Remember the day when “Nothing Happened?” to Ralph Melish back in 1973?
Oddly enough, 1973 was also the year that gave us Rachel Maddow, star of the ratings-challenged MSNBC. Perhaps as an infant, young Ms. Maddow heard the Python sketch and filed it away for use on a show she would host some 37 years later. Yesterday was that day, as Maddow decided she would cover and analyze things that did not happen.
A California Judge decides that he knows better than the 7 million California voters who supported Proposition 8 and overturns the will of the people. Fast forward a day later and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is indignant. But Maddow is not upset about the anger bubbling up from the GOP. Perhaps that is because there was little or none. On her Thursday night show, Maddow’s spent the entire first block of her show wondering why the GOP and social conservatives were not freaking out about this.
Maddow was incredulous. How dare they not play into MSNBC’s hand on this? Newsweek Senior Editor Jon Alter was called in to toss a few hollow theories on why the GOP was not convulsing and hollering because an activist judge decided that he knew better than the people. The two prattled on for nearly 15 minutes on a non-story.
There were the expected attacks on the usual targets of the Left; Newt Gingrich, The Mormon Church (complete with the obligatory and hacky polygamy joke), and Mitt Romney.
Were show producers planning an opening segment filled with rebuttals to anticipated GOP/conservative anger that never surfaced?
Maddow also spent considerable time talking about statements that Rand Paul was not able to make to her because he had the good judgment to not respond to her invitation to be ambushed on her show again. And then there was the segment about Rep. Pete Hoekstra and how he did not win the GOP primary for the Governorship of Michigan. Hoekstra is not running for re-election and will not be Governor, so what’s the point of wasting valuable network time?
I cannot wait to tune in to TMS tomorrow night and see what else did not happen.