Chris Matthews's Sunday Best
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 17, 2003; Page C01
To Chris Matthews, whose bellowing style tends to trample his guests, the new forum is like moving from a barroom to a high-toned brunch.
On his year-old Sunday morning show, he reins in the "Hardball" hyperactivity and actually lets other people finish a sentence or two. "My job on Sunday is not to grill people," he says.
The chat show, syndicated by NBC, has been a surprising success. While "Hardball" ratings are scraping the cellar on MSNBC, "The Chris Matthews Show" is drawing 2.1 million viewers, beating "Fox News Sunday" nationally and even edging out CBS's "Face the Nation" and ABC's "This Week" in Washington and New York.
The marching orders were provided by NBC News President Neal Shapiro, who wanted a slower pace, telling the mile-a-minute Matthews: "You're going to do it my way."
Matthews recognizes that his bulldozer approach and fleeting attention span turns some people off. "I'm working on that overall. I'm interrupting you right now," he admits. "It is so hard to get that right."
Darrell Hammond, who does a dead-on Matthews on "Saturday Night Live," says that "we play him ready to pounce, staying low as if he's getting ready to jump across the desk, just shy of a coiled spring. He's a guy you'd like to have at the Department of Motor Vehicles, telling people off."
But under the firm hand of former "Meet the Press" producer Nancy Nathan, the Sunday show is different. Rather than interrogating politicians in "a way that forces people off their talking points," as Matthews puts it, he shoots the breeze with fellow journalists and commentators -- a rotating group of about two dozen that includes Gloria Borger, Cokie Roberts, David Brooks, Sam Donaldson, Joe Klein, Peggy Noonan and Clarence Page. Matthews gives the guests a bit of space instead of browbeating them into agreeing or disagreeing with his tidal wave of opinions.
"My job is to be much more like Ed Sullivan, to simply introduce them and make sure the exchanges are lively," says Matthews, who tapes the show on Friday afternoons. "It's not gladiatorial."
Newsweek's Howard Fineman, who appears on both programs, says Nathan convinced Matthews that "there was something between 110 miles an hour on 'Hardball' and PBS. He doesn't shout, he doesn't lean in, he doesn't look like he's looming over his prey."
CNN's Tucker Carlson, another regular, says: "There is this stream-of-consciousness quality to the way he speaks, but he actually says things that are interesting and unusual. . . . I know it's fashionable to beat up on Chris as a blowhard, and he's got some blowhard qualities, but I like the guy."
On "Hardball," Matthews is doing a series of hour-long interviews with eight of the nine Democratic presidential candidates. The exception: Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who's still fuming over an appearance in July.
After Kucinich had announced he would nominate a gay, bisexual or transgendered person to the Supreme Court if that person would uphold Roe v. Wade, Matthews said: "It just looks like the most patent kind of pandering." When Kucinich said he was against criminalizing abortion, Matthews pressed him eight times to name someone who was in favor of it, and when Kucinich named a GOP House member, Matthews said: "I think it's a rotten thing to say."
Kucinich spokesman David Swanson says Matthews "harassed" and "badgered" his boss and "made pretty wild accusations and did not allow the congressman to reply and treated him extremely rudely." Kucinich says only that "I'm not interested in saying anything to disparage him, I just don't want to be on his show."
Matthews, a onetime aide to Jimmy Carter and Tip O'Neill, isn't sure why "Hardball" ratings -- the program is averaging 379,000 viewers -- are down by about two-thirds from their late-1990s peak. He floats one theory: A heavily conservative cable audience, which liked his Clinton-bashing during impeachment, has been turned off by his opposition to the Iraq war.
He says the Bush administration's handling of the war was "the great tragedy of the last year" and has put the United States in a "horrible situation."
Most administration officials avoid "Hardball," and some are fuming over his recent remarks at Brown University, for example, that Vice President Cheney "is running the place" and "put his thumb on the scale" to force conservative decisions.
But things are lighter on the Sunday show. Nathan notes a joking comment to Matthews by Don Imus that each program has "a babe and a nut." "Yes, true, we have babes," she laughs. "We specialize in great-looking women."
Matthews, who radiates a smartest-guy-in-the-studio intensity, isn't content to bask in good reviews for his Sunday show; he provides them himself:
"I do a commentary at the end which I think is pretty good."
During the California recall, "I thought I did a great job out there."
"What people like about me is I'm honest."
"You walk down Fifth Avenue, people come up and say they love me."
Matthews may soon be inescapable. He is on Washington bus placards, is spoofed as "Chris Cashew" in Jerry's Subs commercials and -- d'oh! -- will play himself on "The Simpsons."
Debt Collector
In a recent New York Times op-ed piece, former Clinton administration official Mark Medish argued that Iraq must pay its debts, including $10 billion to corporate creditors.
Left unmentioned was that the Washington lawyer represents Hyundai and other companies seeking to collect debts from Iraq. This was particularly odd because Medish had been quoted as a Hyundai lawyer in the Wall Street Journal.
"It just slipped by us," says Times Editorial Page Editor Gail Collins, who ran a clarification and plans to tighten disclosure provisions in future contracts. "Obviously we want op-ed people to be forthcoming about these things."
Says Medish: "I strongly resist any implication that anyone was pulling a fast one here." He says it would have been "appropriate" to disclose his Hyundai work at the law firm Akin Gump but that the piece was put together on the run.
Boyd's Second Act
Gerald Boyd has signed a six-figure deal with HarperCollins for a book that will culminate with his downfall as New York Times managing editor last spring. "It's not an attempt to defend -- it's more of an attempt to explore and explain the Jayson Blair incident" and the "lessons learned," says his lawyer, Robert Barnett. The book, scheduled for 2005, will trace Boyd's career from his impoverished St. Louis childhood to "unique perspective of an African American in the highest ranks of print journalism," Bennett says.
Plagiarism Watch
A Denver Post music writer resigned under pressure Friday after editors confirmed that he had used language almost verbatim from an online article for a preview of a Simon and Garfunkel concert.
G. Brown lost his job after Post editors discovered 12 more pieces this year in which he had copied phrases or sentences from other publications without giving credit. Brown pleaded sloppiness, but Editor Greg Moore told his paper that "what he did cannot be tolerated. He has apologized for his transgressions because they have no place in journalism."
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