I watched this like three times for the laughs.

Posted by mark | May 16, 2008 9:38 AM

"Absolute genius" is not enough praise. Why does this kind of thing happen so infrequently?

Posted by James Gary | May 16, 2008 9:40 AM

Who says Chris Matthews can't do sketch comedy?
That was so funny it makes the dead parrot sketch look like a snuff film.

Posted by tom c | May 16, 2008 9:40 AM

Yeah, my roommate was watching this when I got home from work yesterday. I was just about to back out to get some Doritos when I heard the first "But what did Chamberlain DO?" and went back to the tv. I was pretty glad I did.

Posted by mark f | May 16, 2008 9:42 AM

The sad thing is that Bush has displayed the same kind of ignorance as this doofus in his statements in Israel, although its not quite as obvious because he doesn't have to answer any questions.

By the way, I just got cable recently, so I'm pretty new to the cable coverage. I'm surprised how good Mathews is in general. I know he gets criticized a lot by liberals, but from what I've seen in the last 2 or 3 months, he's very good. I think a lot of the people who complain about silly things he's said (eg, Thompson and Aqua Velva) don't realize how hard it is to fill up all the air time. The other MSNBC guys (Abrams, Olberman) are good too. Even Scarborough is ok. If you're going to have a conservative, he's one of the less repellent ones.

Posted by Jim W | May 16, 2008 9:43 AM

Can you believe that the stupid jock-meathead guy was a federal prosecutor, a grad of Oklahoma University and a graduate of the University of Houston law school?

I was sure that date rapes at his school declined 50 percent after he dropped out midway through first semester freshman year.

Further proof that college education for the masses is over-rated. Sean Hannity is a dropout and this guy makes Sean look like Kirkegaard.

Posted by calipygian | May 16, 2008 9:45 AM

Wow. Hilarious. Who is this Kevin James guy?

Someone who has more free time than I do should count how many times he said "appeasement" or "appeaser" in that 4-minute clip.

Posted by right | May 16, 2008 9:46 AM

I think more than anything it shows the inherent weakness of the host-as-all-knowing-guru act you get on talk radio all the time. When these guys don't have a computer screen in front of them and a producer to do other research and a dump button to get rid of anyone who says anything inconvenient, they're exposed for being know-nothing blowhards. I'd love to see some of the bigger names get shown up like this, but unfortunately I think the Jay Severins of the world are at least smart enough to recognize their own limits.

Posted by mark f | May 16, 2008 9:47 AM

Anyone ever feel like the entire subtext of the republican party is "Where stupid people can go to feel smart and important!"

It's like a giant dog whistle for anyone who can't follow what intelligent people are talking about -- they get to join the republican party and have bullies make fun of the smart people.

Republicanism is basically about selling "intellectualism" to stupid people who can't actually grasp anything.

Posted by WinSmith | May 16, 2008 9:54 AM

James has just earned his very own NYT op-ed...he has better track record and sense of history than the entire "Iraq 5year retrospective/mission acomplished" panel! He can fill in the gap between Brooks and Kristol!

Posted by centrist | May 16, 2008 9:55 AM

Actually, the answer to the question is that Chamberlain signed an agreement with Hitler effectively ceding the Sudetenland portion of Czechoslovakia to Germany. That was the appeasement, not that he went to Munich to negotiate with Hitler. Had he stood up to Hitler and indicated that any attempt to occupy the Sudetenland would be considered by the British Government an act of war, it is possible that the coup that the German General Staff was planning might have gone forward and WW 2 thus avoided.

Posted by SLC | May 16, 2008 9:55 AM

That was damn funny.

Posted by Bill | May 16, 2008 9:56 AM

SLC,

You've just demonstrated why you could never be a successful right-wing pundit.

Posted by Jim W | May 16, 2008 10:01 AM

No, no. What happened in history isn't important, it's buzzwords that are important!

Posted by Adam Villani | May 16, 2008 10:01 AM

Note also that James never stops shouting-- the viewer has to be paying attention for a full ten minutes, and Matthews has to really keep at it to make the point. It's interesting to see how much effort goes into a real takedown.

Posted by MattF | May 16, 2008 10:02 AM

I love how, when completely backed into a corner, James started undulating like in a MadTV sketch spoofing 'Girlfriends.' Pathetic.

Posted by EpicureanQuaker | May 16, 2008 10:03 AM

I'm not impressed. This is more gotcha gaming from Matthews.

I've read up on Chamberlain and Czechoslovakia, but I couldn't recall the details while watching this interview. That's just the way memory degrades over time into broad themes.

I'm willing to forgive Kevin James the same way I'm willing to forgive Kirk Watson.

Posted by Creamy Goodness | May 16, 2008 10:03 AM

ABS - Always Be Shouting. A-Always B-Be S-Shouting. Always Be Shouting. About appeasers.

