For Senate, that is:
Chris Matthews, the host of the MSNBC program "Hardball," told his staff on Wednesday night that he would not run for the Senate in 2010 from Pennsylvania.
For much of the last year, Mr. Matthews had been considering entering the Senate race as a Democrat in his home state at the same time he was renegotiating his contract with NBC News. He had attended several meetings that had included Pennsylvania representatives as well as some major fund-raisers in the Democratic Party.
But Mr. Matthews, who was once a top aide to the House speaker, Tip O'Neill of Massachusetts, and ran for Congress as a Democrat in 1974, never formally declared himself a candidate, a decision which would have forced him out of his position at MSNBC.
In an interview in October, Mr. Matthews said, "People have asked me about it. I've never told anyone that I'm running."
There has been speculation that Mr. Matthews, 63, was flirting with a Senate run as a way to give him some leverage in his contract talks. According to at least one earlier report, NBC was planning to ask Mr. Matthews to return but wanted him to take a drastic pay cut — from $5 million a year to an amount closer to $1 million.
I'd be willing to mouth off for even just one million bucks a year. I'm certain I can think of something equally obtuse to say on teevee. Things like this one:
While discussing the velocity of money, Matthew suggested that husbands should pay their wives for cooking the dinner, to move money around.
It's not a big thing, of course. Just a teeny drop of obtuseness, one of all those zillions of drops which make up the Matthews Ocean of Obtuseness, which show that he lives in a world where men are men and women are household implements.
So why was I sobbing? How can I pine for Chris if he won't go?