Rachel Maddow

Rachel Maddow

It is too depressing and journalistically depraved a bunch on both sides of the great American political divide with which to spend your professional life.

But seldom do arrogance, ignorance, cultural irony and act-like-you-know phony bluster come together as they did in a segment on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show Thursday.

Part of that was Senator Joseph McCarthy red-baiting the heck out of the entertainment industry, dragging in actors and writers and anyone he thought might have a whiff of communism on them ... Well, in 1947, Ronald Reagan testified before that committee -- as a friendly witness."

Reagan testified before HUAC in Hollywood. McCarthy, a senator, had nothing to do with that House committee. John Parnell Thomas and John Rankin were among the more notorious names on that committee. They were members of the House -- not the Senate. Let's see if MSNBC and Ms. Maddow correct the mistakes tonight.

You can read more analysis from Mark Finkelstein at NewsBusters about this matter here -- including a paragraph citing Ann Coulter also pointing out what a sorry, mixed-up, muddleheaded view of history Maddow was peddling in this video.

I have compared Glenn Beck's view of American history to that of an elementary student enamoured of the hagiography of biographers like Parson Weems. Maddow is worse in this case.

The Rachel Maddow Show enjoys the highest degree of engagement, meaning minutes spent per month, among all the NBC News and MSNBC news programs, according to MSNBC.com president Charles Tillinghast, in this interview with Beet.TV

Part of its success has been from an online/offline strategy, involving high degree of interactivity around Apps and social media, Tillinghast explains in this video.

An MSNBC.com spokeswoman tells Beet.TV: "Online viewers watch over 45 minutes a month of The Rachel Maddow Show video, making it one of the top viewed video sources in the digital NBC News network."  Her source is the comScore March Video Metrix.