she would not win. Hillary Clinton laid the groundwork before she was victimized, before she was humiliated. She worked to put her husband in office, she played a huge role in her husband's campaign and her presidency, and her experience does play to an extent as to why she won as well. So I think what you say is fair, I just --

SCARBOROUGH: OK, OK, OK, OK, your point, though, is -- very quickly --

MATTHEWS: They're all factors, they're all ingredients, and they're all true.

SCARBOROUGH: Right.

BRZEZINSKI: Exactly.

MATTHEWS: But if it hadn't been for that weird accident of history that threw her out to the people --

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.

MATTHEWS: -- in a way in which she had to be heroic just to stand there. I accept the irony of all this.

BRZEZINSKI: Yes.

SCARBOROUGH: Right.

MATTHEWS: I accept the fact. But the weird thing about it is, if all those circumstances had not occurred, how would a woman who never lived in New York got to be a United States senator? That's the weirdness of it. Barbara, listen up. Get on the blog sites, listen to where you get your information -- that other woman, get your information in bits and pieces, but maybe it's better to study some history.

SCARBOROUGH: Chris, the thing is, and I talked to you about this earlier, anybody that was actually in this business -- you were in this business back in '98, I was in Congress back in '98. It was painfully obvious. This was not a matter of debate that actually Hillary Clinton had been vilified by the right from 1992 to 1998, and it was in fact her grace under fire that had Americans look at her a different way, and the same exact thing happened in New Hampshire this past week.

MATTHEWS: Well, I agree. And I think -- by the way, I made a point with Mika that if anybody would actually watch the tape of Morning Joe that morning, I wasn't criticizing Hillary; I was analyzing it with you; you disagreed. If think if we had had this conversation then, it would have been more fulfilling of the question. There are lots of ironies and consequences that go into politics. Sometimes circumstances drive reality.

BRZEZINSKI: Sure, sure.

MATTHEWS: And that this is the case here. I just wish people wouldn't look online and get some item from Media Matters or one of these blogs, and just -- and say, "Well, here's something I can argue about."

BRZEZINSKI: Chris, also, I think there might have been an implication, if you isolated just part of what you said, there might have been an implication she was undeserving, and I don't think that's what you meant.

SCARBOROUGH: That's not what he was saying.

MATTHEWS: No. In fact, I made a point of saying the other night I'll never underestimate her again because of the heroic way in which she spent those -- this weekend we were up there, and I was watching her, I went and watched her speak, two of her major addresses where she went on -- on and on in front of huge crowds under tremendous duress. I think at the time, as Tim pointed out this morning, looking at poll data that showed she was going to lose.

SCARBOROUGH: We had her -- we had an interview with her the night before, when her own campaign had internal polls showing she was losing by double digits.

BRZEZINSKI: They were moving out.

SCARBOROUGH: They only had only written a concession speech, as Tim Russert said, they were going to fire half the staff, and Hillary Clinton showed amazing grace under fire and it's what she's always done, and that's why she's in the race now.

[...]

MATTHEWS: I think that's interesting because there wasn't that ethnic or gender factor. I mean, you have an all-white male party running, and you're not going to have this interesting social change going on here. It's a social change. I'm sure going back to '60, if they asked people --if Catholics, if they voted for [John F.] Kennedy because he's Catholic. Oh, everybody said, "I'm not voting for him because he's Catholic, I'm just voting for him." I mean, you don't always get a straight answer, you know.

SCARBOROUGH: Exactly.

MATTHEWS: People don't even know themselves why they vote for things, you know. But anyway, let me tell you this. I've always respected Barbara Walters. On this issue she's wrong because the statement I made was really an assessment of history. And Mika's right. You can argue a lot of factors go into these things. But clearly, the accident of history was that she was put under incredible duress back in 1998 during the impeachment trial. She went out there and heroically took the heat, was a bold, courageous woman and took on the fire, but that fire was created by her husband.

SCARBOROUGH: And it revolved --

MATTHEWS: It's an irony of history. If you don't like the history, fine, but don't get mad at me for reminding people of how things actually happened.

SCARBOROUGH: Actually, it helped Barbara Walters. She went back and looked at op-eds and articles of the day --

MATTHEWS: I hope I help everybody's ratings, but as I always say, watch Hardball.

