Better watch what you say before the show.  Chris Matthews is caught playing anything but Hardball with the Neocon Demon, Tom Delay. These two were caught chatting before the cameras rolled on this edition of Hardball.  Reported on AirAmerica Randy Rhodes and Harry Shearer on the Huffington Post:

 MATTHEWS: Hey thank you for calling me. It was a good thing for me, mostly.

DELAY: Oh really.

MATTHEWS: Oh of course it was. We got on the air as fast as we could….

[…]

MATTHEWS: Shannon [DeLay aide] told me, she called me, she said ‘don’t worry — he’s not calling in to complain…

MATTHEWS: Have you seen this new focus group stuff on the candidates?

DELAY: No I haven’t

MATTHEWS: It’s great stuff. I’ll send it to you — it’s great — yeah it’s great stuff. Hillary, John Kerry. All these guys, all these democrats, and how they do. And, uh, Frank Luntz did it…

DELAY: who I like

CM: …and Hillary did not do well. Kerry did well.

DELAY: You’re kidding.

MATTHEWS: I am NOT kidding. They didn’t like Edwards — they thought he was a rich lawyer, pretending to care about poor people…

DELAY: Too slick. Too slick.

MATTHEWS: …and Hillary was a know-it-all.

DELAY: Nothing worse than a woman know-it-all

[…]

MATTHEWS: Thanks. I owe you one. I owe you two — today and last night.

DELAY: No you don’t.

MATTHEWS: No, I do.

DELAY: I appreciate it.

Do you hear that huge sucking sound? I guess the game of Hardball is played only with a select few.  If you hear the actual audio of this, you will realize just what a suck-up Matthews was. I guess "Us and Them" is human nature for even so called adults.