But did she call him a TERRORIST!!!
Totally agree with you on all points. Someone made a point about Maddow possibly being condescending; I haven’t seen enough of her to become aware of that, but no one can work condescension and sarcasm like Bill Maher, and it’s hilarious and often a beautifully effective put-down of the intended target when the intended target is an idiot, which it invariably is. God, I love that show. I’m going into withdrawal now that Maher is on holiday break until mid-January. He was on Colbert the other night and all he had to do was say the word “Republicans” and the audience giggled, because in his lexicon it has such wonderfully funny associations that it’s practically synonymous with “deranged lunatic”.
The few times I’ve seen Maddow I’ve found here intelligent and informative, but I can see your point that a preachy style can eventually be off-putting. One could contrast it not just with Maher, but with Jon Stewart, whose style was to turn news into fun by exposing hypocrisy and idiocy, and if you wanted to make a political point out of it, that was up to you. Even when Maher does his direct talking-to-the-camera bit in the “New Rules” segment, the intent is to make you laugh with some extremely well-written observational gems, and the moral or political message is in the background, like the lingering aftertaste of a good wine.
Yes–good observation. Something I’ve noticed, too. It’s really annoying, and not really necessary.
Contrary to the backtracking–which is sentence-level discourse–I think the “roundabout” delivery is valuable, because she’s usually packing in historical context when she does that, which provides a better understanding of the topic.
I like Bill Maher, but I have a hard time getting past the antivax stuff. He is also much more of a polemicist and activist than Maddow. His anti-Muslim stuff makes sense when he keeps it within his anti-religion POV, but it seems like he’s going beyond that at this point.
The best thing about Rachel Maddow is not that I agree with her (though I almost always do) but it’s that I trust her. She fact checks herself better than her detractors do.
I can recall exactly two instances where someone questioned her veracity online and I had to examine the evidence.
Once was in this very forum where in the sprawling Is Fox News really all that bad? thread where Fox News Fanboys liked to come in and contrast her as the opposite of Fox News with regard to bias.
They get shouted down that it’s not the bias that makes Fox News bad, it’s the lies. But this was posted:
The fact was that none of this was true. As Gerald II was told by TonySinclair (among others), “She didn’t say the blogger made up the fact that Fast and Furious existed, she said he made up the story that the motivation behind it was to undermine the Second Amendment.” and that “She said that it was a continuation of a Bush strategy of selling guns to criminals in the hopes of tracing them to druglords.” All of which is true.
This argument was a complaint made by Right Wingers at the time but what Maddow actually reported was in no way erroneous.
The other time was more recently on my Facebook page when claimed that Maddow was a liar. I asked for evidence and he linked (without watching, based on my subsequent conversation with him) to a YouTube video.
The video was made by Infowars - the group of tin-foil-hatted never-met-a-conspiracy-he-didn’t-invent Alex Jones. In it, it showed a report by Maddow did when the Republicans in Congress shut down the government and there was much ado about how veterans were unable to go to closed memorials and a few scuffles between the police and veterans.
I watched it. They had no issue with anything she said. They took issue with the video she chose - apparently she used video of protesters being aggressive towards the police because they said that the police started it.
I found their argument unpersuasive because Maddow did in fact show a lot of video footage of the police being aggressive and honestly, if we are going to decide which group is more likely to present false or unrepresentative “raw” video footage, Maddow or Alex Jones, past record makes me pretty confident which one is more likely full of shit.
Just this past Friday, Maddow gave more mainstream news coverage to what Boko Haram is doing in Nigeria, Mali and other African nations than I have seen to date, and it’s long overdue.
So if we’re pitting Rachel Maddow, I will respectfully decline to participate. But the people who don’t like her? Can we pit them instead? 
I’ve been watching him for years and the anti-vax stuff only came up once. Maybe twice. I do have to admit the time it came it up I couldn’t believe my ears.
Also, one of the many things I really like about Maher is that he’s very frank about admitting when someone has taught him something new or when he’s changed his mind about something. I can see him totally changing his views on this after a good in-depth talk with a credible and informed subject matter expert, and openly admitting it.
He’s had that talk. He only fell back as far as weasel words and JAQing off. It’s been very disappointing.
That’s not true.
More specifically, you may “recall” that I’ve previously mentioned this incident and been advised of Maddow’s correction, but it’s confabulation on your part: it never happened.
The thing that often annoys me about Rachel Madow, the thing that rubs me the wrong way, as in, I just get sick of hearing it and find it soooo tedious, is that she often, as in frequently, l mean really, really much, much, much more likely to happen than not, emphasizes, draws attention to, puts bright colored verbal circles around, what she is trying to say, the point she wants to make, the thing that she is espousing, by using multiple, and by that I mean more than one and not just a single on its lonesome, redundant, as in one would be just fine thank you ma’am, and often hyperbolic, as in over the top, as in most other people’s way of saying things is in Death Valley and her’s is at the top of Mount Everest, little verbal filler phrases… that I find it difficult to maintain my attention to the point where she makes a point.
The backtracking (already mentioned in posts #12 and #43) is not redundancy so much as repetition.
I usually enjoy them as well, especially when she goes back quite a ways in time like she did for Dole and H.W. Bush because it’s pretty much all new information for me and really often does help me to contextualize the story of the day.
I think this has been pointed out by mainstream media critics (“mainstream” media critics as opposed to “mainstream media” critics) that she uses the style that has made Fox News and talk radio so successful - pick a story line and hammer it to death. Early every morning Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh establish the stories of the day and all day long they get repeated over and over again.
She does that all in one show.
One thing I’ve noticed is that while Republicans really hate her, if you pin them down as to what she is getting factually wrong in her stories, they have no answer other than “She’s a bitch!” It’s the airtight way she puts her stories together that infuriates the Right. They have no answers.
Yeah, Donald Trump wants to register Muslims. That’s Hitler-esque. One doesn’t have to go full Hitler to do Hitler things. I think the comparison Maddow made is apt
Particularly given that she played clips of Trump having the opportunity to clarify his position and to specifically address whether or not his suggestion was akin to the acts of the Nazis regarding Jews.
Building freeways and parks are also Hitler things. Is wanting to register gun owners also Hitleresque?
Golly, what an incisive point. You’re the cleverest.
Forgive my lack of historical knowledge: big park builder was he?
They are not uniquely Hitler things. Hitler drank water and ate food but I’m not against that. But registering minorities is something that not a lot of people do. Hitler did it and used it to single out groups he didn’t like for violent discrimination. Given what Trump has said, his support of registration is moving in that direction. I don’t plan on letting him ever reaching that goal
Books can be your friend.