Chris Matthews: Nuts? Certainly. Bigot? No.

True/Slant contributor Sara Libby and — oh golly, a whole lot of other people have weighed in this morning on Chris Matthews’ bewildering quote from last night:

I forgot [Obama] was black tonight for an hour … I said, ‘Wait a minute. He’s an African American guy in front of a bunch of other white people. … It was so broad-ranging, so in tune with so many problems, of aspects, and aspects of American life that you don’t think in terms of the old tribalism, the old ethnicity. It was astounding in that regard.

Sara sees racism in Matthews’ remark. I don’t. Let me take an unpopular position here: Matthews is loony as they come and half the time I don’t understand what the hell he’s talking about. He gets caught up in these rhetorical tropes and God only knows where he’s going to come out. But that’s the thing– there’s a disconnect between his brain and his mouth in those moments. I saw the moment in question, and my impression was that he’d found the most garbled, inept and generally dumbass way to say that for an hour he’d forgotten to marvel at the fact that this was the first black president standing up there for his first State of the Union. I mean, let’s be honest: How many times in the last year have you seen Obama on TV and thought Holy cow — the black guy actually won! I know I have, a dozen times or more. I still do. It’s a marveling, pleasurable moment.

What I think Matthews was trying to say, in his typically overheated and jumbled way, was that Obama has settled into the job in a way that pushes the wonder of his historical accomplishment into the background. I think. This is a guy who brings the crazy on a daily basis — remember him saying that Obama “sends a thrill up my leg”? That was fun. But is he a bigot? I don’t believe so.