During an appearance on the January 9 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, Chris Matthews -- host of MSNBC's Hardball -- said of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), "Let's not forget -- and I'll be brutal -- the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win there on her merit. She won because everybody felt, 'My God, this woman stood up under humiliation,' right? That's what happened."

A search of the Nexis database reveals that Matthews made similar versions of that comment in 1999, when Clinton began her initial run for the Senate. During a discussion of then-first lady Clinton on the July 8, 1999, edition of Hardball -- then on CNBC -- Matthews asserted, "I cannot imagine a male going to a state he's never lived in and saying, 'Make me your U.S. senator because my wife's been cheating on me.' " Matthews continued, "I mean, it's hilarious, but isn't that her main claim, that she's the victim of the -- of the -- of the year?" later adding, "Now it's an election ca -- it's a bumper sticker. 'My husband cheated on me, make me senator.' "

The following day, on the July 9, 1999, edition of Hardball, Matthews asked:

MATTHEWS: I mean, what has she done? Let me just ask you a blunt question. What has she done? Has she ever passed a significant piece of legislation? Has she ever had a job? Has she ever won an Oscar? Has she ever written a book that she wrote herself? Has she ever actually done anything except as she put it, be a quote, "tireless advocate," whatever that is?

His guest, Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, indentified in the Nexis database as a "jury consultant," asserted, "Well, you know, Chris, what her -- her biggest -- her biggest advantage is right now is she stood by a philandering man for years." Matthews responded by repeating, "Right. She -- OK. 'My husband cheated on me, make me your senator.' "

From the July 9, 1999, edition of CNBC's Hardball:

MATTHEWS: Well, I have a theory. Jo-Ellan, can I ask you a question? I think that what she's done brilliantly here -- you say low energy -- they always say that on TV -- energy level, we're always talking about that on television when we're off-camera here -- but it seems to me what she might be doing is be a genius, and having gotten popularity from being the victim of Bill -- and I believe that is the raison d'etre of this campaign, that she is, in fact, a victim for so many Americans -- that she's now going to make herself the victim of Rudy as she was the victim of Bill. This'll be stage two in the campaign, and a lot of women'll say, "Bill beat her up, now Rudy's beating her up, the media's beating her up -- I'm for her."

[...]

MATTHEWS: Do you do much psychotherapy of people, or do you just try to look at their superficial behaviors, because I -- I look at this woman as a person who has, for whatever reason, a deep sense of entitlement, that she's entitled to certain respect as--almost like a -- a Madonna, a godlike figure. She's expected to have people bring flowers to her -- in fact, she seems to be eternally in a state of a duchess expecting the peasants to bring her bouquets of flowers. All the time she's in the -- in the readiness, ready for that sort of behavior of the public. Where does that come from? Where did she get the idea the public should worship her as almost a -- a -- a d -a d -- a -- a goddess?

[...]

MATTHEWS: I mean, what has she done? Let me just ask you a blunt question. What has she done? Has she ever passed a significant piece of legislation? Has she ever had a job? Has she ever won an Oscar? Has she ever written a book that she wrote herself? Has she ever actually done anything except as she put it, be a quote, "tireless advocate," whatever that is?

DIMITRIUS: Well, you know, Chris, what her -- her biggest -- her biggest advantage is right now is she stood by a philandering man for years.

MATTHEWS: Right. She -- OK. "My husband cheated on me, make me your senator."

DIMITRIUS: You betcha.

From the July 8, 1999, edition of Hardball:

MATTHEWS: Well, speaking of New York and the -- and the wealthy and the powerful in New York and the celebrity class, I was reading my favorite book the other day. It's called The Great Gatsby, and it's about a rich guy that lived up in New York, a bootlegger. Here's a bootlegger -- it's -- it's -- it talks about a guy moving to New York, to Long Island, buying the biggest house he can find and asking all the people that live in surrounding houses to thatch their roofs so that his house will seem more prominent. Of course, they refused to do that 'cause they are Americans, and here's what F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author, said: "Americans are willing to be serfs, but they've always been obstinate about being peasants." Paul Costello, why is every New Yorker in politics or not in politics bowing down to Hillary Clinton saying, "Of course, Duchess Hillary, we wouldn't presume to run for the Senate from our own state. We want you to come in and take the job for us"? This is -- this is yeoman behavior, not American behavior, isn't it?

