Chris Matthews Must Go!
November 16, 2008
by The New Agenda
|Exhibit 1
For those of you still willing (and able) to watch the MSM after the election, there seems to be a fair amount of self-examination going on. Some, like the Washington Post, are realizing that in the end, their organization was totally imbalanced during the election. Other organizations are gasping for air (read: audience), post November 4th.
As with any shake out, there will be winners and losers. Some will benefit, others will get left at the road side. NOW is our time to act!
The New Agenda wants to put together a coalition of groups to finally, once and for all, take down Chris Matthews. We need your help.
Let us know your suggestions for organizations that we can partner with. We need women’s rights groups, media watch dog groups, political activist group, and others that you think can be constructive in a team type effort.
Please share your thoughts below.
That is disgusting! I can’t believe Chris Matthews did that on air. I feel so bad for that young woman. I am brainstorming and will let you know if I have any ideas.
The Women’s Media Center
http://www.womensmediacenter.com/index.html
Am I missing something? All I have is an empty space at the top?
The top of my screen I mean.
We can make sure that Matthews does not even get near a race for PA Senator, as has been rumored. He has no more entitlement to public service than Larry Summers.
But I agree with Matthews as an already illegtimate host on any news channel – he’s the resident sexist buffoon on MSNBC, and should not be given a national playground to get his jollies from. Here, it’s at the expense of one of CNBC’s premier financial reporters, Erin Burnett – treated as a plaything for Matthews’ perverse thrills. It’s shocking in 2008 to see this. He’s the Hugh Hefner of cable news.
Count me in – he must go.
I didn’t think it was that bad. If anything Matthews is a shoddy reporter who is refusing to do his job correctly. He can also be described as a 5 year child.
Okay now I can see it. That poor woman was sooo uncomfortable. I guess that is his normal tack if he doesn’t agree with something a woman says? Just make them so uncomfortable they can’t speak.
Erin is a very prominent business news anchor. She is on prime time while the markets are open on CNBC.
She was a guest on his show in this segment to speak about financial matters. She is part of the “NBC Team” and this is the way he treated a colleague!
He needs to go, and MSNBC needs to replace him with a woman.
Check this out, from Media Matters
Is there a woman Chris Matthews hasn’t sexualized?
He needs to go, like, yesterday.
Wow Dawn! He’s been doing this for years! I don’t ever watch that network but somebody must. How has he gotten away with this for so long? What a **** He really makes my skin crawl!
For years and years, Cynthia. Here’s a fairly comprehensive list. When you get down to the bottom, you realize how far back it goes.
I don’t know how he’s gotten away with it. Can you imagine if he was talking about an ethnic minority the way he talks about women?
[LINK FIXED]
Has anyone mentioned Women Count as a partnering org.?
http://www.womencount.org/its_our_time
Check it out.
today was the first day I could actually bring myelf to read the Sunday newspaper after the election, let alone watch Hardball.
I am astonished that Matthews and MSNBC gets away with this kind of behavior. It is insult to women everywhere that a respected journalist be treated that way. I think this man has really lost all sense of propriety and journalistic principles. A disgrace!
Disgusting! Here’s what we can do:
1. Who is Chis Matthews’ boss? Can someone find the name and email addresses of who we can write to? i.e., his boss, manager of the news organization, president and CEO of the news organization, and Chris Matthews himself.
2. Let’s blanket them with an email campaign about his inappropriateness, disrespectful, unprofessional behavior.
Can someone provide us with names and emails?
Jeffrey Zucker is his boss. We did write Zucker a letter in September which is listed under our Action tab:
http://thenewagenda.net/septem.....ff-zucker/
We did not receive a response. As a result, when I was asked to appear on MSNBC, we refused:
http://thenewagenda.net/2008/0.....no-thanks/
Here are some emails I found online:
Executive Producer Jeff Zucker –
jeff.zucker@nbc.com –212-664-2830
Steven Capus, exec producer — steven.capus@msnbc.com –201-583-5102
Hardball with Chris Matthews — hardball@msnbc.com
letters@msnbc.com world@msnbc.com
Looks like there has been a lot of protest about Chris Matthews, yet he is still on the air: http://guerillawomentn.blogspo.....chris.html
It’s time for change! Voice your opinions!
