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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (66443)	9/2/2004 11:34:10 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793983

Ed Morrissey comments on a USA TODAY column. ...Sometime over the past few years, interview shows morphed from the intent to draw information from guests that would inform and entertain viewers to a pitched duel between the interviewer and the subject/victim, a duel to the rhetorical death in front of a nationwide arena of rapidly diminishing numbers of fans. Chris Matthews did not originate this disease, but he's hardly faultless in its spread. Bianco lets Matthews have it with both barrels later in the article, which was written and posted before Matthews got slapped down by a fired-up Zell Miller: Still, when it comes to luxuriating in the sound of your own voice, even O'Reilly must bow to MSNBC's Chris Matthews. In one of the convention's more bizarre exchanges, Matthews interrupted a Joe Scarborough screed about immigration Tuesday to ask, "Who are your favorite immigrants?" Luckily for a seemingly nonplused Scarborough, he didn't have to answer, as the question was merely an excuse for Matthews to tell us, "Mine are the West Africans." No doubt they were thrilled to hear it. Matthews, without a doubt, will be seen as the one mainstream news media figure to have suffered the most damage to his reputation from this electoral cycle. He has acted in such a transparently partisan manner while hypocritically maintaining a non-partisan facade that Zell Miller easily penetrated that he can't possibly recover his credibility with anyone except the zealous (Zell-less?) left. The rest of his audience, much like MS-NBC's in general, will have left for other commentators less in love with themselves. Matthews, truth be told, is a terrible interviewer for the exact reason Miller used to bash him on his own show. Matthews has a long-running love affair with his own voice and can't seem to put aside that addiction long enough for any of his guests to answer. He asks long-winded questions and routinely cuts people off after a few words in response. Put bluntly, Matthews is a windbag, and while windbags can entertain, they don't draw much out in the way of truth. Hardball doesn't interview guests, it subjects them to a gauntlet in which they can only hope to survive rather than inform viewers, especially if Matthews disagrees with them. Miller not only called Matthews on his tactics but he got the response for which he looked. When you hit a bully in the nose, they inevitably back down and claim they meant no harm, which Matthews did several times at the end of his interview with Miller.