Supplemental: Maddow still seems to be shocked, just shocked!

SATURDAY, MAY 2, 2015

The things you won’t hear on her program: In our view, it has been one of the biggest media events of the past decade.

We refer to the way the stars of our emerging “liberal/progressive” media have ended up behaving like Rush and Sean. We got several doses of this phenomenon on last night’s Maddow show.

Eventually, the transcript of the program will turn up here.

Midway through the program, Maddow’s treatment of yesterday’s “Bridgegate” indictments was the usual clown show. For today, consider what she had to say about the indictments in Baltimore.

Maddow opened her program with that topic. She compared the rapid indictments in Baltimore to the lack of indictments in Ferguson last year.

Early on, she offered a highly novelized recap of what happened in Ferguson. This included a silly, full-blown demonization of one of The Others.

We were especially struck by the statement we highlight below. It inspired us to conduct a search of Maddow’s past reporting:

MADDOW (5/1/15): The current national outrage over police use of force began in earnest late last summer with the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Michael Brown, 18 years old and unarmed when he died on the street in Ferguson in August 2014, last August.

After Michael Brown’s death, Ferguson saw weeks of protests, some of them very intense. But local officials asked people to let the process play out, the justice process, wait for a grand jury to decide whether the officer who shot Michael Brown should be charged for Michael Brown’s killing.

That police dragged on for weeks and for months, until finally in November, three months after Michael Brown was dead and buried, with the city of Ferguson and the St. Louis region on edge about what that grand jury would decide, people hoping and believing at that time that at least the release of information about that decision would be handled in such a way that would give people fair warning and time to prepare, and time to brace themselves.

In the end, the way it happened in that case was that the St. Louis County prosecutor made his announcement at night with no warning. That prosecutor ambled up to the microphone, long after nightfall, with a couple hundred protesters already gathered outside. He gave a rambling, abrasive, at times bizarre stem-winder of a long, meandering press conference, in which he suggested some of the witnesses had simply lied to the grand jury.

He had been talking for ten minutes already that night before he finally came to the point about what he was there to announce and what the grand jury had decided.

At that point, Maddow played tape of Robert McCulloch announcing that there would be no charges against Officer Darren Wilson. In the course of her demonization of McCulloch, we were especially struck by the statement we highlight above.

According to Maddow, McCulloch ambled to the microphone long after nightfall. He gave a rambling, abrasive stem-winder which was at times bizarre.

How bizarre was the abrasive stem-winder? In the course of his long, meandering conference, McCulloch even “suggested some of the witnesses had simply lied to the grand jury.”

That struck us as a very strange statement on Maddow’s part.

Plainly, Maddow was constructing one of her demonized portraits of someone of whom she disapproves. When liberals are willing to swallow such porridge, we’d say it bodes ill for the world.

That said, Maddow likes to feed us rubes these heavily Hannitized portraits. But even by her own standards, her statement about what McCulloch “suggested” struck us as very odd.

McCulloch suggested that some witnesses lied? By now, everyone except Maddow’s viewers knows that some witnesses lied.

How do we know that some witnesses lied? We were told that in early March, in the report from the Justice Department in which Eric Holder’s department agreed with the grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Wilson—in which the Justice Department explicitly said that every shot Wilson fired was justified.

Was Justice right in that assessment? We can’t tell you that! But along with its exoneration of Wilson, the Justice Department went into substantial detail about the way various witnesses and supposed witnesses had misstated and even lied to various investigative bodies, even to Michael Brown’s parents.

Last night, Maddow acted like McCulloch’s “suggestion” to that effect was one of his many horrible acts. An obvious question came to mind:

Were Maddow’s viewers ever told about that Justice Department report—about the Justice Department report which exonerated Wilson?

Were they ever told what Justice said about Officer Wilson? Were they ever told what Justice said about a wide array of witnesses and supposed witnesses?

Using Nexis, we reviewed the relevant transcripts. Sadly, no—they were not.

Maddow’s viewers were never told about what the Justice Department said. Last night, Maddow beat their ignorance like a drum, a not uncommon occurrence.

Rachel Maddow often behaves like our own Sean Hannity. It has often seemed to us that she isn’t an obsessively honest star. But in fairness, she also routinely seems like a full-blown true believer.

When she seems to loathe The Others, we often get the impression that her loathing is real. Last night, her loathing was aimed at the vile McCulloch, who had made a vile suggestion.

As she gave way to this tribal loathing, her viewers got treated like fools. Later, her treatment of New Jersey events wasn’t a whole lot better.

Maddow often behaves like Sean. Quite routinely, she betrays tribal impulses which seem like a mirror of his.

In fairness, it often seems that she truly believes the things she says, even when her statements seem strange. True believers truly believe the foolish things they emit.

Did the Justice Department exonerate Wilson? Because she values our eternal souls, Rachel tends to keep us liberals from hearing such terrible things.

In the process, she makes us immeasurably dumber. She makes us dumber and worse, and a great deal less wise.