Posted by Adam Villani | May 16, 2008 10:05 AM

Thanks for posting that, since like almost everyone else, I never watch MSNBC and would have missed it. Matthews made this Bill James (whom I've never heard of) look like an idiot. That was funny. It reminds me of when the late Peter Jennings was moderating a Democratic debate and asked Al Sharpton who he would nominate as the next Federal Reserve Chairman and if he could offer some of his thoughts on monetary policy.

Posted by Fred | May 16, 2008 10:05 AM

The person who is literally a terrorist appeaser is George Bush. In OBL's taped message, he said one of their main goals is the liberation of Palestine.

So, if GWB takes part in giving some of Palestine back to the Palestinians, then he is appeasing OBL in the same why that Chamberlain gave Hitler parts of the land he wanted. In the end, he just emboldened Hitler to take all the rest, too.

And so it will be with GWB - by giving half of Palestine back now, as OBL wants, he's just emboldening OBL to take the rest by force.

The real way to proceed is to insist that Isreal never leave Palestine until al Queda is totally crushed throughout the world. (Even better would be to not create a Palestinian state until no one in world really wants it.)

Posted by Chuck | May 16, 2008 10:05 AM

Creamy Goodness, if you can't recall the details, you can't just call a guy "appeaser," either. You don't make the comparison. "I know he did something bad but I don't remember what it was, and Obama did something that was exactly the samet" is just not a valid statement. Nobody blames Kevin James for not knowing; we blame him for being a blowhard.

Posted by jhupp | May 16, 2008 10:07 AM

The whole coordinated "appeasement" thing is going to be a disaster for McCain. It ties him directly to Bush's foreign policy, at a time when he's ostensibly trying to "distance" himself from Bush. It also contradicts his earlier position.

Matt's colleague Marc Ambinder is the only one I've seen notice this, but I bet Obama's folks haven't missed it. Watch him slam the Bush-McCain foreign policy.

Posted by David in NY | May 16, 2008 10:08 AM

I've read up on Chamberlain and Czechoslovakia, but I couldn't recall the details while watching this interview.

Give me a break. You don't need to recall the exact details. But if you don't know anything more than "Chamberlain was an appeaser" then you are an idiot. Especially if all your foreign policy arguments are based on Chamberlain analogies.

Posted by Jim W | May 16, 2008 10:08 AM

The talk radio guy is a meathead and had it coming. Matthews slapped around a state senator from Texas a few weeks ago. The state senator was an Obama backer, and Matthews pressed him on the reasons he liked Obama, besides the fantasies of "hope and change."

The Texan was unable to recite any legislation or any other reason to support Obama.

Matthews beats up on the little guy.

Matthews does not have the balls to press a US Senator around like this, yet there are plenty US Senators who are just as stupid as Kevin James.

Posted by del | May 16, 2008 10:10 AM

It would have been a lot less painful for Righty McBlowhard if he'd just admitted, when first asked, that he didn't recall what Chamberlain did (though you really ought to know that before calling someone a Nazi appeaser). Instead he keeps shouting "appeasement" over and over. I don't know, maybe that's considered a valid line of reasoning in the world of right-wing radio. I almost felt bad for the moron.

Posted by Kraz | May 16, 2008 10:11 AM

By the way, one of the reasons that the Bush Administration, along with the Governments of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are nervous about one on one Israeli negotiations with Syria is that they don't trust Olmert not to sell out Lebanon in order to make a deal with Assad.

Posted by SLC | May 16, 2008 10:11 AM

Fred - this talk show host is Kevin James, not Bill James. Bill James is the baseball statistician. Kevin James is also the name of the lead actor in The King of Queens, but that guy is probably smarter than this Kevin James. Yeah, I'd never heard of this guy, either.

Posted by Adam Villani | May 16, 2008 10:12 AM

Matthews made this Bill James (whom I've never heard of) look like an idiot.

"What did the Black Sox do, Bill?"

Posted by Mike | May 16, 2008 10:13 AM

even someone as dense as this clown probably realizes how much he embarassed himself. what i'm looking forward to is what he has to say today....

Posted by howard | May 16, 2008 10:15 AM

Bill James says that this guy's VORP (Value Over Replacement Pundit) is a measly 0.7.

Posted by Delicous Pundit | May 16, 2008 10:16 AM

You don't need to recall the exact details. But if you don't know anything more than "Chamberlain was an appeaser" then you are an idiot. Especially if all your foreign policy arguments are based on Chamberlain analogies.

Exactly. And how much of an arrogant dick do you have to be to accept a booking to go on television to talk about something you know nothing about and then not spend even five minutes looking stuff up on Wikipedia?

Speaking of Wikipedia, half the Kevin James page is about yesterday's Hardball appearance.

Posted by mark f | May 16, 2008 10:17 AM

Creamy Goodness,

Matthews wasn't just playing gotcha. It is pretty obvious by the end of the clip that he was basically trying to make SLC's point (that appeasement is giving away something you shouldn't, not merely talking). But the problem is that Matthews couldn't even get that far, because James had no clue what he was talking about. So nailing James down on the fact that he had no idea what appeasement actually means was crucial, because it allowed Matthews to make his point clearly.

