There's no gentle way to put this, so I'm just going to come right out with it: The Rachel Maddow Show, from Rachel on down, is taking the night off. Instead, MSNBC will be showing "MSNBC Films: The Assassination of Dr. Tiller hosted by Rachel Maddow."
In a few minutes Kent will be publishing a special cocktail recipe, so hopefully those of you so inclined will find some solace there. We look forward to seeing everyone on Monday.
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An blog post three hours before airtime and no prior announcements or promos--why am I getting a really bad feeling about this? Has Rachel offended the solons at corporate and is going to disappear a'la Keith Olbermann
You're taking a BREAK????????????? OMIGOD!!! Well at least we didn't have to GO TO JAIL early! Have a FABULOUS weekend!
Well, I applaud the "taking care" aspect.... but, I am sad!
here's a little film to get your wkend started..http://youtu.be/_LFp15H4Be0
Rachel, you deserve a nite off. But, after hearing the Pres. today at noon, could not
wait to hear your show. sorry hope you will respond on Mon. I will be listening.
M
Just finished watching "The Assassination of Dr. Tiller". All that energy and financial resources that the anti-abortion extremists devote should be refocused toward preventing unwanted pregnancies through education, preventing rape and incest through education, and preventing birth defects through research and education. That is what a true, intelligent Christian, would do. There is no honor in leaving your own son without a father, Scott Roeder. You did nothing more than abandon your own family when you chose your "Claim to Fame" upon realizing that you were nothing more than mediocre.
Grandiose actions in their own minds they believe they sacrifice self , when they abandon their family and kill someone, affecting their family. This is quite sick.
This is totally wrong, the Operation Rescue folks (and other radicals that whip up emotions to "justify" "taking them out") need to know what it means to incite their audience, influencing them to take action, then wash their hands like Pontius Pilate.
She is trying to beat Ed to the prime throw em back in the water after ripping their lips off fishing spot. Ed got a head start yesterday.
I'll miss ya Rachel, get some much needed rest!
What's funny is that when I went to play the podcast tonight (had a thing to attend earlier, and I didn't check the blog first), I got intercepted by MSNBC with a request that I take a survey.
OK, I'll take the survey. So I started filling it out. Viewing habits. Number of hours and minutes I spend watching news, different types of news. Gee, I don't watch any Entertainment or Sports news. Go figure.
But here's the strange part: Through the course of the survey, I reveal that I watch MSNBC almost exclusively (some PBS, but I have to catch Bill Moyers on podcast, cuz I can never figure out when he's on anymore). Oh, and I don't watch any idiotic reality shows (and they're all idiotic). That probably removed me from the self-defining circular reasoning pool right there.
Perhaps I offended the marketing survey gods. Suddenly, part-way through the survey, I got dumped out. The screen said, "Sorry Charlie, too many people gave the kind of answers you gave, and we don't need any more of those to fill our quota."
Say what?! I mean, yes, I have a graduate degree in social sciences, so I have taken the requisite courses in SPSS and survey instrument construction. I sort of know what I'm doing, even tho I learned enough quantitative communication research methods to know that I believe the results gained from qualitative research more.
So yeah, I do know I could get kicked out of a survey for being an anomaly (meaning, like with the The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)-- I took that once and broke the test, even tho that's the test they give to suspected psychotics and schizophrenics in prisons-- if they identify too many contradictions, they presume you are screwing with the test, sort of like cheating on a polygraph test. And yes, I was answering that honestly too. That I broke that supposedly unbreakable test left me depressed for weeks).
But tonight I was not giving anomalous answers. I was giving TRUE answers, answers I imagine many of the other avid Maddow fans who post on this board would also give. TRMS composes the majority of my media diet. So shoot me. You got a QUOTA for that? Like if you get too many of those kinds of results, they get EXCLUDED?
I'm sorry, but I don't know what kind of BS social science method EVER stacks its sampling deck that way, unless it is trying to deliberately bias its results. I mean, online surveys, even when they appear suddenly in a dialogue box on a web page, are self-selected. The user must CHOOSE to complete them. That is an inherent self-selection bias, even if you are A-B testing the instrument, as some kind of a pilot study.
