From Editor and Publisher
By Greg Mitchell

You may find this hard to believe, but there was a time when TV gasbag Chris Matthews was a respectable hard news reporter. He worked in Washington, D.C. for the San Francisco Examiner from 1987 to around 2000, and also wrote columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and others. But if you have ever bemoaned the turn his career took as an interviewer/talk show host – or if you just hate the inside-the-beltway mentality of many of our leading press and TV pundits – then you would have loved Jon Stewart’s dismantling of Matthews on “The Daily Show” last night.

I have no idea if there is a back story to this epic confrontation beyond Stewart’s known hatred of loudmouth TV bullying (remember his famous attack on “Crossfire” a few years back?). But what was on the screen right in front of our noses was shocking enough, not to mention long overdue. Matthews, growing angry, called it “the book interview from hell” and his “worst interview ever,” adding, “You are the worst.”

Matthews accused him of “trashing my book.” Stewart said he was actually “trashing your philosophy.”

The “Hardball” host was there, like so many others before him, simply to hype his new book, “Life’s a Campaign.” Stewart was after him right from the start. He described the book as claiming that “people can use what politicians do in political campaigns to help their lives. … That strikes me as fundamentally wrong.” Rather than a self-help book it is really a “self-hurt book, if you will,” he added. “Aren’t campaigns fundamentally contrivances?”

Read more Interview