We’ve been hearing warnings all day about how conservatives shouldn’t politicize Ted Kennedy’s death. One might think that those warnings should be directed not at Kennedy’s public political opponents, who have all conducted themselves with class, but with his allies in the media. Chris Matthews waited only hours to use the occasion to tinkle down his leg over the anger in town-hall forums prompted by the Barack Obama agenda, and likened it to the assassination of Ted’s older brother John (via Gateway Pundit and Newsbusters):

CHRIS MATTHEWS: You know there’s going to be a lot of talk about the tragic blessings of the Kennedy family, and the curse. And it’s all nonsense. These people were courageous risk takers. Kathleen Kennedy, the girl, the oldest daughter, she was killed with her lover traveling on a plane ride she never should have taken through terrible weather in Europe. Joe Kennedy, Jr. took a mission that nobody should have taken in a plane loaded with dynamite to go blow up the V-1 rocket sites. Jack Kennedy was killed in an open car in Dallas in the midst of the most hated–it’s like the mood we’re in right now.

Well, except for that pesky fact that John Kennedy was assassinated not by some “un-American” conservative angry at government expansion, but by an avowed Communist, as Mark Finkelstein points out at NB.

Lest you think those are isolated incidents, here’s Matthews again, not politicizing Kennedy’s death on the Today show:

MATTHEWS: He wanted to be his brother’s brother, and then he turned that torch over last year to Barack Obama. And the great thing about the Kennedys is that they always grew as a family. They tended to get better as they got older. Some families like the Long family of Louisiana dissipated. This family got better. The Kennedy commitment to civil rights was almost accidental. It began because of history — ’63 and Martin Luther King’s march. By Bobby, it became passion, by Teddy it became real. And then Teddy turns it over to the first African-American and says, “You got the ball.” Amazing history. Barack’s now the last brother.

Will anyone in the media call out Matthews for his shameless Obama shilling? I somehow doubt it.