Thing is, having read all the other interviews Rachel Maddow has done recently so as not to repeat too much, I realized that everyone had pretty much already asked her just about everything anyone probably ever wanted to know about her and then some. Mostly "some".
Like:

Fictional character she identifies with: Wally Cleaver. Cause he is a dork.

And:

Asked if her television career is the culmination of a plotted path, Maddow laughs. "You mean when I started working on AIDS in prisons, was this where I thought it would end up? Yeah. This is pretty much it. Phase forty-seven of my master plan."

Also:

LESLEY: Did you go out with boys in high school?
RACHEL: Yes.
LESLEY: Spin the bottle, and all that kind of stuff?
RACHEL: Oh, yeah. My prom pictures are hilarious.

And let's not forget this:

"If I'm wearing a gray suit, people aren't going to talk about what I'm wearing," Maddow explains, "therefore, I will wear a gray suit every time I go on television. That was sort of the plan."

And finally:

Mother Jones: You're TV's "It Girl." How does it feel?
Rachel Maddow: It doesn't feel like that.

It was going to be hard to find a question that someone else hadn't already asked her, and I am completely opposed to being unoriginal.

Last week, settled into a booth at a midtown Manhattan bar that serves classic cocktails with rummy deliciousness in my hand, I had a flash of inspiration. And so began our interview.

Megan: So, who makes your lip gloss?
Rachel: I don't know! It's provided to me by the very nice people who work in the MSNBC make-up room. The only thing I know is that one of them that they seem to use every other day makes my lips hurt. That's apparently on purpose? It has some sort of irritant...

Megan: It's a plumper!
Rachel: A plumper? That sounds like some sort of fetish.

Megan: Plumping, it's supposed to make your lips look biggers.
Rachel: Who's into plumping? Well, it's pain, which I don't like. They never warn me, and I can't identify it by sight because I don't watch what the products are as they approach my face. So, I don't enjoy the plumping. But that probably narrows it down as to what brand it is, right? Are there a lot of plumping glosses out there?

Megan: There are a lot of things that will make your lips really large.
Rachel: As make-up? It's a whole class of make-up, not just one brand? Well, then I can't help you. But there is one guy there who has mascara that has a motor in it!

Megan: Like, a vibrating magic mascara wand?
Rachel: You said it.

Megan: I do tend to say things like that. But, um, I've now officially run out of personal questions that no one else has asked you, so it's about to be the most awkward segue ever.
Rachel: It's okay.

Megan: Well, so, to get back to the plumping thing, I'm reminded of the word surge, and Obama has just announced a new Surge in Afghanistan, since the last surge was, like, so much fun.
Rachel: [laughs]

Megan: So, like, the new Surge will be like twice the fun even though it's only half the people and doesn't involve anyone that attended the first Surge going to the second Surge. It's sort of all new people going to the new Surge and all the old Surge people kind of staying there.
Rachel: And it's not a Surge because they'll never leave. It's more like a swelling. A plumping! Rather that a surge. Because a surge would imply some sort of temporary rise and fall whereas I think an escalation would be a better word for what it is they want to do.

Megan: Well, they probably don't want to call it that.
Rachel: Right? Awkward. About the troop levels in Afghanistan, we're in year 8 already. So they're all like, we're going to need a 3 or 4 year commitment. No, no, no, what's you're saying is that we're actually going to need an 11 or 12 year commitment. What are years 11 and 12 going to work out better than, I don't know, years 3 and 4? 7 and 8? 1 and 2? Pick any. We've been there a long time.

Megan: Yeah, George Bush probably should have gone back and looked in Vladimir Putin's soul again and asked him, because the Russians probably know a little bit about that.
Rachel: General Gromov, who was the last Russian general who supervised their withdrawal and was the last person over the line when they left in 1989, said, "Yeah, what we learned is that you can't solve political problems though military means." Duh.

Megan: Wait, so the Russians in 1989 were the Republicans in 1998?
Rachel: Well, not anymore, because we're not leaving.

