Among the many pleasures of eschewing TV in that I have only a vague and very unpleasant idea of who Chris Matthews is. Yet Mark Levin has called him a Benedict Arnold. Hmmm. Maybe because both Matthews and Arnold boast first names for surnames? Otherwise, the quote on which Levin bases his charge is so incoherent I can’t for the life of me understand what ol’ Chris means — and unless Levin reads minds, presuming there is one here to read, I don’t know how he figured out the meaning, either:
“Reverend [Al Sharpton],” Chris blathered; do you suppose he genuflected while doing so? “I just, I owe it to you. I think that is the key statement about what happened yesterday, the loss of Mandela, and what his history was about,” — oh, boy — “and the key statement of why this has been so poisonous the last five years. We have real people in this country with real power and status who have used that status of power to hurt the country so they could hurt the president. That’s the most damning assessment I’ve heard and I think the truest.”
That prompted this rebuttal from Levin: “I dare say that if this were 1775-1776 that the likes of Chris Matthews would be siding with the crown in England. He’d ultimately be the Benedict Arnold. He and his ilk. Oh yes, I believe that.”
Well. We’ll leave this dogfight between two nincompoops for sunnier climes. If you’d like to learn the real story of the heroic Benedict Arnold, treat yourself to my new novel, Abducting Arnold. LRC’s readers have already boosted it into the Top Twenty for Historical Fiction; thanks very much, and let’s see if we can go even higher!
11:02 am on December 10, 2013
