500 orders a month was manageable. 5,000 is madness! Embrace intelligent order fulfilment with ShipStation. The only platform combining order management, warehouse workflows, inventory, returns and analytics in one place. What used to take five separate tools, ShipStation does in one. Go to ShipStation.com and use code START to try ShipStation free for 60 days. Hey, it's Jeff Zito and thanks for listening to another episode of the Celebrity Jobber podcast. Streaming on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, wherever you listen to the podcast so, please subscribe. We'd love a 5 star rating and if you could, please leave a review. You want to check out past guests and episodes, you can do so by going to celebrityjobber.com. And you can also follow on Instagram celebrity underscore jobber underscore podcast or our YouTube channel which is youtube.com slash the at sign celebrity jobber. What did these people do before they were famous? My guest today had a lot of jobs we're going to discuss. He's widely respected for his in-depth knowledge of politics. He's now retired. He was a nightly host, news anchor and political commentator on MSNBC, a Washington DC bureau chief for the newspaper, The San Francisco Examiner. He was a chief of staff to longtime speaker of the House of Representatives, Tip O'Neill, a Carter era presidential speechwriter and penned a number of bestselling books, including his latest Lessons from Bobby, Ten Reasons Why Robert F. Kennedy Still Matters. Former host of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Mathews. Here he is, Chris Mathews, my guest this week on Celebrity Jobber. To find out. Hey Chris, how are you? Good, Jeff. Jeff in Detroit. That's right, man. Originally from New Jersey, not too far from your old stomping grounds, right? Well, Philly. Yeah, when's the last time you've been back to Philly? I'm going tomorrow. Tomorrow is Wednesday and I'm going to speak at the Philadelphia Free Library. Okay. And they have a big show there. I have a feeling when I'm in Philly. So, you know, someplace, it's a real city like Detroit. I mean, Washington isn't quite a city like that. Yeah, why is that? Washington is a training place. It's a national government headquarters. Right. It doesn't have the ethnic diversity of a big city. When you got to Washington, I understand one of your very first jobs was as a Capitol policeman. Is that true? It's quite a job. I was, I worked with those guys. I love them. I like them because they're all working guys. They existed at a level a little bit below the congressmen and senators who sometimes look down on them. But they were good guys. A lot of them were former MPs, former military guys, tough guys. They weren't tough, a lot of them. And one of them explained to me why the working guy cares about his country. He said, you know, he called me aside one day because I was the college kid. He knew I was a Patriot's appointment. And he said, why do you think a little man loves his country? And I paused and I said, I don't know. He said, it's because it's always got. That's a good, that's pretty cool. I thought that that was the story of the working guy and working woman in this country. And you better not mess with that sentiment if you're a Democrat. And you, you got into politics. I mean, did you study politics in college? I know you studied economics in college. What, what was your thought when you were going to school? What you were going to do? You know, you know what I loved? I thought I loved economics. I didn't, I didn't love economics. I loved economic philosophy. I loved John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith. And I loved the philosophy of the worldly philosophers, the guys you wrote about economics, but we're really writing about philosophy. I think the argument of left versus right is a good argument. You know, and do you want big government? Do you want smaller government? Do you want, do you want more independence for the individual? Yeah, that's what I want. At the grad school and I realized, my God, I don't like economics. It's all I could, it's all math that's driving me crazy. It's mathematics. And I was never that good at it. Even though I got great grades in the graduate records, about 99%. I don't know. I was very good at reading charts somehow. It doesn't sound fun though, does it? It was the guy, Professor Orsage, he, he got his PhD at Penn. He would just go into every day and come in and just put econometric model models, economic models on the wall. And I go, what is this about? I can't understand a thing you put on that back, backboard. He gave me an A. So the celebrity jobber podcast with Jeff Cito celebrity jobber. What about mom and dad? Chris, what did, what did they do for work? What kind of jobs did they hold? My dad was the guy that writes down in court. What happens? He's the guy that writes down the dictation and may and delivers the, he was the senior court reporter in Philadelphia. He's the guy that writes the record of the trial. That was a very tough job. I mean, some of these people in trial were screaming at each other. A lot of that ethnic attitudes about descriptions of life that he would, he would write it down in English, you know, it's