But that's why no one should pretend to validity of most marketing data that is gathered from any other method than TRUE random sampling (usually phone or direct mail queries, culled randomly from a much larger data set with pre-screened characteristics. In other words, the entity conducting the research knows they are talking to a pre-screened specific live person whose identifying characteristics will be removed when the data is processed-- but that absolutely precludes ANYONE being able to take the survey more than once. A one-to-one data confirmation, in other words.) And this is also my field, since I design web sites for a living, and often specify insert intercepts such as these on pages, for sites that need feedback on their design. All that is is design or usability feedback. No pretense to being actual valid data.
Online surveys can be easily made to remove multiple entries by the same person or persons (ballot-stuffing, so to speak-- what we used to do in the old days, when TV Guide would post a poll, Who is Better, Xena or Highlander? Highlander always won, and Xena fans knew why. There were a bunch of hackers in the Highlander universe, and they easily coded up a bunch of voting bots that just endlessly pinged the vote. Xena fans, while able to code a decent SQL fan fiction database, weren't really good enough script kiddies to code up bots or other agents. It took about 3-4 years for TV Guide and People magazine to even figure out how the fans were stacking the votes and block it-- turns out media organizations were even worse coders than the Xena fans).
So a survey query randomly pops up on my screen. Am I a random sample? Then why was there a quota blocking too many people who were Maddow fans (on a page where I was getting ready to PLAY TRMS PODCAST?!
Uh, yeah, we don't want too many Maddow fans taking this MSNBC survey we're placing on TRMS SITE, because that's just TOO ANOMALOUS for this survey. We want to know what the media diet is for the people who are NOT Maddow fans, watching the TRMS podcast. Because, oh, there's just so many more of those?
In what lowest common denominator world do these survey-conducting folks live? The same people who are doing whatever sort of odd demographic programming things to The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell? Sheesh, the format of that show is going through so many personnel and permutations, I can't even keep up with all the desks and the screen-tested people at them, mixed in with the real (non-Barbie) folks. No offense, but I just can't deal.
Revenge of Ye Olde School Media Demographic Managers? Comcast pukes? There's always a backlash, I suppose. I just hate the idea. Wouldn't it be nice if truth and justice could prevail?
(sorry, I just finished Lizz Winstead's book, which was so wonderful, but the narrative behind the Air America part of the story just saddened me, especially because I was making appt radio listening by 2005 JUST FOR Air America, on the AM dial in Montana, no less. Guam?! Is it so hard to get POVs outside of the most craven (or sophistically duplicitous) corporate interests on the air? Must we always have to finagle and end run and slip in sideways?)
Now I really need Obi Wan Kenobi. He must be our only hope. After all, I just got kicked out of a marketing survey on the Death Star.
Sorry, I'm just still pissed off, fuming, etc. I just had to add one more point, about the oddity of excluding people from an MSNBC marketing survey who appear to like TRMS too much.
Anybody remember back in the 90s, when AOL first decided to let its walled garden inhabitants have an on-ramp onto the Internet proper?
I mean, besides making fun of all the noobs who suddenly showed up with AOL email addresses and no sense of online netiquette, asking inane questions and behaving badly?
Those were the days of the famous AOL busy signal, cuz all those folks were still on dial-up. Well hell, I was still on dial-up then too, but being at a very techy university, I had access to a high capacity dial-up on-ramp. Bourgie me.
What was so funny about that busy signal was that America Online DIDN'T KNOW WHAT IT DIDN'T KNOW.
It's one thing to have a busy signal and to go, "Oh look, people are complaining that they can't get online." But because the busy signal blocked innumerable numbers of people, AOL had NO SENSE of the scale of it, the numbers of people who actually could not get through. All they knew was that their lines were tied up when the capacity reached X.
How high the demand for capacity was OVER X, they had no way of knowing.
I do make fun of a lot of the limitations of statistical sampling, because, even with all the stats and math, p and n values and all, if you don't ask the RIGHT QUESTIONS, the answers you get may be pure @!$%#e, and you'd never really know it, because of the blinders, the narrowness of quantifiable responses, things which can be counted.
