In Case You Missed It: Rachel Maddow on Meet the Press

I was on vacation during this past week's Meet the Press, so I missed it. This would not be a tragedy on most weeks. But I'm glad I caught the recording on my DVR, because it was a rare week where I didn't want to paste David Gregory. And, it included Rachel Maddow as a panelist, going up against smarmy Ralph Reed (Jack Abramoff crony) and proud homophobe Jim DeMint (late of Congress, current of The Heritage Foundation). And despite my mild anger that such horrible people get to appear on network TV "for balance" about gay rights, this was--for me--Must See TV­™.

Now, I think Rachel did a great job, and I'll admit she sometimes gets a bit flustered when she goes head-to-head outside of her own venue. This has an obvious cause, that she finds so much wrong with what her opponent is saying, she can have difficulty winnowing her response down to a pithy soundbite. But she's getting better at that, and this was probably her best performance in this kind of setting. I loved her point about the conservative tactic boiling down to basically the right to discriminate. Because that is the only real effect of their anti-gay campaign; they don't make less of us, they just discriminate against us.


Oddly enough, this very same clip is running around the right-wing blogosphere, as an example of how Rachel Maddow got her clock cleaned by Reed and DeMint. There are also the de rigueur "Mad Cow" and "she looks like a dude" jokes, because that's as deep (and original) as conservative humor gets. Anyway, it's an example of how the right-left divide can be almost uncrossable. I can't watch this and see anyone but Maddow as the winner. Oh, and Reed and DeMint make my skin crawl.