Why does Chris Matthews keep talking about drinking beer with Bush?

[The Backlash Cometh]

He said this in 2000, also. He claimed that most people would feel more comfortable drinking beer with Bush, than with his opponent.

And now he's bringing up the beer drinking reference again this year and I don't understand why. I would feel uncomfortable drinking alcohol in front of an alcoholic. In fact, I would feel very uncomfortable sitting down and talking to Bush about anything. He comes across like many honed elites that go around picking up trivia at cocktail parties to make themselves sound more intelligent than they really are. In Bush's case, he may even throw in a few self-deprecating jokes to make himself come across as common, but I don't really see the conversation hitting on anything new and exciting. A pretty boring evening, really.

Kerry on the other hand comes across like the real Washington outsider! He's running his campaign just the way any Joe Smith would. Even though the media claims he's a flip-flopper, I see a man who actually reads the fine print and adjusts his opinions based on the grey areas. That is a man who will listen to new facts as they present themselves, instead of staying a course that will send you over the cliff.

[jayfish]

1. Because He Is Weird. -NT-

Jay

[unfrigginreal]

2. "Kerry on the other hand comes across like the real Washington outsider"

Sorry, that statement is far out of touch with reality.

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. I know, I know. But look at what we've got with Kerry.

I have gone below the media filters and find something entirely different than what they portray. Kerry does talk issues, but the media just picks up on soundbites and doesn't go to the core of his thought processes.

Frankly, if he were a REAL Washington insider, he'd come across far more calculated and slick. You know, like Chris Matthews.

[mmonk]

3. I've heard him say

its ridiculous given the voting public won't be given that chance and that it means nothing. News is directed from the top now, not from those that speak to the camera (unless they are on HBO or something where they aren't controlled by their employers).

[billbuckhead]

5. This makes me crazy--BUSH IS A DRUNK!

Nothing good comes out of drinking with a drunk.

[Union Thug]

4. Bush is the absolute LAST person on earth...

with whom I would want to lift a pint. He's an obnoxious, elitist rich kid that's grown into an even more obnoxious, elitist adult.

Anyone who would want to drink with him needs some serious psychiatric care.

[Rockholm]

6. Hey Matthews, Bush Supposedly Doesn't Drink.

So, I guess you will just get to enjoy his company. Hey, you'll need those beers then just to get pass the time.

[Sydnie]

8. He is the person I would most like to throw a beer at though! n/t

[blm]

9. This nations needs a SERIOUS MAN for a SERIOUS TIME. Tweety is SO pre9-11

does he REALLY think any beer drinking standard is good for this nation?

Wouldn't Matthews trade a beerdrinking buddy for a president who would have READ and implemented the Hart-Rudman report on global terror that was handed to him on Jan 30, 2001?

I dare ANY pundit to pose that question.

[The Backlash Cometh]

12. I have a theory that Chris Matthew's audience is very limited

and why we find him confusing is because he's been given a far broader media reach than he really deserves. Out of touch with most Americans.

[peekaloo]

28. He pussyfooted around this topic yesterday on his ABC show.

Final segment in which he was comparing the presidential campaign(s) to the talent competition, or lack thereof, in the Miss U.S.A. pageant. I think Tweety's schizo because he couldn't understand why people valued the ability to drink a beer with the president as a motivating factor to vote for that person.

He proceeded to expound on the fact that the war and its tragic consequences are real, having a good paying job that supports a family is real and that the American public should start taking their candidates seriously on issues that affect them. "Hey folks, it's not a Michelob commercial!"

As usual he talks out of both sides of his ass.

[AmerDem]

10. Matthews lives in a fantasy land

He likes to think of himself as some kind of tough guy that grew up the hard way on the streets. He was in fact a book nerd geek who dodged the draft and grew up in a slightly above middle class family. Like so many of his generation he is as plastic a pretender as they come.

People like to sit back and wonder what went wrong with our country. What I never hear and I find this to be the main problem is, his generation has come into power. They are the most spineless, gutless whiners America has ever seen. Who would have thought 50 and above year olds behaving and sounding like teenagers. This is what we have, millions of them!