[...]

MATTHEWS: Not anymore. Let me ask you, Julia -- let's talk about the double standard and have some fun here. I cannot imagine a male going to a state he's never lived in and saying, "Make me your U.S. senator because my wife's been cheating on me."

JULIA REED (Newsweek contributing editor): Well, that's --

MATTHEWS: I mean, it's hilarious, but isn't that her main claim, that she's the victim of the -- of the -- of the year?

REED: Yeah, that is exactly what's made her into a celebrity. Without Monica Lewinsky, no one would have asked Hillary Clinton to think about running for the Senate. I mean, forget about it. The only reason she's there is because Bill Clinton, who had been cheating on her forever, all of a sudden cheated on her on a -- like, on a -- in a bigger way --

MATTHEWS: Now it's an election ca -- it's a bumper sticker. "My husband cheated on me, make me senator."

In a January 10 report about a real estate transaction involving Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Tony Rezko, ABC's Brian Ross gave a misleading account of Obama's comments about the transaction in order to portray Obama as having "given a series of various explanations about the deal."

Ross reported, "For his part, Obama has given a series of various explanations about the deal. First, he told the Chicago Tribune that he didn't recall what his conversations were with Rezko. Four days later, he told the Chicago Sun-Times that he did recall telling Rezko about the property."

In fact, the accounts in the Tribune and the Sun-Times are similar. And in both papers, he was quoted indicating that he did not clearly recall what happened.

The Tribune reported that "Obama raised the possibility that he was the first to bring the lot to Rezko's attention" and quoted Obama as saying, "I may have mentioned to him the name of [a developer and] he may at that point have contacted that person. I'm not clear about that."

The Sun-Times quoted Obama as saying, "To the best of my recollection, I told him about the property, and he developed an interest, knowing both the location and, as I recall, the developer who had previously purchased it."

From the January 10 edition of ABC's Good Morning America:

ROSS: For his part, Obama has given a series of various explanations about the deal. First, he told the Chicago Tribune that he didn't recall what his conversations were with Rezko. Four days later, he told the Chicago Sun-Times that he did recall telling Rezko about the property.

From the November 1, 2006, Chicago Tribune:

Obama said his family's real estate broker brought the house to his wife's attention. He said he discussed the house with Rezko but isn't sure how Rezko began pursuing the adjacent lot. But Obama raised the possibility that he was the first to bring the lot to Rezko's attention.

"I don't recall exactly what our conversations were or where I first learned, and I am not clear what the circumstances were where he made a decision that he was interested in the property," Obama said.

"I may have mentioned to him the name of [a developer and] he may at that point have contacted that person. I'm not clear about that," Obama said.

From the November 5, 2006, Chicago Sun-Times:

Q: Did you approach Rezko or his wife about the property, or did they approach you?

A: To the best of my recollection, I told him about the property, and he developed an interest, knowing both the location and, as I recall, the developer who had previously purchased it.

During the January 11 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, discussing the January 8 New Hampshire primary with former Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson, host Chris Matthews asked: "What do you make of [Sen.] Hillary Clinton's [D-NY] performance on Saturday night right before the New Hampshire primary, this past Saturday night? There's been a lot of talk about this, the role that we in the media, that I personally played. There's a whole kind of -- all kind of discussion about the boys perhaps tackling the one woman candidate."

Richardson replied: "Yes, I do, and I think the incident where she got a little broken up helped her a lot with women voters, and they flocked to her. And that's the kind of person I know her. She's a regular person, and she showed that emotion, and obviously, I believe it helped her." Richardson added: "But yeah, I think women are concerned with guys ganging up on them, and what I tried to do in all the debates -- as you know, Chris -- is to say, "Look, let's stay positive. Both sides, don't throw negative stuff at each other, personal stuff. Let's debate the issues.' "

During MSNBC's January 8 primary coverage, Air America host Rachel Maddow said, "I will tell you that on the influential -- influential perhaps on the left -- website Talking Points Memo today, you want to know who they're blaming for women voters breaking for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama? Who they're blaming for this late showing in a big vote for Hillary Clinton? They're blaming Chris Matthews. People are citing specifically Chris not only for his own views, but also for as a symbol of what the mainstream media has done to Hillary Clinton." Matthews responded: "My influence in American politics looms over the people. I'm overwhelmed myself." Maddow then said, "People feel that the media is piling on Hillary Clinton. They're coming to her defense with their votes."

