I'm not clicking on Rachel Maddow anymore. Life is too short

The BBQ Pit
1

My 10th-grade English teacher taught us how to write an essay: Tell the reader what you’re going to tell him. Then tell him. Finally, tell him what you’ve told him.

Ms. Maddow carries that too far. She tells us that she’s going to tell us about a secret recording. Then she tells us a little about the secret recording. Then she tells us what she told us. Then she tells us that she’s going to tell us about playing the secret recording. Then she tells us she’s going to play the secret recording. (At last! … No, not yet. :smack:) Then she tells us again that she’s going to play the secret recording. Finally at the 5:17 mark she plays the recording. That’s over Five Minutes. With an F. Just to tell us she’s going to play a recording. (Good news is that less than 3 minutes of my life was wasted — I always play Ms. Maddow at double speed.)

The recording is … a stunning let-down. In the “secret” recording, Representative Devin Nunes admits that some of Trump’s tweets make him cringe. That’s a story??? It only proves that Nunes is more sentient than a banana slug, something that many of his detractors already suspected. That Ms. Maddow or her ilk find this scandalous confirms my fears about the stupidity of the left-wing bubble. Maybe there were more exciting revelations in the secret recording, but I found a convenient X to click. Bye bye, Rachel.

Yes, I see the YouTube is from August 2018. Don’t blame me; Google recommended it; I don’t know why. “Hey Google! Stop trying to be helpful. And stop showing me Rachel Maddow altogether.”


On the topic of playing a video at 2X speed, I have a question for any 'Web gurus who read this.  I have my own webpage with an html <video> tag.  When Firefox displays that video (not a Maddow video!), it also provides a menu with a "Play Speed->Ludicrous (2x)" option.  ***I want the playback speed to default to Ludicrous!***  Is there a way to do that, e.g. with simple Javascript?

Can any gurus help with this?  *Don't me ask in GQ!* :)
2

She’s endearing. I love Ms. Maddow.

3

I stopped watching Ms. Maddow years ago. Even when I agree with her, I find her constant condescension unbearable.

4

The spectrum of perception is amazing to me. For someone to find Rachel Maddow condescending is truly hard for me to wrap my head around. Many things she is but condescending I do not see.

5

By the way, I love and admire Rachel Maddow! I just can no longer tolerate her repetition.

(I’m afraid I have the same speech pattern myself. People look at their watches when I go off on a diatribe…)

Request for help withdrawn. Solution shows up immediately at StackOverflow Googling “html video play speed.” (Ludicrously, I’d been Googling for “Ludicrous” :smack: )

6

This.

I only watch MSNBC if I’m in a mood to get pissed off, and since I’m usually already pissed off, there’s no need for me to intensify that feeling by watching MSNBC.

7

If it’s just the repetition that bothers you, I’d suggest going to the website for the clips–maybe after typing her name into Google to see if she’s reported on anything big.

I don’t watch because I have to fight some depressive tendencies, and hearing about Trump all the time doesn’t help. Plus I already know enough to know I support his impeachment.

Plus it’s enough work to not get worried about how anxious I’ll be next year.

8

I’m liberal but I don’t watch her , she is very full of herself.

9

She’s always reporting on something big! Often a big something I didn’t know about. I also click on Al-jazeera, (Alternet*), Reuters, Seth Myers’s Closer Look, Stephen Colbert, etc.

But by “repetitive” I do not mean she tells us on Thursday what she already told us on Wednesday. I mean that on Thursday, she repeats each sentence, with slightly different wording, not once, not 2 or 3 times (which would be good for me, slightly attention deficited), but 10 or 12 times. (I just pulled “10 or 12” out of my hat — maybe it’s even more). I have to select YouTube’s 2X speed option, and still get bored by the repetition.

    • Alternet would be a good site to learn what’s consternating the ultra-left. EXCEPT they’ve got some Javascript or something which slows down the machine. Open 2 or 3 Alternet tabs and the laptop crawls. Open 4 or 5 tabs, and I may need to reboot! :eek: ETA: Yes, the laptop gets so hosed (busy) I can’t even click X.
10

My take on Rachel is that when there’s a significant story that needs explaining, or important backstory that needs to see the light, nobody does it better. The problem is that when the news is more ordinary, her repetition and hype can be a bit over the top. I watch her selectively.

