“Finding all the disparate facts and then finding their coherence” with “rigor and a devotion to facts that borders on obsessive” will soon be a thing of the past, as MSNBC host Rachel Maddow new “Lean Forward” ad will attempt to rekindle the magic of the 1930s Americana.
On Thursday night, Maddow made an appearance on NBC’s “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” and revealed her new commercial. She explained on a trip out west to attend her girlfriend’s art gallery opening, she made a stop at the Hoover Dam, which sits on the border of Arizona and Nevada at the entrance the Lake Mead and the Grand Canyon and decided that’s where she wanted to film her TV spot.
“Since I was on the West Coast, it’s time to shoot new MSNBC commercials, and I said since I’m going to be on the West Coast how about we meet at the Hoover Dam,” Maddow explained. “And I completely conned them into letting me do my commercial at the Hoover Dam — Spike Lee shooting a commercial with me in it at the Hoover Dam. I can die happy. It’s so cool.”
The message of the commercial is one that the United States of America can sort of build its way out of this economic malaise with New Deal era projects.
“I thought it would be cool, and I wanted an excuse to go, and it was hot which is nice because it’s been cold here,” she explained. “But there’s this — because of all the budget crises that where in, there’s all this you know, ‘We can’t do anything that’s a big deal anymore. We’re broke. We can’t spend any money. We can’t do anything.’”
She explained it will combat the notion that public works projects aren’t possible as a result of the country’s fiscal situation.
“The Hoover Dam opened in 1935 in the middle of the Great Depression and it opened 18 months early, and during the Great Depression – we built our way out of it. We made all this cool stuff,” Maddow said. “And now we’re like, ‘Oh we’re broke. We can’t do anything. Let China build it.’ And that’s just stupid.”
And that ideology is the focal point of her message.
“When you’re in hard times, the way we have done it in America is we have built our way out of hard times to a brighter future and we got to think that way,” she said.
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