Posted by DTM | May 16, 2008 10:22 AM

Yes, the incident is now up on Kevin James' wikipedia page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_James_(broadcaster)

Posted by willie | May 16, 2008 10:24 AM

It's a pretty instructive take on "Talking Points". Talking points originally were the message(s) you were supposed to hit while generally talking about anything. But as this clip shows, the only thing out of his mouth was a talking point. The guy was literally incapable of saying anything other than "appeaser, appeaser, appeasement".

While Matthews is entitled to kudos for revealing the guy to be an ignorant shill, it is pretty damning that this stuff goes on all the time - but generally uncorrected by anyone in the media - because they absolutely refuse to probe behind the obvious talking points of these blowhards.

Posted by McKingford | May 16, 2008 10:24 AM

This is a fascinating look into what being a right-wing radio talk show host is all about. The guy never stops yelling, repeating the same talking point over and over again, but actually has no idea what any of it actually means.

Also, I was under the impression that Republican manly-men spent a lot of time watching the WWII documentaries on the History Channel. You'd have thought James might have learned something.

Posted by Tyro | May 16, 2008 10:27 AM

I've read up on Chamberlain and Czechoslovakia, but I couldn't recall the details while watching this interview. That's just the way memory degrades over time into broad themes.

I doubt Matthews was looking for a nuanced analysis of the Munich Agreement. All he was looking for was the word "Czechoslovakia" and he would have been satisfied. I have to say though, I love the explanation that perhaps he wasn't historically ignorant, his knowledge of the buildup to WW2 had just degraded to a broad theme of appeasement. Maybe if you were going to go on national TV to compare the Democratic nominee to Nazi appeasers you should try to remind yourself of some of the details.

Posted by ibid | May 16, 2008 10:31 AM

You'd have to assume that if this guy was going to be on national television he would've let his radio audience know about it. I'd love it if some LA area people would listen to his show and let us know if he spends part of today:

a. making lame excuses for freezing up
b. castigating the "liberal media"
c. pretending he never went on tv ever

Posted by mark f | May 16, 2008 10:37 AM

ibid: "I have to say though, I love the explanation that perhaps he wasn't historically ignorant, his knowledge of the buildup to WW2 had just degraded to a broad theme of appeasement."

Awesome.

P.S. Kirk Watson is also an idiot.

P.P.S. SLC is... right? I agree with him entirely.

Posted by Korha | May 16, 2008 10:40 AM

Also, I was under the impression that Republican manly-men spent a lot of time watching the WWII documentaries on the History Channel. You'd have thought James might have learned something.

They watch them the same way they watch porn. It's all about the action, baby; ignore the words.

Posted by Roboticghost | May 16, 2008 10:42 AM

I've read up on Chamberlain and Czechoslovakia, but I couldn't recall the details while watching this interview. That's just the way memory degrades over time into broad themes.

But the "broad theme" here is that making material concessions to overly ambitious regimes, in return for nothing more than a promise of peace, doesn't work. That was Chamberlain's folly, and is pretty much the idea for which "appeasement" has become shorthand. If he got the country wrong, or the timeframe wrong, it would easily be forgiven. But he got the very basic definition wrong, all the while shouting the word at the top of his lungs.

Posted by Brad L | May 16, 2008 10:54 AM

There is a revisionist take on Munich that holds that Chamberlain knew exactly what he was doing - buying a little time to expand the army, build the Spitfires, get this radar thing working, etc. - and was willing to be thought an idiot as a consequence.

SLC may also be right about the German situation, but that's a seriously high stakes poker game to play without much in the hole.

Posted by snoey | May 16, 2008 11:05 AM

"I was under the impression that Republican manly-men spent a lot of time watching the WWII documentaries on the History Channel."

What Roboticghost said. Calling Tony Soprano!

Posted by Henderstock | May 16, 2008 11:09 AM

The weird thing is that this is Chris Matthew's show. It was Chris Matthews people who booked this Kevin James guy to talk about this subject. Did they know where this was going? How could they not have? Chris Matthews knew, in advance, that Kevin James could not explain the events in Munish. How often does he ask those kind of basic historical fact questions when people start on some rant? How many times do people throw Munich around James without being asked to prove the know what is happening.

Posted by Tom in Ma | May 16, 2008 11:20 AM

I was startled. I just wasn't prepared for Matthews to slap down a conservative, and I shall try to see it as a sign of hope in campaign coverage to come. Still, the people that the "appeasement" line hope to sway aren't terribly interested in facts anyhow. They just have these feelings that Obama isn't one of "them" whereas people who shout "kill" are. Just pray that segment can become a little more marginalized.

Posted by John Haber | May 16, 2008 11:21 AM

That was incredible. Buffoonery at its finest!!