1. Media reassessment after the fact is nothing new. They act like idiots then wring their hands afterwards about what they did wrong and could have done better, then proceed to repeat the same mistakes the next election cycle. Sad, but true.
2. The Women’s Media Center and Women Count pac are great ideas. Also, what about Lynette Long’s web site?
3. Contacting the top brass is crucial. I think PUMApac blog might have some of this contact info in their Action Center, but not sure.
4. Identify basic journalsitic standards of conduct to use as a baseline to compare Chris Matthews to in making our case against him.
5. Will continue to brainstorm and share any additional ideas I come up with tomorrow…
Amy – Just saw your post pop up. Why did you decide not to appear on the show? It sounds like it was because Mr. Zucker didn’t have the courtesy to respond to your letter, but I don’t want to presume. I’d like to understand so I can have a better idea about how to think about this.
Amy -Ignore my prior post. I just read the link about your reasons. Will give all of this some more thought tomorrow. I agree that the message needs to be strong, unified and as large and as loud as we can make it.
One last idea for the night:
First: Brianstorm people and organizations who might be supportive of our idea to take action for Matthews to go.
Second: Contact those individuals and ask if they would join an ever growing chorus of voices to apply pressure for MSNBC to take action.
Third: Figure out the best mode of communication, be it via a petition that peope sign, a coordinated letter writing effort, public protest, etc.
My take is that he is just plain in love with himself.
I remember these kind of guys in JR. High and one hopes they they grow up. Not Chris.
There will always be a new Chris Matthews. That is why we need consumer rights. We need the OPTION of cable TV a la carte so we can call up and cancel channels like MSNBC when this stuff happens. Short of that contact the sponsors of his show directly and in a coordinated manner.
I don’t feel sorry for the woman in the video. I feel sorry for the people who can’t afford to stay in their home. That is the group being maligned by Matthew’s “boy-meets-girl” antics at the moment of orchestrated “compassion”. These people have already tuned out.
What is needed is an equation between Matthew’s language and misogyny. Something along the lines of a media campaign with a “Willie Horton” type ad. Splice Matthew’s sex-based language with YouTube clips of woman being brutalized. There are plenty to be found and, I suspect, there will be more coming.
Thanks for that, Sarah. I hadn’t noticed what she was saying when he started harassing her.
I read the list in my second link above, and I imagine what would happen if Matthews behaved like that in an office environment. He’d have so many sexual harassment complaints that he’d be a constant liability to his employers.
If he’d be a liability to employers, he can be made a liability to his allies and associates. I think we should go after anyone who associates with him, anyone who supports him, anyone who tolerates his misogynistic antics. They need some motivation to cut him loose. What if women refused to appear on his show?
Is she the journalist who did a (nude) cover for Maxxim?
I find it hard to ‘read’ her reactions – embarassed? confused? pleased? uncertain? I don’t think she is mad, not with the repeated smiling. I think for many men, she comes across as flattered somehow – it is that the prolonged smiling on her part. Where is the chagrin, the anger, the hurt? All victim, no fighter? I have just about as much to complain about over Erin as I do Chris.
Is she thinking this is just part of it? Par for the course? I hardly regard her as some kind of victim here – she is intelligent, capable, mature, why didn’t she at least say, ” What does my appearance have to do with the housing crisis, Chris?” why didn’t she this? This was not some kind of seedy atmosphere where she would have to worry about physical retaliation for standing up to a sexist pig.
“Resident sexual buffoon” (Marie) sums it up and I wonder what MSN’s will have to say about the barrage of emails from women objecting to this sexism played out on national TV?
I think it’s really unfair to attack Erin for not calling Matthews on his sexism at that exact moment. First, he played a joke on her, asking her to move toward the camera when she had no idea what was going on. The laughter surely came out of surprise and I bet she was fuming when she had a moment to digest it all. But when sexism comes like that – passing a colleague briefly in the hallway, at an important meeting, during a moment of intense busyness on the job – it’s hard to give the perfect response.
When it comes to this sort of sexism we are viewers – and it is up to ALL of us to be the fighters.
If Erin has a problem with Matthews she can file a suit, otherwise it seems like you are inflating the seriousness of the situation. There are plenty of other more serious issues women need to spend their time on. I wasn’t offended by this clip.
