Frum: Maddow's sarcasm same as shouting out 'kill him' David Edwards and Muriel Kane

Published: Tuesday October 14, 2008





Print This Email This MSNBC's Rachel Maddow introduced an interview with National Review columnist David Frum on Monday by sarcastically enumerating recent examples of chaos in the McCain campaign and its increasing loss of support from GOP activists, intellectuals, and elected officials.



Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, has expressed his own criticisms of how the McCain campaign has been run, but he appeared less interested in discussing them than in attacking Maddow's satiric tone as being somehow equivalent to the Republicans' demonization of William Ayers.



Maddow, however, handled Frum so deftly that one top Daily Kos diaries headed an entry on the encounter, "Rachel PWNS Frum -- Big Time." Even Matt Lewis at the conservative website Townhall wrote "David Frum Has His Clock Cleaned by Rachel Maddow," and called the interview "arguably one of the most pathetic appearances I've seen."



Maddow began by asking Frum what he had meant by his recent suggestion that "those who press this Ayers line of attack are whipping Republicans and conservatives into a fury that's going to be very hard to calm after November."



"You were talking through much of the show about the matter of tone in our politics," Frum stated in response, "and yet I think we are seeing an intensification of some the ugliness of tone that's been a feature of American politics in the past eight years. I mean, the show unfortunately is itself an example of that problem, with its heavy sarcasm and sneering and its disregard for a lot of the substantive issues that really are important."



"Do you think that my tone on this show is equivalent to people calling Barack Obama somebody who pals around with terrorists?" Maddow asked in amazement. "People yelling from the audience at McCain-Palin rallies 'bomb Obama,' 'kill him,' 'off with his head,' 'traitor.' Are you accusing me of an equivalence in tone?"



"I don't think that's an important question," Frum answered condescendingly. "I think the question is, given the small plate of responsibility that you personally have, how do you manage that responsibility. The fact that other people fail in other ways is not an excuse for you failing in your way."



"You did just say that it's the same thing," Maddow insisted. "I sense also that there's a devotion to coming up with a sort of false equivalence. ... You saying that my tone on this show -- sarcasm, being playful, the way that I approach issues -- would be somehow equivalent to the McCain campaign, I'm guessing, saying they don't want to talk about the economy."



"If we want to have a more intelligent, more grown-up politics ... then we ought to do it," Frum replied, attempting to maintain a position of superior seriousness. "I absolutely am concerned and unhappy by the kind of campaign my party has been running, and I'm doing my best to try to raise the tone."



"When you say that you want the discourse to be more grown-up and more intelligent, I agree with you on intelligent," answered Maddow. "I don't necessarily agree with you on grown-up. I think there's room for all sorts of different kinds of discourse, including satire. ... But I do think that there's something qualitatively different about threats of violence and about accusations that people are un-American."



Frum, appearing backed into a corner, was finally reduced to arguing that candidates may not hear the more inflammatory cries from the audience, but that "John McCain has tried to dial it back." He also acknowledged that "the McCain campaign is doing a non-substantive job and doing a lot of politics of cultural resentment. That's all true, and they're going to pay a heavy price in November."



Frum attempted to explain his poor performance the next day, writing, "I don't watch the show, but I had (or thought I had) a rough idea of what it was like. ... I watched the show in horror in the MSNBC green room. Maybe I was a bit crankier than usual: I'm still jet-lagged enough that I have been going to bed by 8:30 most nights this week ... Anyway I was unprepared for the sarcasm and anger of what I saw. So when it was my time to go on air -- and instead of being asked about Afghanistan I was asked about how awful and hateful the John McCain campaign was -- I got a little grouchy."





This video is from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast October 13, 2008.









Download video via RawReplay.com









