NYT Provides The Tweety Chronicles

So the big New York Times magazine article on Tweety Bird Matthews dropped, and Digby thinks it's so relentlessly damning of him that she almost felt sorry for him. She thinks that the system is as much the problem as any one personality, and it's wrong to focus on Matthews at the expense of a Russert or the parade of establishment talking heads that don't simply land on Hardball, and those figures are no more noble.

I suppose that's true, but that's no reason not to note the preening self-regard of Matthews, the extent of the puffery, the cocoon of self-importance around him. I think that ANYTHING taking him down a notch is a small victory for democracy. Why let someone who thinks like this go unchallenged?

As we approached the airport gate, Matthews mentioned that he and his wife, Kathleen, have been contemplating a trip to Damascus. It’s something they have wanted to do for a long time. But he worries that he might make an inviting target for a kidnapper. “I can imagine getting some big-name media figure would be a big propaganda catch for them,” Matthews said. “You can imagine what the neocons would say if I were kidnapped. They’d be like, ‘See, Matthews, terrorism isn’t so funny now, is it?’ ” [...]

“Did you see me on the ‘Today’ show?” Matthews asked when I called him one afternoon in early March. “I quoted F. Scott Fitzgerald. I think I’m the only guy around who quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald on the ‘Today’ show.”

I mean, anyone who sees himself as Nixon - in a good way! - kind of has to be stopped at all costs.

Matthews has berated Russert to several people at NBC and has told friends and associates that Russert is like John F. Kennedy while he is more like Richard Nixon. Kennedy was the golden boy while Nixon was the scrapper for whom nothing came easily. It’s an imperfect comparison, certainly (Matthews is Irish Catholic, for starters, and Russert is not charismatic by any classic Kennedyesque definition), but it does offer a glimpse into how Matthews perceives himself, especially in relation to Russert. It’s also worth noting that Nixon was obsessed with Kennedy, and Kennedy could be dismissive and disparaging of Nixon.

The thing is, of course, that all this is bombast. He talks himself into these beliefs of prominence, while underneath there is this undercurrent of sadness, of a recognition that his life is incomplete without being given a proper perch. The resentments of practically every other anchor at MSNBC is very obvious. In this sense, Matthews is something of a tragic figure and I understand why you would almost pity him.

Regardless, Matthews has an attuned sense of pecking order — at MSNBC, at NBC, in Washington and in life. This is no great rarity among the fragile egos of TV or, for that matter, in the status-fixated world of politics. But Matthews is especially frontal about it. In an interview with Playboy a few years ago, he volunteered that he had made the list of the Top 50 journalists in D.C. in The Washingtonian magazine. “I’m like 36th, and Tim Russert is No. 1,” Matthews told Playboy. “I would argue for a higher position for myself.”

He wanted to feel part of the “first team,” he added. “You can be on the second team at 25 or 36. But at some point you say: No, this is my opportunity, my life. I want to be on the first team.”

So, yes, it is pitying. But this guy does have importance, even if it's in the little Village world, and discrediting his shtick is in my view crucial. In many ways, you've seen the shift since the firestorm over his anti-Hillary comments and the "Tweety Effect" in New Hampshire, which eventually forced him to apologize on the air. There appears to be no question that NBC is pretty unhappy with the negative attention, and the constant drumbeat against his rampant sexism is a cause of that. Matthews may just be a cog in the wheel but I'd say he's a fairly prominent cog, and so taking down this DC establishment piece by piece and trying to return to a media that informs the citizenry is a long-term project, and Matthews is a good place to start, anyway.