Some thoughts about Rachel Maddow

As examined through two interviews. 

First off: Who do I write this blog for? Primarily, seeing as very few people read it (which I don't really mind), I'd say I write it for myself. It'd be nice if I could say that I write it for more than just myself, but that's how it is. It'd be great if more people read my blog, but that's not a huge concern of mine right now.

Anyways, onto the main topic. My (partial) namesake, Rachel Maddow. I assume most people have a general idea of who she is -- an MSNBC host who's got her own show that's on at 9 pm weeknights. Naturally, it's called the Rachel Maddow Show, and not that I'm really aiming to go into broadcast journalism, but what if I end up having my own show with a similar name? An interesting idea to ponder, if you're me. 

I'm not particularly familiar with her or her show, so I had to look up how to pronounce her last name. The second syllable rhymes with show or meadow, not now. In that, she's like Anderson -- his show (or rather, the shortened name of it) also has a bit of a rhyming thing going on: AC360. I am trying to watch MSNBC a bit more for the sake of variety, so hopefully I'll catch the Rachel Maddow Show occasionally.

Not having watched Rachel Maddow enough, I can't really provide that comprehensive of a comparison of her vs. Anderson. They've both got their own shows, have had said shows for a decent amount of time, and are gay/lesbian. As far as differences go, Anderson has a fancy sounding name, and the family background to go with it, as he is an heir (but you wouldn't guess it). From my preliminary readings about Rachel Maddow, I have learned that she is not an heir and does not have a particularly fancy sounding full name. That's about the extent of the comparison I can do so far. 

The reason I started thinking about Rachel Maddow is because of Donald Trump's recent tweet about "Sloppy Steve Bannon," a new derogatory nickname. Knowing someone else (not Bannon) named Steve, I wondered what he thought (if anything) about the nickname "Sloppy Steve," since I feel like I would have some thoughts if Trump came up with a derogatory nickname for someone with the same (first) name as me. 

So, naturally, I ended up thinking about the fact that Rachel Maddow has the same first name as me and could plausibly be someone Trump might decide to come up with a derogatory nickname for. If he happens to do that in the future, it wouldn't be the first time he's gone after MSNBC personalities (ex: "Psycho Joe" Scarborough).  

Since I was thinking about Rachel Maddow and wasn't (still am not) particularly familiar with her, I decided to read a couple of interviews of her. (do you see a theme here? I'm not sure if other people share my penchant for reading interviews of various mildly-to-rather famous people to get some insight on them. But how else are you supposed to get an idea of what these people are like?)  

The first one I read was from Rolling Stone, published in spring of last year. Some key things I noticed were that she came across as very confident, sure of herself, and direct in her answers. In some ways, you could almost consider it masculine (not that women have any obligation to behave in stereotypically feminine ways). This interview happened to mention her preferred style of clothes to wear, which I wish I could get away with without feeling overly un-put-together. 

The second interview I read was from New York magazine, published in the fall of 2017: It offers a deconstruction of Maddow's style of explaining things in her show, something which would probably resonate more with me if I were more familiar with the show. It also goes into what her workday is like, her process of preparing material for her show each night. 

A very interesting part of this interview (more so the published article, rather than the actual interview as an event), to me, was where the author goes on a tangent (if you know me, you know I'm a tangential person) about a somewhat distant relative of Rachel Maddow, who happened to have written a book the interviewer had read and thought to be "brilliant." The interviewer and Rachel Maddow end up talking about this relative, and this tangent later connects to Maddow's apparent similar habit of telling tangential stories on her show, based on her trains of thought (I tried to distill this idea in my own words as well as possible, but maybe you're better off reading the relevant part of the interview).  

Some takeways/key ideas from both of them, or things that were mentioned in both: Rachel Maddow sees her job as being to explain the news.* She wants to have something worthwhile to say to her audience. 

There were a few lines/parts that were quite similar between the two of them, very similar phrasing about the same topic (one instance happened to be about personal life, privacy) -- reminiscent of when I was reading interviews of David Fahrenthold; after a few, I definitely noticed some repetitive ideas or things he mentioned showing up across multiple interviews (maybe the interviewers should've asked him different questions, therefore eliciting different answers?).

I don't really remember noticing such parallels when I read interviews of other people -- Peter Sarsgaard, for example, but maybe there are explanations for that. Maybe it's not necessarily a case of journalists (as a specific set of people) being particularly predisposed to give similar answers across multiple interviews. In any case, two examples (Fahrenthold, Maddow) might be a bit of a small sample to make broad generalizations from.  

In closing: Maybe it would serve me well to strive to be more like Rachel Maddow? But I'll have to get more familiar with her show and what she's like first.

*Somewhat similar to my notion that journalism is a means of bringing order to information, which appeals to me in the way that watching Law and Order appeals to me, because that show portrays detectives and prosecutors bringing order to things by solving the crimes and serving justice.