Chris Matthews on The Daily Show

This interview has been making the rounds. I just finally saw it.

It's brilliant. It's incredible. It's incredibly brilliant and funny and - and this is the most important part - it is representative of how the mainstream, talking head, Beltway media is so pathetically insane, and as a result, why our the national level of discourse is so disgusting.

(Of course, there are other reasons. But this is so central, so key, that you should watch and learn.)

Chris Matthews has a show on MSNBC called Hardball. He is perhaps THE talking head of the TV media in some ways. It's been known for some time that he has some strange views on sex, gender, and how they relate to politics, but this - this is a window into the mind of someone who, I think, has inverted the relationship of politics to reality: To Matthews, politics creates reality. Reality should aspire to be like politics. Needless to say, I think that view is insane.

Stewart destroys him. Matthews knows, to some extent, that this is happening - and the audience does as well. It's brutal, but it's worth the watch: