Chris Matthews sides with Maddow over Olbermann

MSNBC's Chris Matthews is kind of O.K with Keith Olbermann being gone from the network. Even better, he thinks it would have been "a bigger deal" had it been Rachel Maddow that left instead.

Ouch!

From "Forbes":

He’s happy at MSNBC, which he says feels “more evenly balanced” since Keith Olbermann left in January. The two didn’t always have a collegial relationship. “Keith was really the top guy here,” he says. He’s surprised by how smoothly the network has weathered his departure. “If Rachel [Maddow] had left, it would’ve been a bigger deal,” he says. “Rachel’s very important to this network. She is a star, an unexpected star, I think she’d even say. People who watch her wouldn’t watch anything else.”

Also, Matthews wants you to know he didn't use a ghostwriter for his new book "Jack Kennedy." And if you think he did, "f*** you." That's what he told the writer at "Forbes" who asked.

Matthews’ genial, boyish face darkens. “Forget you,” he says.

(Only he doesn’t say “forget you.” Both Matthews and my editor asked me not to print what he actually said, so I rely here on my readers’ familiarity with both the original and radio versions of a certain Cee-Lo Green song.)

“Forget you,” he repeats. “Where’d you get that? Is that what you think? You think I don’t write my books?”

[...]

“I would never let anybody write something for me,” he says. “Why do you think I’m like that? It’s amazing to me that you think I’m some lightweight, glib bull**** artist that has somebody do his work for him. The writing is the hard part, the composition.”

Painful.

h/t Politico