Rachel Maddow

Sometimes it's what they neglect to mention that's more revealing than that was.

Disgraced former CBS anchorman Dan Rather, now broadcasting from obscure AXS TV on the high triple-digit end of the cable dial, told Rachel Maddow of an incident back when he was a reporter devoted to hounding Richard Nixon. (Video after page break).

In likely the only time she'll ever publicly utter the name of convicted baby killer Kermit Gosnell, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow ended her self-imposed blackout of the abortionist's trial and told her viewers he'd been found guilty of murder.

Media coverage of Gosnell's two-month trial was "polarizing," Maddow sniffed, perturbed that so many lesser evolved beings remain unconvinced about the necessity or niceties of abortion on demand. (Video after page break)

Leave it to Ed Schultz to conjure up the most deranged spin yet in response to the Internal Revenue Service admitting to undue scrutiny of tea party groups.

While many liberals have been critical of the Obama administration in the wake of the hardly surprising revelation, Schultz on his radio show yesterday was full-throated in his defense of the IRS -- even to the point of making the absurd claim that it showed how conservatives should support President Obama's plan to "simplify" the tax code. (Audio clips after page break)

Hard to believe, but Rachel Maddow once engaged in something resembling journalism in response to the attack in Benghazi.

It came on her MSNBC show only two days after the jihadist onslaught that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans last September, on the 11th anniversary of 9/11. Maddow described how security in Benghazi had deteriorated for months-- while she inadvertently damned the Obama administration for not providing adequate protection as conditions worsened.

For sheer entertainment on MSNBC, few things rival the spectacle of its marquee host, Rachel Maddow, in the throes of high dudgeon.

There she was again last night, the full shtick, wide eyed, arms waving, sentences ending with exclamation points, the fact checkers at PolitiFact the target of her wrath. (Video after page break)

What's the difference between someone with a “far-left” philosophy and a person who's a “liberal?” Bill O'Reilly received an interesting answer to that question while interviewing Democratic strategist James Carville during Thursday night's edition of “The O'Reilly Factor.”

Carville said that far-left people, including the protesters who clashed with police in Seattle on May 1, are criminals who are “breaking the law,” a standard he used when rejecting the conservative host's assertion that “the MSNBC people” are “starting to dominate the political conversation.”

Coming up next on MSNBC, further evidence of the link between global warming and the National Rifle Association, which the gun lobby inexplicably continues to deny ...

How reassuring it is for liberals to trot out their various all-purpose boogeymen to blame for whatever frustrates liberals at any given moment.

Last Friday, Obama made “history” by being the first president to address Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest purveyor of abortions. Obama did this in spite of the terrible timing, during the Kermit Gosnell trial. But like the Gosnell trial, Obama’s speech drew a blackout: no story on  ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, or NPR.

MSNBC's Chris Hayes hailed it was a "history-making" speech, but complained that Obama never used the A-word, which he should never feel ashamed to use. Rachel Maddow praised Obama for “putting a new capstone” on bold proclamations for the “right to choose.” USA Today and the Los Angeles Times somehow missed it. The New York Times blogged it – with this amazing paragraph from reporter Peter Baker as he mentioned Gosnell:

When MSNBC announced in March that Ed Schultz's weeknight program, “The Ed Show,” was being replaced by “All In,” which is hosted by 34-year-old Chris Hayes, the executives of the "Lean Forward" network hoped that the new hour-long program would hold onto the channel's liberal audience and even draw in younger viewers.

Instead, the ratings for Hayes' broadcasts in April were down 18 percent in total viewers from that month's numbers in 2012 for “Ed,” and it appears that “All In” is also dragging down the viewership for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” which was off by seven percent from its ratings during that period a year ago, and “The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell,” which also fell eight percent in a year-to-year comparison.

Wow, the unintended hilarity just keeps coming from "The Rachel Maddow Show."

Last night a genuine rarity occurred when one of Maddow's guests, Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell during George W. Bush's first term, ridiculed an earlier guest, former CIA and FBI official Philip Mudd. (Video clip after page break)

More potential jihadist attacks against American civilians in the wake of the Boston bombings? Not worthy of further attention from Rachel Maddow. Instead, Maddow is more concerned with that "real crisis" down at Guantanamo, of prisoners starving themselves.

If future media critics ever want a quintessential example of the Maddow show, they could do worse than watch her program from April 30, 2013. And after cringing through it, they'll want a bleach bath. (Video clip after page break)

Back in the mid-1990s I went to a public forum in Boston to hear ex-adman Earl Shorris talk about his new book, "A Nation of Salesmen: The Tyranny of the Market and the Subversion of Culture."

In one of his many anecdotes on working in advertising, Shorris told of being hired by Nestle after it was discovered that one of their infant formulas was sickening and killing newborns in Africa. What should we do, a nervous Nestle's exec asked Shorris. "Stop killing babies," he suggested. For this Shorris was dubbed the "conscience of the company." (Video after page break)

Say, did you happen to see that commercial for Elizabeth Warrren in the guise of an interview on "The Rachel Maddow Show"?

Those six minutes of scintillating chit-chat would have cost Warren big time if she and MSNBC went by the book, seeing how in-kind contributions to politicians don't get more obvious. (Video after page break)

These Rocky Mountain right wingers, Rachel Maddow complained last night, there they go again, trying to thwart voting rights.

Seems that a conservative group in Colorado mailed out a flier in response to a Democrat state lawmaker filing a bill that would make it easier to vote. (Video clip after page break)

Yeah, good thing. Come to think of it, when could that have even happened, Mr. Pierce?

