Mad About Rachel Maddow

Maddowisms 

• Newtraction - Newt Gingrich's way of saying something ill advised then retracting it, then retracting the retraction, and then sometimes rewording the original statement to mean nearly the same thing it originally meant before all the retractions. Introduced in May 2009 when Newt Gingrich began reappearing on the TV machine as another GOP has-been.
• Moment of Geek - a new segment on TRMS introduced in late May 2009 celebrating the geeks,dorks and nerds of the world when we do something newsworthy.
  
  First moment of geek: Geography and land marks of North Korea developed by a graduate student using Google's mapping tools, his own experiences visiting North Korea and the input of lots of other people who had visited North Korea.
• Gah - something to say in total frustration from being unable to articulate language.
  
  Gifted to Rachel by Ana Marie Cox on Tuesday, February 24, 2009 when Rachel was speechless over Governor Bobby Jindal's equation of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina as the benchmark for federal government response in general. Governor Jindal gave the Republican rebuttal to President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress that night, his NOT state of the union address. Jindal's response was abysmal at best and often just stupid. He's smarter than he appeared that night. He's the governor of my state and he is a smart guy, but he messed up that performance so badly that his hopes of Presidential politics may be over completely, or at least postponed for 8 years. It will give people a chance to forget this debacle.
• Conservadems - Created in March 2009. Moderate to conservative Democrats in the Senate who have formed their own caucus in an unfathomable effort to slow down the Obama administration's agenda and policies. Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska says they aren't together to join with the Republicans but to do what is right for their states and the country with policies that aren't rubber stamps of one side or the other. There goal is smart policy. We'll see...
• Speak-O - a spoken typo. Created by Rachel on February 27, 2009
• Ginormous - Rachel's word for "gigantic enormous".
  Definition: huge.
• Bullpucky - Rachel's sensor-friendly, on-air word for "bullshit".
• Dorknozzle - an asshole who thinks s/he knows what s/he is talking about, but absolutely has no clue so covers it up with bullshit.
• Lame-itude - anything that can be described as lame or weak.
• Quackitude - "Lame Duck Watch, because somebody's got to do it"; especially of outgoing President George W. Bush during the Obama transition period.
  
  As of November 25, 2008, now with more quack:)
  
  The Lame Duck Watch segment ended on January 19, 2009 with President Bush's last full day in office. This 8 year headache is finally over!
• The TV Machine - Rachel's phrase for "television".
• The Internet Machine - Rachel's phrase for the internet. Other terms for the internet: the internets and the interwebs. Origin of "the internets" came from inept members of Congress. I'm not sure where "the interwebs" came from.
• The Google Machine - Rachel's phrase for the Google search engine.
• The Cocktail Moment - very cool tidbits shared by Rachel at the end of a show that might be discussed at cocktail parties, including the first actual cocktails made on the show with Master Mixologist Dale Degroff. He made some cocktails in celebration of St. Patrick's Day on the March 17, 2009 show. Rachel's biggest thrill...she personally got to shake Dale Degroff's cocktail shaker.
• GOP in Exile - the segment of Rachel's show about the Republican Party being very far out in the wilderness searching for who they are and what they represent. After huge losses in the 2004 and 2008 elections, the GOP seems to not only have lost the races for the White House and Congress, it has lost its way entirely.
• The Weak in Review - A segment with Kent Jones reviewing all of the lame-itude going on in the news all week. There is a lot of lame stuff going on!
• Scrub, Rinse, Repeat - "Because this is going to take awhile." The new segment of Rachel's MSNBC show about the Obama administration cleaning up the huge mess the Bush administration made out of government. Segment began on January 21, 2009.
• Rubinomics - [rue-bin-om-iks] - noun [Etymology: The Rachel Maddow Show, the economics of the Clinton administration's Fmr. Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin]
  
  def.: the ardent embrace of balanced budgets, zero deficits, deregulation, and free trade as routes to prosperity.
• Joementum - Joe Lieberman's momentum in the Senate to retain his important chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. Should he be removed? Some say yes, some say no. I say yes. He hasn't done enough to investigate the government's failed response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, where over 1,000 American people lost their lives. It's inexcusable. Rachel says yes as well for similar reasons and begs an answer to the question, "What do you have to do to these Democrats to make them mad enough to punish your bad behavior?". Joe still has his seat and we still don't have an answer to that question.
• Holy Mackerel Stories - The Ms. Information segment of Rachel's MSNBC show where her true geekiness and quirkiness come through. Some stories are "Under Reported" and some are not. She reports on stories that may be obscure but extremely interesting. Sometimes they are heart-warming, sometimes they are sad, sometimes they make you angry and sometimes they make you laugh.
• Talk Me Down - the segment of Rachel's MSNBC show when she is out on a figurative ledge about an issue and needs to be talked down off of it.
  
