The recent addition of the Rachel Maddow Show to the MSNBC nightly lineup has added a highly effective voice to the liberal arsenal. Ms. Maddow has proven herself to be a witty, highly intelligent, and effective commentator. Her show has garnered rave reviews and wide viewership. I, for one, am grateful to MSNBC for giving her a platform.
A recent article in The American Prospect gives a full background on Rachel and the path she took to her present prominence in the political commentator world.
Maddow’s self-deprecating, wry wit comes across clearly in the article, just as it doesn on her radio and television shows.
“I think I have a fear in general about whether being a pundit is a worthwhile thing to be,” Rachel Maddow tells me over dinner at a Latin restaurant in lower Manhattan. It’s more than the ordinary self-deprecation of someone who just got her own cable commentary show. It’s an insecurity essential to the on-air style that’s powered the 35-year-old’s rapid rise from a wacky morning radio show in western Massachusetts to the liberal radio network Air America and now to her own prime-time show on MSNBC.