Left wing MSNBC host shocked conservatives not once but twice by defending both Speaker in waiting John Boehner and Fox News host Glenn Beck in the same week.
Boehner who was pilloried by the liberal media for having the audacity to show emotion, most notably on his recent 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl was praised by Maddow for having the courage to just be himself saying;
There’s nothing wrong with politicians showing emotion. There’s nothing wrong with politicians crying in public. A) It demonstrably does not hurt them with voters, but B) it shows us what they feel passionately about, and what’s wrong with that
Now she didn’t totally let Boehner off the hook when she said that “Crying in public, however, is not the same thing as fixing the thing that makes you cry” referring to what she and other liberals see as problems with the Republican agenda.
But it did put Maddow on the opposite side of her buddies in the liberal media by actually defending his actions which I don’t suspect she is likely t do again in the near future.
As for Beck, Maddow appeared on Letterman and was discussing the difference between Fox News and MSNBC- They make up stories, we don’t when the conversation turned to what Letterman called “blowhards” like Limbaugh,O’Reilly and Beck who he also called “looney.”
Rather than play along with the remark about Beck Maddow to her credit recounted how much she enjoyed Glenn when he was only doing his radio show;
“Before Glenn Beck had his TV show, I used to listen to him every day on the radio. I think he’s the most talented…he was the most talented radio personality of my entire generation… Now that he has his TV show, he mostly talks about himself, which isn’t as much fun.”
If you thought defending Boehner was heresy then the praise for Beck is tantamount to treason. Yes she isn’t crazy about Beck the television host but calling him the most talented radio personality of her generation is truly shocking.
Liberals shouldn’t fret that Maddow is going soft on conservatives just that she has a conscience after all and was only suffering from a temporary dose of common sense before returning to her liberal roots.
Maybe there’s hope for MSNBC after all. On second thought probably not.
Don Irvine is the chairman of Accuracy in Media and its sister organization Accuracy in Academia. As the son of Reed Irvine, who launched AIM in 1969, he developed an understanding of media bias at an early age, and has been actively involved with AIM for over 30 years.
