May
19, 2005
Valley Advocate
Poking the White Underbellyby Andrew Varnon It's "Now, every day here at The
Rachel Maddow Show ," she says, "We
poke a sharp stick at the soft, white underbelly of the right-wing scheme
machine, giving you a little peek at the right-wing playbook for privatizing,
polarizing and paving the United States of America. Today's underbelly story
is kind of a big-picture look at the overall right-wing approach to the
social safety net. Right? The idea that the government can help where free
market forces fail. Where there's some social contract to turn to if you're
sick, or if you are unlucky or if you are fortunate enough to live beyond
your working years and actually retire." Maddow relates the news that a federal
judge recently ruled that United Airlines could default on its employee
pension plan, throwing it into the lap of the federal government. With 134,000
employees affected, the United Airlines pension default is the largest in the
past 30 years, perhaps ever. With US Air already having defaulted on its
employee pensions, Maddow sees the beginning of a
trend that doesn't bode well for American workers, at least in the airline
industry. Still looking down at her script, she points a finger at Chris, the
sound engineer, who plays a sound clip that Maddow
had asked him to queue up during the break. In the clip, a representative of
the flight attendants' union signals her displeasure at the ruling and says
her union will continue to fight it in court. Then, Maddow
turns to her analysis: "It's one thing to think about how the employees
of United and US Air are being screwed by the companies that made these
promises to them, but it's another thing to think about the right-wing
playbook here --alright? -- the way that this thing fits into the overall
right-wing plans for the social safety net." She brings up the declining
numbers of companies that give health benefits to their employees, and how
that leaves government as the backup. The Republicans want to take away that
backup, Maddow says. Not just Social Security, but
Medicare and Medicaid, too. "So if the companies aren't
doing it any more and the government isn't doing it any more -- at least if
the Republicans get their way -- then who's taking care of your health
insurance and your health care needs and your retirement? Well, you are,
alone. On your own. "The Republicans want an
individualistic, every man for himself, eat the
poor, capitalist, for-profit system, because that's best for business, that's
best for people with money. They want to shift the risk -- right, because
risk is what the social safety net is really all about -- they want to shift
the risk from the government to you." She's set it up. First she laid
out the airline pension defaults, then she moved to
the Republicans aims on Capital Hill. Now, she turns to the counter strategy.
She holds up a finger, as if making a point in an argument with somebody
standing in front of her, only there's no one there. "Now, the Democrats, I think,
need to start articulating this basic fact, start talking about their
different approach to this issue, because I think people accept that the role
of government generally -- it's not controversial to say -- is to take on
some of the risk where some of the individuals can't manage it, right? To
take on some of the risk where you are disadvantaged because of your age,
because of ill health, because of being unlucky." Maddow has dropped her script now and
she's going on feeling. Chris, the sound man, brings in background music, a
driving dancehall beat. The music begins to rise, signaling that the end of
the segment is approaching. "There are ways in which we
can't live as beasts in an asocial environment, right?" Maddow says. "There's a way in which we come
together for the collective good to support one another. When we're down on
our luck or when we get old." According to Maddow,
the Republicans are going about this the wrong way, creating a giant crisis
as "an excuse to shred these programs that
create the social safety net." The right way, Maddow
says, is to try to find a way to get at the root of the problem of rising
medical costs and to try to make them more affordable. "How's that for a Democratic
program? Are we still looking for one? It's 27 after." Right on time. Chris cuts to the
commercial break. The Rachel Maddow
Show is billed as
Air America Radio's front page. Launched on April 14, it is one of the newest
programs on the liberal talk network, a network that
many predicted wouldn't last beyond the 2004 election. The show stars Rachel Maddow, who joined the year-old network as part of the
ensemble cast of Unfiltered with comedienne Lizz
Winstead and rapper Chuck D. When Air America Radio
reshuffled its programming in April, bringing on notorious daytime television
host (and former mayor of Air America Radio has garnered a
lot of buzz for its big-name celebrity hosts like Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo, which has
also earned the radio network its share of criticism for its big splash
strategy. If Air On his radio show in March, Rush
Limbaugh asked, "Has anyone heard of Rachel Maddow?"