Megan: Well, so we'll gain Russian-levels of insight into foreign affairs in about 2015.
Rachel: Yes. Well, no, let's see, what year is it now? 2009. So in 2029, we'll be giving the Chinese this advice.

Megan: Sounds like a good plan! Speaking of China, Hillary Clinton went there having hit up Japan, Indonesia and South Korea. That's the same part of the world, right? They're all short and stuff.
Rachel: There is a geographic commonality in the broadest sense.

Megan: Sort of like Canada and Chile.
Rachel: Yeah, exactly, "The Americas." In the same way that Sarah Palin and Alberto Fujimori are representative of the Americas, also South Korea and China are.

Megan: So which leader will go to jail, then, like Fujimori?
Rachel: Which one will send dramatic faxes to his homeland from exile? Hard to say. But I think the amazing thing about Hillary Clinton in Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and China is that she timed it to Kim Jong Il's birthday. Kim Jong Il's birthday is a big deal. There has to be a lot of synchronized swimming, there has to be of course dancing, there has to be a costumed procession...

Megan: Sort of like prom?
Rachel: More crappy even then prom, the dancing on the occasion of the Dear Leader's birth. There was, apparently, a mysterious halo that appeared around the moon on the occasion of his birthday this year. Very unearthly.

Megan: Is that how he gets his golf skills? I mean, he only golfed the one time, but 18 holes-in-one, you really can't top it.
Rachel: It's a world record! It's almost as impressive as Pat Robertson holding the international leg press record. Pat Robertson said he could leg press 2,000 pounds, which meant that he would have won the Olympics. It's the same kind of thing. I don't know if they have a Regent University, I don't know if they have something that is as much a representation of the spiritual worthiness of that leader, but...

Megan: I'm pretty sure there's some goosestepping in both places. I can see it.
Rachel: Was it Regent University where Mitt Romney gave the speech about how France limited its marriages to seven years? Or was that Liberty University? I get them confused.

Megan: I think it was Liberty [Ed: Rachel was right, it was Regent]. Liberty's the one that advertises on Washington's subway.
Rachel: Wow. I love that. I love that you can just make a university! I love that! It's accredited.

Megan: I'd bet I could accredit myself.
Rachel: At Hampshire College every year they spray paint quotation marks around the word "College" on the sign out in front of the school.

Megan: I know someone who got kicked out of Hampshire College for doing too many drugs.
Rachel: You know someone who's dead!

Megan: No, in fact, we had drinks about a year and a half ago!
Rachel: "Drinks" you said?

[We order another round of drinks.]

Megan: So back to Hillary Clinton and the catfight she's about the get in with Tim Geithner over China, since I'm sick of catfights only being girl-on-girl. Have you heard about this?
Rachel: The Eyebrows of Doom! His hair is perfect, but his eyebrows are like Eliot Abrams style. His eyebrows are Richard Perle quality.

Megan: Are they Jim Gilmore quality?
Rachel: No, no, no, they're bigger! They're better! They're not reach out and grab you eyebrows, they're Eyebrows of Doom! They're like lifted eyebrows. The whole like crazy arch, death ray eyebrows. Geithner should not be messed with.

Megan: Well, so, the catfight. In the Bush Administration, Henry Paulson since he was like BFF with Wu Yi, and Sue Schwab ended up at USTR but had no power and Condi Rice was all over Middle East policy at State, Paulson got the Strategic Economic Dialogue with China which became sort of the place where most China policy ended up.
Rachel: Right, because his relationship preceded his Treasury Secretary-ness because of his time at Goldman Sachs. Ugh.

Megan: Right, so, Hillary Clinton is all up in China's business on economic policy, taking bits of what turf on China policy got passed to Geithner, going to Asia, taking advantage of Geither pissing off the Chinese during his confirmation hearing and Geithner's need to fix the economy.
Rachel: Hillary Clinton is ready to take up a lot of room! The amount of room there is to be taken up is finite. And somebody is going to take it up. It's exciting to imagine the changes that might happen in our own government and in the world, the range of options that we have as an economy and a military and a government operating in the world, if our State Department matters. And she's grabbing power and installing loyalists, she's completely filling up the policy space and taking over the State Department. It's great!

