That's Jeff Bercovici's right-to-the-point summation of The New York Times Magazine profile of Chris Matthews.
Bercovici, one of TCG's favorite bloggers, describes the profile, by Mark Leibovich, as "jaw-dropping." Bercovici observes that Matthews is "the only TV news host insane enough to tell a potential guest that she should come on the show 'because you're beautiful...and because you're black.'"
That's pretty good, on the nuttiness score, but there's much more in the Times profile. Where to begin? How 'bout the beginning:
Whenever Chris Matthews says something he likes, which happens a lot, he repeats it often and at volumes suggesting a speaker who feels insufficiently listened to at times. “Tim Russert finally reeled the big marlin into the boat tonight,” Matthews yelled — nine times, on and off the air, after a Democratic debate that Russert moderated with Brian Williams in late February at Cleveland State University. Matthews believed that Russert (the fisherman) had finally succeeded in getting Hillary Clinton (the marlin) to admit that she was wrong to vote in favor of the Iraq war resolution in 2002. “We’ve been trolling for that marlin for what, a year now?” Matthews said to Russert.
Or maybe one could single out Matthews' pathological namedropping and status conscious-ing. Or his wish to run for the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania in 2010 against Arlen Specter.
Once again, The Cable Gamer has to ask: What is going on at MSNBC? Jeff, do you have any answers? And in this case, I don't Jeff Bercovici (although I am always interested in his take). Instead, I mean Jeff Zucker, and Jeff Immelt.
