Matthews Belittles Climate Change Skeptics and Homeschoolers
By:
Geoffrey Dickens
November 03, 2009 18:40 ET
If you're a skeptic of climate change or want to educate your child at home
Chris Matthews probably thinks you're an oddball. On Tuesday's Hardball, the
MSNBC host egged on the former liberal Republican New Jersey governor and former
EPA head Christine Todd Whitman to turn to the camera to scold all the global
warming non-believers in the GOP as he urged: "Would you tell your Republican
colleagues right now – look in the camera and say, 'There is climate change and
we have to do something about it?'" And later on in the show Matthews
stereotyped all homeschoolers as some sort of anti-social shut-ins that don't
want their children to "go to public school 'cause you don't want to mix with
other people."
The following exchanges were aired on the November 3 edition of Hardball:
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Would you tell your Republican colleagues right now – look in
the camera and say, "There is climate change and we have to do something about
it?"
CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN: Yes I would. Absolutely.
MATTHEWS: Do it.
WHITMAN: Okay there is a thing called climate change. Humans don't cause it
but we exacerbate a natural trend and we better start doing something about it
now.
MATTHEWS: Okay. That's a Republican, by the way. Thank you Christine Todd
Whitman.
...
MATTHEWS: Last question. Here's my litmus test. Are you pushing
home-schooling?
CHRIS CHOCOLA, PRESIDENT CLUB FOR GROWTH: We don't, no, we, we support school
choice. But that's up to-
MATTHEWS: No but home-schooling where you don't go to public school ‘cause
you don't want to mix with other people. You want to keep the kids at home so
you can teach them about life at home, away from the exposure of other social
groups. Are you for that? Because that would be, I would consider that
culturally conservative, at least.
CHOCOLA: We, we do not push home-schooling, we support school choice. We
think parents are the ones that are the best in a position to make a decision
about the education for their children.
MATTHEWS: Mr. Chocola I'm with you on school choice. Thank you sir, very
much.
—Geoffrey Dickens is the senior news analyst at the Media Research
Center.
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