Chris Matthews is the prey in the journalistic equivalent of “The Most Dangerous Game”

The New York Times’ Mark Leibovich uncorks one of the great all-time hit pieces in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine (already available online via this link). His target: MSNBC’s blustery Chris Matthews, who was all too willing to play along, serving as the prey in the journalism equivalent of “The Most Dangerous Game.”

Here’s guessing that when Matthews finishes reading it, he won’t respond with his trademark “Ha!”

The first sentence reads, “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,” so you know no good can come of this as far as Matthews is concerned. But this will prove to be one of Leibovich’s kinder observations about Matthews, who comes across as vain yet incredibly insecure, which makes sense given his on-air behavior.

Matthews is a taste I’ve never managed to acquire, and Leibovich’s piece explains precisely why that is. He revisits Matthews’ exquisitely creepy interview with CNBC’s Erin Burnett as well as his humiliating appearance on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” in which Stewart labeled his latest book “a self-hurt book” and “a recipe for sadness.” Matthews hints to Leibovich that he thinks MSNBC may balk at resigning him when his contract expires next year; this profile gives the network all the ammunition it needs to dump the guy.

It opens with a fairly excruciating anecdote set in a bar after Matthews has done post-debate analysis of one of the 200 or so Presidential candidate debates of the past year. Matthews gets cozy with actress Kerry Washington, whom his producer has invited to appear on “Hardball:”

*

“I know why he wants you on,” Matthews said to Washington. ... At which point Matthews did something he rarely does. He paused. He seemed actually to be considering what he was about to say. He might even have been editing himself, which is anything but a natural act for him. He was grimacing. I imagined a little superego hamster racing against a speeding treadmill inside Matthews’s skull, until the superego hamster was overrun and the pause ended.

“He wants you on because you’re beautiful,” Matthews said. “And because you’re black.” He handed Washington a business card and told her to call anytime “if you ever want to hang out with Chris Matthews.”

Then, a young Irish-looking woman walked up shyly and asked if he was “Mr. Matthews.” “Ah, an Irish girl has come to my aid,” Matthews said, placing his hand gently on the woman’s shoulder. She was in law school and said her name was Margaret Sweeney. “I went out with a Sweeney once, a nurse,” Matthews said, taking her hand. …

At one point, Matthews suddenly became hypnotized by a TV over the bar set to a rebroadcast of “Hardball.” “Hey, there I am — it’s me,” he said, staring at himself on the screen.

*

In case that’s not bad enough, here are a few more choice lines from the profile:

* “His soothing-like-a-blender voice feels unnervingly constant …”

* “[Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Keith Olbermann] 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.”

* … “[T]hree network officials asked me why I was writing about Matthews and not Olbermann.”

* “‘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.’”

* “A number of people I spoke with at NBC said that [NBC’s Tim] Russert can be disdainful of Matthews, whose act he often sees as clownish.”

* “Sometimes during commercial breaks, Matthews will boast to Olbermann of having restrained himself during the prior segment. ‘And I reward him with a grape,’ Olbermann says.”

* “Bill Kovach, the founding chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, anointed Matthews as part of a ‘new class of chatterers who emerged in [The Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky] scandal . . . a group of loosely credentialed, self-interested performers whose primary job is remaining on TV.’”

* “If Matthews has an overriding professional insecurity, it is being confined to the pigeonhole of cable blowhard. The insecurity is well founded, since this is how many people view him.”

* “It can be amusing if slightly painful to watch Matthews’s facial expressions and body language on the set of “Hardball” when others are talking; he will, at times, bounce in his seat like a Ritalin-deprived second-grader who is dying to give an answer but has been admonished too many times for interrupting.”

* “As I began researching this article, Jeremy Gaines, an MSNBC spokesman, gave me the names of about a dozen people that Matthews recommended I speak to, all famous — everyone from Nancy Pelosi to Marvin Hamlisch. But gatekeepers for more than one of these people expressed confusion as to why Matthews would refer me to them. ‘Please keep us out of this,’ pleaded a spokesperson for one prominent politician whom Matthews had recommended via Gaines.”

Ha!