Rachel Maddow beats out Larry King

By: Harry Waisbren

Great news for Rachel Maddow fans:

Rachel Maddow has continued her impressive ratings success. After beating Keith Olbermann to be MSNBC's #1 show Tuesday night, she repeated the feat Thursday night, taking in 1.97 million viewers to Olbermann's 1.94 million. What's more, she soundly defeated Larry King in the 9pm time slot, making her the #2 show at 9pm for the week, behind Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes" (whose ratings were helped last week by the Sarah Palin interview).

Maddow is a real inspiration, succeeding amidst the ongoing silencing of progressive thought in mainstream media. Glenn Greenwald has written before about this, cutting to the heart of the issue of why conservatives fight back so vehemently against commentators  like Maddow:

In our political discourse, the only real way to lose one's objectivity -- one's Seriousness credentials -- is to fail to appreciate and praise all the Good Virtues of the Right (the crime of which Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are guilty), or to be too disrespectful to the Bush administration (the sin committed by David Gregory, at least in Sacha Zimmerman's eyes). Liberalism is inherently shrill and unserious -- even when advocated by a smart and sober commentator like Maddow -- which is why the presence of an actual liberal or two on television sends shock and panic waves through The New Republic and Howie Kurtz's column, while the bulging stable of hard-core right-wing ideologues permeating news shows merits no concern; the virtual banishment of anti-war viewsfrom the establishment media barely provoked a single word of objection; and the loss of Tucker Carlson is deemed a matter of grave national mourning

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The myth of an inherrently liberal media continues to be the brazen lie that fuels our corrupt establishment. We are incredibly fortunate that progressives have another powerful voice fighting back against this corrupted conventional wisdom, all while proving that there is an increasingly strong desire for progressive voices in the public sphere.