The world of sampling likes to deal with about 1,500 people. It is SO validated, SO universally loved, that you can take any randomly generated sample of about 1,500 people and extrapolate entire universes, masses of unknowable scale and size.
The richness and complexity of the universe, boiled down to 1,500 people. To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour. Thank you Mr. Blake.
But if too many people register a similar POV, that violates a pre-set quota. Because in those 1,500 people, no similar POV can be that dominant (what, mob rule? where's the minority rights?). You can't assign POVs to partial people or fractions of a person anyway.
Is it sort of like the opposite of the finer granularity of the richest 1%? Versus the richest .001%?
To the serf or the person hanging on to a single-wide in the trailer park, Castle A is rich, and Castle B is rich. That there may be vast differences of scale between the riches of Castle A (McMansion row in Buckhead, outside of Atlanta) and Castle B (the Gates compound) from that POV is just a data point that gets lost in the busy signal.
I can count to 10, but anything higher than that is just "a whole lot".
A 1,500-person sample-set survey can't count the intensity of TRMS fandom, so long as it shuts out anything over a "quota" by dumping it out with a "busy signal."
I know, I know, I've probably got this all wrong. But it's counter-intuitive, and besides that, it chaps my hide.
Rachel,
It's been a rough week for anybody who would be a fan of your show. I hope you are taking a well-deserved rest. I don't know how I will make it to Monday!
Thank you for all you do,
A new and enthusiastic fan
Me, I've always had the ambition of setting the MMPI to music.
I mean, that's a soaring thing to bellow out: "I know who my enemies are!"
Dear Dr. Boese,
Please tell me you feel better now, honey.
Best,
MG
Chris, surveys are a waste of time and money and resources. Our opinions don't count for much today. Noone is listening. On the other hand if they are listening, I ran across the Rachel show by accident and I haven't stopped watching since. I pray that her show could be aired on Prime-time, which I think she should pursue next. There are a lot of people who will soon be unable to afford Satellite TV or Cable TV due to their deceptive practices of doubling your bill overnight. I have the ability to read a person and if Rachel gets duked you know whose to blame. We all know, every single one of us who blogs or watches her show knows. We are all just holding onto to the fact that this might very well be the last place where we will find the truth. The American People are demanding to know the truth. And they deserve it. Where else can we find it except in our own hearts.
Yes, microgreek, that big dump above was very cathartic. Although I now feel compelled to find ways to set the MMPI to music! (THANK YOU, just-john!)
Angel#77, I do have more hope than you do (definition of cynic is disappointed idealist, right?). I mean, IF no one is listening, why would money be spent on surveys in the first place? I do believe there is a desire to listen (and TRMS folks actually DO read this stuff, something I discovered by surprise, and it shocked me out of my base cynicism and left me with a nice warm fuzzy).
However, I also believe the baseline of the marketing and pre-Internet mass media industry is locked into reactionary assumptions and deeply entrenched insider baseball spawned by the peculiar limitations of the evolution of one-to-many communication forms in what they think is capitalism, but is actually more of a social-norming, aspirational, always-be-selling side effect of marketers only talking to other marketers, eliminating ALL outliers and oddities, and subjecting everything to relentless homogenization.
If I didn't already believe such things, I most certainly would after the bizarre presentation I overheard in my cubicle this past week (the presenter/company shall remain unnamed), an Internet company that was pitching its new Internet TV "programming" channels (and which online media company ISN'T developing curated "channels" for Internet TV these days? Like the way magazines saw the iPad as revenge of the dumb print designs (I mean, magazine "innovation" as a series of PNG slideshows, in what universe?), all of a sudden EVERY big online publishing entity thinks punting OLD SCHOOL horseless carriage television CHANNELS to the empowered, a'la carte browsing Internet is as hot as sliced bread).
So this presentation, for a big online publishing outfit, was barfy cheese galore. As I was rolling my eyes over the presenter who never met a superlative he didn't like, my cubemate leaned over and said, "They're just reciting their cable upfront presentation." And I was like, "Oh god, that's exactly what it is!"
Those cable upfronts, the overt sales pitches that court ad buys for the year ahead. I'm not in that audience, thankfully, because I would be throwing up in my mouth all day.
