A Pilgrim’s Digression

Perhaps I am blowing this out of proportion, but I wrote Chris Matthews an email about his interview with Bill Maher the other evening. The transcript of the Matthews program is available here. You can read my letter below:

Dear Mr. Matthews,

I am writing you to express my disappointment in a segment of your show “Hardball” which I happened to catch last night. I saw a portion of your interview with Bill Maher as I was flipping back and forth between news channels. I usually watch portions of your show, and generally I find you to be a serious-minded journalist. However, a question I heard you ask Maher really ticked me off because it seemed to come straight from the mouth of Rush Limbaugh rather than Chris Matthews. Did I hear you correctly? Did you really ask Bill Maher what he thought of John Kerry’s new tan? No, that wasn’t quite how you put it—it was something about John Kerry’s “orange look,” wasn’t it? And Maher answered that maybe when Kerry went in for his latest Botox treatment, he was given some “Tan In A Bottle” to go with it.

Republicans don’t need any help making John Kerry appear unmanly and elitist. By raising such a totally irrelevant, but nonetheless damaging issue, you might as well have been reading from Republican talking points. It was unfair, and I hope if you ever go back and look at that segment, you feel some shame for how you and Maher so cattily lowered the level of political dialogue to the exact depth at which the Republicans want to keep it, which is to say the level of appearances. I don’t know what you could do to redress the situation. An apology to Mr. Kerry and your viewers would be a start, I suppose, but in a way it is too late for that. The best one can hope for is that in future, you will think before joining one of your guests in a silly gossip-fest.

I have since found out the source for the “orange Kerry” story is Matt Drudge. Here is the article, Kerry on Orange Alert. To his credit, radio talk show host Neal Boortz has suggested that the picture Drudge uses has been Photoshopped. Other pictures of Kerry from the same day show Kerry looking normal.

But why is this even a topic up for discussion in this election? Why is Lynne Cheney cracking wise about it, as she did yesterday? And why are mainstream journalists such as Matthews and the reporters for the AP abetting Drudge in this nonsense?

This goes beyond the damage it might do to Kerry. I really don’t think it is damaging, because any fool who decides to vote for George Bush because he thinks Kerry looks a bit orange … well that fool would probably be the kind to vote for Bush anyway. In fact, the Bush Administration courts exactly that kind of fool, welcomes them with open arms.

The question is, what level of debate do we want to have in this country? Do we want to seriously consider the achievmenets of the first Bush term and weigh the pros and cons of a second term for him, which is what the election ought to be about, or do we want to snicker about John Kerry’s skin tone?

Good Lord, what a country we live in, what absolute juveniles we are.