red onion

My ongoing love-affair with Chris Matthews of Hardball fame continues. Last night he interviewed Representative Chris Smith concerning his proposed constitutional amendment to criminalize abortion, and Dennis Kucinich's name came up again. Here is my email to Chris Matthews that I wrote today:

Chris Matthews,

Yesterday I wrote to you expressing disgust for your attack on Dennis Kucinich. I and he were wrong concerning the supposed arrest of women for having illegal abortions. Apparently, Dennis was wrong concerning the intentions of Representative Chris Smith, and in a search on the net, I could find no evidence that women were jailed for having illegal abortions. However, there are ample horror stories of women dying from back-alley abortions, which is why this issue is so emotional for women. We want control over our own bodies.

It is interesting the obvious contempt with which you held Mr. Kucinich. Obviously, Kucinich did not get his facts straight concerning the intent of the proposed amendment to ban abortions. It is also interesting than neither you nor I knew wether women were arrested for having abortions when they were illegal. It appears we all three need to do our homework on this issue.

Granted, Dennis Kucinich has much to lose right now in verbal gaffes such as the one he made. But I don't believe, and I don't think that you believe, that he purposefully lied. I do believe that he feels so emotional about the issue, as I do, that his mouth moved before his brain did, as mine did when I wrote the email to you, and stated women had been jailed. We didn't check our facts first.

It reminds me of the time recently when you stated the democratic candidates attacks on President Bush as "political", regarding Bush's statement, 'Bring 'em on'. Your reaction was emotional. They're just out to get him. You didn't stop to think that his statement might actually endanger the troops, and is also extremely insensitive to the dangers they face on a daily basis. You were corrected by the two people you were interviewing on the subject. One of them was Howard Fineman, I believe.

If you want to talk about lying, then I would love to see you dress down some of the administration officials who ,apparently now, lied to bring this country into a war where thousands of Iraqis have died, and American soldiers are dying every day. A constitutional crisis of international proportions? You betcha.

Lets get to work.

elizabeth cook