CHAPTER 7
RACHEL MADDOW
Brainy
I’M GOING TO APPROACH Rachel Maddow the way Rachel Maddow would approach Rachel Maddow: by taking my sweet time to build the story of how she’s broken the rules of reporting, and continues to break them, daily. MSNBC’s biggest star anchor, Rachel, is out and proud about being the smartest person in the (cable TV news) room. She refuses to dumb anything down—and if you cannot keep up, that’s fine with her.
Almost 20 years into the new millennium, our political parties have devolved into warring factions that seem to be a spin-off of World Wrestling rather than a crucial component of a democratic government. Now it’s the Red Team versus the Blue Team, and there’s no discussion, just gamesmanship. It’s as if we’ve slid into a parallel universe where invisible points are being totted up on an invisible scoreboard—the health and well-being of the republic utterly beside the point.
It wasn’t always this way. I’m a lifelong Democrat raised by staunch Republicans. My dad was an old-school, nonreligious right-winger, tacking Libertarian. Our political debates, often unspooling during the all-important martini (or two) hour (or two) that preceded dinner, were textbook right versus left. My dad and I assumed a basic set of facts, gleaned from the news of the day. If one of us made a point that was irrefutable, the other conceded. We were united in our belief that facts were facts. Looking back, these debates seem so sweet and courtly. We were so old-fashioned!
The Blue Team’s signature strategy is ad hominem attacks;*1 the Red Team’s signature response is to label anything they disagree with as fake news. When the Blue Team proves to be true an event or accounting the Red Team spokesman has deemed “fake,” the Red Team pivots, claiming their mistake is an “alternative fact.”
This drives the Blue Team bonkers, which brings the Red Team deep and abiding joy. We Blue Teamers respect facts. We believe the world is complex, and politics and government tend to be really complex. We think there are way more than 50 shades of gray.
And this is why people adore Rachel Maddow. She is the patient, bemused explainer who puts our increasingly nutso nation in perspective. She is proudly brainy. She has no problem holding the floor, and is willing to get as detailed as necessary to explain the evermore Byzantine ins and outs of contemporary governing. She is the exact opposite of the woman who has been told (me, by my mother) not to be “a know-it-all.” I have no doubt that when it comes to politics, Rachel probably does know everything worth knowing. And she’s made it look as hip as it is necessary.
As host, since 2008, of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, Rachel is a tomboy nerd who has said of her political leanings, “I’m undoubtedly a liberal, which means that I’m in almost total agreement with the Eisenhowerera Republican party platform.” Blue Teamers dig her dark cropped hair, black hipster glasses, black blazer, boyfriend jeans, and Converse sneakers. Her stylish butch mien sets her apart from the phalanx of overdone pageant queen–style newscasters.
It will come as no surprise that Rachel’s academic credentials are impressive: In 1994, she graduated from Stanford with a degree in public policy, and in 2001 earned a doctorate in politics from Oxford, where she was the first openly gay person to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. Some on the Red Team disregard all this extreme book learning as yet another example of elitism, therefore not to be trusted. Blue Teamers, however, believe this erudition makes her extra-trustworthy. Since the arrival of Rachel on the news scene, if the behavior of my friends and me is any indication, we’ve felt freer and more emboldened to argue our points at gatherings where we might otherwise distract ourselves with the Chardonnay.
Rachel Maddow doesn’t report the news. Instead, she explains it, drawing connections that are often buried—either because they’ve been intentionally obfuscated by people in power or because they simply get lost in the increasingly complicated shuffle. She is the wonk’s wonk, telling complex narratives (critics call them “convoluted and labored”) in which she pulls in seemingly disparate facts to make a larger point that might not be obvious at first. Her show is the cable news embodiment of reading an article to the end, which no one seems to do much anymore.
For example: In early 2017 she began a broadcast with a short history of the United States’ purchase of Alaska from Russia 150 years ago, followed by an introduction to the We the People petitioning system the Obama Administration created in 2011 (in which citizens could directly petition policy experts). She then made an easy joke about the nine million legalize-pot petitions before directing us to a very odd petition that popped up in 2014: the “Alaska Back to Russia” petition, which called for returning Alaska to Russia. The petition was bizarre, and not just because it was obviously translated from another language (we’ve all received those idiotic- sounding and obviously fake spam emails). It was also bizarre because it garnered a quick 39,000 signatures. “These can’t all be from people who think this is hilarious,” Rachel commented. It took her 10 minutes to get to the meat of the story (an hour in newscast time) about the role of bots in the Russian cyberattacks to influence the 2016 election.