As Media Matters for America documented, the next morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Matthews said: "Let's not forget -- and I'll be brutal -- the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win there on her merits. She won because everybody felt, 'My God, this woman stood up under humiliation,' right? That's what happened."

From the January 11 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews:

MATTHEWS: What do you make of Hillary Clinton's performance on Saturday night right before the New Hampshire primary, this past Saturday night? There's been a lot of talk about this, the role that we in the media, that I personally played. There's a whole kind of -- all kind of discussion about the boys perhaps tackling the one woman candidate. Did you feel that when John Edwards joined [Barack] Obama in going after Hillary Clinton that he made her the object of some sympathy from women voters, especially older women voters?

RICHARDSON: Yes, I do, and I think the incident where she got a little broken up helped her a lot with women voters, and they flocked to her. And that's the kind of person I know her. She's a regular person, and she showed that emotion, and obviously, I believe it helped her. But yeah, I think women are concerned with guys ganging up on them, and what I tried to do in all the debates -- as you know, Chris -- is to say, "Look, let's stay positive. Both sides, don't throw negative stuff at each other, personal stuff. Let's debate the issues."

MSNBC's Chris Matthews problem

I do not care which person is your candidate. I don't care what you think of Hillary Clinton as a potential president. What is being done in the press is akin to a pack of rabid 7th graders trying to haze the nerdy girl in school simply because they can. It has nothing to do with her qualifications -- it has to do with gender, and these lemming pundits think that it's perfectly acceptable because everyone is doing it, including women like Andrea Mitchell and Anne Kornblut.
-- Christy Hardin Smith, Firedoglake

"OK, let's put the gender thing in here. I love gender politics, guys."
-- Chris Matthews

The behavior Christy Hardin Smith describes has its epicenter on MSNBC's Hardball, where rarely a day goes by without host Chris Matthews sputtering and shouting about Hillary Clinton, often in terms that would give Bobby Riggs pause.

Put simply, Matthews behaves as though he is obsessed with Hillary Clinton. And not "obsessed" in a charming, mostly harmless, Lloyd-Dobler-with-a-boom-box kind of way. "Obsessed" in a this-person-needs-help kind of way.

More than six years ago, long before Hillary Clinton began running for president, the Philadelphia Inquirer magazine reported that, according to an MSNBC colleague, Matthews had said of Clinton: "I hate her. I hate her. All that she stands for."

Even before that, Matthews told the January 20, 2000, Hardball audience, "Hillary Clinton bugs a lot of guys, I mean, really bugs people like maybe me on occasion. I'm not going to take a firm position here, because the election is not coming up yet. But let me just say this, she drives some of us absolutely nuts."

Not that there was much chance his feelings would go unnoticed by even the most casual Hardball viewer.

Matthews has referred to Clinton as "She devil." He has repeatedly likened Clinton to "Nurse Ratched," referring to the "scheming, manipulative" character in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest who "asserts arbitrary control simply because she can." He has called her "Madame Defarge." And he has described male politicians who have endorsed Clinton as "castratos in the eunuch chorus."

Matthews has compared Clinton to a "strip-teaser" and questioned whether she is "a convincing mom." He refers to Clinton's "cold eyes" and the "cold look" she supposedly gives people; he says she speaks in a "scolding manner" and is "going to tell us what to do."

Matthews frequently obsesses over Clinton's "clapping" -- which he describes as "Chinese." He describes Clinton's laugh as a "cackle" -- which led to the Politico's Mike Allen telling him, "Chris, first of all, 'cackle' is a very sexist term." (Worth remembering: When John McCain was asked by a GOP voter referring to Clinton, "How do we beat the bitch?" Allen reacted by wondering, "What voter in general hasn't thought that?" So Allen isn't exactly hypersensitive to people describing Clinton in sexist terms.)