[tibbiit]

32. a secret for you:)

when humans reach 50, its as big a deal as reaching puberty only in reverse. Our feelings from jr. high are still there (puberty onset)and still the way we react to change. I didnt believe it, and thought I was a responsible mature adult. lol
what a shock. (imo)
tib

[Inland]

11. Because he can't say why people actually back Bush

Nobody, even if they say they are voting for Bush because he's a regular guy, believes that Bush could care less about people like you or me or would be caught dead in your favorite hangout except for the purpose of elections. Its because they want their tax cut, want to kill any old muslims we catch, or because they want christianity established by law or to imprison women who have abortions, or because gays disgust them. But is Matthews going to insult Americans and Bush by telling the truth? Nope. He is going to flatter them by saying that all their love of Bush is based in down home friendliness. Better for ratings to call Bush supporters naive and friendlythan avaricious and hateful.

[The Backlash Cometh]

14. Wow. Very enlightened post.

I would only add that Bush shares the same insular intellectual perspective as his Republican constituents. They live in a Mason Jar up high on a shelf, away from sunlight, where their essence is preserved for posterity. A taste of summers past.

[Dhalgren]

21. Man, that's it! I had never heard the "have a beer with" meme

explained so well. The "have a beer with" phrase is code for anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-choice, pro-Christianist, anti-Muslim, pro-knuckle dragging. I could never figure out what in the hell they were talking about: "He's the candidate you'd most like to have a beer with." Now, it makes perfect sense. This is the guy who shares all of the prejudices, and bigotries of the lowest common denominator. Good call...

[Inland]

34. Remembering that the worst bitching about everyone you don't

like comes out over beer--and with the guy who won't bother to tell you to be fair or behave, because its the beer talking. That's the analogy to beer. Bush encourages everyone to be their worst, while telling them that they are as good as anyone, including him or God, could expect them to be.

[Lucille]

13. Isn't Matthews a recovered alcoholic?

Funny that he daydreams about sharing a beer with another--supposedly--recovered alcoholic.

Funny also that he spent so much time ruminating on how he imagined "women" responded to seeing the codpiece-in-chief land on the USS Lincoln.

My sense is that the repressed Catholic school boy can't openly say he wants to do more than just share a drink with the manly man who leads our nation.

[kayell]

16. This woman responded to seeing that PR event by

:puke:ing. Of course, that is getting to be my normal response to *.

[drbtg1]

23. Not sure if he would characterize himself as such, but...

Mr. Matthews did state on Hardball a couple of months ago that he hasn't had a drink in about ten years. From the July 14, 2004 show:

MATTHEWS: I think a lot of women would say give me a couple of minutes on a bar stool with John Kerry—or John Edwards. I would sort of enjoy that more, with this sort of occasionally grouchy guy who says bad words, Dick Cheney. What do you think?

GOV. TIM PAWLENTY: Now, in fairness to the president, he doesn‘t drink anymore, so it would probably be a Coke for him. And for you, it would probably be a big mug.

MATTHEWS: No, it‘s a—I quit 10 years ago. I‘m with the president on that one.

PAWLENTY: All right. All right.

Pretty funny that Pawlenty said Bush would rather have a "Coke" (cue Eric Clapton song here). ;)

[librechik]

24. the media love old, well-practiced scripts. That one's been around

since Gore. They try to use as many of the old ones that worked "he's remote, robotic," "he's an elitist insider" because they're too strapped for cash and lazy to do any real work. Disgusting.

Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler has a lock on the misuse of old scripts by these clowns. I read heim just so I can find out WTF is REALLY going on, since there's so little real news being reported.

[NYCGirl]

15. It's a figure of speech!

It's all about the "likeability" factor.

And this weekend, Chris Matthews did a segment on how silly it is to elect a president based on that criteria, how one should consider more important factors, which was in FAVOR OF KERRY.

[agingdem]

17. So respond this way...

I don't want the leader of the free world to be a "come on in and have a beer" kind of guy. I want an articulate, knowledgeable, well educated, curious grown up in the White House. I want someone who can speak to the poor and give them hope; someone who cares about the common good; someone who won't put our sons and daughters in harms way because he knows what it's like to be at the other end of a gun. I want John Kerry.

