The award goes to Chris Matthews for this:
You know there’s going to be a lot of talk about the tragic blessings of the Kennedy family, and the curse. And it’s all nonsense. These people were courageous risk takers. Kathleen Kennedy, the girl, the oldest daughter, she was killed with her lover traveling on a plane ride she never should have taken through terrible weather in Europe. Joe Kennedy, Jr. took a mission that nobody should have taken in a plane loaded with dynamite to go blow up the V-1 rocket sites. Jack Kennedy was killed in an open car in Dallas in the midst of the most hated–it’s like the mood we’re in right now.
Is the passing of a 77-year-old recovering alcoholic from brain cancer really causing a mood similar to the murder of a sitting president of the United States at 46? Or is he saying that the people who oppose the Democratic leadership’s agenda on health care reform are like Lee Harvey Oswald?
Mark Finkelstein notes that Oswald wasn’t even a conservative: “Need Matthews be reminded that JFK was killed not by a hate-filled right-winger, but by a Communist who had spent time in the Soviet Union?”
Rob Port, from whom I discovered this clip via Twitter, observes “nobody in the mainstream conservative movement wants Obama assassinated. We just want him booted from office.”
Matthews is a likeable enough guy but he manages to say something phenomenally stupid every couple of months and keep his perch as a serious commentator on MSNBC. That’s job security right there.
