Maddow watch: Four days in May with a corporate clown!

TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2016

Cable star really bad at her job: On Tuesday evening, May 24, Rachel Maddow decided to end her cable news show with a typical bit of snark.

Tribal snark is now a standard part of Maddow's cable program. In such segments, we liberal viewers get our time wasted in remarkably low-IQ ways. But the purity of our tribal identity gets reinforced and stoked.

Maddow's target in Tuesday's segment was New Mexico governor Susana Martinez. Donald J. Trump would be doing a campaign event in Albuquerque that night. But uh-oh! Martinez, who isn't a fan of Trump, had said she wouldn't attend.

For this offense, Martinez became a target of Maddow's snark in her short closing segment. Liberal brain cells were dying all over the country as Maddow closed with this fact-challenged dose of embarrassing tribal porridge:

MADDOW (5/24/16): Donald Trump's first campaign fund-raiser was tonight in Albuquerque. He's following that up with a rally in Albuquerque right now.

The Republican governor of New Mexico, Susana Martinez, is also the chair of the Republican Governors Association. But when Donald Trump said he'd be coming to town tonight, Governor Martinez said she would not attend—for one very simple reason.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Everybody, of course, wants to know if you will be attending Donald Trump's rally tomorrow.

MARTINEZ: No, I will not.

REPORTER: What's your reason? Tell us why.

MARTINEZ: You know, I'm really busy—

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: [LAUGHTER]

The chair of the Republican Governors Association [PAUSE TO ADOPT SNARKY TONE] is really busy. She'd previously said she would also be too busy to attend the Republican convention this summer, until someone reminded her that she has to go because [CHUCKLING] she's chair of the Republican Governors Association.

So she will have to go to Cleveland. But she does not have to come out of hiding while Donald Trump is in her town. Not yet at least.

That does it for us tonight. Now, it's time for The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell.

As Maddow's program came to an end, viewers saw her snarking about Martinez's dumbness and cowardice. Martinez had been too dumb to understand that she had to attend the Republican convention! And not only that! She was afraid to "come out of hiding while Donald Trump is in her town."

To watch this segment, click here.

This type of snark is now quite common on the Maddow program. Aside from the oddness of aiming all this snark at a politician who has often criticized Trump, what was wrong with this short segment?

Let us count the ways:

1) You'll note that Martinez's statement to that reporter was edited quite abruptly, cuing Maddow's snark. (In professional circles, this is now known as "the Maddow edit.") To see Martinez's fuller response, you can just click here.

2) According to Maddow, Martinez had previously said that she wouldn't be attending the Republican convention in Cleveland. Maddow treated this as a sign of Martinez's dumbness.

We find no clear evidence that Martinez ever made such a statement, although it's possible she did. The AP had reported, back on May 10, that Martinez would be attending the convention. (For the National Journal's May 11 report, click here.)

We find no convincing evidence that this reversed a previous stance. For tape of Martinez's statement on May 9, you can just click this.

3) There is no sign that Martinez decided to attend the convention because "someone reminded her that she has to go because she's chair of the Republican Governors Association." Maddow treated this as a marker of Martinez's amusing dumbness. The notion that someone had to remind Martinez of her position seems to have been invented by Maddow for entertainment purposes.

4) Martinez didn't seem to be "in hiding while Donald Trump is in her town." She made a direct, open statement that she wouldn't attend his event. Her previous complaints about Trump's behavior and statements would have been known to many New Mexico residents.

Maddow was snarking hard in this short segment, as she routinely does. As a special treat at the end of her low-IQ program, we got to chuckle at the dumbness and the cowardice of this Republican governor.

For viewers of the Maddow Show, this is a familiar type of low-IQ tribal fun. But uh-oh! That very same evening, Trump ridiculed Governor Martinez in much the same way Maddow had done!

According to our tribal verities, this meant that Martinez had become the victim of a racist and sexist attack! Embarrassingly, it also meant that Maddow had positioned herself in alignment with Candidate Trump!

Result? The very next night, Maddow opened her program with a segment about how wonderfully bright Martinez is! We'll review that pitiful clown show tomorrow, with last week's real problem to come.

Ever since MSNBC became "the place for politics," Maddow has become a consummate corporate clown. For the most part, we liberals don't seem to be able to see this.

Maddow's clowning about Martinez was simply dishonest and stupid. Her clowning became politically dangerous last week when it was aimed, in a menacing way, at a second governor.

That person was Governor Terry McAuliffe. Is anyone but Maddow dumb enough to trash him in the way she did on two separate programs last week?

Rachel Maddow is bad at her job. Over the next three days, we'll review "four days in May" as she snarked and clowned last week.

Tomorrow: The greatest flip of all