Conceived and started in 2004 as a counter to the preponderance of right-wing rhetoric on talk radio, Air America has struggled to find success in the ratings or at the bottom line. That doesn't mean there the network doesn't offer quality programming, however. One example of that is "The Rachel Maddow Show."
PageOneQ profiles this host who happens to be a lesbian. She is out, but her show is not consumed with LGBT issues.
And while Maddow's sexual orientation is no secret to her regular listeners, she said she tends to discuss queer issues far less than her straight progressive counterparts "not by design, but just because of what I am interested in."
"I am really interested in war and foreign policy and electoral issues... I absolutely do tremendously care about HIV issues, and prison issues and gay issues -- but what I have found is that when I am really personally invested in a political issue, I do my least effective radio about those topics," she explained. "I talk about AIDS issues less than I should, given the importance of AIDS issues right now, and that's largely because I find myself ineffective at them, because I don't have good perspective about how to make it newsworthy for someone else. I know too much information about it, and so my perspective is not at all like that of an average Joe. And I therefore find it very hard to talk about it in a way that will draw other people in...when we get down to stuff that I am really, actively engaged in -- and that if I left radio I would go back to do full time activism on -- I am at my least effective."
Maddow added that while she has done some "gay specific-programming" through fill-in work at Sirius Satellite Network's LGBT station OutQ, she was "not very good at it.""I mean, yes, I am a gay person, but gay niche radio? They are straight hosts out there who are a lot better at that than me. I am good at explaining why the immigration bills never got passed, or doing cocktail recipes or talking about horse racing," she said with a laugh. "I may not be very good at it, but I am totally out. And that to me is even more radical. To say, 'Hey, I'm a big lesbian, and you can get your news from me instead of from NPR,' is to some extent a more radical statement... by the virtue of the fact that I am gay, every time I open up my mouth, what they hear me talking about is something gay."
Maddow is an excellent example of a person not being defined by his or her sexual orientation. Just as I don't focus my thoughts on how to express my heterosexuality, Maddow doesn't make her program all about being a lesbian.
Life is a lot more complex than that.
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