Call this the opposite of a tingle up one’s leg. No surprise here from the classiest cable network to drag anchor in the ratings, but consider if someone on Fox had offered this kind of fantasy musing on air about a liberal show host — say, Keith Olbermann or Matthews himself. The Left would have screamed about fascism and brownshirts, and of crypto-signaling for assassinations and the like:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: You guys see Live and Let Die, the great Bond film with Yaphet Kotto as the bad guy, Mr. Big?  In the end they jam a big CO2 pellet in his face and he blew up.  I have to tell you, Rush Limbaugh is looking more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp.  That day may come. Not yet. But we’ll be there to watch. I think he’s Mr. Big, I think Yaphet Kotto.  Are you watching, Rush?

Live and Let Die?  Matthews is into the Roger Moore Bond films?  That explains a lot, actually.

Note too, that Matthews isn’t using the dishonest “some people are saying” dodge here, either.  He’s openly wistful for the day it happens, telling Politico’s Jonathan Martin and Washington Post reporter Anne Kornblut that “we’ll be there to watch” when someone offs Rush.

Classy.  Really, really classy.  Does NBC want to stand behind this standard for its broadcasts?