Free Republic

Five little words — "I forgot he was black" — have exposed a contradiction in the idea of a post-racial nation. The comment came from MSNBC host Chris Matthews after President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech on Wednesday. "He is post-racial, by all appearances," the liberal host said on the air. "I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. You know, he's gone a long way to become a leader of this country, and past so much history, in just a year or two. I mean, it's something we don't even think about." Matthews meant it as...

My headline might have buried the lede. On the one hand, it's catchy to hear Chris Matthews proclaim his belief that reparations for slavery "make sense." But in the grand scope of things, one more liberal pundit coming out for reparations might be small potatoes. Perhaps the bigger story was the statement on this evening's Hardball by Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC). The former head of the Congressional Black Caucus revealed that he saw nationalized health care as a part of reparations. View video here.

Chris Matthews: Back With an Obamania Vengeance . . . If Barack Obama makes it to the White House, perhaps he should appoint Chris Matthews Commissar of Gosplan, the Commission charged with developing the economy's Five Year Plans. The Hardball host, back from vacation, displayed the enthusiasm of a dutiful apparatchik in praising an Obama ad that was in turn a pitch for central planning. During the "ad wars" segment on this evening's Hardball, Matthews first played a McCain ad that hit Obama over his plans to raise taxes and his lack of readiness to lead. After Andrea Mitchell suggested...