11

To smart people, which many folks here are, trying to explain things to a mass audience made up of many people who aren’t as smart, can seem condescending.

12

Like the OP, I find her show (and most like it) really repetitive. The few times I’ve watched it, she’s had maybe 3 minutes of information, but her show is an hour long. I don’t have the attention span or interest to hear that same info repeated that many times.

13

I agree with most everything said here. I don’t understand how she is still on the air. We gave up in frustration several years ago. And the guy who fills (or perhaps past tense) in for her uses the same format.

14

I can venture a pretty likely guess as to why shes on the air: airtight ratings maybe? The only other programming that knocks her out the #1 spot for all cable news programming at the top spot in prime time (9 p.m.) is that bastion of independent journalism, that stalwart and ever-present check on goverment propaganda, Mr Sean “Trump has the healthiest puckered butthole ever-EVER too! Hannity”.

15

Stop picking on Rachel Maddow! She works so hard, she tries so hard, and all you want to do is drag her down!

A swan’s neck, a girlish giggle and a mind like a steel trap, what’s not to love?

Also, she notices shit. Remember the Republican Platform? Course you don’t, nobody ever does, you wait for paint to dry, you don’t watch it! I was reading about it, and just in passing, the reporter noted that the platform plank about supporting and arming Ukraine disappeared, went poof! gone! No mention of who said so, or why, it just went to the place the candle flame goes when you blow it out. No one seems to have noticed.

But she did. That same night, she pointed it out, how strange it was that there were no fingerprints, nobody could say who’s idea that was, who brought it up. She gave us her side-eye look and asked us who? What the fuck? Why? Huh? This ain’t normal.

I also like how she introduces the subject at hand, outlines the facts, then brings on the guest who knows more than she does and first thing she does is defer to said expert: Did I get that right, any corrections you need to make? Chris Matthews just starts writhing in agony that somebody else is talking. (He worked for “Tip” O’Neill, did he ever mention that? Well, he did…)

Also, generous. Keith Olberman pumped air into the balloon of her career, she did the same for Nicole Wallace and Joy Reid. They couldn’t do anything for her, its how she rolls.

Don’t want to watch, don’t, doesn’t mean shit to a tree. What she says tonight somebody else will say tomorrow, you won’t miss much.

One odd thing: she has a great sense of humor but can’t make a joke to save her soul. Maybe she’s enjoying it too much, maybe she’s having too much fun about the grimly serious business of how fucked up everything is. But I don’t need any grim, got plenty of that all on my own.

Kinda like her.

16

Well of course it’s ratings. I just don’t understand the ‘why’ of the high ratings. She’s certainly personable and smart, and I wouldn’t want to try to debate her, but she panders and meanders and takes an hour to get to the fucking point. If I want that, I have my next door neighbor, the retired pharmacist.

17

Hit the nail, right on the head. I do love it when she has the segment “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”.

18

I don’t watch her every night but I do like her.

As someone already posted, she’s trying to reach the lowest common denominator and that can make her seem repetitious. Also, she needs to fill an hour and even when there’s some big new news item, it may still not be easy to fill an hour with interesting material.

No doubt some stories are over-hyped but that’s due to the realities of capitalism and the need for ratings. It’s similar to the clickbait phenomena.

What recently pissed me off about MSNBC was a recent Morning Joe episode where they had as a guest some doctor pushing his quack nutrition book. (Lectins are poison! Don’t eat nightshade vegetables or grains!) I can’t say for certain that it was a paid commercial as part of the show’s content but I don’t know why else they would have had him on.

19

What do you mean “the why of the ratings”? Looks like you need to try to figure out what you are missing and what value all these millions of other Americans derive from her program that you dont understand. Obviously, many, many other people have a very different and id say more thoughtful and serious relationship with the issues highlighted on her show. For these people, Maddow’s exhaustive, comprehensive and sometimes unavoidably tedious surgical deconstruction of issues represent the gold standard in instilling appropriate awareness and understanding of issues that those in power can work to obfuscate.

20

I love her. She does her research, she connects the dots, and she talks about things that other people aren’t talking about. I learn more from her than anyone else. It’s fascinating.