It's a sound clip that Maddow now uses for one of
her "bumpers" introducing a segment. That people are beginning to
perk their ears up at Maddow's name is a sign that
the network is moving past its star-fueled first stage and into orbit as a
legitimate news and opinion beacon in the broadcast stratosphere. During the commercial break in the
41st floor studio, producer Vanessa Peel comes through the door, a breaking
news report in her hand. She stops to ask whether Chris the sound engineer
is, in fact, drinking a 7-11 Slurpee at this hour.
Then she turns to Maddow, to deliver the report. "I feel stupid today," Maddow says. "You don't sound
stupid," Peel answers. "Really? That's good to
hear," Maddow says. "I thought you wrapped up
that Underbelly story really well," Peel says. In order to transition into her
new duties, Maddow has had to become what she calls
"a news vampire." Her day begins at Maddow's riff on United's pension default
and the social safety is the product of work that began hours earlier in the
small office downstairs from the studio. The room used to be the office for
the Unfiltered program, as evidenced by a sign on the wall that reads:
"Unfiltered commandment: Thou shalt not steal
... except from Franken." On the morning of Wednesday, May
11, after their initial research, Maddow and her
two compatriots gathered in the office for their Maddow stood at the marker board while
her two compatriots sat at their computers, stacks of news printouts in hand.
On the board were written column headers for each of the program's five
regular features: "headlines," "top stories,"
"underbelly," "front page" and "pet stories." First, the three take turns
pitching the stories they've found that they'd like to consider for the show.
Maddow went first. She wrote them on the marker
board as she went through them, munching on a carrot. She wore jeans slung
low on her hips, making her look boyish, and a pair of colorful Addidas sneakers. As she went through, Peel provided
color commentary, as when Maddow read a headline about
an investigator for a district attorney in Maddow's job, as she sees it, is to pore
through the news of the day and give her take on it, to connect the dots
between stories and look at the running trends. "For example," she told
the Advocate after the show that morning. "Talking about Social
Security privatization and the three trillion dollars of cuts proposed in
Social Security along with the United Airlines pension default and putting
those together, say, in the real world, with real people who have real
pocketbook issues and real worries about their retirement -- this is all part
of the same struggle, to maintain some sort of social welfare safety net in
this country. And those stories -- United Airlines and Bush privatizing
Social Security -- aren't even usually on the same page of the paper or not
even covered in the same paper. And so by putting those together, I'm not
doing any original reporting, but I'm making a case for a larger analysis of
what these things mean to regular people." The concept for her current show
grew out of her work on Unfiltered and the Big Breakfast, her
show on WRSI in In the "Underbelly"
segment of the show, Maddow zooms in on a story
that illustrates "the bad guys" and tactics -- both analyzing the
tactics of the other side and prescribing tactics to counter them. "It
is more of an explainer," she said. "It's more of a, you know,
politics behind the headlines kind of discussion, so I wanted to brand that
in a specific way and kind of block it off from the rest of the news as, you
know, a peek at their playbook." At about One of the things that Maddow brings to Air At about Peel handles the sound for the
show. After scripting a couple of segments, Maddow
sat down with Peel to go over the sound clips Peel had harvested. Maddow sat on a speaker next to the large window overlooking
34th Street and the At about By the time After the show finished at Maddow has also become a regular guest
on TV talk shows, something she didn't expect, but said she has come to
enjoy. On that particular Wednesday, she would appear with Tucker Carlson on
CNN. Maddow said later: "The first time
I ever went on CNN, which was like the second time I was ever on TV, it was
me and G. Gordon Liddy and I'm thinking, 'Hey! You
were in prison when I was born.'" Maddow said while she doesn't watch television at home and initially hated the idea of appearing on TV, she has come to enjoy the practice it gives her on interacting with other commentators and sharpening her delivery. "There are not very many liberals who are appearing as talking heads," Maddow said. "And so what's kind of nice is that because there is a shortage of liberal talking head commentators, and the reasons for that are myriad, but whatever, that's the case, I end up being put up opposite kind of A-list conservative commentators." |
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