Just a little pinprick
“For a long time I would prepare for ‘Hardball’ by sitting with a couple of my producers with a big bag of M&Ms on the table in front of me. And we would finish off that baby, and I’d be drinking coffee and I’d drink coffee during the show so I’d be powered by sugar and caffeine.”
So says MSNBC’s Chris Matthews at the outset of a video produced by his son Michael for tonight’s Father of the Year Awards dinner, which benefits the American Diabetes Association.
It was those kinds of habits, the video implies, that exacerbated Matthews’ diabetes last December, forcing him to miss two weeks of work and spend time in the hospital.
The unexpected illness changed some plans that he and Michael had made to go to Iraq on a USO tour with Al
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Franken.
Michael, a documentary filmmaker, said since he had already taken time off, he decided to turn his lens on his father’s condition.
“It’s about this adjustment that he had to make” to better manage the disease, he said. “It’s a transformation piece.”
The latter part of the video shows Matthews wincing from giving himself an insulin shot in the stomach and pushing a Starbucks pastry away, scoffing at the “refined sugar” within. Of his regular, self-administered blood tests, he says, “I [now] enjoy it the way men like to shave in the morning.”
There’s even an amusing anachronism in one scene, as Matthews sits in his kitchen, phone to his ear, as he’s interviewed by Don Imus.
The video “captures me,” Matthews told Yeas & Nays. “That guy up there on the screen is quite a character and it’s me. … It’s great filmmaking.”
He said he has lost about 30 pounds since last year, and all of his health readings have improved.
Beyond tonight’s dinner, the ADA hopes to feature the video on its Web site. It may also figure in an upcoming episode of “Hardball.”
Among those being recognized at this year’s dinner: University of Maryland head football coach Ralph Friedgen and George Washington University Hospital Chief Executive Officer Richard Becker.
