that while listening to Senator Barack Obama speak he "felt a thrill going up my leg;" ever since that time it would appear that Mr. Matthews has returned the favor by becoming permanently attached to Senator Obama's leg.  This fawning fastening has never been more apparent to me than in comments he made over the weekend on his early morning Hardball Weekend show that comes on in the wee hours of Sunday morning.  Although the pandering pundit is not an admitted Obama-ite, I believe his words once more revealed his infatuation with the Senator and for me they also delineated one of the major flaws I have with most of the residents of Obamaville.

The Chris Matthews Show and its slightly edgier brother, Hardball, used to be regulars on my Tivo; these days I have them on my anti-Tivo.  Sunday morning last though I was up very early getting ready to go to the coast and it was either listen to the Hardball Weekend or to that guy who talks about how much waste is compacted in our colons - it was a difficult choice finally made because something Tucker Carlson was saying caught my ear. 

A brief aside to note that Tucker Carlson is a terrifically bright and funny pundit - although he and I probably don't agree on most things - and I miss his afternoon show with Pat Buchanan, Rachel Maddow and Willie Giest; guess he didn't raise enough hackles to garner ratings.  While I'm at it, let me give a backslap to Pat B., who is incredibly funny and if you don't believe me ask Rachel Maddow who seemed to have gotten a kick out of him, too.  Back to the original post.

Along with Tucker Carlson, CM's guests that morning included Willie Brown.  Mr. Brown and Mr. Matthews were discussing Senator Clinton's recent unfortunate phrasing about "hard working white people."  Although I was troubled by HRC's wording I believe as I think Mr. Brown believes that the words were a gaffe that is not representative of Mrs. Clinton's stands and work throughout her career.  He did, however, make the point that the remarks were wrong in seeming to draw a distinction between hard working white people and people of other races who work just as hard and, in some cases, even harder.  But I'll let Willie Brown speak for himself, "You can't use the term 'hard working' and make people think it only applies to white people.  'Hard working' applies to any person who's out there hard working and race is not an indicator of hard work.  I was hard working, that's how I got to be where I am."  True words, I wish they had been spoken by Mrs. Clinton.

Chris Matthews could not let the discussion end with former Mayor Brown's correct and succint comments.  Nope, Chris had to weigh in with his take:  "If you get up in D. C. at six o'clock in the morning, you know who's waiting to catch the bus to go to work?  Black people.  They're up earlier than anybody else going to work for longer hours; of course, that's an absurd argument, only white people work." 

How are those comments - in which Mr. Matthews seems to say that there aren't any white people in D. C. who get up as early as black people and work as long or as hard - any different from Mrs. Clinton's comments?  Both speakers are saying that the term "hard working" applies to only one race which, obviously, it does not.  Mr. Matthews - to my mind out of a need to stand kiss up to the Obama camp - was as wrong in his statements as Hillary was in hers.  Therein lies one of the huge barriers to my falling in line with the Obama-ites:  A movement is not different from the movements that proceeded it if it just shifts the prejudice from one group to another.

When I was in college I worked as a runner in a hospital pharmacy.  The hospital's Central Service Department lay across from the pharmacy; a black woman was the supervisor over the department.  Several days out of the week after supervising Central Service from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., she caught two buses across town to work as an hourly employee in the central service department of another hospital.  I was 19 at the time and I probably could not have accomplished what she did each day at probably more than twice my age and she did it all without any complaint that I ever remember hearing.  Black people, people of color, immigrants of all kinds and yes, white people have worked that hard throughout our nation's history.  Our country is built on the backs of people who worked and still work that hard.  My parents were two of those people.  

Hillary Clinton's words were wrong.  She was, hopefully inadvertently, pandering to a certain type of white vote when she spoke them.  Chris Matthews words were equally wrong and he was pandering as well.  If he had spoken in a similar way about older women, I would have been annoyed by his obsequiousness.  White people deserve better, black people deserve better, the Obama campaign deserves better.  I know that Mr. Matthews does not speak for the Obama campaign - indeed he is not even openly a resident of Obama-ville - but remarks of this nature are rampant amongst Obama supporters.  And so I remain unconvinced.  I can't believe in a transformational movement when so many of its adherents appear yet to be transformed.