I did not see Michelle Malkin's appearance on Hardball last night, mainly because I can't abide Kerry's shrill shill Chris Matthews.

However, I've heard excerpts of the "interview" touching on the Swift Vets book.

I have not heard that anyone was accusing Kerry of deliberately inflicting a wound on himself in order to gain a Purple Heart and/or avoid combat duty. See the problem in that? The accusation I've heard is that he deliberately did something that resulted in an unintentional wound. In short, Kerry was reckless.

But in an astonishing display of the Straw Man logical fallacy, Matthews kept pounding Malkin to get her to say, yes or no, whether Kerry deliberately wounded himself to avoid combat.

If my understanding of the event in question is accurate, the technically correct answer is "no" — but that is the problem. Kerry did wound himself, albeit inadvertently. He then did claim a Purple Heart for the incident.

However, by denying the exact claim Matthews was making, without expanding on it, Malkin would have given him exactly what he wanted: a noted conservative denying a key Swift Vet claim.

The correct answer, what Malkin ought to have said, was "no, but...." Sadly, that's too much nuance for partisan hack Matthews. Spoons has it right: Matthews is a horse's ass.

Posted by Russ at 02:20 PM, August 20, 2004 in Politics