pretty strong stuff. Did he, did he influence you at all as far as what direction you wanted to get into in life? I think hard work, Jeff. It's hard work. I mean, he worked, he'd come home from court and then he'd dictate all night into the dictation machine. And then he would type it or mom would type it. It was, it was real brutal work, but it was, the pay was great. I mean, that's what he likes. The salary, he had studied as an engineer, but he could make more money doing court reporting. So Chris, I mean, obviously JFK has impacted your life. And I'm not sure I didn't understand why back in the sixties it was important if you were Catholic, Irish, or, you know, I didn't understand why it was such a big deal. So can you tell me a little bit about what got you so interested in JFK, the impact that he left on you? And tell me about being Irish Catholic yourself and why, why that was a big deal when he became the president? Well, it hadn't happened before and it wasn't really in the cards necessarily. Nixon, for example, a smart guy thought that he was going to lose the nomination. He was not going to get it. He waited. It was only when he won in West Virginia and how those, how he did it in West Virginia, not necessarily a clean thing. I mean, there's a lot of money passed around and a lot of county chairman involved in that. But he did win. And then once he won that, he knew he had the nomination, which means it was a one on one with Nixon. It was a very brutal campaign. I think that I think that was it. I think my mom, very Irish Catholic, would be learning in the basement and just loving this experience. You know, but we go back here right about the ethnic thing. My mom would watch the McCarthy hearings back in the 1954. I mean, television. She's rooting for McCarthy. You know, he's not for the army. He shouldn't have rooting for the army. He's rooting for McCarthy. So I think the ethnic piece of Israel, although I think the other ethnic groups, Polish Americans, Italian Americans, a lot of the other Catholic groups are stronger for Kennedy and the Irish were because the Irish had moved up to the middle class into the middle class. And on any cases, so they were a little more esteemed self. The Celebrity Jobber podcast with Jeff Seeto 500 orders a month was manageable. 5,000 is madness. Embrace intelligent order fulfillment with ShipStation, the only platform combining order management, warehouse workflows, inventory, returns and analytics in one place. What used to take five separate tools, ShipStation does in one. Go to ShipStation.com and use code START to try ShipStation free for 60 days. The Celebrity Jobber podcast with Jeff Seeto. You see a difference, Chris, between the way JFK Democrats were and the way the Democrats are today. I want to say it. I don't want. I don't know if it's flip flopped, but to me, it almost seems like a lot of the working men and women out there have made of might have flipped and gone to the other side. Why is that? There's no doubt about it. I think the old. Well, it goes way back to divide between town and gown town of the townies, the people that live in the town around the colleges and the gown that went to go to the elite people that show up to go to college there. This is Jack Kennedy once said when he was writing his memoirs as president, he was actually trying to write his memoirs. He talked about being from Harvard and he said the only time I lived in that district, the first district he was elected in was when he went to Harvard. He said, no, wasn't a particularly popular thing to say. You went to Harvard. You were not popular in the district. You are not one of the people. And I think that's very real. And I hate it because it's merged into our politics where the town people are Trumpies and the elite college kids coming into an elite world of university life are Democrats. That's not the way it should be. When Bobby was dead, his body was carried from New York City where he was at the mass celebrated at St. Patrick's Cathedral and that train as it moved down to Washington Arlington Cemetery where he was buried next to his brother. That was a real statement of breaking that bond. I mean, people along the tracks with black people in Philadelphia, white working class people along the train route. It was really quite a multiracial display of devotion. Really remarkable. If you look at the you can look at them today on YouTube. The book is about RFK lessons from Bobby. Tell me about RFK's impact on you and tell me some of the lessons that you've learned from him in your new book. Oh, there's so many. I mean, I've got 10. One of them is he called it hanging a lantern on your problem. People make mistakes in public life. They do. Bobby said I never lost a lot of sleep over civil rights until he got the job of attorney general. And he lost a lot of sleep over when he was attorney general. That's what he was focused on. He was on the side of the Cold War and fighting in Vietnam or fighting the Russians in the Cuban Missile Crisis. He changed his mind a number of times and admitted it and quite openly said, I've changed my mind. I think that's politicians. That's one thing they do. I also accepted the fact that he lost primaries. He lost