The Left's Rachel Maddow Arousal

MSNBC has announced that progressive radio personality and political analyst Rachel Maddow will take over the network's 9pm time slot, replacing veteran anchor Dan Abrams:

With the promotion, which takes effect Sept. 8, Maddow, 35, breaks into what had been criticized as a boys club at the network, led by [Keith] Olbermann and Chris Matthews. Hillary Clinton's campaign frequently ripped MSNBC for what it called sexist coverage during the Democratic primaries. Maddow, who lives with her girlfriend Susan Mikula in Manhattan and Northampton, Mass., may also be the first openly gay woman to host a prime-time program.

Her appointment is certain to draw criticism that MSNBC is moving further left in an attempt to compete with Fox News from the opposite side of the spectrum. John McCain's campaign has repeatedly assailed the network's campaign coverage as biased.

Perhaps the network's leftward lurch explains why the radical netroots is in heat over Maddow's appointment.

Daily Kos gets worked up, "Finally":

I'll never understand why this took so damn long ... Her show will follow Olbermann's, and a HUGE congratulations to one of the smartest voices on cable land.

Spencer Ackerman erupts with some vengeance:

To see an unapologetic, confrontational progressive display a forthrightly liberal point of view from behind the anchor desk of a cable television news show with any consistency has been, for years, nonexistent, even as the country has grown progressively more progressive as the obvious decadence of conservatism has been on display. Rachel Maddow is long overdue.

David Sirota positively climaxes:

This is proof that even in today's disgusting, nepotistic and cutthroat media world - a world that too often rewards idiocy and the idiots that spout the idiocy - good things can happen to good people.

Rachel is the opposite of an idiot - she's one of the smartest people in politics today. She is not just good people - she's great people, and she deserves this.

So, I guess to be "smart," "unapologetic," "confrontational," in "today's disgusting, nepotistic" media environment generates a seal of approval from those who have said American contractors killed by terrorists in Iraq had it coming, that President Bush should die "at the hague," and that the United States deserved the "blowback" of the September 11 attacks.

Yep, "good things happen to good people," especially in the MSNBC/Olbermann universe, where former first ladies get demonized as the "worst person in the world.

Not bad for "a Ph.D. Rhodes scholar lesbian policy wonk who started as a prison AIDS activist."

I'm sure Maddow will be more than "fair and balanced" at her new home.