Tweety

Chris Matthews treats his guests like Steve Irwin used to treat wild animals. He's the interviewing equivalent of somebody who yanks a dazed mammal out of its lair and starts bullying it and screaming into its ear. Matthews asks a question and then inevitably cuts off the response rudely to interject his own answer, often re-directing the line of thought to his own satisfaction or simply moving on to another panelist and doing the same thing. It drives me batty. Charlie Rose also interrupts his guests, but typically his interjections expand the conversation, and evince an engaged mind thinking aloud. There is no conversation on Hardball--you get Matthews answering his own questions and looking into the camera instead of at his guests.

Last night he asked a question of some cat from Time and some other dude from Salon about Bush's popularity, and then quickly answered it himself: "It's not a question of liking Bush less now, it's a question of moving from disliking the guy to hating him. Nobody likes Bush."

Isn't Matthews the guy who said a few months ago that only whackos and extremists disliked George W. Bush? How the CW has changed.

Matthews reminds me of my 7th grade science teacher at Hereford High School. He was a recovering drunk too and loved to hear himself talk and also formed too much spittle at the sides of his mouth. What the hell was his name? He pronounced Socrates 'soak-raytes'.