Tim Russert has been dead a week but that hasn't stopped the nakedly ambitous potato heads at MSNBC from lusting after his Meet The Press job.

Word is out and reported by Page Six at the New York Post that both hysterically hyper Chris Matthews and that bumbling bufoon Keith Olbermann are both jockeying for position in the MTP sweepstakes:

TIM Russert's body wasn't even cold in the ground before MSNBC anchors Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann started jockeying for his job, sources claim.

Matthews was heard loudly discussing what seemed to be his strategy for landing Russert's "Meet the Press" show at Wednesday's memorial reception for the NBC Washington bureau chief at the Kennedy Center in DC. After Brian Williams, Carl Bernstein, David Gergen, Barbara Walters and NBC brass eulogized their friend, Matthews huddled with an unidentified "agent type" and seemed to be plotting.

According to our spy, "Chris, with his loud voice, was going over a pitch for Tim's job. He was saying, 'You know, Tim's thing was this, and my thing is that.' It was unbelievably tacky."

[snip]

Meanwhile, Matthews' MSNBC cable cohort Olbermann, who was also at the memorial, is "threatening to quit if he isn't installed as Russert's replacement," another insider said. "I know, it sounds ludicrous, but, then, Keith Olbermann is ludicrous."

A rep for MSNBC said, "All of this is utterly untrue."

Russert himself wanted Chuck Todd, the NBC News political director he hired, to succeed him, said one source, who added that MSNBC hosts don't stand a chance of landing "Meet the Press." The insider said, "They're cable. They're far too partisan. They have no gravitas. If gravitas is eight letters, they're about seven letters short."