Posted by edsbowlingshoe | May 16, 2008 11:24 AM

Re snoey

The revisionist take on Munich is usually raised by Chamberlain apologists. I would suggest historian Walter Goerlitzs' book, "A History of the German General Staff," which shows that the German armed forces were in no condition to start a European war in 1938. The unfortunate fact is that Germany made better use of the time in between Munich and April, 1940 when the attack in the West took place then did the British and French relative to building up their ground forces, particularly their Panzer units, and supporting tactical air forces.

Posted by SLC | May 16, 2008 11:25 AM

After I stopped laughing I had the same reaction as Tom. They might have tried to bring in someone knowledgable for a quiet discussion, but they chose this instead: maybe Matthews should call his show "Lowball." On the other hand, I bet it's a pretty short list of people who both understand, and are willing to defend, the historical analogy. I guess if ignoramuses are all you have to work with, then simply holding them up ridicule isn't such a bad idea. Also, I'm still laughing about it, so it couldn't have been all bad.

Posted by mark | May 16, 2008 11:27 AM

My reading of the history agrees with what SLC just said.

It is important to point out, though, that in a democracy, you usually have to make it very clear that your opponent is negotiating in bad faith in order to mobilize the population. This is particularly true following the disillusionment of WWI. Having said that, though, Chamberlain went way too far, giving away an important ally that Hitler would have had a hard time beating.

Posted by Jim W | May 16, 2008 11:31 AM

There is a revisionist take on Munich that holds that Chamberlain knew exactly what he was doing - buying a little time to expand the army, build the Spitfires, get this radar thing working, etc. - and was willing to be thought an idiot as a consequence.

While this was arguably true of some of the appeasers (Halifax, maybe, or Simon), it is emphatically not true of Chamberlain, who really wanted an agreement with Hitler that would bring "peace in our time." He thought he got such an agreement, or the beginnings of such an agreement, at Munich, separately and in addition to the agreement to sell out Czechoslovakia, which is why he was so embarrassingly proud of what was ultimately an abject surrender.

It was only after Hitler swallowed the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 that Chamberlain realized he'd been had - and even there the evidence suggests he was still hoping until war broke out in September for some kind of agreement with Hitler. (Prague was defeinitely a wake-up call to the less deluded appeasers, though).

And the reason that Chamberlain is a byword for appeasement isn't so much that he favored it, as that he was so damned proud of it. For Chamberlain, appeasement was a policy of strength, not a weak surrender - it was a positive, directed policy which he thought would prevent a war. He was disastrously wrong, and there's just no evidence that he actually knew all along that the war was coming - in fact, he was still trying to avoid a declaration of war on September 3, until a cabinet revolt forced him into it.

The problem with revisionist arguments like this is that it assumes that historical figures are a blank canvas, and that we can impute any private thoughts to them that we want, so long as they are consistent with their public statements and actions. But for someone like Chamberlain, this isn't true. There's tons of evidence for what he privately thought about appeasement, and virtually none of it suggests that he was simply biding for time. (Also, while the British were manifestly unprepared for war in 1938, and did spend the intervening time becoming more prepared, the time was better spent by the Germans, who were really in no state to go to war in 1938).

Posted by John | May 16, 2008 11:35 AM

John Haber,

I agree many of the people who make up the potential audience for someone like James aren't overly interested in facts, but I also think a nontrivial number of them are only interested in rooting for the winning team in politics. So the fact that Matthews made a fool of James probably had an impact on some of these people, even if his ignorance per se would not have been a problem.

Posted by DTM | May 16, 2008 11:36 AM

Sigh. What a moron. My sense of it is that the idiot factor on the right wing side of the talk show universe is higher than that on the left wing side (though there are some standouts on the left--Taylor Marsh comes to mind), and I say that as a moderate Republican.

Is it true he went to Oklahoma? That's swell. He has no knowledge of the history of WWII, but I bet he can rattle off all kinds of history and stats about the football team.

Posted by Claudius | May 16, 2008 11:38 AM

It's a confounding thing - the folks who clamor "appeasement!" at any attempt to diplomatically engage our foes and/or certain countries with reprehensible leadership and government seem to believe that "tough talk" actually makes them tough.

Cheerleading for more warmongering, aggression, and confrontation instead of encouraging diplomacy doesn't make you tough. The folks who are shaking in their boots out of fear and who consistently advocate war to quell these fears, the folks who are so amoral as to advocate violence when diplomacy will do - this kind of nonsense exposes most of these "studs with a keyboard" as wimps who should be holding a pair of pom-poms in the real world. It's nice to see one of these blowhards, Kevin James, destroyed on national TV....

Posted by edsbowlingshoe | May 16, 2008 11:39 AM

I am completely mystified by the throng of bloviating idiots who pollute the airwaves under the guise of being "experts". Chris Matthews provided one the rare moments when the reality of this embarrassment was openly displayed.

