No News Here: I Still Love Rachel

I love Rachel Maddow.  Yes, I know, that love will never be reciprocated, and I’m okay with that.  Oliver Willis has his Jessica Alba, I have Rachel.

The latest reason why I have rekindled my love for Rachel has been her ability to get Joe Scarborough to walk off a show he was doing at MSNBC.  Granted, MSNBC recalls it a little differently, “Joe didn’t walk off. He chose not to participate in the final couple of minutes of the discussion because he felt the conversation didn’t fit his role as a political analyst.”

In other words, he walked off.

But what I love even more is not that she got him to walk off for being stupid, but she got him to walk off by being absolutely right:

RM: Associates and friendships become an issue when political opponents decide to make them an issue.  And so, we talked about this before on this show, I mean the Jeremiah Wright [cross talk] Joe let me make my point and then you can dismiss me.  Let me make my point first.  The Jeremiah Wright as a pastor for Barack Obama is an issue, the political associations that John McCain has made with other, with right wing pastors have not been an issue.  The issue that has been made about who’s given money to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton because their opponents decided to go after them on that.  But, for example, John McCain had this incredibly controversial relationship with this Florida campaign co-chair  who was caught in a bathroom offering money to a police officer to do something that we can all imagine in a bathroom. 

Nobody’s going to John McCain about that and saying, “He was your Florida campaign co-chair?  What do you think about men doing that in bathrooms?  What do you think about entrapment from police officers?  What do you think about public sex?”  But nobody’s brought that stuff [crosstalk... actually someone says, "That's not what general elections are for," but they are off camera] but nobody’s brought that stuff up to John McCain at this point and it’s a decision made by political opponents.  It’s not something that happens organically because of how long you’ve been around the block.

Shorter: a smear’s a smear, justifications don’t change that.

And, really?  No one’s brought that up with John McCain?  Someone should fix that, huh?

(Update: Thanks to Libby for linking in!)