Why do y'all call Chris Matthews "Tweety?"

[RedShoesBlueState]

I keep seeing that all over this board. Can somebody tell me the origin of that nickname?

[apocalypsehow]

1. I think because of his straw-blond hair, and the way he screeches like a tweety bird when he rants.

[JerseygirlCT]

27. The big fat round head... nt

[ClassWarrior]

2. As I understand the misty origins of the term...

...it has to do with an annoyingly squeeky voice and a big yellow head.

NGU.

[shayes51]

3. I'm so glad you asked that question.

I just figured out who Tweety is not long ago.

[DesertRat]

4. Hair color

His staff nicknamed him Tweety Bird because of the shade of yellow he dyes his hair.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Tweety

[RedShoesBlueState]

8. Thank you! (nm)

[joefree1]

5. With that huge forehead he looks like tweety the cartoon character

And he's got a smart mouth.

[Solly Mack]

6. Because he's not tall enough to be called Big Bird?

[zabet]

10. Not smart enough either!

:rofl:

[rocktivity]

22. Du-zy!

:rofl:
rocknation

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. It's his sunny nobility.

Welcome to DU :hi:

[Maine-ah]

33. Even his mouth is a little beak-ish

[bluedawg12]

35. OMG! Twins separated at hatching! n/t

[reality based]

9. I like to think the nickname stuck because he's a birdbrain. n/t

[sandrakae]

11. I always just assumed because he looks like tweety bird. You can see the resemblance below.

[blondeatlast]

12. Big, giant, yellow head; itsy-bitsy, annoying mouth. You know, like Tweety (I rooted for Sylvester).

[candice]

13. He removed his Bush campaign button every evening and snickered

...whenever he spread the urban legend in which Gore is said to have claimed he invented the internet. Check snopes.com for details.

Whomever Tweety is against--other than just keeping a horse race going for viewer (commercial) eyes, General Electric is against. This is from 2003, but the media just gets more consolidated, not less.

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2003/04/47530.php

GENERAL ELECTRIC --(donated 1.1 million to GW Bush for his 2000 election campaign)

Television Holdings:
* NBC: includes 13 stations, 28% of US households.
* NBC Network News: The Today Show, Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, Meet the Press, Dateline NBC, NBC News at Sunrise.
* CNBC business television; MSNBC 24-hour cable and Internet news service (co-owned by NBC and Microsoft); Court TV (co-owned with Time Warner), Bravo (50%), A&E (25%), History Channel (25%).
The "MS" in MSNBC
means microsoft
The same Microsoft that donated 2.4 million to get GW bush elected.

Other Holdings:
* GE Consumer Electronics.
* GE Power Systems: produces turbines for nuclear reactors and power plants.
* GE Plastics: produces military hardware and nuclear power equipment.
* GE Transportation Systems: runs diesel and electric trains.

[JBoy]

14. Some other DU cartoon characters

Yosemite Sam:



Elmer Fudd:



Daffy Duck:

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Reu/b/2007/163/[e-mail]

Porky Pig:

[Patsy Stone]

21. And don't forget Bert theTurtle.

[Mme. Defarge]

15. Inquiring minds

have wanted to know the answer to this question for the last three years! Thanks.

[lurky]

16. What about Little Boots?

And Pickles? I don't get those either.

[SoCalDem]

17. Little Boots=Bush... Pickles was supposedly a "pet name" he had for her

[FloridaJudy]

19. In Latin the translation of "Little Boots" is Caligula

[lurky]

20. Aha!

:think:

And that would mean Barbara = Agrippina. :evilgrin:

[NoPasaran]

18. He has been seen in the company of puddy tats

[XboxWarrior]

23. IMHO........"Tweety" makes no sense.

Even after reading all the replies......

His only real 'Trademark', is the "HAH".....laugh.

Chris blows in the wind, sometimes pro-war (when it was popular)
and now, pretty Liberal......

His show is way more tolerable than "Tucker's".......

I wish MSNBC would cancel that fuckin' Carlson.

Tweety? really?

I wanna better explanation.

Show me?

[NoPasaran]

24. Okay, I read somewhere

I think it was the late, great Media Whores Online that it was a nickname his staff came up with that referred to his hair. And you know it wouldn't be on the internet if it wasn't true.

[DesertRat]

32. See explanation and link in reply #4. n/t

[rocktivity]

25. Here's a link to a glossary of DU terms/inside jokes

and welcome to DU!

:hi:
rocknation

[Minnesota_Lib]

26. Because it rolls off the tongue easier than Fat-headed, Spit-talking Asshat.

[UTUSN]

28. O.K., skip posts 1 through 27.

Chris Matthews

From Demopedia

Etymology of "Tweety". During Campaign 2000 the media noise machine was swooning over the nicknames Shrub was giving some of them. Media Whores Online ran a contest to nickname Chris MATTHEWS. In the first 3 or so weeks, there was no clear, catchy front runner, with "The Screamer" sort of leading. Then one of MATTHEWS's own Hardball staff leaked to MWO that they themselves called him "Tweety" because of the Clairol shade he favored. This was immediately declared the winner. But in some quarters, it wasn't entirely satisfactory. For one thing, by the time the name was declared, the shade had changed to platinum, leading to a suggestion he be called "Carole LOMBARD".
Plus, "Tweety" sounded too affectionate.

Then M-TV held its 20th or 25th or whatever anniversary, and all the cable echo chambers were doing segments of Britney shedding her duds down to almost nothing. Not to be left behind, Tweety followed suit, with a guest "culture" commentator from Time Mag, the young humor columnist, Joel STEIN. The staff kept re-running the Britney clip, and Tweety was clearly DROOLING disgustingly. STEIN said, "You're beginning to creep me out." Tweety responded, "Yeah, well, wait till YOU're 50." This led to the suggestion that "Tweety" be modified to "Tweezer" to retain the hair reference while canceling out the affection factor and also adding the (dirty old) "geezer" angle.

