Book: Rachel Maddow

Today I ran across this 2019 biography of Maddow by Lisa Rogak. It's breezy and mostly sourced from public records -- no indication she even interviewed the subject herself -- but I do loves me some Rachel. Just to read her life story (so far) is a joy.

Yeah, I watched her interview by Howard Stern on YouTube, and what she said was quoted almost verbatim in the book. It is, as mentioned, "publicly sourced."

The book mentions that Rachel has frequent, maybe constant bouts with depression and self doubt.  She drives herself so hard because of her overwhelming fear of failure.

Back in 2020 she mentioned on-air that her partner Susan Mikula had contracted Covid.  It was serious but she recovered, although she's had some symptoms of "long Covid" ever since: fatigue, confusion, unexplained headaches.

Then last month she went on a hiatus.  The reasons she gave were, one, to work on a movie or multi-part TV documentary version of "Bag Man," her book about Spiro Agnew.  And two, to develop some other new project she was working on, the details of which she didn't want to divulge.

I suspect there was also a three: doing a fact-filled carefully scripted show five days a week is exhausting.

But now I'm starting to worry that her GF's health and her own depression might be encouraging her to pull back somewhat from her insane work schedule.  She might retire or scale way back, like her mentor Keith Olbermann.

I for one would be devastated.

Susan has a website with a bunch of her work.  She does soft-focus (a nice way of saying "out of focus") Polaroid prints, mostly monochromatic, all uninteresting subjects like empty roads, houses in the distance, shadows of people.  Photos that look like accidents, or maybe some kid got hold of the camera.

Yeah.  "Art." :rolleyes: