Transgender actress Laverne Cox absolutely rocked her appearance tonight on MSNBC's Hardball.
We already knew she is an outstanding advocate for the trans community, and her calm, collected and reasoned appearance here underlines that.
I'd break it down for you, but to be honest, it really just needs to be seen.
Bravo, Laverne!
p.s. note how Travis Weber, representing the ironically named Center for Religious Liberty, never - never - answers Matthews' question about which bathroom Laverne should use. #coward
Last night, Travis Weber of the anti-LGBT Family Research Council and Professor Jennifer Finney Boylan of E! network’s “I am Cait” debated transgender bathroom rights in America on MSNBC's "Hardball" with Chris Matthews.
Poor Travis was not prepared for the most basic question of transgender rights these days: If a transgender woman shouldn't use the ladies room, what bathroom SHOULD they use?
The FRC spokesman was literally tongue-tied. Matthews, pointing out the obvious, said again and again, "You're dodging the question."
CHRIS MATTHEWS (HOST): Travis, tell Jenny what bathroom she should use.
TRAVIS WEBER: Well —
MATTHEWS: Which one should she use?
WEBER: Yeah, I mean I’m not sure, um —
MATTHEWS: Well just answer that question.
WEBER: I think people should be —
MATTHEWS: She said she would not be comfortable or not cause such problem if she walked into a men’s room. Should she walk into a men’s room?
WEBER: I think we can do things the way we’ve done them for decades, and people could use bathrooms according to biological sex with specific accommodation made for people who have a genuine issue. If we look at the North Carolina law, it made an accommodation. People are not happy with that, however. And now the Obama administration —
MATTHEWS: Let’s just talk about transgender people. What should a transgender person who identifies as a woman do? What bathroom should they go to? Just keep it simple.
WEBER: Yeah well there’s an issue of privacy concerns.
MATTHEWS: See no, you can’t answer the question, can you? What should they do?
WEBER: They can use the bathroom of their biological sex, except when there’s a genuine issue and an accommodation can be made.
Matthews did not let it go, though. He went back to Weber more than once,: “What should Jenny do if she was visiting North Carolina right now? Should she go to the men’s room? Should she? You’re dodging the toughest question, which is what do you want people to behave like?” He then asked, “Can you answer the question? Should Jenny go to the men’s room or the ladies room?”
Weber had nothing.
Again, Matthews asked the question Weber couldn't answer: “It just seems odd to me that you’d want Jenny to show up in men’s room you go to. You think that would be appropriate? You think that would be appropriate? It’s a simple question, should Jenny go to your men’s room? Yes or no.” When Weber again did not answer the question, Matthews said, “See, you’re dodging this question.”
See, the haters can mock and belittle transgender folks when it's through a press release or talking on Fox News, but when you have a transgender woman on air with you - who CLEARLY should not be using the men's room - you got nothing. Just your moralistic fear and hate.
Professor Boylan, much to her credit, handled the segment without raising her voice or yelling. She was quite persuasive.
In a post-debate interview last night in Las Vegas, MSNBC's Chris Matthews asked GOP front-runner Donald Trump is he still believes President Obama wasn't born in the USA.
Trump refused to answer the question:
“I should not tell you this, but I do watch you a lot. So I knew you were going to ask that question. And you know what I’ll say: I don’t talk about that anymore. You know the problem talking about that question? Here’s the story. I don’t answer because you know what? If I do answer, that’s all people want to talk about I don’t answer that question because once I answer the question, they don’t want to talk about the economy, they don’t want to talk about all the other... I don’t want to answer the question. I don’t want to answer the question.”
Before ending the segment, Matthews did come back to the issue to say:
“I do think that’s a blemish. I think it’s your original sin. I’m an American. I think our president should be respected. And I think there’s a little ethnic aspect to it. I don’t like it…It’s not a good thing about you.”
On Hardball last night, Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas chatted with host Chris Matthews about a number of issues.
At one point Matthews asked about Sen. Ted Cruz’s eligibility to run for President, because he was born in Canada. Matthews has long maintained that Cruz, who has an American mother, is indeed eligible to be president. However, many in the Tea Party maintain that President Obama was not legitimately elected because they don't believe he was born in Hawaii even though the Republican governor of the state released his birth certificate.
“I believe he’s (Cruz) is eligible. He had an American mother. I believe you’re a natural born citizen. Do you agree with that?” Matthews asked the congressman.
