Dissecting Chris Matthews

» NYT Mag: The Aria of Chris Matthews (Mark Leibovich)

While this article is ostensibly about Chris Matthews, it's also about the changing nature of cable news. And that includes the impact that John Stewart and Stephen Colbert have had on it.

I've been a news junkie for a number of years now - I can trace my beginnings either to bugging my dad to subscribe to both the Chronicle and the Post during a political campaign cycle or to being fixated with CSPAN (well, that and HBO) in the early days of cable. I feel like I've at least semi-Gumped my way through the era of Firing Line, the McLaughlin Group, Crossfire, MSNBC-CNBC-Fox News-CNN-etc, and now the era of Comedy Central being a leading political news carrier of the day. Leibovich captures at least some of this transformation in the career trajectory of Chris Matthews.

Matthews possesses at least a few qualities that would otherwise endear me to his style: "Also, Matthews added, Carson 'had babes on the show.'" But there's also a lot that ultimately leads me to discount him, as the article's reference to this interview attests to:

But hey, read the whole thing for yourself. It's a small dose of industry navel-gazing, but it at least glancingly captures some of what's driving the change in the way political news is transmitted these day. I recall at least one of my marketing classes in the early 90s where some of this trend was originated. The characterizations of it have since ranged from "cynical" to "sophisticated" consumers who no longer respond to much of the over-packaged pitches of the past (substitute "pitches" for "talking points" and you go from product marketing to political marketing in a hurry). My own sense is that there's a market for folks who just want to be dealt with honestly and the market of politics is having a hell of a time catching up to producing "goods" that meet that demand.

Matthews is certainly symptomatic of the old approach: accept my worldview or get shouted down; add a dose of conventional wisdom with a twist of CW that's long since disproven; and mix gently with a style that evokes an unhealthy sense of certainty ... entirely unwarranted. And when in doubt, use laughter as a defense mechanism and write a book or two about how great politics is.

I'm more curious to see how the post-Stewart/Colbert/Olberman trend evolves. Eventually, there'll be a conservative/Republican response to it. And who knows, they might be every bit as effective as those three. But how long does their model hold? And would a Republican version not chip away at the model that Fox News tries to impart into the news discourse? Check back in five years and we'll all see for ourselves.

Money clip:

Cable political coverage has changed, however, and so has the sensibility that viewers -- particularly young ones -- expect from it. Matthews's bombast is radically at odds with the wry, antipolitical style fashioned by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert or the cutting and finely tuned cynicism of Matthews's MSNBC co-worker Keith Olbermann. These hosts betray none of the reverence for politics or the rituals of Washington that Matthews does. On the contrary, they appeal to the eye-rolling tendencies of a cooler, highly educated urban cohort of the electorate that mostly dismisses an exuberant political animal like Matthews as annoyingly antiquated, like the ranting uncle at the Thanksgiving table whom the kids have learned to tune out.

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.

So has Olbermann, the host of MSNBC's "Countdown." While Matthews is clearly a stalwart on the MSNBC menu, he is hardly a flavor of the month, or the year. Olbermann is. "Countdown," on at 8, is getting good ratings, usually second in its slot to "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News. Olbermann draws considerably more viewers than Matthews -- about one million a night, compared with 660,000 for the 7 p.m. broadcast of "Hardball" (which typically runs third in its time slots after Fox News and CNN but is up in the ratings this year). There is a view within the TV industry that MSNBC is positioning itself as the younger, edgier, left-tilting cable network, and no one there embodies this ideal better than Olbermann. NBC executives have been promoting him heavily, and three network officials asked me why I was writing about Matthews and not Olbermann.

Part of this can be viewed purely through a bottom-line lens. Matthews's contract expires next year, and NBC officials clearly would like to renew it for considerably less than the $5 million a year he is making now. Whether it's a formal talking point or not, NBC officials seem bent on conveying the message that they could get the same ratings, or better ones, for considerably less money.

But the broader issue involves whether Matthews is a man trapped in a tired caricature. And it touches on the future of his archetype in general -- in other words, whither the cable blowhard? The "What happens to Chris" question -- a hot topic at NBC these days -- infuses the Matthews story with a kind of "lion in winter" urgency, if not poignancy. It also goes to the core of how Matthews sees himself, how cable news is changing and how Americans perceive of and consume their politics.