Rachel Maddow has departed MSNBC but her legacy there and across cable news will live on. The network’s transformation from Keith Olbermann’s George W. Bush hyperventilations to Nicole Wallace’s intelligence apparatus would not have happened without Maddow massaging the crazy through her windy pontifications.
Maddow was Alex Jones with a smug Ivy League elitism and inside voice. No one has ever mastered the “Weekend Update for very serious people” format better than her. While some point to how Bill O’Reilly mainstreamed pen pointing at Fox News, Maddow perfected gestures of disbelief.
She might have been intelligent and sincere yet it’s not so much Keith Olbermann who she has to thank for paving her way as Jon Stewart. Maddow simply repackaged many of the same subjects that Stewart was lampooning Republicans over and made them sound more serious.
