She has the tenacity of Hillary Clinton, but she dresses like Barack Obama

I didn't come up with that title myself...it is one of the blurbs on the Rachel Maddow Show (radio version) that they play at the beginning of the hour.

Here is what Rachel said about being out on AfterEllen.com.

“I think the responsibility that we have as gay Americans,” she says, “is to the extent that we can - and we ought to be really ambitious about the extent to which we can - we have to be out.”

“That’s the thing that we owe the people who came before us who are the pioneers, and that’s the thing we owe the next generation of gay people in terms of clearing the way and making life easier for them. I think that there is a moral imperative to be out, and I think that if you’re not out, you have to come to an ethical understanding with yourself why you are not. And it shouldn’t be something that is excused lightly. I don’t think that people should be forced out of the closet, but I think that every gay person, sort of, ought to push themselves in that regard. Because it’s not just you. It’s for the community and it’s for the country.”

Thank you, Rachel. I think you summed it up perfectly!

Maddow Giddiness...

At this moment my heart is swelling with pride. Rachel Maddow is a rock star.

I just (again) watched Rachel spank Pat Buchanan on national television. I love it when she does that.

Let's talk about how amazing this person is as compared to me. I am almost 32 years old; Rachel is 35. I have $67 in the bank and am unemployed; Rachel is the host of a successful radio show, regularly appears as a political pundit on MSNBC, and was just given her on show on the same network. I'm sitting in a house I don't own playing with cats that aren't mine watching the Democratic Convention on TV; Rachel is part of the political roundtable in Denver AT THE CONVENTION and she was just complimented on her intelligence by Kathleen Sebelius and Tom Brokaw in the span of 30 seconds. I suck.

Seriously though: I'm proud. Proud that a person - a woman - a gay woman, at that, is receiving so much publicity and respect because she is SMART. Not because of her looks or her funniness (although I do think she is both hot and funny), but because she is a Rhodes Scholar and an outstanding politcal commentator. I'm proud because she is an out "mannish woman" lesbian (her words!) and that a representation of me and the people that I care about is finally a part of mainstream television news. Maddow doesn't flaunt her sexuality - it is just a fact, like the air she breathes or the color of her hair.

Thank you, Rachel.