Oddly though, much as I find James repulsive beyond measure, I actually felt a slight twinge of sympathy for him. I am an avid reader of history, have two degrees in history, have read extensively in the history of WWII. Yet, when Matthews asked the question I had to stop for a second and think, "What did he do?" Then a surprisingly timid voice in my head said "Signed a treaty that ceded territory to the Nazis and proclaimed 'Peace in our time'." Then I started fumbling for what territory it was. Now this is something that I know something about, and if we were having a discussion of the diplomacy leading to WWII, I could discuss it quite well, but context is everything.

It wasn't the actual facts that James lacked which I found so appalling, it was his need to start shouting that he knew what he was talking about, when he didn't. He revealed a serious inability to listen coupled with an utter lack of intellectual curiousity, while attempting to portray himself as an intellectual "expert" at the same time.

Posted by Sherry | May 16, 2008 11:41 AM

Re Jim W

Not to belabor this point as I think we have beat it to death at this juncture, but Mr. Jim W raises an excellent point relative the military assets of Czechoslovakia at the time. The fact is that Czechoslovakia had one of the most modern armed forces and arms industries at the time, unlike Poland in 1939 which opposed the German Panzers with horsed cavalry. Given also the much more mountainous terrain in Czechoslovakia, I think that the Germans in 1938 would have had a much tougher time then they did with Poland in 1939. The fact is that Chamberlain gave away the Czech military assets for nothing but a piece of paper.

Posted by SLC | May 16, 2008 11:43 AM

Can you believe that the stupid jock-meathead guy was a federal prosecutor, a grad of Oklahoma University and a graduate of the University of Houston law school?

Two words: Andy McCarthy.

Nothing's shocking.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | May 16, 2008 12:08 PM

SLC-- Right, all the Czechoslovakian fortifications were based on their ownership of the Sudetenland. They would have been much more formidable than Poland.

Handy chart for right-wing talk show hosts: Appeasement = giving things away for a worthless piece of paper. Talking to bad people (ie, Nixon-Mao, Reagan-USSR) != appeasement.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | May 16, 2008 12:12 PM

Bill James says that this guy's VORP (Value Over Replacement Pundit) is a measly 0.7.

That made my day!

Posted by Mark S. | May 16, 2008 12:21 PM

Hey, am I the only person watching this from the ACTUAL Sudetenland? DOUBLE HILARIOUS!

By the by, SLC above has it: the Czechs were pretty seriously ready to rumble in 1938, and the thrust of Nazi anti-Czechoslovak propaganda at the time, was a fear of long-range Czech bombers. This was not entirely bullshit. We'll never know, but Beneš and his military might have given Hitler his Finland. As it was, it was pure retardation to allow the Škoda works and the Česka Zbrojovka gunworks to fall into Nazi hands.

Posted by ERM | May 16, 2008 12:29 PM

To add onto what Jim W and SLC have said, part of the reason why Chamberlain was willing to sign away Czechoslovakia was that he didn't consider Slavic peoples as equal to Anglo-Saxons and didn't think they were worth fighting for.

Posted by Reality Man | May 16, 2008 12:38 PM

"Matthews does not have the balls to press a US Senator around like this, yet there are plenty US Senators who are just as stupid as Kevin James."

Um, actually he does and he did.

Arguably Matthews' most famous interview came in 2004 at the GOP convention. He interviewed then-Senator of Georgia Zel Miller. Miller was a Democrat who, in his last year in the US Senate, had decided to support George Bush. Matthews had him on to answer to his charge that (Miller) believed John Kerry wanted to US to defend itself with nothing more than spitballs.

This was the interview where Sen. Miller went crazy, screaming at Matthews “get outta my face†and “I wish we lived in the days when you could challenge a man to a duel†on live TV! You could argue that Matthews was a bit more respectful because the man was a sitting US Senator but Miller still ended up looking like an idiot.

Also, I don’t know why so many far-left liberals still have it out for Matthews. Back in 2000, yeah, I understand. But by 2008 he’s pro-gay marriage, was anti-Iraqi War since day one and is one of the most racially sensitive “old white men†on TV.

Posted by Raindog | May 16, 2008 12:39 PM

Actually, this reminds me of when Matthews ambushed Kirk Watson, asking him to name one thing Obama had accomplished in the Senate. It may be funny now that he's targeting the right but how long before he snipes one of the good guys again? This is still the lowest form of gotcha journalism. We should not be encouraging it.

Posted by Kevin | May 16, 2008 12:40 PM

Kevin, both of those were valid questions, and asking a benign but pointed question which provokes an out-of-proportion reaction (Zell Miller challenging Matthews to a duel, for example), is completely fair. How is this "the lowest form of gotcha journalism"? In the most recent case, if you watch the video, this is forcing and irrational, screaming guest to actually back up his own statements and calling him on it when he can't.

Posted by Tyro | May 16, 2008 12:50 PM

SLC, while I agree completely with your take on Chamberlain's motives and actions, you're ignoring that the greatest blame for the fiasco lies with the Czech government themselves.

