Convention watch: Howard Dean dies for Maddow's sins!

TUESDAY, JULY 19, 2016

When corporate clowns serve as anchors: Let's refashion the famous line from the late Molly Ivins:

Did you watch Rudy Giuliani's ranting, shouting, screaming speech last night at the Republican convention? Giuliani spoke at 10 o'clock sharp. In effect, he was the keynote speaker.

Giuliani kept ranting and waving his arms. We thought his speech would have gone over better in the original beer hall.

Watching Giuliani, it was hard to avoid thinking of very bad history from the last century. His screaming and ranting helped us see where things can go at times of fantastic tribal division.

It was hard to avoid thinking of very bad history. Unless you were Rachel Maddow, who made Howard Dean take the fall for her own corporate sins.

Much of what follows just isn't true. But this is what Maddow actually said as soon as Rudy stopped shouting:

MADDOW (7/18/16): You know, there's a speech like this at every convention. And sometimes it, sometimes it plainly works and sometimes it plainly doesn't, and sometimes it is a litmus test and half the country watching it will think that's the greatest thing that ever happened and and the other half will think that was maybe satire.

I think that happened probably with Jennifer Granholm's speech last Democratic Convention. I think another example of that on the Democratic side would have been Howard Dean screaming into the microphone after the Iowa convention—the Iowa caucuses.

There's a speech like that at every convention? For starters, that just isn't true.

You very rarely see a speech like that at a convention. At any rate, when Maddow started giving examples, Howard Dean was asked to die for her own corporate sins.

Briefly, let's be fair. Let's assume it isn't easy to co-anchor a live event—to offer commentary, off the cuff, for several hours.

That said, you almost never see a speech like Giuliani's rant! And good God—Howard Dean? Did he have to die again for Maddow's corporate sins?

Maddow offered no examples of Republicans making "a speech like that." It fell to Republican strategist Steve Schmidt to mention Zell Miller's crazy speech at the GOP convention in 2004. (Miller was still a Democrat at the time.)

Remarkably, no one mentioned Pat Buchanan's famous speech at the 1992 convention. Instead, Howard Dean took the fall again for the brief moment when he "screamed."

Giuliani's craziness is a symptom of our very troubling times. So is Maddow's wide array of dysfunctional work.

She talks down to liberals each weekday night, dumbing us down and making us dumbly happy. In many cases, this makes us almost as dumb and self-righteous as Giuliani was last night. If you doubt that, watch our own excesses when we unleash our own furies next week.

Giuliani ranted and screamed. Thinking quickly, Maddow let Dean took the fall.

Jennifer Granholm's speech: Granholm's speech in 2012 was brief and largely positive. She was praising Obama for all the jobs he saved by rescuing the U.S. auto industry.

In the end, she was quite exuberant. But it was nothing like Rudy's beer hall bash last night.

You can watch Granholm here. Uncle Pat went unmentioned.