If readers would like to know why MS-NBC/CNBC has become a cesspool in both ratings and content, Michelle Malkin can explain it all to you in her blog today. Malkin describes what an evening on CNBC's featured political talkshow, Hardball, feels like when having having to deal with the increasingly emotionally unbalanced Chris Matthews:

As I am seated at the table with Matthews, who I am meeting for the first time, he cracks a joke--and not in a well-meaning way--about how I look. (There are quite a few people who are hung up on this.) "Are you sure you are old enough to be on the show? What are you? 28?" I grit my teeth. He badgers me again with the same question. I politely answer his question and supply my age.

(I wonder how Matthews' wife, the respected TV journalist Kathleen Matthews, who hosts a show about working women, would react if informed about her husband's treatment of a fellow female journalist. I've been in the business a dozen years and would be happy to talk to Mrs. Matthews about my firsthand experience with Neanderthal chauvinism in the workplace.)

Needless to say, things went downhill, fast and loud, from there.

Malkin wound up appearing on Hardball paired off with San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown when the Washington Post's Dana Milbank couldn't make it. Politically, I can't abide Brown, but he is sharp as a tack and quick on his feet, and I certainly would have to be on my A-game to debate him. (As an aside, Brown once referred to my uncle, former California Assemblyman Jim Morrissey, as a m*****f*****, which my uncle took as a compliment.) Malkin has a quick wit and an acerbic pen, and has enough backbone not to take crap off of anyone. Unfortunately for Matthews and his viewers, that combination of guests confirmed the diminutive emotional and intellectual status of the host, as his actions proved:

4) Willie Brown expresses exasperation over Swift Boat Vets' questions about Kerry's wounds. He says: "There are questions about the shrapnel wounds. So what else is there? How much he got shot? How deep? How much shrapnel does he have?

Note that I didn't bring the subject of shrapnel. (Got that, Keith Olbermann?) Willie Brown raised the issue.

Here is how I responded verbatim:

"Well yeah. Why don't people ask him more specific questions about the shrapnel in his leg? There are legitimate questions about whether or not it was a self-inflicted wound."

Matthews frantically stuffed words down my mouth when I raised these allegations made in Unfit for Command that Kerry's wounds might have been self-inflicted. In his ill-informed and ideologically warped mind, this transmogrified into me accusing Kerry of "shooting himself on purpose" to get an award.

I repeated that the allegations involved whether the injuries were "self inflicted wounds." I DID NOT SAY HE SHOT HIMSELF ON PURPOSE and Chris Matthews knows it.

Once again, the failure of the mainstream media to understand basic military terminology causes them to act like idiots, and the reference to the terminal puffery of Keith Olbermann will become apparent later in Malkin's story. Matthews kicked Malkin off the show at the break for being "irresponsible" -- and then immediately runs off with her copy of Unfit For Command to fact-check after the fact:

As the show broke for commercials, Matthews scrambled for his producers to see if what he said was true. And I'm irresponsible? One staffer ran to the office where I had left my copy of the book, and handed it to Matthews, who--for the first time, apparently--started flipping through it. I asked for my book back and politely said thank you. After I left, he trashed me again on the air and his scurrilous charges were repeated by his MSNBC colleague Keith Olbermann, who called me an "idiot."

Olbermann and Matthews are two main reasons why the CNBC/MS-NBC tandem can't scratch the underbelly of Nielson ratings. The meltdown of Chris Matthews has become almost complete, and the only part we're missing is a complete nervous collapse on camera, which would then be reported by Olbermann with the smirk he uses for every story for which he reads copy.

Michelle Malkin appears on the Northern Alliance Radio Network tomorrow, which starts at noon Central and can be heard via our live stream (link on my left sidebar). We'll be talking about her new book, but I'll try to work in a few moments for her experiences with the emotional and immature prima donnas of minor cable news shows.

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» We're in Different Worlds from pennywit.com

Sometimes I wish that I watched MSNBC's Hardball regularly so that I could assess the show for myself. Michelle Malkin recently appeared on that show and, by all accounts, got rough treatment. Having not watched the show myself, I find the d

Tracked on August 20, 2004 9:07 AM

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Everyone's all hot and bothered, because Chris is all hot and bothered, about some new trumped up allegation from the evil right-wing conspiracy that Kerry wounded himself deliberately in order to get out of Vietnam. I have to tell you, [Read More]

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» Chris 'A-Hole' Matthews Lies about Michelle from Passionate America
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» Eminem from damnum absque injuria
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