{"id":7064,"date":"2006-04-06T09:10:03","date_gmt":"2006-04-06T13:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7064"},"modified":"2006-04-06T09:10:03","modified_gmt":"2006-04-06T13:10:03","slug":"matthews-and-delay-unplugged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/matthews-and-delay-unplugged\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthews and DeLay — unplugged"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the unlikely event you didn’t catch this elsewhere yesterday afternoon, I thought I’d mention [tag]Harry Shearer[\/tag]’s amazing scoop on the Huffington Post yesterday, showing behind-the-scenes video<\/a> on MSNBC’s [tag]Chris Matthews[\/tag] and [tag]Tom DeLay[\/tag] chatting during a commercial break. They assumed no one would ever hear what the two were talking about. They were wrong.<\/p>\n

To fully appreciate the story, you’ll have to watch the clip<\/a> (Shearer also posted a transcript). It’s a fascinating — and rather disconcerting — glimpse at the unprofessional chumminess “journalists” like Matthews and DeLay enjoy.<\/p>\n

To be sure, the on-air interview from Tuesday night was annoying enough. Matthews lobbed softball after softball, setting DeLay up to repeat the most predictable of GOP talking points on Democratic “liberals” and their drive to “impeach” the president. Matthews even went so far as to practically applaud DeLay for impeaching Clinton, saying, “You accomplished what the Senate didn’t accomplish. The Senate Republicans couldn’t get their act together one way or the other [on impeachment].” Again, this was [tag]Matthews[\/tag]<\/em> speaking, not [tag]DeLay[\/tag].<\/p>\n

But the off-air comments are the real story. Matthews goes on and on, telling DeLay he “owes” him one. He also started chatting about internal focus group polls Frank Luntz did on Democratic presidential contenders. That’s when DeLay let his guard down.
\n<\/p>\n

MATTHEWS: Have you seen this new focus group stuff on the candidates?<\/p>\n

DELAY: No I haven’t<\/p>\n

MATTHEWS: It’s great stuff. I’ll send it to you — it’s great — yeah it’s great stuff. [tag]Hillary[\/tag], John Kerry. All these guys, all these democrats, and how they do. And, uh, [tag]Frank Luntz[\/tag] did it…<\/p>\n

DELAY: who I like<\/p>\n

CM: …and Hillary did not do well. [tag]Kerry[\/tag] did well.<\/p>\n

DELAY: You’re kidding.<\/p>\n

MATTHEWS: I am NOT kidding. They didn’t like Edwards — they thought he was a rich lawyer, pretending to care about poor people…<\/p>\n

DELAY: Too slick. Too slick.<\/p>\n

MATTHEWS: …and Hillary was a know-it-all.<\/p>\n

DELAY: Nothing worse than a [tag]woman know-it-all[\/tag].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Farhad Manjoo put it<\/a>, “At first I couldn’t decide what was worse — DeLay’s sexist remark or Matthews’ desperate effort to impress the sexist with his insider knowledge of Democratic presidential hopefuls’ prospects.”<\/p>\n

I agree; it’s a close call, but “[tag]nothing worse[\/tag] than a woman know-it-all” tips the scales. Matthews is a fawning hack every day; DeLay’s misogyny is usually kept under wraps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the unlikely event you didn’t catch this elsewhere yesterday afternoon, I thought I’d mention [tag]Harry Shearer[\/tag]’s amazing scoop on the Huffington Post yesterday, showing behind-the-scenes video on MSNBC’s [tag]Chris Matthews[\/tag] and [tag]Tom DeLay[\/tag] chatting during a commercial break. They assumed no one would ever hear what the two were talking about. They were wrong. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}