We interrupt this parenting blog to crow about a well-placed lesbian television and radio commentator
17 Comments Published August 20th, 2008 in APB, Miscellaney.I don’t even watch television, but a friend has been saying for months, “Don’t you know about Rachel Maddow?! You have to! Brilliant! Progressive! Out dyke! From your home town fer Chrissakes! On television! Go watch her right this very instant and then report back.”
Sadly, the years of Rachel Maddow’s ascension in broadcasting have more or less paralleled my years either in family crisis or early parenthood or both. So I’d been a bit tuned out. Also, we moved the TV from one room to another about a year or two ago, and managed never to really plug it back in again, beyond hooking up the DVD player. We can’t have the child watching Dottie’s Magic Pockets on my computer here, now can we?
But I succumbed to the peer pressure, checked out Rachel Maddow (pictured at right — see? you think I’m kidding? she’s like, like, like US!), and hot darn was I not disappointed. She reminded me of my smartest chums, laying into [name the topic] with gusto and good humor and insight and research to back it all up. Ah, my peeps.
Now I’m going to guess that nine-tenths of you out there are actually are aware of public events and the people analyzing them, in both alternative and commercial media, and are therefore aware of Ms. Maddow. At least you US residents. For the remaining tenth of you, whether you’re US residents in a partial media blackout, such as I have been, or enlightend folk abroad — and assuming a sharp witted, articulate, progressive, out dyke on the TV set is a thrill — oo! and you wanted more than newlywed Ellen DeGeneres! — I suggest you hie yourself over to any of the links below to acquaint yourself with the new HOST OF HER OWN NIGHTLY COMMENTARY SHOW ON MSNBC. Starting September 8th. At 9pm Eastern, 6pm Pacific. I’m guessing it would be somewhere in between for my mates in Central Standard Time.
I may have to plug the TV in after all.
- • Keith Olberman’s announcement/post on Daily Kos: Rachel Gets Her Own MSNBC Show
- • Salon.com/broadsheet news flash about her show: It’s a Maddow Maddow Maddow Maddow world! (by Rebecca Traister)
- • Nation piece Mad for Rachel Maddow (by Rebecca Traister)
- • Popnography piece Why we’re all hot for Rachel Maddow (by Japhy Grant, who kicks off his piece with the winning first sentence, “I know I’m probably breaking some sort of gay male covenant, but I have the world’s biggest crush on Rachel Maddow.”)
- • The inimitable Dorothy Snarker’s two weeks ago love letter to her, Maddow about you, and her piece on the new show, posted in the same wee hours as this missive, Rachel rising.
17 Responses to “We interrupt this parenting blog to crow about a well-placed lesbian television and radio commentator”
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Lesbian Dad is written by a parent who answers to the name "Baba" and works toward a world in which amor does indeed vincit omnia. 
Have to add an addendum. In her AfterEllen piece on the news, Sarah Warn has this to say:
Yeah, yeah. What she said.
I can think of nothing more eloquent to say than, “woohooo!”
I’ve never heard of her before, but a recommendation from and timeslot right after Keith makes her a win in my book. And I loved her in that clip – very smart and personable.
Eye candy! On TV! For me!
I can’t remember the last time, unless maybe it was extras in the Olivia Cruise scene in The L Word.
I am part of the living under a rock set, but will crawl out to watch this, newborn girlie in the crook of my arm.
I just posted this over Sur. Dorothy but it’s valid here as well. EVERYONE- loves them some Rachel. Straight, gay, male, female, young, old.
She’s got the kavorka.
And, LD, it’s so cute that even though you’re brilliant and hip, part of you still lives under a rock, sort of. (I say it fondly.)
I think everyone’s hoping now she has her own show, they’ll put some work into costuming and makeup that the host finds more comfortable. I hope they let her wear her Converses and big ol’ glasses, but I’m doubting that.
I’ve been listening to Rachel Maddow on AirAmerica for a while now and I love her, but I hadn’t heard about the TV show yet! Yay! I’m so glad you posted this.
And Virgotex is right about everyone loving her – I’m a straight married woman and I have a dear friend is a straight married man. We were having a discussion the other day and I told him that if I was a lesbian I would so want to marry Rachel – and he said I’d have to fight him for her. I also agree that in the clip above, she looks more “made up” than she’s comfortable with. Hopefully that’s a fluke.
LD – I discovered your blog while checking out the keynote readings from BlogHer. You have such an easy, eloquent, beautiful way of expressing yourself and I’ve really enjoyed reading your site for the last month or so.