  Talking her down is a very tough job and now two people have talked her down completely so far: attorney Scott Turow about the Illinois Governor, Rob Blagojevich's federal corruption case. Scott convinced Rachel that Blagojevich is going down. Second is Lawrence O'Donnell about the GOP in Congress telegraphing future trouble because they asked to put off Timothy Geitner's Senate confirmation hearing until Jan. 21, 2009, the day after Barack Obama's inauguration. See "Talking Rachel Down" for videos of people who meet the challenge.
  
  Really smart people and anxiety go together like peas and carrots.
• Just Enough - the segment of Rachel's MSNBC show where Kent Jones gives her just enough pop culture so she can be allowed out in public. Rachel also describes Kent as her answer to Xanax, in particular, the turkey sound.
• Mind Over Chatter - thought and reason are brought together over the constant noise of life, especially in the news. (Can anyone say Fox Noise, Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity?. They are chatter).
• Crisitunity - a crisis opportunity. June 2009
• Frenemy - friendly enemy. From pop culture and now part of urbandictionary.com

Top Reasons Rachel Maddow is the Host with the Most 

And Just Plain The Most

• Rachel's MSNBC show is the first news show my teenage son has ever watched, and he actually pays attention!
• She is NOT a dorknozzle.
• Rachel is a dog person, and not just any kind of dog person, a BIG slobbery dog person. She and Susan have a black lab, named Poppy, who is a year and a half old. I have a chocolate lab, named Ace, who is 6.5 years old and an Australian Shepherd/Catahoula mix, named Kita, who is 6 years old.
• Rachel effectively used both "wussy" and "vituperative antipathy" close together in the same show segment. Wow!
• Her show is a mental workout. She stretches my intellect, which has deteriorated slightly since college. Now that I'm teaching instead of practicing chemistry, I have to know and remember more than at any time since I graduated from LSU in 1985.
• She's very thoughtful and listens intensely, then asks relevant questions or makes informed arguments. She goes much more deeply into the topics she covers than anyone else. She's engaged in what she talks about, not detached from it.
  
  How did that ever leave the news?
• She's an out and proud lesbian, and it's not the freaking headline! Finally, like we have a President who is African American, we have a political pundit who is a lesbian.
  
  This is really important because a lot of people don't know that they know anyone who is gay or lesbian, so they have no idea we're just like everyone else, normal. All you straight folks out there who think you don't know someone who is gay or lesbian, you do. They just haven't come out to you.
  
  Rachel's viewers and listeners know she is gay, and they invite someone they know is gay into their living rooms on a regular basis. She may not think of her position on MSNBC as being an advocate for the LGBT population, but the mere fact that she is on TV and openly gay is a huge game-changer in the average American's perception of what gay people are like. Just being herself, doing her job and being openly gay provide a role model for straight Americans. We aren't so scary once we're known.
  
  The teenage generation watches with their parents and when a parent asks if they know she's gay, they usually answer, "ya, so?".
• Rachel is like a friend with whom you're having a serious political conversation; tough but not mean, making you think without calling you stupid if you don't get something right away. That's why I get the podcasts of her shows. I can watch or listen as many times as I need to to get what she's saying. In real life, I would say "okay, you lost me at ____. Please go back?".
• The formats for her radio and TV shows have only one guest on at a time, so there is no arguing going on between two people with opposite points of view. There is a calm, intelligent discussion. It's what I love about her show and hate about Hardball.
• She offers "truth with a twist", as opposed to spin, something new on TV and radio. The quote is from her interview in the November 2008 issue of The Advocate. Her radio show is "Dramamine for right-wing spin". I seriously miss her live radio show.
• She's a policy liberal, in other words not a talking head for the partisan liberal agenda.
• She faces off with Pat Buchanan on a regular basis and more than holds her own. The fact that they haven't killed each other amazes me.
• She's immensely patriotic. She cries at the drop of a hat, like when she hears The National Anthem. I love that I'm not the only one who does that!
• She's absolutely brilliant, and I mean incredibly smart, with probably the IQ of Albert Einstein and the common sense of Ben Franklin. How rare is that?
• Her doctoral dissertation is on how HIV could be controlled in prison populations.
• She's the first openly gay person to receive a Rhodes Scholarship.
• She wears glasses like most of us geeks. The contact lenses are for TV. I know how she feels. I prefer my glasses, too, and my baggy jeans and t-shirts.
• She's adorable and special, like golden retriever puppies. There is a pop culture reference in that phrase. Do you know what it is? Kent? Anyone?
  
  The pop culture reference is from the Nickelodeon cartoon Danny Phantom in the episode where Paulina wishes she was a cartoon character, and a genie grants her wish. After Danny turns her back into a person, Paulina says, "Why do I feel adorable and special? Because I am."