Below The Beltway

Chris Matthews continued the discussion about Barack Obama’s bowling ability that Joe Scarborough has started, and said this:

MATTHEWS: Here’s a guy trying to break into the white ethnic voting crowd, so he goes and plays a sport most associated, I think, with regular folks in the big cities and small towns. And you and I grew up doing a little bowling. We know what it’s all — we know what a pathetic score is, and neither of us have ever done a 37, I think it’s fair to say.

FINEMAN: Well, to be fair to Barack, it was over seven frames, OK? But that’s –

MATTHEWS: OK.

FINEMAN: — but that still isn’t much. He definitely needs some bowling lessons. He should do what we used to do in Pittsburgh, which is all-night bowling for a dollar, you know, really work on your game.

I think he did get [former Pittsburgh Steelers football players] Franco Harris and he did get Jerome Bettis, the Bus, to endorse him. And he’s traveling around on the bus with the Bus. But if you can’t do something like that, you shouldn’t do it. He should have stuck to shooting hoops –

MATTHEWS: Yeah, I know.

FINEMAN: – which he’s very, very good at, by the way, and which translates racially, too, especially during the NCAA basketball tournament. Don’t do something you’ve never tried before in front of a national television audience, OK?

MATTHEWS: You know, Michelle — and this gets very ethnic, but the fact that he’s good at basketball doesn’t surprise anybody, but the fact that he’s that terrible at bowling does make you wonder –

FINEMAN: That doesn’t surprise anybody either.

BERNARD: Well, it certainly doesn’t surprise anybody black, I can tell you that.

MATTHEWS: Is black a bowling –

FINEMAN: This is just killing him.

MATTHEWS: I don’t know, I guess everybody bowls.

FINEMAN: This is just killing him.

MATTHEWS: I know.

FINEMAN: This is just killing him, Chris. Don’t show this over and over again.

MATTHEWS: No, no, we’re doing it again. This is a killer. Look at this killer. Because it isn’t the most macho form there, I must say, but who knows?