From the New York Times:
Chris Matthews Out at MSNBC
Mr. Matthews’s show, “Hardball,” has been on the air since 1997.By Michael M. Grynbaum
March 2, 2020Chris Matthews, the veteran political anchor and voluble host of the long-running MSNBC talk show “Hardball,” resigned on Monday night, an abrupt departure from a television perch that made him a fixture of politics and the news media over the past quarter-century.
Mr. Matthews, 74, had faced mounting criticism in recent days over a spate of embarrassing on-air moments, including a comparison of Senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign to the Nazi invasion of France and an interview with Senator Elizabeth Warren in which the anchor was criticized for a condescending and disbelieving tone.
On Saturday, the journalist Laura Bassett published an essay accusing Mr. Matthews of making multiple inappropriate comments about her appearance, reviving longstanding allegations about the anchor’s sexist behavior. …“Compliments on a woman’s appearance that some men, including me, might have once incorrectly thought were OK are never OK,” he said. “Not then, and certainly not today.” …
In 2008, he was quoted in a magazine profile declaring the actress Kerry Washington “a total knockout.”
Here’s the nothingburger article in GQ that got Matthews fired.
As I pointed out when they came for 75-year-old Charlie Rose a few years ago, we are in an Age of Lipitor when famous men less often drop dead of heart attacks at age 65 and so they keep hogging the really good jobs for decades, and also an Age of Viagra when they can remain pests into their dotages. So the New Sexlessness is pretty popular as an excuse for clearing out the old-timers. (By the way, Matthews, who was born in 1945, is another Pre-Boomer.)
