“Kevin, when you’re in a hole, stop digging.”

The only thing I want to know is whether Matthews (or his staff) thought, “Let’s get some idiot loudmouth right-wing nutjob on the show and see if we can stump him,” or if Matthews thought that up on the spot based upon James’ blatant fear-based-talking-slash-yelling-points script that he was sticking to.

Simply Wonderful

I think Matthews totally knew what he was doing, which just makes it that much more fun. You can see him bait James from the very beginning.

Oh, it’s so awesome. I love watching blowhards get exposed.

If the volume and pace of the talking didn’t raise my blood pressure, I would watch this all the time as a pick me up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KevinJames(broadcaster)

This guy isn’t some random nutcase. He’s a former Assistant U.S. Attorney. Yikes…

Yeah, right?

I don’t want to generalize about prosecuters in this country, but this guy doesn’t really give them a good name.

I like how Chris’ Philly accent creeps out when he’s fired up!

I think when Matthews invited James’ first response to the question, he quickly smelled blood in the water…i.e., realized that this punk kid has no clue.

It was damned amusing watching the right wing talking point bot explode/implode.

To quote another reader from another blog:

Enabled, Energized, Legitimized … . Enabled, Energized, Legitimized … .

I am Lobotomized GOP bot Talking Point input error Your question is beyond my programming Talking Point input error

error error error

(head explodes)

YAR

This is so funny. Talk radio people are so retarded. Local talk radio people are some kind of extra-special retarded.

They brought this guy on and waited for him to yell and scream like an angry chimp and then made him look like the complete moron he is. Better stick to the airwaves, Kevin.

I’m from Sweden and we have a saying that goes something like “empty barrels rattle the most”… don’t know if you have it in English but this Kevin is a school book example. Also, he is what makes the rest of the world giggle at the Americans. Weren’t it for your big army and tendency to invade other countries.

Aww, come on Håkan! You’re generalizing! As evidenced by the vast enjoyment the public splaying of this man’s brains, a great segment of this country are not “empty barrels.” We do not all cower behind our “big army and tendency to invade other countries.” For example, note that our House of Representative voted to defund the war yesterday. I promise I won’t generalize Swedens based on the spouting of your morons if you do the same for us. Thanks!

Mike, of course I’m generalizing, not all are cowering behind your big army but I also think that the US has a tendency to invade other countries. A short list: Vietnam Korea Afghanistan Kuwait Iraq

ups, my bad, Korea shouldn’t be on the list…

The thing I love the most about this guy is that he’s SO ANGRY and so CERTAIN about something he doesn’t quite understand.

It’s brilliant.

Kevin James wins this month’s ‘http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect’ award.

He reminds me of a creationist arguing about the ‘controversy’ of evolution: he knows nothing but is certain he knows everything and evidence and reality will not get in the way.

I was watching this while working on some music- I think it goes quite well - as if the video wasn’t insanely intense enough already…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ4zJi9SUkI

Unfortunately in American we have given the “empty barrels” the soapbox for way too long. It’s time to expose these people for whom history is a tabla rasa that may be melded to their rhetorical, partisan desires.

America is for all Americans, not political parties.

OWNED

It was painfully obvious that guy was an automaton who could say nothing in his defense but crappy talking points. He had no argument. Logic and history destroyed him completely.

Perhaps Chris the mouth has finally seen the light and is turning away from the dark side.

“This is pathetic”

“Chris! Chris! Wait a minute!” fadeout

Priceless^^

Kevin James is an appeaser.

Don’t overlook the wonderful point at the end where Mark Green advises James to read Richard Clarke’s book in order to get the facts about the run up to 9/11 and James tells Green to watch a made for TV docu-drama.

That was a classic moment highlighting the difference between the pointy-headed intellectuals and the rednecks.

“Go read a book!!”

“Read a book?? But there’s a movie!!”

OK, first let me say that I don’t give a squat about Kevin James, and that he looked stupid there for sure.

I notice that no one here, and certainly not Chris Matthews, seems to care much about whether the assertion was true. It plays so much better to attack the credibility of the guy making the point. WAS Chamberlain an appeaser?

