Leslie Stahl of CBS 60 Minutes has conducted a very in depth interview with Rachel Maddow. I really like Rachel's intelligence and demeanor and honesty. There's nothing fake about her, this interview exposes all aspects of her life, on screen and off....Rachel is such an authentic and lovely person. I think Maddow is a national treasure.
Rachel is not perfect, but I enjoy her and her show very much. It is so rare to watch a political commentary host who lets her guests talk without constantly interrupting them. Rachel doesn't demean, humiliate or scream at her guests. She attacks their opinions with fact, knowledge and verifiable information. Who else does that other than Keith Olbermann? Maddow is strong-minded and opinionated, but she is fair and open as well.... it is not an "ego thing" for her, it's about truth and knowledge and democratic with a small "d" governance.
Ok. I'm a fan....but Rachel Maddow has earned my respect and she has earned one hour out of my hectic schedule, 5 nights a week!
Some of the interesting Maddow interview tidbits. Linkage to the interview...
http://www.wowowow.com/...
Professionally speaking:
LESLEY: Well, you’re doing great. But I have some questions, first off, about demeanor, because one would have thought that the ticket to cable heaven or something like that is a temper tantrum: The anchor shouts and the audiences come. But you are congenial. I’ve never seen you get angry and yet you’re drawing a crowd. So we have Obama; we have Rachel Maddow, lowering the temperature, cooling the hostility. What’s going on? Do you think that there’s been a real change in the public’s appetite?
RACHEL: Well, I don’t know. I guess that will become evident if this becomes a bigger trend than the trend that you’ve just identified. But, the way that I see it strategically, is that those in talk radio – which is sort of where I come from – and television, you’re trying to get people to connect with you; you’re trying to draw people in. And one way to do that is to express anger and vituperation and indignation. That draws people in. It is something that is very compelling, just in human terms. But another way to draw people in and to have people feel like they’re invested in you and they care about what you’re going to say next, is if they relate to you. I think that’s more the direction that I’m going. I think I have the same amount of anger as everybody else. I just don’t think it’s my best side and so I don’t try to show it very much in public. I think it is my temperament. I do feel like I’m hosting, and so I ought to be a congenial host, even with people with whom I disagree. I’m asking people to be part of my program, not because I want to hurt them but because I believe that they have something to say. And so I feel like I ought to, just in terms of manners, ought to treat them that way.
On the FOX Nutwork, balance and Roger Ailes:
LESLEY: I want to ask you, sort of apropos of television and stuff -- that you obviously don’t watch very much -- but you’ve referred to something, actually, put it down, that you’ve called “fake balance” in news shows. And as a person on a news show, I fear to ask: What is that and are you saying that your show is real balance?
RACHEL: I’m not saying that my show is real balance. But I think that the idea of fake balance is worse than not trying to be balanced at all. And what I mean by fake balance is to take any given political or factual issue, a news issue, and to approach it as if there’s a yes and no, pro and con, left and right take on it. On the issue of global warming, for example, that is something that interest groups on one side, as a political issue, tried to make that there was a real debate about the facts. And there really wasn’t a debate about the facts there. And to have a debate about the facts was sort of, at its root, dishonest, because it’s scientific information and, you know, fighting about the interpretation of what we ought to do about it them and whether or not the science is important and all of those things, absolutely fine. Fighting about whether or not we agree with the facts is an argument that is designed to reframe, and for the benefit of one interest group.
RACHEL: Well, if you think about the way that Fox was founded, though – Fox was founded by Roger Ailes. It was created from his perspective as a political operative. His background was as a Republican activist of the highest order. There’s no equivalent on MSNBC. I think MSNBC is trying to find hit shows.
LESLEY: Everybody they hire to anchor their shows is distinctly liberal and encouraged to express themselves that way, wouldn’t you say?
RACHEL: At MSNBC?
LESLEY: Yes.
RACHEL: Well, I wouldn’t call David Shuster a liberal. I would barely call Chris Matthews a liberal. He voted for Bush. And I certainly wouldn’t call Joe Scarborough a liberal.
Some interesting Maddow biography:
LESLEY: It’s an executive position and they are at the top of the pyramid. That’s very interesting, but I’m going to quickly change the subject and ask some questions about you. Can you give us a two-minute bio? Did you have a happy childhood? What were you like? How did you grow up? Who are you?
RACHEL: I was a middle-class kid who grew up in a nuclear family. My parents still live in the house where I grew up. I have one older brother. I went to public schools. I was a jock when I was a kid – I played three sports. I went to college quite near where I grew up. I grew up in the Bay area and then I went to Stanford and I sort of enjoyed college, but not really, and got out a little bit early. By that time, I was openly gay and I had been an AIDS activist from the time that I was about 17. And I threw myself into AIDS work and I did that as an activist for a decade, including doing my doctoral dissertation on an AIDS-related subject, and was working in that field when I came back to this country. I did my graduate work abroad.
LESLEY: Well, wait -- don’t zip over that so fast. You were a Rhodes Scholar.
RACHEL: Right.
LESLEY: You got your doctorate, you’re actually Dr. Maddow, at Oxford.
RACHEL: Although it seems a bit embarrassing to call yourself when your doctorate is in politics.
On being Gay:
LESLEY: I love this, you once told New York Magazine that you often forget that you’re gay and every once in a while you have to say to yourself, “Oh, my God. I’m gay!” Is that true?
RACHEL: Well, I’ve been out for most of my life. I’m 35 now and I came out when I was 17. So it’s something that I never have to --
On life with Patrick J Buchanan:
LESLEY: Didn’t you have some kind of a dustup with Pat Buchanan, whom you work with on your show a lot?
RACHEL: About me being gay?
LESLEY: Not about you being gay, but he saying something ... I’m forgetting what it is. It’s popped into my head, something on air at one of the conventions.
RACHEL: I have talked to him a number of times. Both being on set with him at the same time, but also interviewing him about how his political stances on gay issues and the way he’s been willing to politicize gay rights in his sort of patented Pat Buchanan divisive way have been hurtful to me, and were hurtful to me when I was growing up. And he hears me and he understands what I’m saying. I’m not sure that he is particularly concerned that it hurt me. I think Pat knew what he was doing, with the way that he politicized issues like gay rights. And I don’t think it comes as a surprise to him to hear me say the way it affected me.
This interview is a must read. Leslie Stahl conducts the interview very well until she makes the ridiculous statement that Chris Matthews is a "Liberal". But not to worry, Rachel Maddow corrects her and teaches Stahl that although Matthews may indeed be a Democrat, he is not a "Liberal". Now you'd think a correspondent on 60 Minutes might know that.
But the interview is about Maddow. So I won't spend any time trying to figure out how the usually intelligent Leslie Stahl forgot her "thinking cap" on interview day.
Please read the interview and watch the incomperable Rachel Maddow on MSNBC!