Michelle Malkin appeared on ABC's This Week yesterday to talk about the racial issues in Obama's sit-down over beer with Henry Louis Gates and James Crowley. We thought her comments were pretty obtuse and wholly unenlightening, and decided to compile some examples of other commentators who've made similarly ill-advised statements on political shows. Click through to enjoy the ridiculousness.
Peggy Noonan went on ABC's This Week shortly after the release of the torture memos from the Bush administration and said "Sometimes in life you just have to keep walking ... Some things in life need to be mysterious."
Conservative talk radio host Kevin James appeared on MSNBC's Hardball on March 15, 2008 and got into trouble when he compared Barack Obama to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's "appeasement" of Hitler prior to World War II. For about three full minutes Chris Matthews tried to get James to name specific examples of Chamberlain's actions while James kept repeating "He was an appeaser! We're talking about appeasement!" James finally conceded he didn't know what he was talking about.
In August of 2008, John McCain famously told Politico that he wasn't sure how many houses he owned. Mark Halperin went on This Week the following Sunday and tried--unsuccessfully--to spin McCain's remark as somehow unfavorable to Obama.
At the 2004 Republican National Convention, Chris Matthews' questions frustrated Democratic (but Bush-supporter) Senator Zell Miller to the point that he challenged Matthews to an old-fashioned duel.
Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff made a bumbling appearance on Meet The Press after hurricane Katrina and tried to justify the government response to the massive storm, saying "Well, I think if you look at what actually happened, I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged the Bullet.'"
In another memorable Meet The Press moment, Senator Chuck Schumer flat-out laughed when asked if Sarah Palin was the future of the Republican party.
By Sharon Eliza Nichols