Thank you so much, jayfid. Thank you. I kind of stick the eloquence in the backseat when I get all excited like this (kin! on the TV!). Or I stumble over it and leave it in a heap, what have you. So thank you. And welcome.
To follow up vt’s note, I took the liberty of scouting up a nice big horn-rimmed glasses shot of RM, pre-Ready for Prime Time makeover:
[Above image courtesy of the nice people (or rather Monte Belmonte) at the Northhampton radio station 93.9 The River. I had to go for the horn-rimmed + baseball cap image, since that has long been my hatwear du choix.]
Virgo-T you made me go Google kavorka. Which, I quickly learned, I had to Google because (! there again!) I haven’t watched enough TV in the past decade. I am humbled that you describe me as both brilliant and hip. I’d give my left hip to be either.
Liza, sister, it’s about time gals like you had some eye candy. Even though I must admit it can make gals like me a little nervous. I mean, the beloved is constantly bemoaning the lack, and noting that the femme end of the female universe is quite over-represented in popular media. Can’t dispute that (or complain). I can take the heat though. I can. I can. (And courage, these last overpregnant days! You can do it! Go obscenely pregnant team!)
And you know, Maria (aka immoralmatriarch), I am equally late to the Rachel Maddow party. But when you get a load of her past zingers online (go to YouTube and stick in her name + Pat Buchanan, against whom she has typically been paired on Hardball) you’ll have an extended picnic.
Neekee, woohoo on back at you! Seems like there are a lot of us woohooing about now.
From a few months back, pop culture blogger Bossy (of I am Bossy) on her “new husband” Rachel Maddow.
i am bossy: The Only Thing Standing Between Bossy And Her New Husband Is A Vagina. Or Two.
Thank you for that! A treat, the first comment, which read
VT, without wanting to be too presumptuous, I think that might mean us. We all may just be in season. Or at least for a day. Which is fine by me.
yes, so eloquently put:
we are in season
may it ever be so.
we can take our place in the produce aisle.
right next to the organic peaches, is my hope.
I just realized I have had a small slice of eye candy on TV, thanks to my lovely wife. The WNBA has a few butch hotties, including the elusive long-haired butches, as do college softball and hoops.
But this is better. Smart eye candy! Actively being smart while also being eye candy! I’d rather watch smart than sweat.
That’s Doctor Maddow to you. She was a Rhodes scholar, ya know…
She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s hot… and her laugh! She’s been my internet girlfriend for years. I adore her.
Wow! and Why? I thought that US TV stations-including MSNBC- were uniformly conservative and right-wing. Talent aside how DID she get the job?
Can you believe, “quest for ratings”? So says the Los Angeles Times.
They did go through the roof when she guest-hosted for Olberman (if memory serves).
Addendum: Glenn Greenwald ran a fairly detailed post at his Salon.com column earlier today about conservative response to Maddow’s new show. In it, he reviews the extant voices in cable news, not just on notoriously right-wing Fox, but on MSNBC and CNN, and certainly corroborates your impression, Chumpy.
“The decay of serious journalism and Rachel Maddow’s new show”
Amazingly, this piece confirms what I’d read earlier in the LA Times piece: that — you could knock me over with a feather — Keith Olberman has indeed been very popular. Bill Carter, a New York Times TV critic wrote the same earlier in the week:
Thanks for such interesting reading. The link in your first reply is a 404 but I found the article through Google. Im glad I got past Jodie’s sombre pronouncement for the Glen Greenwald post.
His post includes the line ‘who only explicitly sports extremist right-wing rhetoric on Sundays’ to describe one of the other news anchors- priceless!
Still don’t understand it though- if its all about increasing ratings why are part of the audience suddenly interested in a ‘liberal’ viewpoint? Were they not before?
I’ve never understood why the right has such a grip on the media in the US, nor why that grip would appear to be loosening just now…..
Me neither, on both counts (grip and the loosening thereof). Though the trend toward corporate monopolization has been decades in the making. If ever the media were utterly independent. Sigh.
(Given what a challenge it is to continue to afford to do this jobbie (LD) sans
anymany external gestures to commercialism, etc., the whole shebang is even more poignant to me.)Historians might point to the simple, inevitable pendulum swings of history, at least, on the matter of why the tides might be turning. One can only take sooooo much imbicile crypto-fascism.
Then again, ask Gramsci; he’d say we can be quite nicely programmed to swallow it all, ’til we’ve got no stomach left.
Fixed the broke link to the LA Times piece, by the way. Thanks for the heads-up.