Rachel Maddow Bashes Network She Once Tried To Join

FOX-ED INTO A CORNER

Maddow's Sheltered Life Comes Back To Haunt Her





*** NEW: WHILE ADULTS HAVE CHOICES TUESDAY, SCHOOLCHILDREN NOT SO FORTUNATE ***

*** COLUMNIST COMPARES HEROIC USAIR PILOT TO OBAMA ***


With a rapid rise accompanied by a generous helping of mainstream media fawning, it was only a matter of time before broadcast rookie Rachel Maddow began to trip over her own words. Isn't that how this kind of story always plays out?

Thanks to an unfortunate series of blunders and career mishaps, that's precisely what has occurred in a big way, all in the course of just a day or two.

At a dinner Thursday evening, for example, Maddow reportedly told hacks and flaks at a Television Critics Association gathering she's "never seen a show on Fox at any time, ever."

Isn't that a funny thing: just six months ago, before her debut as full-time MSNBC host, Maddow was pitching her services to the FOX News Channel, the very network she's now busy attacking in public. Looks like Rachel has just Fox-ed herself into a corner.


Earlier that same day, Air America Radio announced they were moving her talk show to mornings and cutting it to just one hour, raising speculation that it may be taped, given her evening MSNBC work and peculiar fear of taking live callers. Under previous AAR management, Maddow has already failed in morning drive.

When hosts are reduced to a single hour, by the way, it's usually a final stop on the way out of a station or network.


Finally, an overzealous producer also got Rachel into hot water, thanks to an embarrassing display at the site of last week's USAir crash into the Hudson River. Just as shaken, freezing passengers were being pulled from the frigid waters, they were solicited for appearances on Maddow's MSNBC program:

(Huffington Post) A man who was onboard the US Air flight that went down in New Yorks' Hudson River Thursday spoke to media shortly after being rescued, memorably telling interviewers he was "scared as s--t" as the plane was going down.

After his interview, as he was attempting to leave the scene, he was asked two very different questions (by two different people):

1. "Jeff, do you need to go to the hospital? Are you alright?"

2. "Jeff, are you interested in appearing on The Rachel Maddow Show tonight?"

Ouch.


At the meeting with television critics, Maddow followed up her Fox-free admission with some knee-slapping observations (see, she IS a comedian, just as the mainstream media claims, the humor is merely unintentional):

"The idea that there's any equivalency between us and Fox News..." she said. "Fox is a political experiment. Imagine them having somebody as liberal as Joe Scarborough is conservative doing their whole morning? It doesn't make sense."

Really, Rachel: MSNBC is fair and balanced thanks to Joe Scarborough's mushy moderate (and sometimes quite left-leaning) views? That's side-splitting.

Her hyper-partisan network boss followed up with some choice gems of his own, claiming MSNBC is "less political" than Fox. These guys are a laff riot!


Given what we know about Maddow's background, should any of this come as a real surprise? Between the extremism of the (off the deep end) East Bay, Western Massachusetts, Oxford and Manhattan, she's spent her entire life hiding from conservatives and their viewpoints (occasional on-air jousts with populist Pat Buchanan really don't count).

And one suspects that if she could get away with it, she'd retreat to the Berkshires for good and make jam, or play with cats. So what is this really all about?

Top that off with an aversion to televised viewpoints from the competition and a picture emerges of a talking head without a clear idea of what the other side truly believes. Because she beats the fossilized Larry King in the 25-54 demo, however, the New York Times would have you believe she's the next candidate for sainthood.

By contrast, conservative talk radio's top stars have spent their entire lives studying (and most certainly living amongst) the left. The massive audiences they've generated recognize this quality; it has been key to their success.

Forget the doctorate (which in political science is a bloody waste of time), with this Achilles heel, why should Rachel Maddow be taken seriously?


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