Chris Matthews: Do ‘Dittoheads’ On The Right Like ‘Goosestepping’ To Fox News And Rush Limbaugh?

The war between Media Matters and Fox News that has resulted in some on the latter network calling for the former organization to have its tax-exempt status removed has resulted in many comparisons between the two, and debates over how much bias is an unfair amount. On tonight’s Hardball, Chris Matthews and his panel debated just how ideological Media Matters is, but not for long before discussing the “authoritarian” nature of conservative opinion itself.

While Matthews thought it was “fair” to identify Media Matters as progressive, he posed the question of whether that was enough for the government to remove their tax-exempt status. Panelist Ron Reagan agreed with the progressive label– “they are unabashedly progressive,” he admitted– but the reason they were still deserving of their legal status was that they were not out politicking. “You can be ideological and be tax-exempt,” he explained, “but you certainly can’t be political.”

The conversation then veered to the identity of Fox News, which Talking Points Memo‘s Josh Marshall argued “operates as a wing of the Republican Party, there’s no getting around that,” despite some at the network “trying to be good journalists.” On that note, Matthews played a clip from the now-infamous debate between Chris Wallace and Jon Stewart in which, Matthews argues, Wallace “is not saying they’re fair and balanced, he’s saying they’re a balancing act.” This set off Reagan, who argued, facetiously of course, that “everyone else in the media is part of a liberal conspiracy and poor lonely little Fox is out there doing the counterbalancing,” concluding, flatly, that “Fox makes things up.”

“Does Fox make things up?” thus became the new center of discussion, as did the people who follow Fox and other conservative commentators. Matthews suggested that “if you only watch Fox… I think you’d be in trouble,” and then went on to attack people who “walk around and say ‘I’m a dittohead’ after listening to Limbaugh.” “Why would anyone want to be a ‘ditto-anything?'” he asked, suggesting that people “put your own stew together” and “not be derivative.” Marshall stepped in to add that some of that is pervasive both on the left and right, but that there was an “authoritarian mentality” around some on the right.

The segment via MSNBC below:

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