Sometimes the smartest guy in the room isn’t a guy at all…
Which is usually the case when MSNBC host Rachel Maddow happens to be one of the guys in said room. And the room she’s gonna be in today on Earth Day is the big one at the Uptown Theater.
Consider this a reminder.
Rainy Day Books honcho Vivien Jennings will do the honors, interviewing Maddow about her new book Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power.
In it Maddow "argues that we’ve drifted away from America’s original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails," Amazon says. "Sensible yet provocative, dead serious yet seriously funny, Drift will reinvigorate a "loud and jangly" political debate about how, when, and where to apply America’s strength and power–and who gets to make those decisions."
Maddow will sign copies of her book for attendees.
The deal goes down at 2 p.m. today at the Uptown.
What to expect from Maddow’s book? Expect the unexpected, says New York Times reviewer Scott Shane.
"Some readers will come to Rachel Maddow’s first book expecting an entertaining left-wing screed against the military. They may be surprised to discover instead a lively but serious argument about American history," Shane writes. "Fox News fans will be taken aback to find a blurb from none other than Roger Ailes, that conservative channel’s creator, declaring that ‘Drift’ offers ‘valid arguments’ and is ‘a book worth reading.’ Meanwhile, devotees of Maddow’s liberal MSNBC show may raise their eyebrows at her declaration that ‘my generation of veterans’ is ‘a huge part of why I’m bullish on America’s capacity to adapt, lead and succeed in the 21st century.’"
Even Fox New types may want to check out Maddow and her new book:
"If the book lures readers briefly from their political silos, it will be because Maddow’s thesis crosses ideological lines," Shane continues. "Like the Tea Partiers, she believes that the United States must return to the lost principles of the nation’s founders — in this case a suspicion of standing armies and a deep reluctance to go to war. ‘America’s structural disinclination toward war is not a sign that something’s gone wrong,’ she declares. ‘It’s the way the founders set us up.’ ”
But here’s the real reason pretty you should go check out Maddow today at the Uptown or at the very least start watching her weekday show on MSNBC:
Nobody gets to the bottom of more significant news stories and issues better than Maddow.
She’s that good.
Guys like Bill O’Reilly and Chris Matthews get the ratings and the plaudits, but it’s Maddow who brings home the bacon with stories like Friday’s expose on oil spills and the pathetic, dated techniques of cleaning up oil spills still employed by BP and others after more than 30 years.
"The BP oil spill started two years ago today," Maddow told viewers. "And one of the shocking things about that disaster, is that it made us all realize that over the course of 30 years cleanup technology, what is available to us to respond when there’s a big, horrible oil spill hadn’t really progressed at all…Like we’re still stuck in 1979."
In other words even with all the push to drill more oil wells, little to nothing’s been done to protect against the incredibly harmful spills we’ve seen in the past.
In another story Maddow updated the so-called Republican War on Women with a report on regulations targeting medical (nonsurgical) abortions in Wisconsin.
"A new state law which establishes criminal penalties, including prison time, for doctors. The new law signed by Republican governor Scott Walker earlier this month sets up requirments for exactly how a doctor needs to talk to a patient before any abortion. It also includes requirements for specific exams and specific doctors visits both before and after the medication is prescribed for a nonsurgical abortion."
At the same time, Walker greenlighted a bill "removing contraception from the state’s sex ed curriculim," Maddow reported, adding, "That’ll help."
Oh yeah, check out the Uptown’s Earth Day garage sale across the street to the north while you’re there.
TV talking heads….blah
Rush…Doin’ It Live O’Reilly…Hannity…Olbermann…Maddow…ugh.
I wish the talking heads would go away. They are not interesting. They provide no facts. They intentionally skew facts. They turn people against each other on mostly trivial issues for their own aggrandizement. They make people dumber by not giving neutral facts or news, just opinions.
As for Maddow: She doesn’t even write her own stories. Someone ghost-wrote her book. She rose to prominence once MSNBC decided 3 years ago to be the left wing Fox.
Scissor Sisters
Ditto Balboni!
Maddow is to the left what Sarah Palin is to the right. Emotional, illogical and uninformed. They represent opposite sides on every issue but still their presentations have everything to do with emotion and nothing to do with the real facts. If people in the USandA weren’t so stupid these two would be job sharing as greeters at WalMart.
?
… who is this teenaged boy? … he has a show on cable?