I just check out the mediamatters link from the 2nd comment. that gives me creeps. you start seeing how chris mathews uses his “chris Mathews test” = judgement of female physique by chris mathews as a weapon. I learned at the site that he is a judge on beauty contests.
he definitively gets any woman off track in an interview by these comments. judgemental praise does that. it makes you almost apologize and you can’t apologize for looks.
we have to get chris mathews off air and not in congress. but the method is widely used by some men. and the effects need to be understood and a counter strategy developed. just like in martial arts we need to have a good defense strategy beyond taking one guy out.
something like standard response to judgement of physique:
‘ so, are we on a beauty contest here, thought the interview was about…” and off course never get too close to a camera. in the above instant be prepared and question his eyesight, whether he needs glasses.
I don’t think it had anything to do with her being too close to the camera, I think he just made that up after the fact. I think she was just so uncomfortable she didn’t know what was wrong. At one point it looks like she is checking her blouse buttons and wondering if there is something on her face or in her nose. That is what I would think at first. I don’t think I would be peeved until he said “knockout”. She was just caught off guard and didn’t know what the little jerk was talking about. I have had that happen when someone has said something so inapropriate that I was just in shock for a minute or two thinking “surely that isn’t what he said? I must have heard that wrong????”
The point is taken , Erin was caught off guard. I would like to hope that someone at the top or near the top of their profession would/could be a little faster on their feet than this, as if Erin was blindly ignorant of such crude antics on the part of Matthews, not the case. I wonder how he acts around wives and daughters and sisters of senior MSN management.? This is really disgusting.
Keep in mind too that they are usually just looking into a camera and she probably couldn’t see his smirky leering face like we can.
-another point taken, she couldnt have reached over and applied some pepper spray to his beady eyes. The more I think about it the more disgusting it gets – on national TV, what is senior management saying? probably nothing, apparently this is a regular thing with this guy – I thought NA was going to give him some kind of misogyny award? Wasn’t there goint to be some kind of Sat. Night LIve type satire of him, a utube sort of thing? Am I imagining this?
That was Keith Olbermann from a couple of weeks ago if you are thinking of Ben Affleck.
http://showhype.com/video/satu.....olbermann/
We need women’s rights groups . .
It’s been a while since Martha Burke waged her ‘holy war on the patriarchy,’ as some liked to call her campaign against the Augusta Golf Club boyz. Her ‘National Council of Women’s Organizations’ includes some 200 powerful women’s groups. Why not reach out to her? It would be easier than contacting all 200 groups.
Together4us (Lynn de Rothschild’s site)
&
Women Count PAC are both vigilant about sexism in the media.
Guys we can’t blame the victim for the aggressor, the sexist asshole. I don’t blame her for reacting that way live on TV. Remember she still has a job to keep. No matter how she reacts to the sexism, it’s still sexism and it isn’t the victims job to stop men like Chris Mathews.
And really, how many of us have met blatant sexism in the workplace with an anxious giggle?
It’s the standard response to discomfort of that nature. I wish it weren’t so, but it is.
I remember a particular boss in my 20′s, to this day, that I reacted to in much the same way. I have thought about it many times over the years and would’a could’a should’ad it to death. I was the only female management trainee in a heavily male dominated industry and my boss was the most disgusting sexist jerk you have ever seen. I only had to do six months of training there and move on so I just put up with it.
There is one incident that sticks out the most in my mind. The business had a counter at the front for customers to wait and drink coffee etc. The cash box was behind the counter on the bottom shelf. There were several male customers at the counter and two salesmen and the manager behind it. While they were all laughing and talking, I went behind the counter to get the cash box (requiring that I get down on my knees and lean under the shelves.) The manager, my boss, said in a booming voice “hey baby, while you’re down there…” This was met of course with wild laughter and staring at me while my face turned beet red. My response was an embarrassed “oh shut up” while laughing nervously and I scuttled back to my office where I promptly burst into tears. I was tired from working 80 hour weeks to prove myself, partly embarrassed, partly ashamed, and partly angry. I went down the hall to get myself together in the bathroom and a guy who drove our delivery trucks was waiting in my office when I got back. He asked me if I was okay and if I wanted him to go punch the manager. I told him of course not but that I appreciated his support more than he would ever know. His answer to me was, “hey I have a wife and two daughters and that sh*ts just not right.” What an eloquent man! Surrounded by “civilized” college educated men who laughed and snickered at my humiliation, it was a truck driver with a criminal record (and a wife and two daughters) who got it. I knew I was only going to be there a little longer and I really needed a good review from this guy so I pretended it and many other things never happened and got the heck on to my next assignment as fast as possible.
