TWEETY

That's the left blogland's nickname for Chris Matthews. Atrios links to an interview article about him and points out that Tweety once had a problem with alcohol-induced sexual embarassments but for me the more important things in the article are Tweet's bitterness and fear.

First, the bitterness:

Yet, like our current president, Matthews reserves contempt for the intellectual elite. This caste, for him, is embodied in the Times critic Michiko Kakutani, his disdain for whom comes out in his numerous syllable-by-syllable mentions of her name. "I bust my ass six years on a book!" he says, inveighing against her tepid review of his 1996 historical tome, Kennedy and Nixon. "I wasn't part of her Weltanschauung."

Then, the fear:

"There's two governing emotions in this city: jealousy and fear, and you can't tell 'em apart," Matthews says. Maybe he was mean one day to an underling, snapped at a hairdresser, he admits. Maybe he's reached a height where bigger guns are aimed at him.


"What's the bounty on Chris Matthews?" he asked me in our first lengthy phone conversation. "What do you get for bringing back Chris Matthews in a bag?"

I don't know too many regular Joes who use the word "Weltanschauung" and I figure the most I could get from bringing back Tweety in a bag is a new bag.