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" We weren&amp;#039;t surprised when pundit Rachel Maddow, 35, got her own show. The openly gay poli-sci Ph.D. was a radio star at struggling lefty outpost Air America before nailing a guest-hosting gig on Countdown With Keith Olbermann. Now, with The Rachel Maddow Show (9 p.m. EST, MSNBC), she&amp;#039;s become an unlikely cable-news hero, earning great ratings with her goofy demeanor, her everywoman look (monochromatic pantsuits straight out of 1997 and &amp;quot;the bare minimum of makeup for TV&amp;quot;), and her knack for boiling down nuanced issues without pandering. Just the kind of wonky gal we&amp;#039;d want to have a drink with - so that&amp;#039;s what we did.  MC: You seem to be having a lot of fun. It&amp;#039;s a good time to be a pundit, isn&amp;#039;t it?  RM: Yes! What wasn&amp;#039;t going on during this election? We had a woman and an African-American man running! There was the opportunity for change after eight crisis-ridden years of Bush. And John McCain - always a bridesmaid but never a bride - finally ran for president at age 72. It was operatic!  MC: Have you met McCain and Obama?  RM: I haven&amp;#039;t met anybody. I don&amp;#039;t go to Washington, and I don&amp;#039;t go to parties. I&amp;#039;d rather read.  MC: What do you read?  RM: I do everything online. The start of my day is AP, Reuters, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The L.A. Times, The Boston Herald.  MC: Wow. All before breakfa--  RM: Huffington Post, InProgress, RawStory, National Review Online, RedState, Drudge, Wired, McClatchy, Washington Independent, BBC . . .  MC: So are you part of MSNBC&amp;#039;s alleged plan to balance out right-leaning Fox by slanting far left?  RM: How is MSNBC like Fox? What&amp;#039;s Fox&amp;#039;s version of Joe Scarborough, a conservative who gets three hours each morning on our network?  MC: But you do tend to host like-minded guests.  RM: We have Republicans on almost every night. During the election, we begged McCain&amp;#039;s advisers to come on, but they wouldn&amp;#039;t show us the love. And it&amp;#039;s too bad, because their campaign was a lot more interesting. The Obama campaign was like, &amp;quot;Maintain. Make no news.&amp;quot; The McCain campaign was like, &amp;quot;Set yourself on fire! Set your dog on fire! Put a lit firecracker in the glove compartment and go through the car wash! See what happens! Whoo-hoo!&amp;quot;  MC: When you started at Air America, you told gay newsmagazine The Advocate you wouldn&amp;#039;t play down your identity as an out-lesbian liberal. Does the same go for this gig?  RM: Yes, because I don&amp;#039;t have any option. I&amp;#039;m not going to be less gay or more pretty. I can&amp;#039;t try to have less personality or fewer controversial opin-ions. Newspeople tend to go through this homogenizing, high-heat process to become a palatable thing that to me has limited appeal.  MC: So the network didn&amp;#039;t try to make you over?  RM: Nope. I said, &amp;quot;Are you OK with what I look like?&amp;quot; And they said, &amp;quot;Yeah, we&amp;#039;re totally fine.&amp;quot;  MC: What do you do when you&amp;#039;re not doing your pundit thing?  RM: On weekends I stay away from politics, which isn&amp;#039;t hard because we don&amp;#039;t own a TV. I go to the dump every Saturday. I wake up on Sunday and plan out what cocktail I&amp;#039;m going to make that night. I&amp;#039;m a hobbyist bartender and a drinking bully.  MC: You bully people into drinking?  RM: I bully them about what they drink - whether I think it&amp;#039;s worthy. Your Peronis pass muster. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.marieclaire.com/politics/news/a2307/rachel-maddow-girl-crush/>