Smartman makes the most cogent point… but…
it needed to be taken one step further.
Sarah and Rachel are identical cases who came to fame, I would suggest, in identical ways. Sarah is, to the right wing, koolaid drinking, Pied Piper crowd, following mindlessly, what Rachel is to the gay crowd who jumped on her band wagon just because she’s openly gay and gaining noteriety. NOT THAT THERES ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT… I have friends attending her event just because of that. Not people who live in front of the TV debating her positions, not friends who think she’s Bill O to a factor of `10, not people who think she’s the second coming of Cronkite, but because she gay….
But, this follows along with how all our pop culture grows its own. Add someone with, flair, looks, a point of view, toss a interest group behind them and wa lah… you’ve got a celebrity! Sarah=Rachel, identical twins in that aspect.
Dont make me start on Paris, Braniffer, Shawn Penn……
I will go tonight and spend some time with a 25 year old single girl. 3 years ago she got a passion for Africa. Started a non profit, started raising money and started her own orphanage in Africa. Last year, brought back a little black kid, given up for dead, suffereing from AIDS. He was left at her door step at the orphange with a note that he was dying of AIDS. He, after being in the US, is in pretty good health now and she’s adopted him. She goes there, works at her orphange, comes hack and raises more money. Oh, did I mention she was finishing her degree at William Jewell in the middle of all that? Any one know her name? Nope.
Love conquers all!
Speaking of a “Lefty” getting spanked, looks like the community love for Dick Clark got Brandon’s manifesto obliterated.
Wilson, how can I donate to the young woman you mentioned?
Bleeding heart nonsense
Oh great Paul your friend brought an AIDS infested tax sponge and future criminal to America. Exactly what was needed…
Once more into the breach.
I am picturing Hearne, naturally anxious to please his sponsors, but anticipating the grape shot this would attract from his commenters.
Nice job actually. A reference to Roger Ailes and this quote, “Even Fox New types may want to check out Maddow and her new book:” lets some air out of my right wing balloon and infects me with cognative dissonance. I’m ok with that, dissagreements and difference of opinion can lead to concesus through dialogue.
In my opinion, most folks have a portmanteaus political outlook, that encompasses diverse opinion, based on subjectivity and empathy.
Our excellent Iraqi adventure (Bill and Ted couldn’t have fucked this up any worse.) destabilized the entire Mid-East and left our Sharia enemies in a position of unexpected power. When we vacate the premises, the next “Arab Spring” will catapault the Muslim Brotherhood into ascendancy in Iraq and pave the way for an Islamic Fundamentalism hegemony all over the region.
So I guess I agree with our new CNN doyenne in that respect.
I think Paul and smartman are correct, Rachel is to serious journalism, what the Monkeys were to Rock and Roll. But what the fuck, I loved “Daydream Believer”.
She sure beats the hell outta Kieth ‘condescending’ Oberman. That guy had “Bill Maher” levels of contempt for all of his viewers, left, right or middle, just like Bill Maher. Now he ‘castrato’ in some backwater shit hole where he belongs.
The problem with CNN and liberal thought is not only substance, but presentation. Liberals all operate from an assumptive close. Every demogogue on CNN worth his/her salt dispenses the news with the implication of American guilt.
Even if I agree with Rachel on abortion, it doesn’t mean I am in her fuckin club. I think the assumption is there. I think it hurts the Liberal cause, the condescension, the preachy pedagogue here to save us from our nativist inclinations and nasty, mean spirited, out of fashion, laissez faire machinations. If any of us right wing Neanderrthals diverrge at all in opinion, we are so insulted by the presentation, we re-think our capitulation and return to the fold.
Put the paddles on Cronkite. I want him back.
Smartman, her organization is called…
.. .Energy of Hope. She’s been honored my local media, I can connect you with her. Email me and I’ll get you here FaceBook.
I thought the same thing
?
Mark X 12:11:59 PM – Sun. Apr 22. 2012
… who is this teenaged boy? … he has a show on cable?
I guess they have to have
a face to prop up the brand after ‘THE OLBERMAN’ left the pasture.
**Yawn**
Question; is she “attractive” even if you’re a lesbian…
…and need a sure thing?
I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I’m just wondering who’s doin the beholdin?
She is the only one
on TV who is an actual journalist. She sticks to the facts and reports on stories from every angle. She is one of those rare liberals that I actually respect.
Looks like….
A Jonas Brother.