They didn't have to give up the fortifications, their army was extremely well-prepared, not to mention the 35(t) and 38(t) were equal to or better than anything the Reich possessed.

Finally, in '38, after the Sudetenland was signed over, again, by the *Czech* government, not by anyone else, Hitler toured the defences with his generals. They were appalled, and they did not believe they could have taken them, certainly not without wrecking the army. Remember, after all, the Maginot Line didn't fall until France itself capitulated, so it's not like massive defence lines were useless.

Hitler's response was classic Hitler: "It's not the guns, but the men behind them."

Posted by Greg | May 16, 2008 1:01 PM

I agree with Tyro. Requiring your guests to actually, umm, know stuff about the subject for which they are appearing on your show is not "gotcha journalism." It's just journalism. Even if the dope in question is supporting your candidate (the dopey Kirk Watson was supporing mine).

Posted by Led | May 16, 2008 1:08 PM

That's the funniest TV spot in forever and ever. Is James a Democratic plant or operative? He's the dumbest politico I've ever seen.

Does James still have a job today?

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | May 16, 2008 1:09 PM

To add onto what Jim W and SLC have said, part of the reason why Chamberlain was willing to sign away Czechoslovakia was that he didn't consider Slavic peoples as equal to Anglo-Saxons and didn't think they were worth fighting for.

Which explains why he signed a mutual defense pact with Poland, because, of course, Poles... aren't... Slavs?

Posted by ajay | May 16, 2008 1:10 PM

re: gotcha journalism

Oh, balls. If the GOP sets out to turn history on its head, it's hardly "gotcha journalism" to expect that they should know the history they want to rewrite.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | May 16, 2008 1:15 PM

I would suggest historian Walter Goerlitzs' book, "A History of the German General Staff," which shows that the German armed forces were in no condition to start a European war in 1938.

The problem was, neither were the British.

Look, the best defense of Munich is that it delayed things long enough for the British and the Americans to ramp up their war machines. Churchill has an inflated reputation now, but he wasn't showcasing intellectual brilliance and foreign policy acumen so much as screaming from the sidelines about how horrible Chamberlain's foreign policy was. It's always easy to call for a war when the government opposes it, because then you aren't held accountable for how it turns out. And given the Nazi atrocities, it's understandable to wish that someone could have stopped them sooner. But the reality is, the best time to get into World War II was probably when Chamberlain actually committed Britain to it.

But Matthews' point is also correct. To the extent that the criticism of Chamberlain is valid, it's not that he talked to Hitler, but that he offered a big chunk of Czechoslovakia to him.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 16, 2008 1:18 PM

And the reason that Chamberlain is a byword for appeasement isn't so much that he favored it, as that he was so damned proud of it. For Chamberlain, appeasement was a policy of strength, not a weak surrender - it was a positive, directed policy which he thought would prevent a war. He was disastrously wrong, and there's just no evidence that he actually knew all along that the war was coming - in fact, he was still trying to avoid a declaration of war on September 3, until a cabinet revolt forced him into it.

The problem with that view is that at the same time, Chamberlain WAS ramping up the British war machine, and furiously. That suggests that he was quite aware that Hitler might breach his pacts.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 16, 2008 1:21 PM

Actually, this reminds me of when Matthews ambushed Kirk Watson, asking him to name one thing Obama had accomplished in the Senate.

So, I went back and watched that one, too, for comparison's sake.

Here's the difference: Watson never started with an assertion about Obama's degree of accomplishment. Matthews asked him to name them, and Watson averred, wanting to discuss other aspects of the campaign. Matthews persisted, and Watson admitted he couldn't name legislation. Matthews asked if this was a problem, and Watson said "no."

So far, this was mostly fair game. There was a certain amount of "gotcha" here when Matthews didn't ask the obvious followup, "So why do you support him?" while continuing to cut Watson off when he tried to explain that. Then, later returning to the question after Watson had already admitted he couldn't answer it seemed like nothing more than bullying.

Gotcha score: 5 out of 10. Valid but unprompted question to someone that had not made a particular assertion. Unwillingness to listen to other reasons of support after honest answers were provided to the original questions. Further humiliation.
Entertainment score: 3 of 10.

This piece:
The guy had already agreed with the Obama-as-appeaser statement (at least, according to wikipedia, but not shown on the clip). When asked specifics, he kept returning to "appeasement" but never explaining why or answering the question.

Gotcha score: 0 out of 10. Valid question about a previous assertion. Hectoring following very poor dodges of the question.
Entertainment score: 10 of 10

Posted by Brad L | May 16, 2008 1:29 PM

It bears asking what it is about the Republican mindset and mental state that people like James and Hannity end up irrationally screaming like this, without any prompting. I'm not saying that one has to be a mentally ill, bullying screamer to be Republican, but certainly people of that personality type are drawn to the Republican party in disproportionate numbers.

Is there any universe where Mr. James' behavior -- not even counting his brazen ignorance -- is considered acceptable? Is this how Republicans live their lives? If so, it points to a cultural and spiritual crisis that, no doubt, has led to their current problems.

