Friday, April 11, 2008

Is Rachel Maddow the liberal's next mainstream star?

This quick-witted woman has shattered another glass ceiling and is taking her rightful place in the traditional boys' club of big-time politics

Go to AlterNet original
As the seemingly endless Democratic presidential primary slog enters its second spring, one amazing woman has managed -- by relentless dint of hard work, long experience, sharp intelligence, quick wit, quicker quips and a winning smile -- to shatter the glass ceiling and take her rightful place in the traditional boys' club of big-time politics.

No, not her -- Rachel Maddow!

That's right -- a woman who calls herself "a supplicant who worships in the Temple of Journalism" -- but who others have described as "Amy Goodman with animal noises" -- is now firmly ensconced in the upper echelon of the political punditocracy. With her own rising radio show on Air America, coupled with regular appearances on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann program, where she is often, oddly and excellently paired with Patrick Buchanan, this self-described "35-year-old, liberal, lesbian girl-who-looks-like-a-man" is on the brink of becoming progressive media's next mainstream breakout star. One significant measure of Maddow's new-found favor: the decision by MSNBC, effective next week, to hire her as a regular panelist on its newest nightly campaign program Race for the White House -- and to allow Air America to simulcast the 6 p.m. nightly program as the first hour of its own nightly Rachel Maddow show.

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