the Oregon primary and admitted it. And Papua Cannon was there in the crowd and said that this was an extraordinary performance to acknowledge your defeat. I think Donald Trump should have acknowledged his defeat in 2020 instead of storming the Capitol building. I think it's a very important thing to admit your mistakes and admit when you're loose. And that's one of the real messages of Bobby. Celebrity Jobber. The Celebrity Jobber podcast with Jeff Zito. Tell me, Chris, what was your very first job, first paying job of all time? Uh, paper boy Philadelphia Bulletin. Uh, big afternoon newspaper, fat newspaper on Tuesday because Wednesday was shopping and that was the big fat paper. And I had to get two baskets of newspapers. I had a big paper route, a tough paper route. But that was my first route and that was a long borderline between Bucks County and Philadelphia. I worked on that. I made five bucks a week. I didn't make a lot of money. I had five bucks a week and that was a one torturous effort on my bike. And then I worked as a drug store. I worked as a stock boy in a drug store. And then in college, I ran the birthday cake concession. So when you had your birthday about three weeks before your birthday, your parents would get a letter from me saying, do you want a birthday cake for your son? And I would get them a birthday cake. Some of the parents took the thing too seriously. They said, well, you invite the coach from the basketball team. I said, I'm not having, I'm not a caterer. I'm just getting your birthday cake. And that was a good job. And then it was in college. So all right, resident assistant. It's a great job with Carter kids to keep, keep, keep quiet. Like lessons from Bobby, the new book from bestselling author Chris Matthews. Real pleasure, Chris. Thanks so much for talking to me today. So much. Thank you. Take care. Chris graduated from Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts back in 1967. Did graduate work in economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was also a visiting fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics, served in the United States Peace Corps in Switzerland from 68 to 70 as a trade development advisor and holds 34 honorary degrees from numerous universities and colleges like Drexel, Quinnipiac, Fordham, Temple, Ohio State, LaSalle and a lot more. Man, if I could just get one honorary degree, I would be more than content with that. His old man, Herb Matthews was a court reporter. And I asked if his father had any influence over, you know, what direction Chris wanted to go into life. He mentioned that his father was just a really hard worker and that that influenced him. He said his dad studied engineering, but apparently made a good living, made a good salary being a court reporter. Chris talked about when he first arrived to Washington, D.C. He was an officer with the United States Capitol Police and had a lot of respect for those people. He also talked about his first job being a paper root was a paper boy. It's like a lot of our first jobs, you know, you know, being a paper boy was also my very first job when I was probably 10, 11 years old. So he delivered papers for a number of years until he said he was a stock boy at a drug store. And then when he got into college, he did something with worked at the birthday cake concession. He would send a letter to all the students parents like three months before their birthday and ask if they wanted to buy a birthday cake. I thought that was pretty cool. He said he liked that job and he also was the RA at his school, the resident assistant or the resident aid, you know, in charge. It was a student hired to kind of police the dorms, make sure no girls were in guys rooms or vice versa. Nobody's sneaking beer, smoking anything in their dorm room and the author of a number of bestselling books, including his latest lessons from Bobby. 10 reasons why Robert F. Kennedy still matters. Chris Matthews, former host of MSNBC's Heart and Ball with Chris Matthews. My guest this week on Celebrity Jobber. Thank you so much for checking out another episode. Like I said, streaming everywhere, whether it's Apple Podcast, Spotify, iHeart, wherever you listen to podcasts. And I ask you to please subscribe. Very important. Also, if you could give a five star rating, if you happen to like the podcast, leave a review. Also very helpful. And you can discover past guests and episodes online at celebrityjobber.com. Who knows what Chris Matthews would have turned into. It looked like he was going into an economics direction. Of course, when he got to grad school, he figured out economics was all about math. I could have told you that. So have a great Thanksgiving, everyone. And I'll be back on Black Friday with another episode of the Celebrity Jobber podcast. So until then, have a great Thanksgiving. Once again, I'm Jeff Zito. 500 orders a month was manageable. 5000 is madness. Embrace intelligent order fulfillment with ShipStation. The only platform combining order management, warehouse workflows, inventory, returns and analytics in one place. What used to take five separate tools, ShipStation does in one. Go to ShipStation.com and use code START to try ShipStation free for 60 days.
