Rachel
Maddow
A breath of fresh air in a sea of rightwing radio talkshow hosts
by Mike McNamara
Rachel Maddow, host of Air America’s The Rachel Maddow Show, was Celebrity Grand Marshal and Master of
Ceremonies for Seattle’s GLBT Pride
Parade/March and Rally on Sunday. Launched in April 2005, The Rachel Maddow Show airs weekdays on dozens of Air America Radio
stations, as well as nationally online and on XM and Sirius Satellite Radio.
Her show can be heard locally on Seattle’s progressive
talk station, AM 1090.
Maddow is
an expert on U.S.
prison conditions and has been credited with founding several HIV/AIDS
activist groups. She has a Doctorate in Politics from Oxford University
and a degree in Public Policy from Stanford. She was the first openly Gay
American to win a Rhodes Scholarship. Her background is in commercial radio
(WRSI, WRNX) and political activism.
Prior to launching The Rachel Maddow
Show, Rachel co-hosted Air America’s
Unfiltered with Chuck D and Lizz Winstead. Perhaps more importantly, Rachel knows how to
make a Pegu Club Cocktail, enjoys appearing on
right-wing TV shows as the smiling-but-obstinate liberal, loves her parents,
and thinks AMTRAK hot dogs are a national treasure. She lives in Western Massachusetts and New York City, with her partner, artist
Susan Mikula, and their outstanding dog.
The SGN conducted a brief interview with the very busy Maddow as she prepared to help lead Seattle’s GLBT community
celebrate Pride 05.
SGN: Where did you grow up?
Rachel Maddow: In the San
Francisco Bay Area a town in the East Bay Area called Castro
Valley. Not to be confused with Castroville, the artichoke
capital of California,
or The Castro, self-explanatory.
SGN: What were your parents like?
RM: My parents are great.
Dad worked for the water company, Mom worked for my middle school.
They’re suburban Democrats married 35 years who still live in
the house I grew up in.
SGN: Did you go to college, if so where? In what ways were
these years influential in your life?
RM: I went to Stanford for undergrad,
and Oxford (in England) for my doctorate. I didn’t love student
life, but I came out during college and had a successful academic career that
opened a lot of doors for me. I was also a die-hard activist, which probably
gave me even better training for the real world than my degrees.
SGN: What is your political history? Past activism?
RM: Lots of AIDS activism, several ACT UP chapters, several student groups related to HIV/AIDS at Stanford,
work at the AIDS Legal Referral Panel and the Women’s AIDS Network in
San Francisco, the AIDS Treatment Project and
the AIDS in Prisons Forum in London,
and the National Minority AIDS Council in DC. LGBT anti-conservative stuff in
college, prison reform in conjunction with HIV/AIDS issues in California and London. I worked with
the ACLU National Prison Project on two successful campaigns to overturn the
worst HIV/AIDS policies in the country, in Mississippi and Alabama state prisons.
SGN: How do you like working with Tucker Carlson? Is he as
conservative as he leads us to believe? (Ed note: - With that little bow
tie?)
RM: He’s definitely conservative, but he’s openminded. He’s against the war
in Iraq,
for example, a position on which he changed his mind within the last couple
of years. He’s also changed his views over the
years on the death penalty and abortion. So he’s not a kneejerk partisan, and that makes him more fun to work
with than you’d think just from the bow tie!
SGN: What do New Yorkers really think of Seattle?
RM: I’ve only been a New Yorker for
about a year or so, so I’m no expert. But
I’d say we think of Seattle
as a the westernmost Scandinavian country.
SGN: How did you hook-up with Air America? Do you think we will be
able to build a monolith that can really challenge the right-wing talkers.
RM: I kept hounding them for a year until I finally figured
out a way to get a mutual friend to get Lizz Winstead (my former co-host) to listen to my tape. Then I
got hired as a newscaster. Then I finagled my way into a co-host spot with
the great Chuck D and Lizz. Then when our show got
replaced by Jerry Springer (!) on my birthday this year (April 1), I finagled
my way into my own show by volunteering to work all night and start
broadcasting at 5:00 a.m.!
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