One of the more bizarre observations in media after the capture of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhav Tsarnaev came courtesy of Charles Pierce, Esquire magazine political blogger. (Video clip after page break)

Not to worry, horribly misunderstood jihadist community, Rachel Maddow's got your back.

Doing her part for MSNBC's weekend coverage of the capture of marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhav Tsarnaev, Maddow appeared peeved that the Miranda warning usually extended to criminal suspects had been waived after Tsarnaev was taken into custody, the FBI justifying the waiver under a public safety exception. (Video clip after page break)

Guess this hinges on how one defines "threaten." As far as Rachel Maddow is concerned, anyone who disagrees with her, and who owns a firearm, is inherently threatening. And boy would she love to make a citizen's arrest.

Continuing in her efforts to exploit the murders at Sandy Hook into political advantage for liberals, Maddow on her MSNBC show last night deceitfully accused Indiana gun owners of threatening to shoot a group of mothers protesting in favor of more restrictive gun laws. (video clip after page break)

I say "political integrity expert," you say "Eliot Spitzer."  I say "you're kidding me, right?"

Rachel Maddow actually got off to a good start last evening in her segment on political sleaziness, ripping politicians both Dem and Republican for a variety of venal sins.  But of all the people to bring on as your expert to discuss how to raise the moral bar . . . Client 9?  Surely you make mirth, Ms. Maddow! View the video after the jump.

If the New Republic's Rebecca Dana is correct, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is more deluded than anyone thought.

In her lengthy piece about MSNBC president Phil Griffin, Dana claimed Maddow believes the reason President Obama hasn't given the cable network an interview since 2008 is because "his people know he’s going to get asked difficult questions":

The left-wing righteousness was heavy in the air on Tuesday, the tenth anniversary of the U.S. war starting in Iraq. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow booked Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) to decry all the lies told to Congress and the American people about the intelligence out of Iraq. Conservatives aren't just hostage-takers on taxes or the sequester.

Duckworth called the run-up to war a "hostage situation," since members of Congress were "being threatened and had their patriotism questioned." That sounds just like the anti-conservative blather from then-MSNBC president Erik Sorenson in the early weeks of the war in Afghanistan in 2001: "Any misstep and you can get into trouble with these guys and have the Patriotism Police hunt you down." Here's how Maddow spurred the latest conservative-hostage-takers metaphor:

Dylan Byers of Politico reported that the new Zev Chafets book on Fox News boss Roger Ailes includes talk of his warm friendship with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. Ailes wrote a blurb for Maddow’s first book, “Drift,” and told Chafets he knew praising Maddow would make MSNBC executives think he was trying to bring her over to Fox. “I don’t want to recruit her but they’ll think I do,” Ailes told Chafets. “Hell, they’re paranoid over there.”

“I think Roger’s vision is wrong, but he’s the most important Republican in the country,” Maddow told Chafets. Then she insisted he was so intellectually superior to the Republican rank and file:

Bill Maher made a comment Friday that his benefactor and hero Barack Obama should sit up and take notice of.

Speaking about the taxes the rich pay particularly in California, the host of HBO's Real Time said, "Liberals - you could actually lose me" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter's Friday story -- adapted from a longer post on his "Media Decoder" blog -- relayed the changing of the prime time guard at the nation's most liberal news channel: "Weekend Host Chris Hayes to Take Over 8 P.M. Slot on MSNBC." Stelter praised Hayes for his "well-regarded morning program," crediting it for "long, thoughtful conversations about politics and public policy," though conservatives would question how deep that surface sheen of sophistication truly is.

Chris Hayes will take over the 8 p.m. time slot on MSNBC in the next month, the Comcast owned channel announced on Thursday, the day after the current host of that hour, Ed Schultz, said he was moving from the weekdays to the weekends.

Behold the birth of a liberal meme. Ten years hence, we'll still be telling them it isn't true, and they'll keep repeating it regardless.

Speaking with Jay Leno on Monday to plug the paperback release of her book "Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power," MSNBC's Rachel Maddow described the one and only time she attended the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, better known as CPAC. (video, audio clips after page break)

With the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) starting Thursday, March 14, Rachel Maddow, appearing on the Tonight Show w/ Jay Leno on March 11, recalled her pleasant encounter at the Media Research Center booth at CPAC in 2010.

A few years ago, the MRC produced ‘Stomp Out The Liberal Media’ mats featuring numerous MSNBC personalities, including Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman.  Maddow recalled her experience with the MRC as such:

On Thursday night, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow mocked Republican party chairman Reince Priebus for listing as a lesson from 2012 "controlling the debate process, getting involved in moderators and networks and all of these other issues so that we don`t have chaos."

Maddow found it odd that the GOP chair would (very sensibly) say "we just can`t have MSNBC, you know, hosting a debate at the Reagan Library only to have their network comment -- you know, make the commentary afterwards for three hours about the debate of the Republican Party. I mean, it’s ridiculous."

Editor’s Note: Some of the language and links might be offensive.

Austin is known for its motto, “Keep Austin Weird.” This week, an estimated 27,000 people will come to South by Southwest (“SXSW”) to try and prove it.  The annual interactive media and technology festival will host big name liberals like former Vice President Al Gore, the Bush-hating band Green Day and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, as well panel discussions and films about gays, pornography, sex with minors and drag queens.

In short, it’s a celebration of things liberals love.