Matthews repeatedly suggests Clinton is a "fraud" for claiming to be a Yankees fan, despite the fact that all available evidence indicates that Clinton has been a Yankees fan since childhood. In April of 2007, former Washington Post reporter John Harris, who has written a book about Bill Clinton, told Matthews to his face that the attacks on Clinton over her history of being a Yankees fan were false. Harris said: "Hillary Clinton got hazed over saying she was a New York Yankees fan. It turned out, actually, that was right. She had been a lifelong Yankees fan. But people were all over [her] for supposedly embroidering her past." But Matthews doesn't let a little thing like the truth get in the way of his efforts to take cheap shots at Clinton: At least twice since Harris set him straight, Matthews has attacked Clinton over the Yankees fan nonsense, once calling her a "fraud."

Matthews has described Clinton as "witchy" and -- in what appears to be a classic case of projection -- claimed that "some men" say Clinton's voice sounds like "fingernails on a blackboard." In what appears to be an even more classic case of projection, Matthews has speculated that there is "out there in the country ... some gigantic monster -- big, green, horny-headed, all kinds of horns coming out, big, aggressive monster of anti-Hillaryism that hasn't shown itself: it's based upon gender."

Matthews has suggested that Hillary Clinton "being surrounded by women" might "make a case against" her being "commander in chief." He once asked a guest if "the troops out there" would "take the orders" from "Hillary Clinton, commander in chief." When his guest responded, "Why wouldn't they listen to a [female] commander in chief? Sure," Matthews responded: "You're chuckling a little bit, aren't you?" When his guest responded "No," Matthews couldn't quite believe it, sputtering: "No problem? No problem? No problem?"

Matthews has wondered if she is unable "to admit a mistake" because doing so would lead people to call her a "fickle woman." He has said that Clinton is on a "short ... leash" as a presidential candidate, lacking "latitude in her husband's absence" to answer a question. He has, at least twice, called Hillary Clinton an "uppity" woman -- both times, pretending to attribute the phrase to Bill Clinton. But, as Bob Somerby has explained, there is no evidence Clinton has ever used the term.

One of Matthews' favorite topics is Clinton's marriage. After The New York Times ran an article purporting to count the number of nights the Clintons spend together, Matthews' imagination ran wild, and the MSNBC host couldn't get the Clintons' marital life out of his mind. At one point, Media Matters counted 90 separate questions Matthews asked guests about the topic during seven separate programs; the number undoubtedly grew after we stopped counting. In the middle of one of Matthews' bouts of obsessive speculation about how often the Clintons are "together in the same roof overnight, if you will," Washington Post reporter Lois Romano asked him, "[W]hat is your obsession with logistics here?" In response, Matthews snapped at her: "Because I'm talking to three reporters, and I'm trying to get three straight answers, so I don't want attitude about this. It's a point of view -- I want facts. Tell me what the facts are, Lois, if you know them. If you don't, I don't know what you're arguing about."

Matthews has claimed: "[T]he reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around." John McCain's political career got started after he left his first wife for a wealthy and politically connected heiress, married her, and ran for Congress. But Chris Matthews doesn't suggest that the reason McCain is a "U.S. senator ... a candidate for president ... a front-runner" is that he "messed around." Even Fox News' Bill O'Reilly said Matthews' comments about Clinton went too far: "I mean, it's rough business what these people over there [at MSNBC] are doing. We don't do that here. We would never say that Senator Clinton got her job because her husband messed around. I mean, that is -- that is a personal attack. And it is questionable whether a network should allow that or not."

Matthews periodically gets it into his head that the most important question in the world is whether Bill Clinton will be a "distraction" or whether he will "behave himself." He badgers Clinton aides about the question and warns that Bill Clinton "better watch it." He asks if Clinton will be a "good boy" or be guilty of "misbehavior." Matthews is not so subtly referring to Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. But curiously, he doesn't have the same concerns about McCain or about Rudy Giuliani, as I wrote nearly a year ago.

Think about this for a second: Chris Matthews is holding it against Hillary Clinton that her husband cheated on her. But he doesn't hold it against John McCain and Rudy Giuliani that they cheated on their spouses. Matthews seems to think women are to blame when their husbands have affairs -- and men who cheat on their spouses are blameless.

