photo by Deborah Cannon/American-Statesman
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, asked if she ever considered running for president:
“President of what? I’m not even president of my own house. No.”
Dressed in a loose blouse of big, brown checks and faded jeans — plus her signature oversize glasses — Maddow drew several thousand South by Southwest attendees to a talk early Sunday afternoon.
During the prepared speech, she appeared more serious than funny, as if giving a lecture to a college class on contemporary American history. Most of her thoughts were drawn from her new book, “Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power,” which was available for free in the convention center lobby after the speech.
Her opening was uncharacteristically hesitant: “I’ve never done this kind of thing before.”
Then Maddow veered into more familiar wit: “I’m turning 40 in about 5 minutes.” Folks cheered, then later wished her a tuneful happy birthday.
She talked at length about shifts in American attitudes to military service, pointing out that we tend these days to treat all returning troops as heroes, then we forget them. And by treating them that way, we ignore them as individuals.
She tied part of our disconnect to the lack of serious discussion about how much military might we need. We have 5,000 nuclear weapons along with few checks on the Pentagon Leviathan. Meanwhile, Congress keeps shoving weapons at the military that it doesn’t want or need.
One military leader has said: “We have no enemies in Congress.”
This “hands off” treatment and off-budget emergency funding in Congress contributes to the ease with which we go to war, Maddow suggests.
“We don’t really feel the consequences of war” she says, pointing out the huge gap between the lives of service families and others in our country. One percent of us are bearing all the burden. The rest of us get tax cuts.
Maddow, though she cries even at fake troop homecomings in commercials, wonders about the emotional connection to the troops that is not complemented by reform of the Veterans Administration or other real-world help.
Once she left behind the prepared remarks, Maddow loosened up.
Her biggest “get”? “Oh please, Mr. Cheney, let me interview you!”
How has social media changed things? “Social media makes things faster, ensures more people are heard, but also fosters a rush to errors.” (More than once, she pleaded for better editing.)
Least favorite buzzword? “Impact used as a verb. Unless you are a proctologist.”
Advice to young reporters? “Journalism is now more than ever a meritocracy. There’s always somebody out there that could get your scoop.”
Next frontier for equal rights? “There’s a fight among equals in the Republican Party to do the right thing vis-à-vis gay rights.”
Asked about SXSW, Maddow called it a cross between Lolapalooza and a political convention. “There’s a rock ‘n’ roll ethos, but people take issues seriously.”