Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz profiles MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in the wake of Keith Olbermann’s split with the network:
Olbermann so thoroughly defined MSNBC as the voice of liberal outrage that Maddow, a self-described policy geek, must help forge a new identity. Maddow says she misses Olbermann but dismisses “suspicions” that the channel is toning things down, saying the ugly breakup “really wasn’t about the rest of us.”
And that means Maddow’s — and MSNBC’s — targets haven’t changed.
In the Olbermann tradition, Maddow is increasingly denouncing Fox, saying that Glenn Beck, in monologues about Muslims, has been “running baroque conspiracies that are designed to freak people out about bogeymen coming to get them, conspiracies that are unsupported by the facts.” Fox, she charges, has “become a McCarthyite chamber of horrors… You can’t really call yourself a news channel if that’s what you broadcast.” Maddow’s repeated attacks have not provoked a response from Fox.