September 29, 2007

The Ithaca Journal

Talk radio host’s live broadcast

brings 1,000 downtown

by Linda Stout

ITHACA — About 1,000 people gave a standing ovation to Air America talk radio personality Rachel Maddow and her guests, the Burns Sisters, Friday evening at the State Theatre of Ithaca.

“Rachel, you're so cute,” an audience member yelled.

Maddow, 33, with dark, cropped hair and dark, heavy-framed glasses, might look cute, but she has a Ph.D. and a biting wit the audience admired — even as she kept saying she was nervous. This show in Ithaca through Cayuga Radio Group's 1470 WNYY Progressive Talk was one of few she has cut live.

“I'm stunned by the turnout,” said Kent Jones, of Kent Jones Now, who joined Maddow for entertainment and sports segments.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer joined the show by phone, commenting on this week's policy change to issue New York state drivers' licenses regardless of immigration status. To his critics, he said, “We are not the INS. They're here; they're part of our community.”

Maddow said she believes the war in Iraq will stop only when funding stops.

“If we only got the war ended, I feel I could live with my generation,” Maddow said. “That's the thing that moves me more than anything.”

In addition to making serious fun of her conservative talk radio rivals such as Bill O'Reilly, with clips of him marveling that African Americans ran and dined at a restaurant like Italians in a white suburb, Maddow took on the week's news, for example, the use of military contractors such as Blackwater U.S.A. and Rudy Guiliani's flip-turn on guns.

The party at the State Theatre on Friday night went on more than an hour after the two-hour taping, with more music by the Burns Sisters. Many autograph seekers and supporters gathered by the stage after the show.

“It's support, but it's also connection,” Maddow said after a man greeted her after the show. He said he's a Quaker and part of a weekly Thursday afternoon protest in Ithaca against American involvement in Iraq for more than three years.

lstout@ithacajournal.com

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