All clowning, pretty much all the time!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 2017

Maddow sets new world record: Last night, we heard a familiar cry. It came from the Analyst Viewing Facility here on our sprawling campus.

"I I I I I I I," the analysts derisively shouted. And sure enough! Rachel Maddow was on the air, talking about herself:

MADDOW (5/2/17): Quick programming note. Tonight, I'll be on an excellent television show called Late Night with Seth Meyers. Two fair warnings:

One, I will still be wearing this same $20 blazer. If you think it looks frumpy from the front, you should see it from the patented 34-degree side angle that happens on late-night shows. Hoo!

[off-camera: standard sycophantic laughter]

In the annals of news, no one talks about him- or herself more than Maddow does. Making matters worse, the sycophants are always there, laughing and urging her on.

As she continued, Maddow stated her second warning, then engaged in her favorite activity—playing videotape of herself. On this particular videotape, she was speaking to Meyers while making no obvious sense:

MADDOW (continuing directly): Number two, there will be a belabored analogy involving The Silence of the Lambs.

MADDOW (videotape): There's never been a presidency, an administration that was this overtly hostile to the press. But at the same time, there's never been a president who was more addicted to the news about himself and who is more responsive to the news that he supposedly thinks is so worthless. So it is a weird tension.

We're skipping the "belabored analogy." If you want to watch this short segment in full, you can just click here.

As you've noted, that brief analysis by Maddow doesn't exactly make sense. If a president thinks the news about himself is "worthless" (in Trumpian language, "fake"), why wouldn't he be inclined to pay attention to it?

Presumably, a president could ignore "the news" if he thought the reporting and analysis were competent and fair. As a pol, you pretty much have to pay attention if you think the news is fake.

Trump is crazy, but Maddow rarely makes much sense at this point. Have you seen her wandering account of the source of the money for the lobbying by Michael Flynn in the summer and fall of 2016?

Increasingly, Maddow's work is designed to please and entertain the tribe, not to make clear sense. That said, last night's opening segment seemed to establish a new world record for ludicrous on-air behavior.

Background: OMB director Mick Mulvaney had tried to conduct a conference call earlier in the day. It seems the conference call broke down due to technical problems.

We say "seems" because Maddow made no particular attempt to explain anything much of substance. Her opening segment ended with five minutes of mugging and clowning about the technical problem involved in the failed conference call, as illuminated by her own masterful comic performance.

Her program aired at 9 PM. It was billed as a news show.

With that in mind, we'll suggest that you click here for the tape of that opening segment. The full tape runs 14 minutes. You should move ahead to the nine-minute mark and watch the segment from there.

On other news programs last night, we saw people try to explain what Mulvaney actually said about the budget. On the Maddow Show, we saw a multimillionaire corporate stooge as she mugged and clowned and played the fool, setting a new world record for pointless self-indulgence.

We'll suggest that you click to the nine-minute mark and watch the next five minutes. We think what you'll see is truly remarkable. Massive wealth and massive fame tend to be bad for many folk. In our view, the devolution of Maddow's performance has tended to prove this point.

Seriously! Click that link, then advance to the nine-minute mark. Remember: The program you're watching is advertised as a news program.

Warning: Over Here, many people in our tribe can't see the problem with this. The same problem tends to obtain when Hannity comes on Over There.

Coming soon: Who paid for Flynn's lobbying last summer? We don't know the answer to that, but we'll show you what Maddow said on one program last week.