Chris Matthews's Last Hurrah
Source: city-journal.org
This week, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews abruptly ended his reign, and an era, as long-time host of Hardball. His departure is a reminder that cable-news stardom remains ephemeral. Years of sparring and provocation became untenable for the network, especially after a recent trifecta: a controversial comment, a viral gaffe, and accusations of inappropriate behavior. There is no palliative care in this censorious age, and so Matthews was forced into retirement. “We’ll always have Hardball,” he said, paraphrasing Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.
In a sense, Matthews, always armed with a film reference, became a version of The Last Hurrah’s Frank Skeffington, the aging, big-city politician felled by a changing culture. Written by Edwin O’Connor in 1956 and adapted into a movie starring Spencer Tracey, The Last Hurrah revolves around Skeffington, likely modeled on James Michael Curley, a former Massachusetts governor, then Boston’s intermittent mayor between 1914 and 1950. In the novel, Skeffington, 72, embarks on another run as Democratic mayor, but his Irish-Catholic brand of campaigning—pursued in funeral homes and smoke-filled rooms—conflicts with the postwar, Kennedyesque dawn of television advertising. Matthews grew up in this evolving world in 1950s Philadelphia, a city undergoing demographic and economic change and transitioning from a Republican-run political machine to Democratic leadership.
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Matthews nurtured a center-left outlook, but his liberalism—rooted in patriotism and Kennedy-era idealism—didn’t always jell with MSNBC’s increasingly progressive agenda. In 2010, the network launched “Lean Forward,” a branding campaign that embraced this leftward direction. A year later, MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki, then a writer for Salon, called Matthews the network’s “most conservative voice after 5 p.m.” In 2012, when Buchanan was axed by MSNBC, Matthews defended him, noting that “loyalty is the heart of Pat’s being. He is loyal to country, to church, to neighborhood, to heritage.” In 2013, on Morning Joe, he acknowledged his vote for George W. Bush in the 2000 election.
Over time, Matthews abandoned moderation, especially by the 2016 campaign. Yet following the network’s rigid ideological direction proved impossible for him. In this primary cycle, Matthews’s more traditional views reemerged, but he was increasingly treated like the troubling relative with problematic opinions—relegated to the sidelines before his departure became inevitable. “The younger generations out there are ready to take the reins,” he said in his farewell. He had become a character in an O’Connor novel. “It was a new era, sport, and your uncle belonged to the old,” said a political operative about Skeffington in The Last Hurrah.
More at: https://www.city-journal.org/chris-matthews-downfall
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