Farenthold replied, “Listen, we’ve had this discussion on Obama… He’s as eligible as Obama is.”
Ultimately, Matthews said, “Can you repeat after me: he was legitimately elected president.”
Farenthold repeated, but with a key word left out: “President Obama was elected president”
“Legitimately,” said Matthews.
“The people elected him,” Farenthold said, refusing to say “legitimately.”
We all have folks who inspire us; who make us think "man, I wish I was that smart/talented."
One of those guys for me is Chris Matthews on his MSNBC show Hardball. Chris is tough with his guests, Republicans and yes, with Democrats too, when he thinks they're calling bull.
I try to keep up, get smarter and stay aware of what's going on in the news cycle - both on the surface and underneath. Chris inspires me to understand and see what's really happening.
Just my personal invite to tune in and learn from someone who's been in DC a long time, and doesn't take the "talking points" for gospel.
Chris Matthews and Hardball move to 7pm EST/4pm PST on August 26th.
Chris Matthews, of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, and guests Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out and psychotherapist Laura Berman discuss the shutdown of Exodus International and the harm done by so-called reparative therapy, aimed at turning gay people straight.
Both the host and his guests denounced such therapy as wrongheaded and harmful, and lauded the progress toward LGBT equality in the U.S., which much remains to be done. “Today, it’s gone beyond tolerance to acceptance,” said Matthews. Added Besen: “Equality is an unstoppable train.”
Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's "Hardball," ripped into GOP chair Reince Priebus over Mitt Romney's "birther" joke last week and playing the "race" card in campaign ads.
Said Matthews: "It is an embarrassment to your party to play that card... This stuff about getting rid of the work requirement for welfare is dishonest — everyone's pointed out it's dishonest... And you are playing that little ethnic card there. You can play your games and giggle about it, but the fact is that your side is playing that card."
Priebus wasn't having it but Chris Matthews did not back down. Good for Matthews. Priebus and the GOP can sit back and deny, but what Chris Matthews says here is true. And the GOP knows it.
LGBT activists have been waiting for this day for a long time. Finally someone confronts Tony Perkins on his anti-gay rhetoric and doesn't stand down.
Congressman Barney Frank and Chris Matthews do not let Tony Perkins "off the hook" here.
The only show I can honestly say I don't miss is HARDBALL with Chris Matthews. I think he's smart, fair and experienced. I like him and I like his clarity.
Loved seeing this happen. Tony Perkins throws out phrases like "the social science doesn't conclusively show..."
Blah, blah, blah... it's all his own lies because there are enough people in the world that IF they hear something enough, then they believe it must be true.
One point I have to make here: Perkins says over and over again that social science shows children do better with a mother and a father as opposed to two mothers or two fathers - and he's wrong. At the Prop 8 trial, over and over experts testified that studies show children of lesbian or gay couples develop and achieve just as well as the children of heterosexual couples. Tony Perkins' "social science" is made up of the lies he WANTS to believe.
As I've mentioned before, I watch Hardball on MSNBC every day. I think Chris Matthews is fair and clear. Especially in this argument.
Chris is always arguing for good construction and manufacturing jobs - the same kind of jobs that built America during the boom of the 1950s. And I agree. Jobs that need to be done for infrastructure anyway.
The 1950s were good days for America in terms of growth and opportunity. (By the way, the top income tax rate in the late 1950s was 91% versus 35% today. And America grew at an exponential rate in the 1950s and 1960s.)
It seems like just when Mitt Romney gets a chance to take a breath and think he's got it all down, he or his campaign makes some unforced error.
The Romney campaign’s Etch-A-Sketch gaffe may eclipse all of Mitt Romney’s other campaign missteps combined.
The real problem with this particular gaffe is the visual - of a toy everyone knows - makes it too easy to play into the scenario of Romney being a flip-flopper: the idea that he can just "shake it up" and start with a clean slate - which we all know is not the reality in politics today.
The Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman and The Boston Globe’s Matt Viser weigh in on why the Etch-A-Sketch comment may outlive any other story about Romney in this election.
When I was growing up, we got a lot of our science from television. There was "Mr. Wizard" who taught us chemistry, Werner von Braun - with a little help from Walt Disney - who taught us physics.
The main lesson was that we Americans were first in everything, that we are going to be the country to conquer space; that we were going to start the conquest by putting little things called satellites into orbit around the earth. Yes, that was how it was going to be.
