[VadeRetro]

I remember having dinner in Belfast on the eve of the Good Friday peace referendum. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Mary McGrory of the Washington Post, Mike Barnicle of the Boston Globe and I all sat around the table. We all had our roots in Ireland, and I loved it.

But I can't kid myself. I never made their world. They were the best writers in the business.

Hint to Chris: You're tone-deaf.

[TLBSHOW]

bye chris! Humm no one read your drival anyways! LOL

[I Hired Craig Livingstone]

I remember having dinner in Belfast on the eve of the Good Friday peace referendum. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Mary McGrory (!) of the Washington Post, Mike Barnicle of the Boston Globe and I all sat around the table. We all had our roots in Ireland, and I loved it. But I can't kid myself. I never made their world.

Mary McGrory is the most partisan hack in Washington! The way her childish conservative-bashing is juxtaposed with George Will's thoughtful columns reads like the "Point/Counterpoint" satire from The Onion.

Chris, you sell yourself a little short.

[Republic]

Shame on Matthews. His lack of foresight, his diminishing of the importance of preventing Saddam from using an unspeakable arsenal of truly deadly weapons of mass destruction is alarming, shallow and sickeningly fearful. This man does not deserve to write any more columns, I am not sorry to see this is his last. With it, he proves he is just another leftist elite-brainless where it counts but always able to appeal to the undereducated or over-inflated.

[SR71A]

What about the tens of millions of Arab sons who will want to finish a fight we start next spring in Baghdad?

Everyone else is commenting on this line, I'll give it a try also...:)

All of those Arab sons have already been indoctrinated in the hatred of the West, because Arab armies have been beaten like a rented mule for hundreds of years by Infidel(tm) armies. Another decade, another Arab military disaster. They'd be hating us anyway, Chris.

[adam stevens]

Matthews is a traitor and deserves to be treated as such.

[Pharmer]

"Oppose this war because it will create a millennium of hatred and the suicidal terrorism that comes with it."

Dear Chris:

Here is a list of former foes vanquished by US Soldiers on the feild of battle and have sworn blood feuds and suicide bombers killing our innocents:
1) Great Britain
2) Spain
3) Germany
4) Japan
5) Dare I say Russia?

The fact of the matter is that all of the foes that America has defeated to the point of unconditional surrender or has collapsed internally to renounce its hostile leadership, have gone to become some of our greatest allies and trading partners. One could argue that we forced our way upon them (in the case of GB we were allready them) and corrupted their culture, but I have yet to see Germany rushing to re-embrace National Socialism or Japan re-adapting the code of Bushido. The problem is people like you who fail to understand that by not fighting this war and totally defeating this guys, on the field of battle, including executing their generals and political leaders who have opposed us on the field and through acts of terror, we will incite the very blood feud you fear.

Sadly, GHWB's legacy is his son's burden. What you fail to see is that the middle east can be civilized when forced to do so. Rome stabilised the area for 3 hundred years. The Ottoman Empire stood for almost 1000 years. And Great Britain) brought civilization to the area. It was when these influences were forced out that the region collapsed into chaos. By the way, Chris, I am impressed at the 1000 years of hatred and suicide bombings the Arabs are waging in London and Manchester. What are the latest death tolls?

I contend that the instability in the Middle East is there because Israel is there. As long as Israel is there and a bone in the throat of its neighbors, they will hate us too.

The leaders in the area need to be brought to account. We have gone to war for far less. There are 3000 dead who will be just the first if we do not show these thugs that this cowardly form of warfare is as unacceptable as gas, landmines, and nuclear warfare.

After 9/11 you were on Imus demanding retribution. Now that true retribution may be at hand, I feel you do not wish it from the hand that delivered it. Would it be better if President Gore delivered it? Don't hold your breath.

[BonnieJ]

He's correct for once, he is a lousy writer. A speech writer for the boring Pres. Carter, and one erroneous and trivial column after another. And where were his protests against Clinton's failed war efforts in Kosovo and Belgrade? And why don't we ever hear follow-ups of that NATO/Clinton failure? Belgrade remains in ruins and Kosovo is a mess, still violent and divided and suffering. But the media doesn't care, it was Slick Bill's & Madame Albright's legacy war. And so it received blind approval, gushing accolades, and then total silence.

[D. Miles]

avenge his father, my hind foot! War with Iraq will not bring the hounds of hell from the middle east down on us! They have a natural inbred hate for us no matter what we do or when. Chris just go quitely into the good night...and please,..... STAY THERE!!!!

[nightdriver]

"I don't know how they do it: the endless flow of news ideas, the ever- surprising settings, the out-the-blue insights, the fine and faultless language."

...The made-up stories, the near-treasonous slant as a counterpoint to every breaking story so as to belittle those who know the truth, the relentless effort to validate socialism in all aspects of society, the constant tearing down of the reputations of decent men, the incredible justification of acts of sedition committed by one of their own.

Just beat it, Matthews! You won't be missed. There's hundreds left to take your place.

[BluesDuke]

What von Hoffman could do from the left, George F. Will soon matched from the right. I watched Will join the masters of the universe: David Broder, Joseph Kraft, Bob Novak, Jimmy Breslin, Murray Kempton and Jack Newfield.

Interesting comparison here. Of the writers he listed as the "masters" whom Mr. Will "joined," the only one of them who could write was Murray Kempton. (Kempton died in 1997, but I notice he rarely gets credit for one of his signature moves: he was the first and the earliest among the liberal columnists - and if you read the preponderance of his work, you might conclude that he was a rather conservative type as liberals go - to call Droopy-Drawers Clinton on his duplicities, his lying, and his tactical sleaziness, even before the bastard was elected President. In fact, it was William F. Buckley, Jr. - the two were longtime friends; Buckley often referred National Review writers to Kempton for backgrounders on labour issues, Kempton having made his bones as a labour reporter/columnist and said to have had files on the subject that even the Library of Congress and the FBI would have envied - who finally pushed and shoved Kempton into assembling and collecting his second collection of columns and essays, Rebellions, Perversities, and Main Events, his first such book since 1962's America Comes of Middle Age.) Well, so could the Jimmy Breslin who wrote Can't Anybody Here Play This Game, a charming recap of the New York Mets' hilarious first season of play.

But if Mr. Matthews should have any further doubt, he should be advised that no less than George F. Will wrote, when Murray Kempton won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1985, that Kempton was "the class of our class," meaning sociopolitical columnists: "Imagine a baseball pitcher satisfied just knowing that Sandy Koufax was a contemporary. I know exactly how he would feel. It is gratifying to know I am in a profession adorned by Murray Kempton." I like to think of Murray Kempton as not only one of the greatest prose stylists ever to grace American newspapers (it says something disgraceful that, if he were beginning his career today, his prose style would be spurned by editors today who prefer sound bite writing over rich, lyric sentences) but as perhaps the last liberal whose brains didn't go entirely to bed.

[NYCVirago]

I remember having dinner in Belfast on the eve of the Good Friday peace referendum. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Mary McGrory of the Washington Post, Mike Barnicle of the Boston Globe and I all sat around the table. We all had our roots in Ireland, and I loved it.

Sounds like the dinner from hell!

[BonnieJ]

Does anyone else think he was actually fire as a columnist? I don't see why he makes his exit with this self-deprecating approach, so unlike him! Has he gained humility at last?!

[Syncro]

Oppose this war because it will create a millennium of hatred and the suicidal terrorism that comes with it.

I guess he doesn't know that suicidal terrorism is already here...that is what started this war on 9-11-2001

Being as we were brought into this war with that act, it is our duty to end it.

Thank Goodness that was his last column.