And then there's Matthews' fixation on Hillary Clinton's "ambition." In December 1999, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson appeared on Hardball to discuss Clinton's Senate campaign. Matthews asked Wolfson eight consecutive questions about whether Clinton was "ambitious." Finally, Matthews said, "People who seek political power are ambitious by definition," leading Wolfson to tell him: "if you say so. If it will make you happy, I'll agree." If Matthews has ever displayed as much interest in the "ambition" of male candidates like John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, or Mike Huckabee, he has done so in private.

And, in the midst of his years-long assault on Hillary Clinton, much of it either directly based on her gender or on a sexist double standard, Matthews has the audacity to accuse Clinton of being "anti-male" and to insist that "she should just lighten up on this gender -- 'the boys are coming to get me' routine."

None of this should surprise us. Chris Matthews acknowledged his feelings about Hillary Clinton long ago: "I hate her. I hate her. All that she stands for." And "she drives some of us [guys] absolutely nuts."

But Matthews' questionable treatment of women extends beyond Hillary Clinton.

Matthews has described House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as "scary" and suggested she would "castrate" House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. And he has wondered how she could disagree with President Bush "without screaming? How does she do it without becoming grating?"

Just this week, Matthews claimed there isn't a plausible female presidential candidate "on the horizon" because there aren't any "big-state women governors" -- but Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell, and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius all run states with populations comparable to male governors who have recently run for president, including Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Bill Richardson. How large a state does a woman have to run before she qualifies as a plausible presidential candidate to Chris Matthews? One that is twice as large as Mitt Romney's Massachusetts? Three times as large?

Last October, Matthews mused aloud about a hypothetical couple trying to decide who to support for president. In Matthews' mind, the wife just wants to see "the first woman president." According to Matthews, the husband has to explain the math to his wife: "[T]he husband says, 'You know, dear, you know, this is going to kill our tax bracket. You know that tuition thing we pay every couple of years for the kids, every year, we can't do that if we get a higher tax bracket. We have to pay more money.' "

After the Des Moines Register endorsed Hillary Clinton earlier this year, Matthews suggested that the paper's "female editors and publisher" succumbed to "lobbying" by Bill Clinton.

Matthews has repeatedly focused on the physical characteristics of his female guests. He recently began an interview with conservative radio host and author Laura Ingraham by telling her, "I'm not allowed to say this, but I'll say it -- you're beautiful and you're smart." He ended the interview by saying: "I get in trouble for this, but you're great looking, obviously. You're one of the gods' gifts to men in this country. But also, you are a hell of a writer." Note that Matthews said Ingraham is also a good writer -- apparently, to Chris Matthews, there is no reason for men to care about whether a woman can write, only about how she looks.

Matthews' comments about Ingraham came only a month after he told CNBC anchor Erin Burnett, "You're a knockout," adding: "It's all right getting bad news from you." Matthews also told Burnett: "Come on in closer. No, come in -- come in further -- come in closer. Really close." Matthews made such a spectacle of himself during the exchange that The New York Post said "it sure looked" like Matthews had been "perving on CNBC hottie Erin Burnett on live TV the other night." Matthews explained that he had merely been "kidding around."

During MSNBC's April 26, 2007, coverage of the first Democratic presidential debate, Matthews discussed the "cosmetics" of the evening. In doing so, he complimented Michelle Obama's pearl necklace and declared that she "looked perfect," "well-turned out ... attractive -- classy, as we used to say. Like Frank Sinatra, 'classy.' "

Matthews also appeared to argue that many viewers would be basing their decisions about the candidates on how, in Clinton's case, the candidate was dressed, or, in the case of the male candidates, how their spouses were dressed: "Some people are, by the way, just watching tonight. They stopped listening a half-hour in, and they noticed how pretty she is -- Michelle -- and they said, 'I like the fact he's [Barack Obama] got this pretty wife. He's happily married. I like that.' They like the fact that Hillary was demure, lady-like in her appearance." When NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell interjected, noting "You're talking about two ... lawyers," who went to "Harvard and Yale," Matthews defended himself, saying, "Cosmetics are a part of this game."

