Wednesday, February 23, 2011
"The Rachel Maddow Show" on MSNBC broadcast from Free State Brewery in Lawrence Wednesday.
The show typically offers political news and commentary from a left-leaning perspective. The episode broadcast live on Wednesday focused on both former attorney general Phill Kline’s ethics hearing in Topeka and followed up on the show’s past coverage of Dr. George Tiller’s murder in Wichita.
Rachel Maddow has been hosting the show since its debut in September 2008. She was also a radio host on the station, Air America, until it went bankrupt last year.
Maddow’s show managed to fill up the brewery to capacity hours before the broadcast, with many University of Kansas students among the crowd.
“I came down because I really like Rachel’s perspective on current events and social issues,” said Vincent Jerkovich, a freshman from Salina. “My thinking really aligns with hers.”
Jerkovich and his friends John Baker and Gavin Hanson, both freshmen from Salina, said they had only found out about the broadcast hours before they’d arrived.
“I heard about it walking down the stairs of Wescoe. Someone walked past me and I overheard.”
The show’s decision to broadcast from Lawrence wasn’t only a surprise to students, but to Free State’s manager, Alex Hamilton.
“They called us on Tuesday out of the blue,” Hamilton said.
Concerning the left-leaning tendency of the show, Hamilton also said that Free State was open to everyone.
“If Bill O’Reilly wanted to do a show here we would probably let him do it,” he said.
Bill Wolff, the show’s executive producer and vice president of Prime Time at MSNBC, said he was surprised to learn about the brewery’s history.
“It turned out to have this amazing story, the first brewery allowed in Kansas in 100 years, the John Brown plaque, the story of Bleeding Kansas, and the 1856 burning of Lawrence; it turns out to be this amazing place,” Wolff said. “We didn’t know any of that. We were glad about that, but that was totally a happy accident.”
Wolff said the show had chosen Kansas for their story because it was on the front line of the culture war in regards to reproductive rights, a topic they’ve been covering for months. Last October the show broadcast a documentary titled, "The Assassination of George Tiller" narrated by Rachel Maddow.
“One of the big themes we’ve been examining is the idea of threats...and threats of violence...and violence being used as a political tactic,” Wolff said, “and it’s not supposed to be that way.”
During their time in Kansas, Wolff said the crew’s experience has been positive.
“The people have been typically incredibly nice, incredibly helpful, and really eager to talk about this story.”
— Edited by Brittany Nelson
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Comments
'The Rachel Maddow Show' films at Free State Brewery
It's Phill Kline, not Phil.
'The Rachel Maddow Show' films at Free State Brewery
Rachel Maddow is not left-leaning. She is obviously a moderate democrat with right-leaning tendencies.
'The Rachel Maddow Show' films at Free State Brewery
Also it's "Bleeding Kansas" not "Bloody Kansas".
'The Rachel Maddow Show' films at Free State Brewery
For the people who agree with Maddow; you're going to be very disappointed when you realized the rest of the world doesn't agree with her. Expand your circle of friends and listen (not just hear) to some opposition. Speaking of opposition, I wonder if that is why so quickly organized and executed; fear of opposition. If you can't stand opposition then you must not have a very strong argument. For the owner; if this letter is accurate why did you say you would "probably" have O'Reilly here if he wanted to. Why not say he is absolutely free to come here? Since I am a conservative I would get on my secret short-wave radio frequency and pass along the offer to Commander O'Reilly.
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