If a tree falls on you and you don't scream, does it make a noise?

I am told that Chris Matthews, who apparently has a show on MSNBC -- which, I am told, is a news network of some sort -- had some really odd things to say the other day about U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Now, mind you, I am not a big McCain fan. I think he is a squish on many important issues and wants to get along with Democrats (which means supporting their positions) rather than stand up for conservative principals. However, he has served his country honorably and well, in the military and in the Senate. Maybe the "well" applies more to his military service than his Senate service, but that is a matter of opinion and something into which we will not get at this time. (Eff me, did you see the correct grammatical construction that dude just used? Who says "into which" these days?)

In any event, Sen. McCain apparently took to task Chuck Hagel, the dipshit recently nominated to be Secretary of Defense. It apparently does not matter that Hagel can't articulate a coherent thought about defense policy (or anything else, from what I can see). The lamestream media declines to criticize him, although they acknowledge, apparently, that pretty much everybody thinks Hagel proved himself to be a moron at his Senate hearing the other day. (I am not providing links because this post deals mostly with my opinion, but also because some of the links are to places to which I refuse to link, and also because I am one seriously lazy sumbitch.)

So, Chris Matthews, who used to be a staffer for former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neil, a Democrat from God knows where, apparently thought that Sen. McCain, because he was putting some pointed questions to Mr. Hagel at Hagel's Senate confirmation hearing, was having a "Vietnam flashback." Sen. McCain, of course, spent a number of years in a North Vietnamese prison camp after being shot down during the war and still suffers from injuries inflicted upon him there while he was tortured. Chris Matthews, of course, once had a really bad dream about being chased by monsters after he read "Where the Wild Things Are." Matthews still has flashbacks to that dream, and assumes that other people also have flashbacks to the worst moments in their lives.

It is not amazing to me that Chris Matthews said something extraordinarily stupid and simultaneously outrageously insulting to a Republican. What is amazing is that anyone was watching his show and that I heard about what he said. Imagine my surprise to learn that MSNBC is still on the air.