MSNBC's Maddow to Write Washington Post Column

Staunchly liberal MSNBC host and commentator Rachel Maddow will have another platform for airing her views when she begins writing a monthly column for The Washington Post.

The newspaper's opinion section announced Wednesday that Maddow, the first openly gay or lesbian host of a prime-time news program in the U.S., will write once a month over six months.

Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt said he did not take ideology into account when bringing her on board, telling Post blogger Erik Wemple, "Our goal is to have the smartest, most original commentary about Washington and its issues from left to right."

In a 2011 Newsweek profile of Maddow, Howard Kurtz wrote, "At her best, Maddow debates ideological opponents with civility and persistence, as she did by pressing then–GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul about his criticism of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. (He later said Maddow had 'tortured' him and vowed never to return.) But for all her eloquence, she can get so wound up ripping Republicans that she sounds like another smug cable partisan."

Kurtz noted that "Baltimore Sun critic David Zurawik has accused Maddow of acting like 'a lockstep party member.'"

Shortly before Maddow started her current show on MSNBC in September 2007, a profile in Time magazine called her "radio's whip-smart, button-cute leftie."

Maddow came to the cable network from Air America, which specialized in progressive talk programming before it folded in 2010.

She has also written "Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power," a 2012 book on the role of the military in postwar American politics. Her editor was Rachel Klayman, who edited President Barack Obama's second book, "The Audacity of Hope."

“I’m a national security liberal, which I tell people because it’s meant to sound absurd,” Maddow told Time.

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