Welcome to the same old year!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 3, 2017

What narcissism looks like: Is Donald J. Trump a narcissist of some kind?

We don't know how to assess that. That said, we do know what narcissism sometimes looks like. Last night, at 9 PM Eastern, we'd say it looked like this:

MADDOW (1/2/17): Good evening, Ari. I want to thank you in particular for all you did to fill and hold things together last week. It was great. Thank you, my friend.

MELBER: Great. Thank you. Happy New Year.

MADDOW: Thanks. And thanks to you at home for staying with us for the next hour.

It was really nice to have a few days off. It is really, really nice to be back. I keep running into old friends and family members and people on the street and people like, you know, out on the dog walk and stuff. People want to talk to me about politics. They say, with concern in their eyes, "How are you feeling about 2017?

And I found myself by the end of my vacation saying, "I'm really excited for 2017." I am. My job is to explain stuff. And oh, my God, is that a good job to have this year already?

As we've mentioned in the past, Rachel Maddow never stops discussing herself. Our analysts always launch their patented cry:

"I I I I I I I!"

Perhaps it's just a branding tool, a way to pose as the viewer's friend. In this case, she made it sound like she'd returned home after an absence of years.

More striking was the way Maddow described her excitement concerning the new year.

Sensible liberals are very concerned about the coming year. As Maddow has noted in the past, she's taking a different approach. She's excited about the new year. Given the multimillion-dollar job she holds, she thinks the new year should be both exciting and fun!

(Will millions of people lose their insurance? It should be fun to find out!)

In our view, liberals should be very concerned about the peculiar actions, reactions and outlooks of Donald J. Trump. Liberals should also be concerned about the peculiar instincts of Maddow.

Late in the show, she did it again, telling us about the brilliant past work of "the great Steve Benen, who writes the blog for our show." As usual, the statements which followed struck us as perhaps a bit misleading. (This isn't Benen's fault.)

Maddow is constantly selling the car. In this, a deeply troubling new year, it's time for the liberal world to grow up and see her self-dealing behaviors and instincts as a point of concern.