Chris Matthews is a desperate man. He endlessly hurls the charge of racism at any conservative, and constantly talks about “code words” and “dog whistles,” finding a racist under every rock. Just this week, he said that words “food stamps,” and “Chicago,” are racist dog whistles.
Last night, while ranting about “racial code words,” Matthews made the bizzarre claim that he lives in “black majority” Washington DC.
Here’s the video from Newsbusters:
You know, I think that people that don’t recognize the code about welfare and food stamps are really being dishonest and I think if you look at our history, from Ronald Reagan who would talk about the young buck in the line using food stamps to buy T-bone steaks, or certainly Wallace, George Wallace or David Duke. They all talked about welfare. Welfare has been a classic tool to pry apart working-class whites from working-class blacks. It’s brilliant because everybody sees it who wants to see it. Certainly blacks can’t avoid seeing it ‘cause they see the prejudice involved. Whites can deny it because it isn’t technically racial or sectarian, but everyone knows what’s going on here. Everyone knows this.
And now for Mitt Romney, who should be able to win on the arithmetic, on the unemployment rate, on the job creation, on a number of factors, growth in this country not being what it should be, for some reason has resigned himself to the fact he’ll get no black votes and therefore he might as well work for the working-class white vote.
This isn’t prejudice on his part, there’s no evidence of that. It’s really about engineering the country politically. It’s a very bad sign of this ability to still be able to do it in our country. It’s amazing, here we are in the 21st century, 2012, and what worked 60 or 70 years ago is still working today. Say welfare, people think black because politically they’ve been taught to say so.
But I go back to living in DC all these years. I’ve lived there 40 years, a black-majority city, and anybody who wants to get up early in Washington and drive down North Capitol (Street) and drive past Florida Avenue, sees nothing but youn-, but black people up at 6:30 in the morning going to work. That’s where they’re going, to work, and not at big-wage jobs and not to get a welfare check, they’re out working hard all day and not coming home with a fantastic paycheck. So this notion of blacks live on welfare and whites live on work is a brilliant political ploy but it’s not true, Rachel (Maddow). And you know it, I know it.
There’s just one problem with Matthews saying he lives in “black-majority” DC. He doesn’t. Chris Matthews lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, where there are only 10 black people in the entire town.
Media profiles of Matthews (Washington Post, NY Times) and his wife, former TV reporter and Marriott flack Kathleen (Politico) have reported that the Matthews reside in Chevy Chase, an affluent Maryland suburb.
Kathleen Matthews serves on the board of trustees of the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., which lists its trustees and their addresses online. Based on the addresses provided there, one learns that the Matthews live smack-dab in Chevy Chase Village — one of the least diverse locales in the country.
According to census data at Maryland-Demographics.com, 1,953 people lived in Chevy Chase Village as of 2010. Of those nearly 2,000 residents, 10 were black. That’s right — ten. As in, one-half of one percent. Ninety-three percent of its residents were white, the remaining percentage other minorities.
Chris Matthews attempted to use his place of residence as a “holier than thou” moment to point the finger at dirty racist Republicans. But his dishonestly only points the finger back at himself.
MSNBC’s “news” as of late has been rife with hypocrisy, especially concerning the topic of racism. During the Tuesday night’s RNC broadcast, MSNBC cut away from every single minority speaker that took the podium. Meanwhile, other MSNBC hosts took to the air waves to talk about the new racist code words “golf” and “PGA tour.”
Here’s a word of wisdom for the derranged hosts at MSNBC: if you’re looking for racists, you might want to check your own broadcast booth.