[liveoaktx]

18. From *Attack Poodles*- Chris Matthews

*Although like Tim Russert and Mike Barnicle, Matthews spouts a lot of beer-sudsy rhetoric about average hard-working blue-collar guys, he's developed an impacted sneer against liberal Democrats, the traditional champion of blue collars, despising them as (to borrow a word from the Nixon era) effete. In the world according to Chris, Republicans are manly (upright, proactive, astride the globe), the Democrats womanly (fearful, carping, tied to domestic apron agendas). Republicans strap on the holster and get the dirty job done, while Democrats stand in the doorway attaching caveats and wringing their dishpan hands. Sexual chauvanism infuses Matthew's political impressions and responses. He's rude, interruptive and peremptory towards female guests; particularly femininists, with whom he gets thin-nostriled, as if they were trying to take all the fun out of roughhousing and spoil things for the guys at the lodge. That Bill would be married to a harpy like Hillary, that Al Gore would need a Naomi Wolf to advise him on alpha manhood, only confirmed his worst suspicions about how emasculated the Dems had become.
Give him a real fake sun-bronzed stout-hearted man every time, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, the crowd-pleasing self-parodying cyborg (who in his bodybuilding prime resembled, as Clive James immortally observed, a fistful of walnuts stuffed in a condom) whose run for governor of California had Matthews effusing all over his lobster bib. For Matthews, elections equal erections.....
.... Even when Matthews deplores a politician's policies, a well-struck pin-up pose will lay him out in the grass like one of the girlish swooners in Bye Bye Birdie.*

And then the book goes on, in hilarious commentary, to describe Matthew's swooning all over Bush's *manly characteristic* at the Mission Accomplished fiasco. This book is a hoot.

[drdigi420]

19. Well, I would LOVE to have a beer with Bush

Because I don't drink, so I would not miss the beer when I threw it in his face and called him a murderer right to his fucking smirking little beer dripping face.

[BiggJawn]

20. Maybe Tweety should be locked in a room with Shrubbya...

When he's on a REAL mean tear....
"Hey, Chris, how IS that Dubya...Man, what buzz-saw did YOU walk into? you look awful!"

Dumbyass is one mean-assed drunk. I'd bet money I'll never have under him on it....

I don't understand why so many people say they'd like to "have a beer" with him. He's such a PRICK when he's sober (or only mildly buzzed) can you imagine how nasty he'd be fully-popped?

[ILeft]

22. Because he wants to hear Bush say "Only in America"

...about a thousand fricking times. Like the drunken creep does in the classic 1992 wedding party video (shot six years after Junior "quit drinking"):

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/bush/bush.html

[Mad_Dem_X]

25. I've seen that video

It's funny, in a pathetic sort of way.

[pat1962]

26. Drinking Beer with Bush

It is just a tactic to try and humanize the unelected one. First he taks off his tie so he looks like a regular joe, then you show him working on the ranch or at a nascar race or handing out water and ice in Florida. This man was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and he has no clue what it is like to have to make ends meet. The media has a bad habit of doing this. I have had a beer with a presidental candidate and I can tell you that he was far more personable then the media ever gave him credit for.

[Bush was AWOL]

27. I don't know why he talks about this. He continues on with his

lovefest w/ Bush the man, even though I can tell he knows Bush has been a terrible president, and probably disagrees with almost every decision he's made. He, of all people should realize this race is more than a popularity contest, and quit promoting it as such.

[UdoKier]

29. Apparently, the average American finds the combination of beer...

...and a companion who has an idiotic nickname for EVERYONE he's ever met, but is probably as clueless about the lives of ordinary folks as his dad, who MARVELLED at the supermarket scanner machine, because HE'D NEVER SEEN ONE...IRRESISTABLE.

Honestly, I don't want a president who I can drink a beer with. I can drink a beer with my loser pothead friend from high school, or the plumber. I want a president who seems like a bit more than that.

Can you imagine "having a beer with" FDR? With Kennedy? Maybe I'm wierd, but I'd be bit too awestruck to talk about sports scores with them...

[AngryAmish]

30. I like beer.

Does anybody else?

[fob]

31. John Kerry should bring a six-pack to one of the debates and crack

them open and hand them out to the moderators, one for himself and then go give one to george. Let george refuse it by saying he quit drinking, LIVE ON STAGE, then Kerry can turn and look at the camera and say, "I keep hearing this story that people WANT to have a beer with you, but you won't/can't have a beer with them? Well I guess you just have to take it one day at a time. You don't mind if we enjoy our beers, do ya george? (Kerry takes long, slow glug off his ice-cold beer) Ahhh, too bad you didn't mature until your 40's george, there's nothing better than a cool beer."

[Jacobin]

33. Yeah, nothing like swilling beer with an alcoholic

I mean, WTF?

I thought Smirky pretended to be on the wagon?


Where does this prattle come from anyway? Tweety's brain is fried.