But an INTERNET company?! Acting like it was going to lock in a closed set of advertisers in a smarmy, closed world? The Internet is broad and wide. This is open range, people. People show up at web sites because they WANT to, not because some cable company or mega-advertisers is force feeding them some buried channel order, digital package of reality shows, or completely manipulated BS product placement.
Please can I dance on the grave of the marketing industry sometime soon? "People of Earth, Markets are Conversations... "12 years old and still as pithy as when The Cluetrain Manifesto first came out.
So the closed world of the "entertainment" industry warps our culture, removes us from real, grassroots, created-by-people-not-marketers cultures and traditions, is SO removed from the people it is projecting AT (not to), by the one-to-many thick dividing glass of the broadcast communication model that they are forced to enact heroic measures in an attempt to LISTEN, to discover what real people may actually think and like.
But they really hate the idea of doing that. So for every focus group, for every survey, I truly believe there's some blinders-wearing marketer trying to stack the deck, bias the group or survey toward a pet set of assumptions. This circularity has been going on so long, that now is also the norm. And then the norms are normed. And then the aspirational entrants into marketing get enculturated into the normed norms. So they try to out-norm the norms inside the bubble.
And on top of all this, like icing on the cake, are the fluffy new show pitches for the cable upfronts, where everything is superlative, where every new show is hot, will be the next big thing, will change your life. Because if they say so it must be so.
But it is really all just pulled straight out of the lowest common denominator normed normed norms that crawled up their hindquarters and died there.
@Chris, you may be interested to know that the nuclear industry uses the MMPI to determine who is allowed unescorted access to our plants (along with background checks and such). Or maybe you already knew that.
I've had the pleasure of taking the MMPI three times to maintain my access. And setting it to music sounds just ducky, @just-john.
I have no idea what ifyouarealiberal just said. I don't even know if I'm willing to learn, my heads already about to explode. Right on, Chris!
That probably means I won't be allowed anywhere near any nukes! I did know that it is required for top secret and govt clearances, but I didn't think about the non-governmental nuclear industry.
When my friend worked in the Clinton Adm, he got to go into Sandia, Los Alamos, and probably even Yucca Mt. He had the highest clearance. I never really thought about what it took to get it (he was the chief public affairs officer for both the Depts of Energy and Interior--at different times over the 8 years).
Then he got a REALLY rare brain cancer and died at age 55. Part of me wonders about that high level access, and if he might not have been visiting some toxic facility on a day when it happened to burp or fart out something nasty.
Rachel, I watched tonight's show and there is a similar case that is getting absolutely no play. Another unhinged individual decided to play hero and shot a registered sex offender. Practically the same M.O. to gain the spotlight thinking that they were going to save everyone. I hope you check it out. Thanx, Ric
http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/crime-law/wife-slain-sex-offender-nobody-has-any-compassion/nPMmg/
Fine, and I hope you all had a fabulous day... But next time, please give us a warning? I SO look forward to starting my days, Tuesday through Saturday, with the TRMS podcast and I can't tell you what a letdown it is to find myself deprived. It's bad enough to be blind-sided by a guest host, all of whom are great but not-Rachel; to have no show at all--plus, no Last Word either--well, that just took my breath away!
;-)
Peace.
It gets interesting, when people try to figure how to fix a problem that some Political Psychopath Cracker Monkeys have caused.
Please, give us a longer "warning" period. You really do go through withdrawal without the show.
Hope you all had a great weekend and that everything is ok. Thanks for all you do!
See you monday :)
I have seen many of teachers who work their butts off to help their students, I have seen policemen and fire fighters who put their life on the line everyday. Then to hear Mitt Romney say that these people are not real Americans, really piss me off. Tell the fire fighter who went into those twin towers on 9/11 that they are not real Americans. Tell the family of the fire fighters who didn't make it out of those twin towers that they weren't real Americans. Teachers, Policemen, and Fire fighters are more American than some arrogant rich white politician who think the White House is owed to him.
It would appear that Mitt thinks slander is a fine, upstanding, moral type of behavior. If he behaves this way while campaigning, what will he do when in office? I wish Obama were more tenacious in pointing out Mitt's lies...and helping citizens see Mitt's verbal guano for what it is.