Here's an example of that ideological niche at work. [Video embedded after page break]
While in Nevada to cover the closing days of the Angle-Reid race for Senate, Maddow visited a shooting range in Las Vegas. Here's what happened, as described by one of her staffers, Mike Yarvitz, in a web-only segment posted at Maddow's MSNBC site --
YARVITZ: You may have seen on the show this week that we took a trip out to Las Vegas looking for Sharron Angle and we went to a place called The Gun Store, which is a freaking awesome machine gun firing range, shooting range, you can pick up any sort of weapon you want. And they were nice enough and gracious enough to let Rachel pick up a couple weapons.
Now what you saw on the show was her firing away at those targets (footage shown of Maddow at range). What you didn't see was (sic) the results of all that firing. (Yarvitz points toward two targets taped to a wall). This was one of the first, the first gun that she picked up, was an Uzi, an Israeli-made Uzi that's specifically made for women. And as you can see here she had some pretty good shots. She got one right in the bull's-eye here (Yarvitz pointing this out with his middle finger; toward viewers or Maddow, unclear) and she sort of peppered the left side of this gentleman's body.
The interesting thing is Rachel had her choice about what she wanted as a target. You could shoot at Osama bin Laden, you could shoot at a guy who's holding a little girl hostage. She chose, you know, just a normal gentleman, which I think is probably a fair choice.
Golly, wouldn't want to fire on a target of bin Laden. Everyone knows what a short fuse he has, along with that penchant for keeping an eye on American media.
Had Sharron Angle done the same thing, Maddow would accuse her of firing on the black guy.
What makes it all the more amusing was Maddow's claim to Jon Stewart back in April that, given the chance, "I could kill Osama bin Laden with a spoon" and "I would enjoy that." Curiously, she left out the part about Miranda rights.
Sigh, if only Maddow visited Vegas armed with kitchen utensils.
