Question for Dr. Maddow

It's amazing to me how much of my time goes by before I feel up to doing anything about it. In this, my latest return to posting on my weblog and on the weblogs of others, it's been my intention, as on all my other returns, to keep at it every day, as I've managed to do several times in the past. But I don't seem able to do more than one thing at a time, and all my other projects keep edging my postings aside, though not a day goes by that I don't compose something in my head that I could post, but I never commit them to paper or the computer.

Anyway, here is a question that I've been trying this morning to send to Rachel Maddow, the Air America host from 7 to 9 in the mornings, EST. My email server doesn't like the address that the Maddow show gives, so I'm posting it here, where I won't lose it and until I can figure something out. It's for a segment of her show that she calls "Ask Dr. Maddow Though She's not a Real Doctor."

I have a lot of admiration for Rachel Maddow. Her felicity in her speaking and in her thought processes is absolutely astounding, especially when compared to the likes of Al Franken and, for that matter, everybody else. No digressions for her. No stumbling. For the full two hours her words and paragraphs leave her bow cleanly and like hundreds of quivers of arrows sail straight through to her destinations, ALL of them.

But here is my question:

Hi, Ms Maddow.

You have a great program, to the point where for me it's the high point of the entire Air America schedule. Nevertheless I have long been troubled and baffled by the fact that you consistently introduce your segments with the sound bites of two stalwarts of the right wing, past and present -- John Wayne and the Limbaugh guy -- and no one else. Surely there have been legions of figures on your progressive end of the political spectrum who ought to have inspired you as much but apparently haven't.. So my question is: what deep point of your choices am I missing here?

Thanks

My beef here has to do with something that disturbs me about all the hosts on Air America, and that is their liking for airing the words of GW Bush and all the other pre-Fascist miscreants, over and over. I think I know why they do this, including the need for crutches to fill up the air time, but it just makes no sense. It seems to me that they're giving these rascals a lot of extra air time that they don't deserve in any way, shape, or form. And is the compliment being returned by them to the Air America people? I don't listen to any of the right wingers, so I wouldn't know for sure, but I feel totally comfortable with the guess that the answer is a resounding NO!

If I wanted to hear those thugs I would turn to their shows, but I don't. I avoid them like the plague, yet their evil is so pervasive that my eardrums are subjected to their garbage anyway, presented by people who are supposed to be their foes and opposites. That's not easy to accept.