Oh look, (yes, I went to reference material to see because I didn’t know offhand well enough to spout from memory - and this is only a blog comment!) he signed on to the Munich Agreement, wherein it is written (on whatever it is that they write it on up there) that if Germany gets the Sudetenland he will leave England alone. Poor Czechoslovakia wasn’t even invited to the conference, and Germany, of course, didn’t live up to the agreement. Chamberlain basically sold out the freedom of others in the hopes that it would pacify the Nazis. All of this was after witnessing the Anschluss of Austria, so it isn’t like Chamberlain had only Hitler’s charisma to go by.

Now, we can argue whether Chamberlain was just a bad politician or a dupe or a good politician who made a mistake, but it seems a bit crappy to pretend like he didn’t try to appease the Nazis, and to pretend like it didn’t illustrate the proposition that appeasement of aggression leads to more aggression from the aggressor. Was Matthews challenging him to cite history because he believed that spelling out the actions taken by Chamberlain and then Hitler would nullify the ‘appeaser’ label? If so, he is as ignorant as he makes James look. Or was it anything to make your guest look stupid, and to keep your viewers from considering if the lesson learned by England might apply to events today? Oh yeah, he OWNED him though, didn’t he! woot.

It’s also a bit crappy to act like if the guy can’t recite the history of it, it must not be a valid point. Surely if Matthews knows the history well enough, he realizes that James being able to cite the history more specifically would only STRENGTHEN the point James was making. Best to elide all of that and just shake your head in an ‘isn’t that sad’ way so that the focus is on the credibility of Kevin James rather than the salience of his point.

It’s just too bad that Kevin James wasn’t able to make Matthews look like a jerk instead of the other way around. It happens.

M@: You missed the point, no one is debating whether Chamberlain was an “appeaser”. James was arguing that Obama is an “appeaser” because he wants to talk to Iran. You just demonstrated that, to be an “appeaser” like Chamberlain, one must give something away to the enemy. Obama is not proposing giving away Maine (or any other material objects) to Iran to keep them happy he is not a Chamberlainian “appeaser”.

Because James’ lack of knowledge regarding Chamberlain led him to incorrectly compare Obama to Chamberlain, attacking James’ ignorance was warranted.

@ M@

You’re wrong. The point that Kevin was trying to make is that Barack Obama is an appeaser. Chris was trying to get Kevin to show that he knew was appeasement is, in a historical context. He was unable to do that, and ultimately admitted that he didn’t know what the word means.

There’s a difference between appeasement and diplomacy. For right-wing, talking-point-spouting idiots, like Kevin James, things like facts and truth and history don’t matter. It’s pretty clear that someone told him, “Make sure you use the word ‘appeasement’, and say ‘enable, energize, and legitimize’ as much as possible.”

If you don’t know what appeasement is, you should think twice about accusing people of being appeasers.

“Surely if Matthews knows the history well enough, he realizes that James being able to cite the history more specifically would only STRENGTHEN the point James was making. Best to elide all of that and just shake your head in an ‘isn’t that sad’ way so that the focus is on the credibility of Kevin James rather than the salience of his point.”

This is staunchly based on your interpretation of how Neville Chamberlain ought to be labeled, which just so happens to be anathema to the excepted interpretation. Now, majority acceptance of historical interpretation is a hairy, hairy point to rely on (Howard Zinn sure would scold me), but Matthews was taking the accepted interpretation and checking to see if this man debating had all of his facts in order. He did not, and was shown to be a worthless buffoon.

Kevin James is no ‘kid’… he’s 45, according to Wikipedia.

M@ must have not understood that Matthews thought that Chamberlain WAS indeed an appeaser. That was not the issue. ( After all, Churchill warned against Chamberlain’s vain effort to appease Hitler to avoid war…and was proven right. Churchill is a hero of Matthews’. My dad did his PHD thesis on Chamberlain at Stanford U. but I actually learned about this in school.) Its amazing that Kevin James is so ignorant of history, and the meaning of the word appeasement… Could he have at least done some remedial reading to bring himself up to speed? No he wanted to simply smear…appeasement/unpatriotic/traitorous/naieve/evil (choose whatever description will work to smear) but the fact is that James did not know what appeasement meant…nor the historical analogy that he was mindlessly repeating…Is there hope for Kevin James? I am afraid, as a popular comedian said “You cant fix “Stupid”!

M@ must be Kevin James’ brother.