Posted by Tyro | May 16, 2008 1:36 PM

this is pretty funny. chris does take it a bit far toward the end when it's clear he obviously doesn't know the answer. he should have just said something like "that's very interesting insight."

i wonder how many people on this blog would have recalled the details of cession of Sudetenland to Hitler.

Posted by hardball | May 16, 2008 1:54 PM

Well it's interesting how this total collapse of the Standard Wingnut Debating Technique&tm; highlights the contours of same. Not that there's any great mystery about it, but watching the guy gamely soldiering on, bellowing his GOPFax Buzzword o'the Day(tm) when the whole foundation has crumbled out from under it is really kind of illuminating. The whole procedure is so scripted and robotic and uniform not just within this interview but across the whole species that it makes you wonder whether there isn't some genuine central training center for it. I mean, they couldn't achieve this degree of clone-like consistency if they just picked it up from watching each other, could they?

Posted by DrBB | May 16, 2008 2:01 PM

Sherry, you're also a) not a person who is on media for a living and b) not a person who was specifically on the show to talk about Chamberlain and appeasement. And you still had an answer.

Raindog, all that's nice, but he's still the guy who called Hillary Clinton a 'witch' and 'Nurse Ratched' and practically cried when she won NH. (And I say all this as an Obama supporter.)

Posted by Persia | May 16, 2008 2:02 PM

i wonder how many people on this blog would have recalled the details of cession of Sudetenland to Hitler.

Um, answer appears to be "Quite a few," if you read upthread at all.

Posted by DrBB | May 16, 2008 2:09 PM

i wonder how many people on this blog would have recalled the details of cession of Sudetenland to Hitler.

My guess:

Number of people that could recall the word "Sudetenland," 1-5%.

Number of people that knew that Chamberlain actually gave something away and could have said so: 95+%.

Posted by Brad L | May 16, 2008 2:44 PM

"Um, answer appears to be 'Quite a few,' if you read upthread at all."

Selection bias. Few people who didn't know are going to be motivated to admit that they didn't.

That said, I didn't. All I would have been able to say was that he negotiated with Hitler believing that Hitler was negotiating in good faith. I might have remembered the "peace in our time" line. I did not remember, if I ever learned it, that he had negotiated away Sudetenland.

On the other hand, were I to be asked to appear on national TV to discuss comparisons to Chamberlain, you better believe I would have studied the history beforehand.

And, of course, I would never have been making such comparisons as a radio host without brushing up on the history, as well.

It's really the willful, arrogant ignorance of Republicans that bothers me more than the ignorance itself.

On the other hand, I have a close friend who is conservative, has a Master's in Physics, who is fanatical about researching every and any issue about which he has an opinion and believes that it's the liberals who are ignorant. He likes to play "gotchya" with elected officials with regard to factual matters in correspondence and phone calls. YMMV.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | May 16, 2008 3:04 PM

Well, I guess the refighting of WW 2 goes on.

Re Greg

It's a little difficult to blame poor Benes when Chamberlain pulled the rug out from under him. If it had been just Germany against Czechoslovakia, Germany would have eventually won just on the basis of attrition, although the cost would have been much higher then was inflicted by Poland the following year.

Re Dilan Esper

The question is, who was more ready to fight in 1938, Britain, France and Czechoslovakia or Germany. Actually, Prof. Goerlitz is of the opinion that Hitler was bluffing and would have backed down if Chamberlain had stood up to him, which would have greatly improved the chances of the coup that the German General Staff was planning.

Posted by SLC | May 16, 2008 3:20 PM

Re: Kevin James.

Meth is a hell of a drug.

Posted by That Fuzzy Bastard | May 16, 2008 5:07 PM

Maybe yes, maybe no. The German general staff tried to kill Hitler on myriad occasions and never managed the trick, and it's highly unlikely that anything would have come of their attempt to overthrow Hitler at an early stage when he was still tremendously popular.

The desire to trot out Munich over and over are laughable on any number of levels, ranging from the fact that Germany was infinitely more formidable than any of the tinpot countries who we are now rattling our sabers at to the fact that Czechoslovakia was a failed state that was in the middle of disintegrating and that the Germans had as reasonable a claim to the Sudentenland as anyone.

But of course the biggest source of irony is the fact that England eventually got the war that Chamberlain wanted, and they promptly lost it. In June 1940, the coalition that was invested in defending the Czechs were soundly and thoroughly routed. Game over. That the Germans then decided to take on the Soviet Union opened the door for an eventual Allied victory, but they were very much defeated by 1940. Which is to say that Chamberlain might have done just as well by allowing the Nazis to have their Polish Corridor on top of the Sudentenland. Because he was certainly in no position to stop them with force.

Posted by Sean | May 16, 2008 5:44 PM

Excuse me, that should read "that Churchill wanted" (or just substitute "that the neo-cons of the day wanted."