If that had happened in my 30′s I probably would have gone berserk and introduced him to my kung fu grip
I have wondered many times what the women who came after me did and wished that I had done more to ease their journey.
Just stop watching him! Quit complaining about him and stop watching. He all ready has very low ratings and the lower he goes the better the chance they will dump him.
Watching his program, then complaining about him, makes no sense! They don’t care if you are happy about what you are watching. They just want you to watch so their ratings go up.
We have stopped watching him!
But now it’s time to make an example of him. That this kind of misogynistic behavior is simply not acceptable.
I understand that Tina Brown was on Morning Joe this morning and took on MSNBC’s treatment of Hillary. Way to go Tina!!!
kenoshaMarge,
I want them to know WHY nobody is watching. They have to understand that is just isn’t acceptable to have that kind of blatant sexism from what puports to be a serious news station. Even if they get rid of him, they could just throw another sexist jerk in behind him. I understand we don’t want to get carried away harping on every little thing and becoming overly sensitive, but since when did standing by and doing nothing accomplish anything? Pretending it isn’t really happening to other women and just crossing your fingers that it won’t happen to you isn’t working. Ignoring the victimization of others by “just changing the channel” is pathetic. I hate to keep drawing the same comparison, but if a major news channel was saying blatantly racist things do you really think the offended parties would just “change the channel?” Why do women have to just shut up and eat it when no other group would?
I listened to Chris Mathews last night and am thoroughly disgusted with his anti-Hillary rantings which are starting up again as she is considered for Secretary of State. I emailed NOW, Womencount.org, and Emily’s List, hoping all the women’s groups can coordinate and get this jerk fired once and for all. Hillary, who is a smart and wonderful lady, should not be trashed and abused like this – enough is enough. Our country has too many important issues at hand to listen to this crap. PLEASE do something about this. Thank you.
If there were any way at ALL to file a class action against Chris Matthews for his YEARS of misogyny I’d do it. He’s offended me personally so many times..and ALL women in general. This is HARMFUL to society at large and needs to be called out as being totally unacceptable. Clearly, this man is a sexist being allowed to ramble on, condescend to and offend half the population of America. He is solely responsible for the most irresponsible lies about Hillary Clinton in the primaries and the woman hating just oozes out of him.
I am all for doing whatever it takes to get his ass fired! If Zucker doesn’t have the good sense to get rid of this jerk then he needs to be taken to task. Did anyone hear about Obama paying off G.E.’s debt??
MSNBC is owned by G.E. Women in this country have all the purchasing power. Write to them and tell them you’re not only boycotting their propaganda show they call “news” but, that you are not buying any other G.E. products and WILL encourage others to do the same through word of mouth, blogs, emails and phone calls until they not only fire Matthews AND Olberman but, start reporting the actual news in a factual manner.
Women need to start thinking outside the box on this and make people take it more seriously. Where is the ACLU on such matters? We have a right not to be subjected to hate speech? Our first line of business is to get it considered HATE to carry on a career before the American people on live television that is built on nothing but, pure misogyny.
[...] does Chris feel that he must interrupt and comment on women’s [...]
Who are the sponsors for his show? That’s where the boycott should begin. Letters to them explaining why we won’t buy their products, and then a massive boycott. Also, publicity about the boycott. Make the sponsors look bad. “Refuse to ride the buses”.
Alice Paul on November 19th, 2008
Thanks. I promise not to buy GE products and I agree with both you and samanthasmom that our voices will be heard through boycotting. Money really talks. Once the membership is large enough, we can suggest that the New Agenda have a link on the site listing the sponsors of MSNBC, CNN, and any media that harbors misogynists.
I just spent the evening watching “9 to 5″. The term “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” still has meaning so many years later. The movie is still funny, but it’s sad that nothing much has changed.
samanthasmom,
I had forgotten about that line and I haven’t seen that movie in years. I’m going to see if I can rent it this weekend and in my mind just replace Dabney Coleman with you know who! Thanks for the smile
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