Darrell HAMMOND "Doing" Tweety on SNL. Tweety's ego was massively stroked after the debut of HAMMOND's impersonation of him, either in 2001 or 2002. He said, "I am now an ICON: I have been 'done' on Saturday Night Live'." The funniest line in the debut was HAMMOND as Tweety, cracking himself up with, "For the...FIFTY...people who watch this show (Hardball, not SNL)..." In the first few times HAMMOND featured him, the target was Tweety himself--manically interrupting, spitting, and drooling. However, the characterization evolved, not true to the original, where Tweety became the "rational" character surrounded by oddball, extremist "guests", with HAMMOND-Tweety shaking his head in disbelief at their partisan spin.

"Turning" from Being a Democrat. He (like G.E.RUSSERT and Pat CADDELL) still trades on having been a Democrat in the CARTER/O'NEILL era. In the hothouse of big time political flunkydom, STATUS and POWER come from the SUCCESS of your boss. RAYGUN kicked Tweety's bosses' rears, and Tweety gravitated to admiring that "success". When he started up his media career he was mentored by G.E. RUSSERT, who had himself already started "turning" by "reaching out" to LIMBOsevic and expending his formerly-Lib-bleeding-heart on those poor wingnuts who had been maligned and marginalized, lo those many years. Tweety started doing video valentines to RAYGUN, walking arm in arm with Nancy. He might have tapped into the frenzy of the FAKE impeachment, but "hatred of the CLINTONs" isn't what made him turn. The last time he was identifiably a Democrat was sometime after 1988 when Hardball (the book) was published.

How Tweety "Executed" DONAHUE on MSNBC. Tweety was on his book tour for another one of his "books" (large type, wide spaces between lines, blank half-pages). It was in the jingoistic hysteria in the run-up to the illegal Iraq attack. The book was about supposed "Americanism" --an American Civ 101 ripoff about books and movies and cultural stuff that are essentially American (think, "The Great Gatsby"). So Phil welcomed him as a colleague and peer on Phil's show for the full hour to plug the book. From the moment he appeared, there was a strange, deadly snake look in Tweety's snake eyes. Phil was walking around, apparently not sensing anything, while Tweety was motionless, following him only with his eyes. Phil brought up something or other questioning blind jingoism, and Tweety STRUCK! He started out with venom dripping, "You see THIS is EXACTLY what's wrong with you Liberals: You are NEGATIVE about this country, you find NOTHING good about it," and on and on. It took awhile before Phil figured out what was happening. Later, Phil was sitting at the table with Tweety and, weaker and weaker, did some of his trademark shoulder shrugging and arm waving. Tweety delivered the coup de grace, "What's THIS (mimicking the movements)??!! What's with the --APE-- movements???" Days or a week or two later, Phil's cancellation was announced and took effect.

How Tweety "Triggered" a Gun Incident (re: Kathleen WILLEY). At the height of the FAKE impeachment, Ms WILLEY claimed that a mystery jogger had threatened her or her cat or somebody. Several months later, there was gossip that the jogger had been identified. Tweety hosted her and it appeared they had discussed the identity off camera. He tried mightily to get her to say the name on the air, which she wouldn't do. Finally, he himself blurted it out, "Was it Name/Surname?" She would not confirm it. Within days there was a bizarre incident, with the mentally disabled brother of Pat and Bay BUCHANAN going with a gun to the house of the supposed jogger, where there were only some foreign exchange students present. Later it was determined that the person Tweety named on the air had NOTHING to do with the supposed jogger incident.

"Heroes" Tweety and Tom DeLAY. In the aftermath of the 07-24-98 shooting of two Capitol police officers when the slain officers were duly eulogized and called heroes, Tweety latched on to this, the way we have seen him attempt to glorify himself in other instances: Like saying he was assigned in the Peace Corps and "WALKED THE SAME GROUND" THAT CHURCHILL passed through. Or when he said, "I am an ICON! I have been 'done' by SNL!". So now that the Capitol policemen were being called heroes, Tweety came forward to say that HE had been a Capitol policemen, TOO, JUST LIKE THEM, when he was starting out. It turns out that he had worked a (temporary?) job for three months as that. In all the years before the officers were shot and eulogized, he probably NEVER referred to that job, most likely thinking of it as a rent-a-cop turn, until he could see in retrospect the glory that he had been DESTINED to from the beginning.
But he is not the only glory hog. When that incident was happening, the news of the moment reported that Tom DELAY had hopped a plane out of town and immediately turned around in Houston when the incident was over. This show of courage is why he has been dubbed, "Tom-DePLANE!-DePLANE!-DELAY".

But searches of countless news reports of that time show no mention of the hopping-the-plane. Only this is left:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/... "...House members, many rushing out of town, did not have to remain behind. DeLay slipped out the main door of the Capitol less than 15 minutes after the shooting. He looked stricken. Asked if he'd seen anything, he said, "Did I ever. I don't want to talk about it." Aides rushed him into his waiting car. ...."
------------

[BurtWorm]

29. I'm really surprised it took that many posts to give credit where credit is due.

Sigh... Long live the memory of Media Whores Online!

:patriot:

[UTUSN]

30. Long live MWO ------------- and YOU!1 n/t

[BurtWorm]

31. And you!

:toast:

And everyone who has resisted Bushism from Nov. 7, 2000, on.

[mulsh]

34. Right Wing Shill is too wordy

n/t