MSNBC took away Tucker Carlson's show because it was terrible and no one watched it. They gave to former White House correspondent David Gregory (the tall guy). We're not sure if his show is terrible or not, because no one still watches it. But regardless, rumors continue to fly that Gregory is being "groomed" to take the place of Hardballer Chris Matthews. Matthews is a network star, but he comes with a lot of baggage, like accusations of sexism, embarrassing magazine profiles, and his inability to deal politely with his staff. Gregory—famous for, in addition to his height, his testy and sarcastic exchanges with Bush press secretaries—doesn't have the ratings to justify any of this yet, obv, but supposedly CBS wants him so therefore NBC needs him even more because that's how TV works with its "talent." But would replacing Matthews with Gregory be even more of a disaster?

Gregory generally came off as awkward when trying to lighten up during his gig guest-hosting Today—he also did quite a bit of dancing. He also once called in to Don Imus either terribly jet-lagged or comically drunk. And some people claim he's hated by his staff and, uh, mouths off to the help.

He might well be hated by his staff and mean to wait-staff. He's smug, self-important, and largely humorless despite his on-air geniality (it's almost like he's in television!). But we bummed around DC for a little while doing not much of anything in particular and from what we heard at the time, from people who might happen to know him, he's not Chris Matthews bad.

We could be wrong. Anyone work with or for the man? Or served him dinner? tell us how it went.