Video: Carville on Beck, Olympics, and, er … hockey courts?

This clip contains plenty of material for three blog posts, but I’ll roll it up into one. Pay attention to the entire clip all the way to the end, but be sure to watch for James Carville making a fool of himself by declaring Glen Beck incompetent on sports — while talking about hockey “courts”. Hey, I’m no big fan of hockey, but I can tell a rink from a tennis court:

I think he’s nuts… Just out and out nuts. And I also think that he’s a blatant hypocrite. Here’s somebody that sits on his show and weeping about how much he loves America… and then, he’s absolutely giddy when his country doesn’t get the Olympics.

He wouldn’t know the difference between a football, a bat, and a hockey court.

And that’s Carville at his most coherent in this clip. He descends into incoherence immediately afterwards, earning a puzzled look from his wife.  (Update: I got that quote from CNN’s Political Ticker.)

As for cheering the loss of the Olympics, Carville has an implied point about it being bad optics. However, 47% of Chicagoans didn’t want their Olympic bid to succeed, either; does that make them un-American, or just clear-eyed about the costs and risks of hosting the 2016 Games? After all, that would dump billions of development dollars into one of the most chronically corrupt cities in America, much of which would come from federal monies, and all of which would be used to further entrench the power of the Daley machine in Chicago.  It’s hard to imagine how we could possibly make it easier for the Daley Machine to extend its patronage efforts and solidify its grip on power than to hand it an Olympiad, which has had its share of corruption problems over the years without the assistance of the Chicago environment.

So yes, it’s possible to think that losing the Olympics is a good thing without hating our country.  The argument that equates that with being un-American or unpatriotic is risible, especially when it comes from people who cheered when an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at an American president, or celebrated casualty counts while opposing the war in Iraq.

Lastly, Graham will take a lot of heat for his remarks about Glen Beck not representing the Republican Party, but Beck himself would probably be the first to agree.  It’s the same with Rush Limbaugh, but with different audiences.  Limbaugh represents conservatives, while Beck is more of a conservo-populist, and both regularly criticize the GOP for its policy directions.  That’s what makes the efforts of the Obama administration to make either or both the face of the Republican Party so laughable; it demonstrates a cluelessness about both talk radio and the Republican Party, and looks like desperation.

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