If you haven’t heard, I’m extatic that lefty lady Rachel Maddow is getting her own show on MSNBC starting next week. But in preparation of her upcoming prime time newsy-talker, Maddow is rumored to be getting a few “suggestions” from the suits at the network. According to Page Six:
MSNBC loves the chatter of liberal pundit Rachel Maddow, but not her look. Maddow…is being subjected to a network makeover. A source says an entire “glam squad” has been hired for the openly gay Maddow, and she has been asked not to wear her Drew Carey-esque glasses again. There’s even talk of “putting her in a skirt.
Um, effing lame. Why does it matter what she’s wearing, as long as it’s fit for the air? Its not like she’s dressed like a bum, or a lumberjack. Do they really think people aren’t going to tune in because she’s not dressed like Katie Couric, who isn’t taken seriously as a journalist, anyway? Will making her wear a skirt help her think harder or something? Are pantyhose the magic key to getting “Middle America” to keep on watching a lesbian spout current events?
From what I know, people were pining for Maddow to get a show as she is (and as I hope she will remain to be). TV execs are lame, Maddow is gorgeous, so suck it, pants haters!
UPDATE: Maddow replied on TV Newser on Wednesday:
I think it’s hilarious that Page Six just runs stuff that they make up. What a great job that must be! Not intimidated — thanks for the question, Ron.
I reeeeally hope this is true!!
September 17th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Just want you to be aware of this…check it out.
Today the financial markets are reeling–again. This week we have seen amazing news of bankruptcies and layoffs and 400 and 500-point drops in the Dow–all related to something called credit default swaps. Since they were deregulated in 2000, the market for these securities has ballooned from $900 Billion to more than $45.5 Trillion–bigger than the U.S. equity markets, U.S. Treasuries, and Mortgaged Securities, combined. (NY Times, February 18, 2008, by Gretchen Morgenson)
Wouldn’t it be something if this mess is somehow connected to Enron and the deregulation that allowed Enron to do commodities future trading? Guess what? It is.
Try this on for size: John McCain’s Chief Economic Advisor and Campaign chairman (until July 18, 2008) wrote the bill deregulating the financial industry and creating “swaps,” a bill that had a little something in it for Enron, too. This is so incredible that I know you will want to check it out. There are many Google sources, but you can start here: http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/05/30/mccain_gramm/index.html The title of the article is “McCain’s Scary Economic Advisor,” dated May 30, 2008.
Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Phil Gramm, a Republican Senator from Texas, pulled a sly legislative maneuver that paved the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown.
Gramm’s most cunning coup on behalf of his “friends / contributors” in the financial services industry came on December 15, 2000. Things in Congress were a bit tense. Only two days earlier, the Supreme Court had issued its decision on Bush v. Gore. As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384 BILLION omnibus spending bill, Gramm cleverly slipped in a 262-page addition called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Written with the help of financial industry lobbyists and co-sponsored by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the agriculture committee, the act would give free reign to “swaps” (credit default swaps). Phil Gramm strode onto the Senate floor to hail the act’s inclusion into the “must-be-passed” budget package. He declared that this measure would ensure that neither the SEC nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission got into the business of regulating newfangled financial products called swaps–and would thus “protect financial institutions from overregulation” and “position our financial services industries to be world leaders into the new century.”
These unregulated swaps have been at the heart of the subprime meltdown. The U.S. has affected the world, for sure.
In 2003, Phill Gramm left the Senate to take a highly lucrative job at UBS, which had been able to acquire investment house PainWebber because of the banking deregulation bill. His title? It is Vice-Chairman of UBS Investment Bank, a financial services company based in Switzerland. Until March, 2008, UBS paid Gramm to lobby Congress, the Fed, and the Treasury Department for UBS on banking and mortgage matters. By May 30, 2008, Gramm was John McCain’s Campaign Chairman and Chief Economic Advisor.
Oh, lest I forget–The Gramm-Leach-Blily bill, entitled the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, was the act broadly deregulating the financial industry. One provision of the bill was referred to as the “Enron loophole.” It included a provision that exempted energy trading from regulatory oversight. (The loophole was provided to Phil Gramm by an ENRON lobbyist, a generous Gramm contributor).
Wikipedia notes: “Some critics blame the provision for permitting the Enron scandal to occur.” Soon after that rule was passed, Phil’s wife Wendy Gramm joined Enron and served on Enron’s board of Directors. Interesting, how it all comes together.
Also of interest, Wikipedia reports the following: “In a July 9, 2008 interview explaining McCain’s plans in reforming the U.S. economy, Phil Gramm downplayed the idea that the nation was in a recession, stating, ‘You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession. We have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline’.” Hmmmmm…..
October 12th, 2008 at 11:48 am
When McCain and Palin speak in front of a crowd and say “who is Obama” and the people yell out traitor and terrorist. McCain and Palin stand back and smile. What that smile means to me is that they are condoning the terms traitor and terrorist. Then people say that they are afraid of Obama. Well I for one am afraid of McCain and Palin.