Nor is any of this new: In August 1999, Matthews hosted notorious liar Gennifer Flowers, during which he told her: "I gotta pay a little tribute here. You're a very beautiful woman, and I -- and I have to tell you, he knows that, you know that, and everybody watching knows that; Hillary Clinton knows that. How can a woman put up with a relationship between her husband and somebody, anybody, but especially somebody like you that's a knockout?" After Flowers told him "Gosh, you make me blush here," Matthews replied, "[I]t's an objective statement, Gennifer. I'm not flirting."

In 2000, Matthews responded to linguist Deborah Tannen's explanation of then-presidential candidate George W. Bush's efforts to appeal to women voters by saying, "So is this like the political equivalent of Spanish fly? That these seductive number of words you just drop out there and women just swoon." That led another Hardball guest, Lynn Martin -- a Republican -- to point out, "You wouldn't suggest he's seducing men."

Chris Matthews has been treating female guests as sexual objects for years. He has been judging women -- senators, presidential candidates, the speaker of the House -- on their clothes and their voices and their appearance for years. He has been referring to women as "castrating" for years. He has been applying double standards to male and female candidates for years.

This is who Chris Matthews is. He is a man who thinks that men who support women politicians are "eunuchs."

He isn't going to stop unless you make him stop. Chris Matthews uses his voice to marginalize women. Use yours to tell MSNBC you've had enough.

It's time to play a little "hardball." Please contact MSNBC and Chris Matthews today and let them know what you think.

On the January 10 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, host Michael Savage referred falsely to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) as "Senator Barack Madrassas Obama." Savage made the comment while discussing a December 10 Associated Press article headlined, "Presidential hopefuls and first cars" that "asked candidates to name their first cars" and also "look[ed] at some of their personal vehicles now." Savage said of Obama: "Illinois Senator Barack Madrassas Obama. His first car was his grandfather's Ford Granada. Now he owns a Chrysler 300C." As Media Matters for America noted, on the June 25, 2007, broadcast of The Savage Nation, Savage falsely claimed that Obama was "indoctrinated" by a "Muslim madrassa in Indonesia."

His comments on Obama followed remarks he made about the article's reference to cars owned by Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and John Edwards. He then added: "What bad taste these people have."

"Madrassas" is not Obama's middle name. Media Matters has documented that the false allegation that Obama was educated in a madrassa has been disproved by CNN, the AP, and the Chicago Tribune. On January 23, 2007, CNN reported that "[a]llegations that Sen. Barack Obama was educated in a radical Muslim school known as a 'madrassa' are not accurate." The AP reported on January 24, 2007, that the elementary school Obama attended as a child in Jakarta was "a public and secular institution that has been open to students of all faiths since before the White House hopeful attended in the late 1960s."

Talk Radio Network, which syndicates Savage's show, says that Savage is heard on more than 350 radio stations. The Savage Nation reaches more than 8 million listeners each week, according to Talkers Magazine, making it one of the most listened-to talk radio shows in the nation, behind only The Rush Limbaugh Show and The Sean Hannity Show.

From the January 10 edition of Talk Radio Network's The Savage Nation:

SAVAGE: Here's a puff piece from the Associated Press: "Presidential hopefuls and first cars." And so they went to all the candidates, and asked them to list their first cars and some of their personal vehicles. Now, when I read this to you, you'll see the puff piece written by the Associated Press, even a simple question like what was your first car can't be answered directly by Hillary Clinton. Even this she has to lie about or tell a little stupid story that you know is a lie.

Democrats. New York Senator Hillary Rotten Clinton: "She owned a 1963 Oldsmobile Cutlass with a battery she kept in her law school dorm on cold nights so the car would start when she needed it." Oh, get out the violin. That's like hearing that Al Gore lived in a trailer when he was young. "She now drives a Ford hybrid and Secret Service vehicles as former first lady." John Edwards, the shyster lawyer, started with a Plymouth Duster. Now owns a Ford Escape hybrid. Yeah, all right. Illinois Senator Barack Madrassas Obama. His first car was his grandfather's Ford Granada. Now he owns a Chrysler 300C. What bad taste these people have. New Mexico Governor Bill the Roadrunner Richardson: Secondhand Ford Mustang. Now he owns an official state vehicle and a Jeep Wrangler.