Mother Jones and Rachel Maddow
Posted at 11:04 am on Sunday, March 29, 2009, in Uncategorized, and tagged blackwater, flickr, mother jones.
Last night I was the guest of honor for a fundraiser event benefiting Mother Jones, headlined by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. (Full disclosure: I have never been the biggest fan of Maddow. I also do not have expanded cable anymore, so in order for me to watch her program, I must view it online.)
The event took place at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. This was the view from our seats…
The ninety-minute conversation centered mostly around the news media — its fragmented role and its potential demise due to the decline of ad revenue. When asked what she misses most about the bay area, Maddow responded to huge applause, “Mexican food.”
Maddow did conduct some sort of logic gymnastics. She mentioned that she hardly ever watches other news programs because of the time required to prepare for her own show, however she also mentioned that she had just recently purchased a television (presumably after not having one for some time), and said that she doesn’t like watching television because she doesn’t want to become a zombie. This was all the while talking about her own television show — which, at the very best, receives a couple hundred thousand viewers per night — and how she plans to increase viewership. Something tells me it is unwise to condemn the very medium that you rely upon for a job.
I did find lots of agreement with what Maddow said, including her statements that the American public is smart enough to watch and engage in intellectual journalism, that we need to fix the ailments of print media (find a balance between what is free and what we pay for), and that a journalist cannot simply take an insider’s account at face-value (e.g., what the military tells you, what Wall Street executives tell you). I didn’t necessarily agree with her position that government will always do a better job than private contractors, and therefore must have expanded roles. In her example, which will be admittedly difficult for me to argue against (but I will try), is the need for the State Department to provide its own security. (The security is currently provided by Blackwater, or the group formerly known as Blackwater.) I don’t necessarily agree with that. Maybe Blackwater is not the perfect place to make this argument, but I think there is room for private contractors to serve the government (in a wide variety of roles), not only to reduce the size of government, but also to decrease the liability assumed by the government, which is the true cost to taxpayers.
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March 29th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
comment & photo from Mother Jones event with Rachel Maddow http://tinyurl.com/decq5o
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
March 30th, 2009 at 6:30 am
When Rachel said that TV makes her into a zombie.. she means SHE becomes a zombie, not that TV itself creates zombies. She has spoken often over the YEARS I have been listening to her about her inability to do anything but watch TV if it is on. I have known other people smart people with similar attention issues.. Most of us can multitask when the TV is on.. but people like Rachel can’t.
Maybe before you go critical on someone you should take Obama’s advice and actually know something about what it is you are discussing next time.
March 30th, 2009 at 8:25 am
[...] had a prepared question for the Mother Jones event. It went like this… There are two families in Washington DC — a dysfunctional one (the [...]
March 30th, 2009 at 8:49 am
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April 15th, 2009 at 8:10 am
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