Rachel Maddow gets dissed

Everyone agreed (even Jackie and Tim) that the pasta primavera was a keeper, except to go heavier on the sauce - more balsamic vinegar, garlic and basil. Duly noted.

Now to change topics completely and switch to politics. I read this post today at TPM cafe about the top ten progressive intellectuals under age 40.:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/12/31/the_ten_young_progressive_inte/

Interesting you-tubing to be had, if you can spare a couple hours. Of interest to me, however, was the Rachel Maddow reviews in the comments section. I instantly wanted to join in and defend her, but I had to sign in to leave a comment and could not remember my user name/password combination. I believe I have about 58 accounts on most websites, since it is so much easier to create a new one than to try to recover your old one. Frustrating.

The trash-talk on Maddow is as follows - awful, smarmy, snarky, shallow, superficial and, I quote: "If there's any problem with the Maddow show its simply that these talk shows are now permeating cable channels."

Wait a minute. And here I tried fruitlessly to reply, that's actually not the problem. The problem is the proliferation of cable-channel talk shows without a left-wing view. Rachel Maddow is the solution! That's the whole point! All television talk shows are awful, smarmy, snarky, blah, blah,blah, - that is the nature of television. People watch TV for entertainment. They want goofy news anchors to sit and discuss titillating topics and manufacture controversy. And cable tv channels just want to sell toothpaste or new cars or whatever. And for the last 10 or 15 years, the talk show moderators that TV audiences have tuned into have been either one of two types, unctuous or angry: the Wolf Blitzer model of generic nonsubstantive blather gussied up with fancy special effects, or the Bill O'Reilly model of angry nonsubstantive screeds gussied up with right-wing talking points and, again, special effects.
The virtue of Rachel Maddow (and Keith Olbermann as well) is that they manage to deliver a popular cable-news show with a little bit of left-wing perspective and flashes of incisive commentary that transcend the average cable news nonsense. - and it gets delivered to a large audience. Bill Moyers and Amy Goodman are great, but appeal to the pointy-heads, not the general public. We need Rachel!