No matter the implications of her nightly reports, Rachel is never angry. She never appears angry, nor does she ever report that something made her angry. As far as her viewers know, she has never been angry in her life. She explains the news with amiable astonishment: Can you even believe this? It’s as if she’s sharing some titillating gossip about the neighbors.
Somewhere in the world, there must exist a culture where female rage is appreciated: where the moment a woman raises her voice, the village gathers around, believing that if a woman is freaking the hell out, it’s probably worth hearing what she has to say. That place is not American cable TV news—or anywhere in America, for that matter, except possibly spin class. Rachel has chosen to be of good cheer: the better to keep people watching. It’s a con, in a way, because her devotion to telling the stories no one else has the patience or discipline to tell usually tips her hand.
Both teams blasted Rachel for a 2016 show that featured the issues raised by Donald Trump’s refusal to disclose his tax returns. Financial reporter David Cay Johnston had received a portion of the returns through the mail, and asked Rachel whether she was interested. Was she ever.
At press time, the reasons for Trump’s secrecy regarding his returns remain mysterious. Blue Teamers have been slavering for them, convinced the documents will reveal he’s either not as wealthy as he’s claimed—or that he’s up to his eyeballs in investments from foreign banks that will prove, once and for all, his many financial conflicts of interest. Red Teamers don’t know what the big deal is.
Ah, but I’ve now finally come around to what makes Rachel Maddow truly difficult: About 90 minutes before airtime, she tweeted that she’d obtained the president’s tax returns. She didn’t say what year, or how many pages. It was an epic tease. More than four million people tuned in that night. Tucker Carlson of Fox News normally dominates that time slot; she beat him out by 1.1 million viewers.
Rachel refused to treat the returns in her possession like breaking news. She told the story as if it were any other story. She carefully laid the groundwork, lingering on the nerdy details she always seems to find so interesting. She reminded us that every president since Nixon has released his tax returns as a matter of course, and speculated about what it may say about this president that he is adamant in his refusal to do so.*2
Thanks to Twitter, the backlash erupted before the broadcast was even over. Journalists, both Blue and Red, berated her for the come-on tweet and commensurate lack of scandal (as if that’s never happened on TV news). Others said she “flubbed” the story. My Facebook feed was a microcosm of the swift and rampant disapproval. My progressive friends who didn’t call her a ratings whore said she should be shot for burying the lead. “Biggest Over-Hyped Live TV Epic Fail in History!” claimed one Red Team news site.
Actually, it wasn’t. Actually, it was just Rachel Maddow doing her signature difficult woman Rachel Maddow thing. She talked about a topic of great interest in her customary, cool style. The degree to which people were clamoring to know had no bearing on her approach. She didn’t flub the story; she just refused to adjust her style to accommodate the desire of viewers.
My father died in July 2000—before President Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore, but won the electoral college, and before the Red Team versus Blue Team lunacy was in full swing. I can imagine he would enjoy Rachel Maddow, appreciating her charts, graphs, and statistics, but raise an eyebrow at what to me seem obvious connections, and what to him would seem like leaps in logic.
Rachel Maddow’s audience has been growing steadily since 2016. Between March 2016 and March 2017 her ratings increased 107 percent—an unheard-of surge. As of this writing, her show is handily winning its time slot. When she was an under-the-radar girl nerd who was an acquired taste, no one cared about her approach; now that she’s come up in the world, people seem to feel she owes them something. Ease, simplification, something. She’s expected to give up her individuality and get with the program, to get straight to the point when, for Rachel, it’s the journey to the point that intrigues her, the way her own mind works. For girls and women who are made to feel apologetic for being too brainy and too analytical, we have Rachel: difficult comfortable in her know-it-all skin.
*1I never really knew what ad hominem attacks were until the 2016 presidential campaign. Essentially, it means attacking the person, not the position, on an issue.
*2Before the show, the White House confirmed that the two pages of Trump’s 2005 returns were authentic, but the president then tweeted that it was fake news.