I still love Rachel Maddow
This spring, I offered a blog post entitled “I have a crush on Rachel Maddow.” Last night, she again earned my respect and hopefully that of all open-minded folks when she took on Fox News and Bill O’Reilly for their blatant twisting of the news for political effect. Maddow said the following to O’Reilly:
your network, FOX News, continually crusades on flagrantly bogus stories designed to make white Americans fear black Americans [emphasis added], which FOX News most certainly does for a political purpose even if it upends the lives of individuals like Shirley Sherrod, even as it frays the fabric of the nation, and even as it makes the American Dream more of a dream and less of a promise.
Is MSNBC biased? Are Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow opinionated? Of course, but that’s not the point. The point is journalistic integrity, and that’s an alien concept to Fox News. Conservative billionaire Rudolph Murdock owns the network, and he can hire right-wing entertainers if that’s what he wants to do, but accepting falsified tapes and trumpeting them as newsworthy “frays the fabric of the nation’” as Maddow correctly asserts. Troubled by the fractious political situation in America as exemplified by the tea-baggers? Look no further than Fox News and their McCartheyesqe, fear mongering falsehoods.
Here’s the full Maddow video clip.
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Thank you Obie!
Rachel Maddow is a gem, and we knew that sooner or later the bullies @ Fox were going to go after her. She doesn’t respond ‘bluster for bluster’ but with dignity and intelligience.
Does she have a bias? Sure she does, we all do. But she is so smart, so well informed, so ‘above the fray’ that the bullies don’t know what to do with her.
I see great things ahead for her: she handles herself with aplomb on the Big Box shows( with the governmental Big Boys), like “Meet the Press,” and no one on her network (MSNBC) or any other, can hold a candle to her abilities.
Rachel gives us something rare: an intelligent woman in the journalism business who isn’t a Barbie Doll cut out, yet she has humor, the bona fides to get into the arena, and she lacks the hubris of most of the egos out there.
No wonder: she is the real thing.
@donna deal
When I mentioned McCarthyism in the post, I couldn’t help but think of the great journalist Edward R Murrow who confronted McCarthy and helped the nation to see him for the pathetic fear monger that he was. I think Maddow is potentially a modern day Murrow.
“even as it frays the fabric of the nation, and even as it makes the American Dream more of a dream and less of a promise.”
Yeah, no fear-mongering there.
I grew up in Wisconsin during the “McCarthy” era and as a school boy sort of wondered why that guy (McCarthy) always looked so angry. Years later when I was studying political science I had occasion to see some of the original film of his bullying of people he hauled before his committee in Congress. Edward R. Murrow’s simple straight forward exposure of putting unedited live coverage of a hate and fear monger on the air let the people see and hear for themselves. McCarthy did himself in. The modern McCarthy types have since learned to use the media to advance their agenda by hysterically hyping carefully selected neuralgic points. Rachel Maddow is their worst nightmare because she insists on talking about “the rest of the story.” Hype and fear don’t do well when confronted with full exposure. Right on, RACHEL!
I grew up in the McCarthy era too and my parents, especially my mother, were strong followers of him at the time. Yes , we needed to be careful of the communist threat but McCarthy overdid it. At the time, the threat of nuclear was was in the spotlight. Krushev was pounding his shoe on the podium and was going to bury us. But McCathy was seeing communists in everyone with socialist leanings. Were these people a real threat ?