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So a little over a month ago in this space, a few of us wished Rachel Maddow luck with her new MSNBC nightly talk show. And boy, has she had luck, or made her own. Today’s NYT reports that in the 25 days her show has been on the air, it’s doubled viewership in that 9 p.m. time slot. She’s keeping 90 percent of Keith Olbermann’s audience from the previous slot—and he has the second-biggest audience in cable news.
Speaking for myself, I can say that in the few weeks it’s been on the air, Maddow’s show has quietly become a staple of my unwholesomely large media diet. I put my kid to bed, make dinner, and watch Rachel Maddow (or at least have her on in the background while surfing the Web for more political news. Like an addict knowing I’ll be forced into rehab come Nov. 4, I’ve just given in at this point.) Her show still has some kinks to work out. It’s too indebted to airheaded cable-news conventions like the spin-doctor interview (who cares what paid campaign flacks have to say on either side?) and the dreaded celebrity-gossip “expert” (both Olbermann and Matthews regularly host these types, and both visibly recoil from them. Just kill the segment!). But as Maddow settles in, she’s quickly evolving into the liveliest voice of the left-leaning media, as well as the only major cable-news host who doesn't seem constantly on the brink of an apoplectic fit.
I think I’m not alone in Maddow love. Profiles of her are appearing everywhere, like this interview with GQ, in which she cheerfully identifies herself as “a big lesbian who looks like a man,” and this "Domains" piece from the last NYT Sunday magazine. I usually hate “Domains”—a weekly feature about the living space of a famous person that seems designed to incite lifestyle envy among readers—but I genuinely wanted to pull a chair up to Maddow’s kitchen table in Northampton, Mass., right next to the reflector-holding garden squirrel, and have old-school mixed drinks with her and her girlfriend. And mind you, I’m straight (though seeing RM in her cute civilian duds on The Tonight Show, I sort of wonder why …).
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Dahlia, I'm also psyched at Rachel Maddow's ascension to the sweet spot at MSNBC, right after Keith Olbermann's top-rated 8 p.m. show. I love that Maddow is not just a non-Barbie doll; she's a 35-year-old out lesbian, with short-cropped hair and a straightforwardly dykey self-presentation (well, dykey for television; MSNBC does load on the mascara and lip gloss, as if anxious to remind viewers that she's still a woman.) The Nation profile you link to hints at an oddball sense of humor that makes me eager for her show's debut on Sept 8. Will she host a special segment on "the evil child-actor twins that run Poland"?
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