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Chris Matthews, Seriously. (O.K., Not That Seriously.)
By MARK LEIBOVICH
Published: April 13, 2008
This article will appear in this Sunday's Times Magazine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/magazine/13matthews-t.html?_r=2&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print ...
Matthews is as pure a political being as there is on TV. He is the whip-tongued, name-dropping, self-promoting wise guy you often find in campaigns, and in the bigger offices on Capitol Hill or K Street. (“Rain Man,” NBC’s Brian Williams jokingly called Matthews, referring to his breadth of political knowledge.) He wrote speeches for Jimmy Carter, worked as a top advisor to Tip O’Neill, ran unsuccessfully for Congress himself in his native Philadelphia at 28. In an age of cynicism about politics, Matthews can be romantic about the craft, defensive about its practitioners and personally affronted when someone derides Washington or “the game.” He can also be unsparing in his criticism of those who run afoul of his “take.” “I am not a cheerleader for politics per se,” Matthews says. “I am a cheerleader for the possibilities of politics.”
This election season, MSNBC has placed great emphasis on politics, devoting 28 percent of its airtime to the subject last year (compared with 15 percent for Fox News and 12 percent for CNN, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism). The thrilling 2008 presidential campaign has been a boon, and in the first quarter MSNBC’s prime-time audience rose 63 percent over the previous year (compared with 12 percent for the Fox News Channel and 70 percent for CNN, though MSNBC still draws many fewer viewers overall). As Matthews is clearly a signature figure on the network, and one of the most recognizable political personalities on the air, this has been something of a heyday for him.
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Nothing illustrated Matthews’s discordance with the new cable ethos better than an eviscerating interview he suffered through last fall at the hands of Stewart himself. Matthews went on the “The Daily Show” to promote his book “Life’s a Campaign: What Politics Has Taught Me About Friendship, Rivalry, Reputation and Success.” The book essentially advertises itself as a guidebook for readers wishing to apply the lessons of winning politicians to succeeding in life. “People don’t mind being used; they mind being discarded” is the title of one chapter. “A self-hurt book” and “a recipe for sadness” Stewart called it, and the interview was all squirms from there. “This strikes me as artifice,” Stewart said. “If you live by this book, your life will be strategy, and if your life is strategy, you will be unhappy.”
Matthews accused Stewart of “trashing my book.”
“I’m not trashing your book,” Stewart protested. “I’m trashing your philosophy of life.”
Matthews told me that the interview was a painful experience. Not only did Stewart humiliate him, but the interview exposed an essential truth that people by and large don’t want to hear advice from politicians, a breed that, in many ways, has defined Matthews’s value system. “I think Stewart was right in that he caught the drift of antipolitics,” Matthews said.
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