Ben Wallace-Wells profiles the MSNBC host, Rachel Maddow:
When she has guests, they are often people whom she admires and with whom she agrees – while I am on set she hosts Paul Krugman, the foreign-policy wonk Steve Clemons and the journalist Steve Coll. When the program is clicking, the guests lead her deeper into a topic, adding their own expertise to her insights. But even in these exchanges, the format requires that the audience place a tremendous amount of trust in Maddow herself, that it defer to her authority. Most cable news shows offer a couple of viewpoints, and let you choose. Maddow generally presents only one, and it is hers.
"The cable-news model is that you want to create a fight," she says. "Because people will yell! And there will be exclamation points and things will be in ALL CAPS and people will watch! Having been the left-wing person booked to fight with the right-wing person in that Punch and Judy show, I'm not interested in re-creating that. If I've booked you, I feel like you've got something worth listening to. With conservative guests, that means you can't just be a random hack who's here to fight with me because I am who I am. You've got to bring something to it where even without sparks flying and even with it being civil, you're going to illuminate something that I can't."
The thing I gleaned from the profile was Maddow's self-criticism which can border on depression. It seems to fuel her and exhaust her – not an uncommon feature of the modern homosexual that I struggle with myself.
She was out, by the way, in college, and in her Rhodes Scholarship application. That took, if she will pardon the expression, big ovaries. Or to put it less crassly, unusual integrity.
The Dish 