VILLAGE-ON-VILLAGE JOURNALISM! Howard Kurtz shows the world how The Village profiles its own:

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THE DAILY HOWLER

VILLAGE-ON-VILLAGE JOURNALISM: Success! Howard Kurtz has had his lips surgically removed from Brian Williams’ “average Joe” keister. (For the first three parts of our yet-to-be four-part report, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 12/14/07.) And in this morning’s Washington Post, he puts his freedom to very good use. He shows how tribunes of The Village profile The Village’s own.

The subject of Kurtz’s is cable loudmouth Chris Matthews. Amid the various ways Kurtz has found to understate the problem with Matthews, we thought his passage about Dee Dee Myers was in some ways the most instructive. Last month, Matthews ridiculed Myers on his show, as he has routinely done, down through the years, when contradicted by non-Republican women. Kurtz tells the tale at some length today. But he leaves out one part: Who was right?

KURTZ (2/14/08): routinely talks over his panelists, but some women feel especially trampled. Matthews challenged Dee Dee Myers, the former Clinton White House spokeswoman, when she argued last month that nobody expected Hillary Clinton to be the inevitable nominee. Everyone thought Clinton would win, he insisted.

"That's wrong, Chris," Myers said.

"Hey, that's a fact," Matthews said. He kept interrupting her, saying: "This is revisionism, Dee Dee."

"Chris," she said, "you ask me a question, if you would let me answer it, it would be helpful—"

"You are answering it and you're wrong," Matthews declared. Myers was so annoyed she refused to return to the next night's show until Matthews called to apologize. "Chris was very disrespectful to me," Myers says. "He has every right to disagree with me, but he did it in a way that was dismissive and wrong. Not only was it bad manners, it was bad television....My only regret is I didn't make him apologize on the air."