Super Tuesday sidebar: Rachel Maddow chokes someone at MSNBC with an Apple

The one station that manages to stay on 24/7 here at the Cerebral Itch offices is MSNBC. It's our cable newstation of choice for a multitude of reasons. One, it happens to be half as crazy as FoxNews and twice as smart than CNN (not hard let me tell you). Plus, it's got the added suspenseful zing of Chris Matthews, the doughy drunk version of Network character Howard Beale and Tucker Carlson's career doing the Schiavo (He's gotta have pics of Dan Abrams doing something unholy). Most of all, we dig Olbermann. He speaks truth to power in a such a way that if "power" wasn't so goddamn moronic and knew how to use a dictionary, Keith could actually find himself in some trouble. But now we can add to that list of MSNBC cats we dig: Rachel Maddow.

Dr. Maddow (doctorate in political science and a Rhodes Scholar) is a well known radio host with her own show on Air America Radio. Her intellect and wit (along with crisp elocution) got her on Countdown. She obviously impressed the brass enough to get her the unenviable job of frequently sparring with Dickensian misanthrope Pat Buchanan on Hardball and election nights. So last night, there she sat. Holding her own with Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan on the MSNBC Super Tuesday battle bridge. Bond villain-esque acrylic catwalks, plasma screens as far as the eye could see and Rachel's little MacBook right in front of her and thus the comedy of this post. See, MSNBC is a joint-venture between NBC and Microsoft. Therefore, anytime Apple makes news it is covered begrudgingly. But there in plain view it sat, Rachel's MacBook with Apple logo glowing icy blue-white surrounded by a sea of Dell computers running Windows. Commence spit-take Microsoft executives.

The best part was twenty minutes later when Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann came back to the crazy quartet, Rachel's MacBook was folded at half-mast; Apple logo no longer visible. The subtle brand nonconformity was genius and soon quashed by some producer who probably just got his ass chewed off by MSNBC Marketing. All I can say is Steve Jobs should shower her in free iPhones and iTunes gift cards for getting past security and plopping his product down in the belly of the beast.

The whole thing almost made up for Hillary winning California.