Happy Birthday Rachel Maddow Show

by Michael Jones · 2009-09-09 09:31:00 UTC
Topics:

Rachel Maddow

How's this for an eye-popping (and we don't mean in a good way) statistic: despite being 51 percent of the population, women only make up 3 percent of clout positions in the media.  As the Women's Media Center points out, audiences are hungry to break free from the all-male media mold.  Where are they turning?

Well, one place is the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, which celebrates its one year anniversary this month.  Maddow, who is also the first lesbian to host a a prime-time news person in television history, has been a progressive star these past 365 days, taking on everyone from Pat Buchanan to the National Organization for Marriage.

And for her part, perhaps no other news show on television has focused as much on LGBT issues has The Rachel Maddow Show this past year.  There was her spot with Lt. Dan Choi after he was discharged from the military under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."  There was her spot talking about the role of race in last year's Proposition 8 vote.  Most recently, she covered the fact that Massachusetts - which became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage - actually has the lowest divorce rate in the entire country.  And last week she took Gov. Bobby Jindal to task for trying to label critics of his decision to charge taxpayers for helicopter rides to church as radical same-sex marriage activists.

In other words, the last 365 days of cable television news has been a lot gayer, and a whole lot more interesting with Rachel Maddow on the tube.  It also helps that she's probably one of the most prepared journalists out there.  Need evidence?  Check out the clip below, where she takes on former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge over how terror alerts were politicized during the Bush administration.

So, happy birthday Rachel Maddow Show.  Here's looking forward to many more years.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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