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

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@septimus

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!* :)

I would watch a Rachel Maddow special but the 1 hour format doesn’t work well for her.

One of the things she’s really good at is distilling ideas into concise mind blowing arguments. She has a hard time filling up an hour a night with high quality arguments without getting really repetitive.

She needs more filler and fluff but she’s just not that good with fluff. Half an hour a night (including international and sports) is more than enough time to get her point across and if there is significant news, she can cut out the weather and sports for the substantive stuff.

[Ruken]

I’ve never watched her. Does anyone have a particularly exemplary/dastardly example I should check out?

[wahsahzii]

Like almost all of the other entertainers proposing to be political commentators, i find them uninformative or entertaining. At least a couple are up front about what they really are. Surely you can find a better source.

[Ambivalid]

@Ulf_the_Unwashed

Looking at number of viewers is a tricky business. Maddow’s current viewership is about 2.5 million, which means that many, many more people do not watch her show than watch her show. She’s currently a couple ticks behind Laura Ingraham’s show. I’m going to guess that you’re not a big fan of Ingraham’s :). Would you argue that Ingraham’s viewership numbers make it incumbent on those who don’t watch her show to find out what makes her so very popular among other people?

Fuck no. Ingraham is not a journalist and Fox News is a nothing but a propaganda tool for the Republican Party. I also don’t feel that people should find out why Hannity gets so many viewers. There is no journalism taking place on Fox and no honest reporting of the news. MSNBC has plenty of faults and its share of biases but there is absolutely no comparing the journalistic integrity of it and FOX News. The people who watch MSNBC are much more likely to get their news from multiple sources, whereas FOX viewers almost exclusively rely on the bubble created by the corporation for the entirety of their news information.

[drad_dog]

@Ambivalid

Fuck no. Ingraham is not a journalist and Fox News is a nothing but a propaganda tool for the Republican Party. I also don’t feel that people should find out why Hannity gets so many viewers. There is no journalism taking place on Fox and no honest reporting of the news. MSNBC has plenty of faults and its share of biases but there is absolutely no comparing the journalistic integrity of it and FOX News. The people who watch MSNBC are much more likely to get their news from multiple sources, whereas FOX viewers almost exclusively rely on the bubble created by the corporation for the entirety of their news information.

I have a theory. Fox news gets ratings, at least now, by sensationalism. That cuts both ways. I watch Hannity a lot, but I’m not a supporter in the least. Fox is a reality TV operation. They are not stricly conservative or trump. They work even when trump is hurting. Notice they run trinp stump speeches a lot, instead of having to get on air and defend him. If sensationalism demands the head of donald trump then it will happen, no matter what the polls say. There are large arcs and karma involved.

It’s good and intersting right now, for me, but only because the prefascist types are doing their hardest work of their lives and it’s great tv. It’s really extraordinary to watch the media become so polarized about what reality is. How could anyone not be interested in watching this?

Anyway Hannity having high ratings does not say to me that he has support. It says he is the most interesting thing on at the moment. Until the next ad break.

[elucidator]

I don’t follow it much, but I heard recently that Tucker Tucker Bug Fucker was nibbling on Hannity’s lunch by going a bit further than he does. Hannity. The moderate guy.

[Guest-starring_Id]

From what I gather Tucker is the biggest white nationalist at Faux.

I’d like to see Maddow share* her show with Olberman so they can get all snipey with each other.

Originally misspelled that as “sharte” - almost kept it.

[SteveG1]

@Ambivalid

Fuck no. Ingraham is not a journalist and Fox News is a nothing but a propaganda tool for the Republican Party. I also don’t feel that people should find out why Hannity gets so many viewers. There is no journalism taking place on Fox and no honest reporting of the news. MSNBC has plenty of faults and its share of biases but there is absolutely no comparing the journalistic integrity of it and FOX News. The people who watch MSNBC are much more likely to get their news from multiple sources, whereas FOX viewers almost exclusively rely on the bubble created by the corporation for the entirety of their news information.

I have to agree. For all its faults, at least other outlets aren’t the Trump Party’s private bureau of propaganda. They don’t get it wrong or make errors, they flat out deliberately LIE.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@wahsahzii

Like almost all of the other entertainers proposing to be political commentators, i find them uninformative or entertaining. At least a couple are up front about what they really are. Surely you can find a better source.

She is not an entertainer and that is the problem.

[AnalogSignal]

If you watch any of the CNN prime time shows, the host does a 5 minute news recap and then fills the rest of the hour with guests and panel discussions. That kind of show is very easy to do. The producers book the guests and prepare some questions and the host can do the show with minimal preparation if desired.

Maddow is doing something very different and a lot more challenging. She spends at least 30 minutes, and often more, talking into the camera usually giving a unique take on the news. I think she is best when she does a deep dive on a particular topic and draws on obscure information over the decades. For example, she has done entertaining shows on how Trump values his golf courses wildly differently every year depending on who the valuation is for.

Her weak area is doing a straightforward news summary of various events of the day. She loses the forest for the trees.

I think Lawrence O’Donnell, who follows Maddow, is pretty good. He does a more conventional guest-heavy show but he has good insights. I wish he was on earlier.