On April 13, Rachel Maddow was a guest on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where he interviewed her about the documentary The Timothy McVeigh Tapes a program she hosted and helped edit that was to be released on the anniversary of the Oklahoma bombings. Though I’m a fan of both of them and friends with Maddow, the following exchange gave me pause.
Rachel Maddow: [Timothy McVeigh] wasn’t really martyred to that movement in the way he wanted to be, and I actually think that’s in part [due to the] way of the very sober, one foot in front of the other way that they prosecuted him, and they put him on trial. I mean, that was done in exactly the right way. … I don’t think McVeigh is a hero to anybody, even to the people who agreed with him. But… whether or not he was disappointed he saw himself as triumphant. He said at one point, “Listen, I look at it in the crudest terms and say 168 to one. You can kill me and I’m still ahead.”
Jon Stewart: See, my problem with everything is intellectually, I feel like: how can human beings kill another human being? But boy, viscerally, I just want to be in that room and pull his throat out through his face. It’s very difficult for me to reconcile those two aspects of my persona.
RM: I feel the same way about, like, Bin Laden. I believe I could kill Osama Bin Laden with a spoon. [Laughter] I’d enjoy that because he’s a cold-blooded killer—Oops!
JS: Why, out of curiosity, do you pick a breakfast implement? Very unusual, something you would use for Jello as well. Very interesting.
RM: Says more about my feelings about spoons than it does about him, really.
Since we were in touch with Maddow, I asked her about the exchange:
Valley Advocate: I happened to catch you on Stewart’s show recently, and I was a little taken aback when both you and Stewart felt the need to explain how you’d both personally murder Bin Laden if given the chance. Didn’t sound like the Rachel I knew, and didn’t seem like the Stewart who so often speaks out against military action in favor of dialogue, etc. It appeared to me evidence that in the wake of what happened to Bill Maher, even the liberal media appears to feel required to take a Rambo stance every so often to assure the chest thumpers they’re not wimps.
A reply came the next morning:
Rachel Maddow: I didn’t think it was Rambo chest-thumping, nor was I trying to head off any feared criticism. I’m okay with criticism. If I remember correctly, we were talking about incitements to violence in political discourse. I was trying to joke about the difference between understandable, run-of-the-mill violent feelings, and incitement—saying that violent feelings aren’t themselves nuts (even when they’re dumb—hence the joke about wanting to kill him because he’s a killer). Kind of like Jimmy Carter’s comments that he’d committed lust in his heart (comments also not well-met, of course!).
Transcribing the interview, I realized that I may not have heard the irony in her initial response—even though she’d punctuated it with an “oops”—and was more focused on how the subsequent spoon jokes seemed out of place with the weighty subject matter. Replaying it a few times, I also saw that Stewart’s awkward question set the stage for an awkward response. I was impressed she remembered the exchange so clearly.
Still, with bully prevention being the subject du jour, I’ve lately been hyperconscious of the prevalence of bullying in the media, politics and most adult American discourse. Relationships we assume to be congenial suddenly implode. Those we rely on for reasoned, measured responses suddenly seem to prefer aggressive posturing over dialog.
Maddow, a veteran of WRSI, 93.9 FM continues to lend her voice to both WRSI and sister station, WHMP, 1400 AM, and she’s close to people on both sides of a recent imbroglio between station management and talk show host Bill Dwight. As a result of an inability to come to terms over internal policy, Dwight left the station. Subsequently, Bill Scher, host of The Liberal Oasis, which ran on WHMP, announced he would also be pulling his weekend political talk show in protest of the station’s “ill-considered decision.” I asked Maddow about the controversy:
Valley Advocate: Are you in solidarity with Dwight and Scher, or will we still be hearing your voice regularly on that station?
RM: I don’t want to wade into internal business at WHMP—I have lots of friends there and lots of respect for everyone involved. But I will say that I hope something can be worked out: Bill’s more than a treasure—at this point he’s verging on landmark status. I love his show, and I miss it already.
