Long enough that when she had a melanoma scare within months of Mikula ending up on death’s door with COVID, it sunk in that she didn’t want to be working 60 hours a week until she retires. She’s been doing the job long enough that it supremely messed up her back, which now has seven herniated or bulging discs that she manages with physical therapy. Maddow, at 49, has been behind the desk for almost a decade and a half. In October 2010, after a particularly rollicking broadcast from a historic Delaware tavern, where the Maddow Show was covering a Senate showdown between Chris Coons and Christine O’Donnell (remember her?), an exhausted Maddow remarked to a colleague, “A person could only do this job for five years.”Īs if.
OUTSIZE DEATH STEELE DOSSIER FULL
(Someone described it to me as being like “a bunch of people holed up studying for finals every night, like in a library, panic researching.”) Throughout the years, Maddow has usually written the A-block monologue herself, on the heels of a full day’s worth of research. Maddow is exceptionally hands-on, and the opening of each show-the “A-block,” in cable news parlance-requires an intensive level of preparation on a tight deadline. The program, known as much for its historical wonkery and sweeping monologues as its lefty bona fides, was immediately successful.
show-long the crown jewel of MSNBC prime time, if not the entire network-debuted on September 8, 2008, with a handoff from then superstar Keith Olbermann, whose subsequent defenestration elevated Maddow to queen bee status. This is, like, a typical-size, perfect pickerel.” She released it back into the hole. “ This,” said Maddow, holding up our trophy, “is a pickerel. We reeled in the first one before too long.
Over the next few months, we would talk a lot about what was at stake-for her health and well-being and career trajectory, for her continued cultural relevance, and for the network that has long depended on her massive nightly audience. Maddow was embarking on a new chapter in her career, a foray into the wilds of our multiplatform media future, in which her success and influence would no longer be so neatly quantifiable. “It may be a little slushy,” she said, “but I promise it’s fine.” Then we squeezed into our snow pants, strapped medieval-looking spikes over our boots, and trekked out onto the lake with a sled full of gear. We dropped by her go-to bait shop, in the garage of a home boasting tattered Trump flags, where Maddow stocked up on rosy red minnows and medium shiners. Before we set off, she showed me the cozy lakefront fixer-upper she’d purchased weeks earlier with her longtime partner, the photographer Susan Mikula, about 30 minutes from the couple’s 164-year-old farmhouse.
Maddow lives for this stuff, even as someone who grew up in sunny Castro Valley, California. The temperature had plunged to something like 12 degrees over the weekend, but now it was in the mid-30s, ideal for our piscatorial excursion: more than enough ice to minimize your risk of a frosty death, warm enough to keep your hands from falling off. We met up in the parking lot of a frozen lake rimmed by low-slung mountains, Maddow in buffalo plaid, a baseball cap emblazoned with the logo for YUM fishing baits, and tortoiseshell Coke-bottle glasses that the folks at home don’t get to see when she’s all made up for the cameras. It was a Monday in early February, on Maddow’s home turf of Western Massachusetts.
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