Hertzberg praises Matthews:
The profile that ran in the New York Times Magazine a few weeks ago captured some of Chris (the insecurity, the self-promotion), but some is not all. The insecurity without the huge appetite for life, the self-promotion without the empathic social conscience that lurks somewhere behind all that love of the political gamethese give a distorted impression. Chris Matthews is a net plus for American politics and American society.
I'm a regular on his show so you can dismiss this if you like, but I agree with Rick. Chris Matthews is a sometimes clumsy, but always decent person. His heart is very large and invariably in the right place. My one disagreement with Rick: hating the Clintons is not reducible to some strange atheist idea of what a Catholic's idea of forgiveness is. The reason so many people who were brought up in a traditional Catholic household loathe the Clintons - Dowd, Kelly, Russert, Matthews, Sullivan, et al. - is because we were taught the difference between right and wrong, and taught to believe it matters.
That's all.