Posted by Sean | May 16, 2008 6:00 PM

Re Sean

1. If Hitler was, in fact, bluffing at Munich, which Prof. Goerlitz says is the case, his popularity would have plummeted. That would have presented the best opportunity for a successful coup led by the German General Staff, in particular, Firsch and von Blomberg.

2. Certainly, even in 1938 Germany was far more formidable then Iran is today. However, at that time, Germany was ill prepared to wage a general European war against Britain, France, and Czechoslovakia. In particular, the panzer units which were crucial to the defeat of France in 1940 barely existed.

3. What is the basis of the claim that Czechoslovakia was a failed state in 1938 and was collapsing from within? The fact is that Czechoslovakia had the most modern armament industry on the European continent and would have been a formidable foe, particularly if supported by Britain and France. Furthermore, the notion that Germany had some sort of legitimate claim on the Sudetenland because of the large German population there is ill supported. What percentage of that population actually supported ceding it to Germany?

Posted by SLC | May 16, 2008 7:23 PM

The question is, who was more ready to fight in 1938, Britain, France and Czechoslovakia or Germany. Actually, Prof. Goerlitz is of the opinion that Hitler was bluffing and would have backed down if Chamberlain had stood up to him, which would have greatly improved the chances of the coup that the German General Staff was planning.

I'm certainly not going to claim that's impossible, SLC, but it is hardly certain either. And the criticism of Chamberlain comes from a mindset that says that it was certain that things would have turned out better if Britain had committed to going to war with Germany in 1938 to save Czechoslovakia. And I am far from convinced of that-- in fact, it very well may have come out worse.

And the mindset that flows from that assumption is, of course, poisonous, i.e., the conclusion that war is always better than diplomacy because any attempt at diplomacy and you could turn out to be the next Chamberlain.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 16, 2008 7:36 PM

We shouldn't be so hasty to rule out appeasement as a strategy--what if Obama offered Appalachia to the terrorists?

Posted by nick | May 16, 2008 8:43 PM

Relative to all the other TV yutzes passing as journalists - Matthews has been good all along. Calling out the ziocons for insanity and anti-American treachery, questioning the U.S.- Israel entanglement, not being shrill, self-serving, or two-dimensional. He has not positioned himself as a pseudo-liberal Dem Party flack, but rather as a Patriot. All the prudish, atavistic "Tweety" shit has missed his positive contribuitions to the national dialogue.

Posted by Trevor | May 16, 2008 8:57 PM

To do penance for being an idiot, James should be required to be a call-in on George Galloway's radio show in England.

Galloway will rip him a new one. Nobody beats George Galloway - not even Hitchens.

Examples:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtw5Zy2M6rk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xpPIvRN6AI&feature=related

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | May 16, 2008 9:09 PM

Re Dilan Esper

"And the criticism of Chamberlain comes from a mindset that says that it was certain that things would have turned out better if Britain had committed to going to war with Germany in 1938 to save Czechoslovakia. And I am far from convinced of that-- in fact, it very well may have come out worse."

1. It could hardly have turned out worse. The point is that it is highly likely that the German army would have been bogged down in Czechoslovakia, giving time for Britain and France to mobilize their forces and plan an attack on Germanys' back door. The Polish campaign went so quickly that the British and French high commands were mesmerized and were placed in a defensive minded mentality.

2. It should also be recalled that the main reason that Britain and France were defeated in 1940 was that they deployed their forces in Belgium in anticipation of a repeat of the Schlieffen plan of 1914 whereas the main panzer thrust came by way of Sedan, through the Ardennes, which was defended by third rate forces. In fact, the original German plan of attack was the Schlieffen plan but a plane crash which delivered documentation of the German order of battle to the British and French intelligence agencies caused the change in the German deployments. Had the Germans actually employed the Schlieffen plan, they probably would have been defeated because of a substantial British/Frence advantage in numbers.

Posted by SLC | May 16, 2008 9:20 PM

Hitler's reported response to the Munich Pact was: "they have cheated me out of my war". He was a madman looking to provoke a fight with Russia and believed that England was a natural ally of Germany. It wasn't until Chamberlain laid down the marker over Poland that Hitler decided to "cook [England] a stew they would choke on" and signed his pact with Stalin. Chamberlain's biggest diplomatic blunder was not getting to Stalin first. It was fear of negotiation not appeasement that failed to contain Hitler.

Posted by Just Karl | May 16, 2008 10:36 PM

Chris Matthews decided he'd like to go to Heaven someday after all?

Posted by aleks | May 16, 2008 10:39 PM

Y'all know Kevin James was once a US Attorney?

This was not some under educated store clerk who decided to become a pundit after being inspired by Hannity.

This is the meritocracy in action.

Posted by Comment | May 17, 2008 5:57 AM

It could hardly have turned out worse.

SLC, of course it could. Britain could have gone to war with Germany, as Churchill advocated, and lost. That would have been FAR worse than what actually happened in WW2.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 17, 2008 6:46 PM