And then came that terrible day in 1957 when we awoke to learn that the Soviets had done it; there was, indeed, a satellite, a really big one, winging its way around our world but it had been launched out there into space by the Communists, the people we thought - had been taught by Werner von Braun and Walt Disney - hardly in the game.
It made us sad. It made me sad, because it undermined us, made us think that the Communists were doing something we were trying to do but couldn't. It had to do with booster rockets, with something called thrust. Their rockets were bigger, stronger, therefore better than ours.
For five years it went like this. They would send a man into space - Yuri Gagarin. They would send a man into orbit – Gherman Titov - and we would send one Vanguard rocket up after the other only to watch it topple right there in front of us, barely off the launching pad.
Then came the first American successes into space followed by this wondrous day fifty years ago today:
On February 20, 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth, circling the globe three times in Friendship 7. Glenn met with President Kennedy at the White House both before and after the flight.
Even space - especially space - isn't free of politics, John Glenn well understood. He recalled to me that Kennedy knew "we were actually superior to the Soviets and that that's what we were out to prove." Glenn's triumphant space flight proved the boost NASA needed. "I think one reason my flight got so much attention was that we sort of turned the corner in public opinion at that point." In fact, conquering space offered an unprecedented thrill for the American people. Suddenly it seemed as if extraordinary things were possible.
And yes, there was a time in the lifetimes of so many watching right now that one of the extraordinary things today was quite ordinary: that we Americans could all root for one thing together. It was us against the Soviets for the leadership in space, leadership we knew in science, engineering, in possibilities. One of the great things about the early 1960s - besides the thin ties and fifty mile hikes - was the sense we Americans could do the things we set out to do - and could do them together.
As the voice of Mission Control said back then, "Godspeed, John Glenn."
Chris Matthews on Newt Gingrich's assertion that President Obama has "put more Americans on food stamps than any other president."
I agree with Chris that bringing up food stamps right now, and in this context, is political 'code' for Gingrich's base. He knows he's taking the back door to bringing up race issues, which most of us hope were long behind us.
Newt is making the racial charge here and putting the blame of poverty on the poor. "It's their fault" is what he's saying.
Sad statement that this plays in anywhere in America today.
If the number one duty of an American president is to protect the country, Barack Obama is meeting his duty, calmly, resolutely, business-like.
Consider the way he has gone about it. He has accomplished the mission that took us into Iraq. Bin Laden is gone. He has removed the operational leader of al-Qaeda, Anwar al-Awlaki. He has persisted to its conclusion his decision to keep Moammar Gadhafi from slaughtering people. Gadhafi, who threatened to kill the people of Benghazi by the thousands, ended up hiding in a sewer pipe.
The difference between Democrats and Republicans, clearly the difference between George W. Bush and Barack Obama, is that one knows how to hot-dog in the end zone, knows how to run up the Mission Accomplished banners, knows how to strut.
The other, Obama, makes a crisp statement in the Rose Garden and goes back to work. You decide which is most presidential. On that point, have you ever noticed how the least impressive dictators in the world wear the most impressive uniforms? I think of the South American Junta leaders flashing their epaulettes, the same Opera bouffe costuming the late Mr. Gadhafi favored. They love their military uniforms, love them to be as colorful as their weirdness would allow, love acting the part of military men when they’ve never been in a war, certainly not one they’ve won.
The lesson of today’s denouement in Libya is that the un-fancy, non-strutting leader is the one to put your money on in the long run.
It’s the clown, the show-off, the guy who loves to adorn himself in colorful uniforms and the foppery of fascism that you can safely predict will end his days as humiliated and scorned as a fellow named Benito Mussolini who ended his days hanging upside down.
(via Chris Matthews on HardballBlog)
I completely agree with Chris Matthews on this point.
Quoting Chris Matthews: "At this very moment of national challenge, with the president doing what every friend of Israel -- left, right and center -- understands he needed to do, this person from Texas, this foreign policy ingenue, spotted his chance and he showed up in New York to make his diplomatic debut."
"Mr. Perry, you did our president a disservice, our country a dishonor today. You showed that you do not understand the role of the American presidency in our national life. When a president acts to defend the United States, in this case on principle as well as national interest, we should all stand behind him."
"If you don`t get that, you don`t get us -- much less the job of representing us on the world stage which the president did so well and so courageously today."
