Chris Matthews, a man who cannot even shower colleague Keith Olbermann with much praise, doesn’t have many pleasantries to hand out, then, for Howard Wolfson, the former Hillary Clinton strategist who just signed with Fox News. Wolfson’s deal with the devil might be a quick payday in the near-term, but to Matthews, it will also be his undoing. Cue scary haunted house music.

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Having waged a war against a cable news network that was supposed to have been an ally, Hillary Clinton campaign strategist Howard Wolfson is signing up with the enemy. Wolfson has inked a deal with Fox News where, like Karl Rove, he’ll serve as a contributor, offering analysis to the right-y network that undoubtedly will work to support John McCain against Barack Obama. Wolfson certainly has ample reasoning to join up with FNC, if only because his days of working “with” MSNBC, which sided early with Team Obama, were hellish. And now that he’s signing up with Fox News, he has even more pleasant words for Roger Ailes’ network: “I thought that Fox’s coverage during the primary was comprehensive and fair and evenhanded. It’s a huge audience, and it is important to have a strong, progressive voice on the network.” It’ll also be important for him to have a soapbox to rail against Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, a favorite Fox News bloodsport. [NYT]

Just in time to plug her New Orleans memoir The House on First Street, Vogue political scribe Julia Reed has a nasty anecdote to share about Hillary Clinton’s former campaign manager Howard Wolfson, who she describes as “the most charmless human being on the planet.”

As you’ll recall, Vogue tried penning a feature on Hillary, only to have her campaign cut off access; Anna Wintour wrote all about it in a February editor’s letter after Reed wasted plenty of time “sitting there sucking up to” Wolfson trying to work something out. Wolfson’s excuse to yanking his candidate? “We already have the women’s vote in the bag,” he told Reed. “We thought we were going to be in a bigger dogfight. We don’t need you anymore.” The rest, of course, is history.

Is Chris Matthews, officially, a tool? Despite that back room reports we’ve issued, we have a general liking for the fellow. But seeing him on last night’s show try to battle Howard Wolfson on including Puerto Rico’s Democratic delegates in Hillary Clinton’s delegate count, when the Democratic party has chosen to give the island a say in choosing the party’s nominee, doesn’t just strike us as overzealous Obamamania, but illegitimate logic. And people like that shouldn’t have a platform.

(If you listen carefully, Matthews crosses over from counting PR’s votes toward the popular vote to PR’s primary delegate votes, which decide whether she’ll be the party’s nominee. Whether he can’t follow his own train of thought, or forgot the difference between the two, is for you to judge.)

[Video: The Page]