Matthews’ big mouth

Chris Matthews insists there’s a method to his madness, says Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post. As host of MSNBC’s Hardball, Matthews, a boyish-looking 62, is known for blurting out whatever happens to be on his mind, and for his tendency to hog all available airtime. There was that time he accused the Bush administration of unspecified “criminality,” for instance, and he once said that Vice President Dick Cheney “always wants to kill.” Matthews is a bipartisan offender, though, recently comparing Hillary Clinton to the oppressive Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. A few weeks ago he was forced to issue an on-air apology after he blurted that Clinton owes her entire political career to the fact that “her husband messed around.” Matthews now agrees that his remark was “nasty” and “callous,” but in many ways, the dust-up was classic Matthews. His job, he says, is “to be provocative and say things—you know, ‘That’s crazy!’—the way you might at a party.” Matthews, who once worked for legendary House Speaker Tip O’Neill, says he genuinely finds politics a hoot, and he wants his viewers to feel the same way. And that means taking some chances and not censoring himself. “I aim for the chalk line,” he says, using a tennis analogy. “You try to keep it in. If it hits the chalk line, that’s perfect. People have that little gasp and say, I can’t believe he said that.”

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