In an earlier blog I declared that Rachel Maddow was the new 'love' of my life! Don't suspect anything romantic though... no woman of this age, intelligence and looks would ever, in her sane mind, fall for my fat belly, for sure. No, it's about the fun I enjoy when I watch her take shots on US politicians. Her favorite one since a few weeks has been that senile geriatric sample from Alaska, Republican Senator Ted Stevens, or 'Uncle Ted' as they like to call him. We know that moron from his declaration not long ago that the Internet was a series of tubes, when he instantaneously became the laughing stock of the entire cyber community... and by doing that he put Alaska on the map, long before the Northern State's other star, creationist Palin, appeared on the scene as Sen. McCain's (desperate) choice of running mate. Oh, yes, Uncle Ted also made a recent name by becoming a convicted felon on seven, I think, counts of corruption, and he now risks a jail sentence at the age of 85! Greed! 40 years of Senate service down the toilet, flushed! He's most probably praying now to die before he gets to serve his sentence behind bars...In a recent article (spring 2008) of the Stanford Magazine Rachel was described as: "Maddow, 34, has a growing reputation as the sharpest knife in the left-hand drawer, but even conservatives might fall for the wholesomeness of her show, which eschews the rude language and coarse stunts that have become staples elsewhere on radio."
And a sharp knife she is. She won't miss a chance to state the facts in a way that you have no other choice than just believe her and feel disgusted about the protagonists of her stories. It's not so difficult though when she talks about Stevens or Palin... those two deserve, more than anybody else, anything they get coming to them.
Since the Obama election three weeks ago Rachel reports daily about the new President Elect's movements to form his new cabinet. It started initially as a soft commentary but threatens to evolve into major cynicism. It's all about the Obama campaign's declared 'Change we need' and the way it's been turning into reality. Actually, Miss Maddow gets increasingly irritated by watching Obama pick-up old timers, especially from the Clinton era, and even from the current appalling administration of Bush and Cheney (ie. Defense secretary Gates). However, to be fair to her, she brought Malcolm Gladwell at her show yesterday to present his new book 'Outliers' that you probably heard me talking about a few blogs earlier... One of the questions she asked the bestseller author was about his feelings concerning Obama's cabinet choices. And Gladwell promptly responded with a reference to the rule of the ten thousand hours of practice that he develops at large in his 'Ouliers' work. He said, that it was to Obama's credit that, as he lacked some experience, he was quite right to resource his cabinet with seasoned actors. The 10K hours rule states that an expert only becomes an expert after he/she spent at least 10K hrs of practice in his/her domain of expertise, roughly 10 years. It's good to have a cabinet that is composed of at least a few individuals with experience and expertise... rather than having them all trying to figure out what their new job is all about, and Obama, not too experienced himself either, trying to firefight the blunders... I am sure that convinced our good fairy Rachel to be a wee-bit more careful in her moaning about Obama's choices in the future.
I was high on Gladwell before from reading his bestsellers... but as I saw him argue live in a show, I must say, I admire the kid even more. A extremely smart cookie. A credit to human race. If you want to watch him on this episode go find Rachel's show in podcast format via iTunes (I watch all these on AppleTV, of course) and look for yesterday's show. Great fun to watch!
It's good to see women of this caliber in action... sort-of female Jon Stewarts... with pairs of balls the size of melons!
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