Megan: And Gates is getting out of her way, too.
Rachel: Exactly, and she can say, well, the Secretary of Defense agrees with me. We haven't been here in a long time. It's exactly the thing I want us as a country to be trying, I don't know exactly how it's going to work out. But the thing that's going to happen is that, when agencies do stuff, they get good at that thing. And when they don't do stuff, they don't know how to do that thing anymore. And so the State Department hasn't taken up this room in a long time, so it's a big calling out of the diplomatic corps. Like, are you capable of taking this stuff on? Are you capable of taking over the primary mission in Afghanistan? Not like support, but are you going to be the front line of what America is trying to accomplish there? Can you? Do we know how? Can we manage our own security? And all this stuff. And it's asking a lot of an agency that has suffered in not silence in exactly, but in quietness for a really long time. And now they're front and center, and they need to step up and build capacity really quickly. Great! It's exactly what I want. But I actually have a question for you, going back to Afghanistan. Who is against it? The war, I mean, not the escalation.

Megan: Besides Barbara Lee? And Sean Penn, I guess.
Rachel: Yeah, who's arguing that we should get them all home?

Megan: Nobody. But who knows that we lost more soldier in Afghanistan in January than we lost in Iraq? What are we there for? What are we fighting for? Are we fighting the Pakistan-Afghanistan border war? Are we trying to stabilize the Pakistan government? Keep the Taliban from coming back? In a very realist sense — and not that I'm a realist in terms of foreign policy — but what was our major foreign policy problem with the Taliban other than that they gave Osama bin Laden safe haven when he decided to blow our shit up?
Rachel: I mean, that was a problem, but Sudan also gave him a safe haven.

Megan: But those were black people.
Rachel: So we didn't invade them?

Megan: Yeah, why would we want to get involved in a morass there that already proved unsolvable when we can prove the Russians were just not doing it right. Like, Africa is such a mess!
Rachel: That's okay, AFRICOM has got it under control, man.

Megan: The whole continent!
Rachel: Yeah, it's AfricCOM. It's not SenegalCOM. It's not Cote d'COM. It's AfriCOM

Megan: It's not CongoCom. Or ZimbabweCOM.
Rachel: That whole country!

Megan: Isn't that how we deal with it?
Rachel: It's easier than learning the boundaries. I don't think we're very far away from the American religious right picking some new obscure opposition movement in Africa to privilege as some sort of religiously-inspired freedom fighter sort of thing.

Megan: You mean, when they're done with Israel?
Rachel: No, like, the new Janjaweed. We're due for that. For American evangelicals to decide on a new mascot.

Megan: Are they allowed to have black people as a mascot?
Rachel: You know, that will be really fascinating to find out.

Megan: I mean, other than Michael Steele.
Rachel: Yeah, he's going to make over the RNC. It's gonna be all hip hop over in the RNC now.

Megan: Maybe he can get Eminem to help.
Rachel: [laughs]

Related: A Pundit in the Country [New York Times]
Rachel Maddow's Life and Career [The Nation]
The Dr. Maddow Show [New York Magazine]
Lesley Stahl Asks Rachel Maddow: What Do You Do at 7 on Sundays? [wowOwow]
Rachel Maddow's Star Power (Extended Interview) [Mother Jones]

Earlier: Rachel Maddow: "I Need To Focus On What I Think, So That I Can Stay Original"

Megan: I don't know if you read Jezebel...

Rachel: Sure.

Megan: ... but everyone is a really big fan of yours, so the opportunity to speak to you is really exciting!

Rachel: That's so nice. I don't think of myself as existing in the world in a way that people can see me. But I can see Jezebel and you can see me, apparently. It's a strange dynamic.

Megan: It is! So what has it been like, this furor since it was announced that you'd gotten your own show? Obviously, seeing the crowd reaction here every time you open your mouth, it seems pretty positive.

Rachel: It is positive. I haven't been able to see any of our coverage, I've only been on it. So the thing that I'm worried about is that I don't know how much our voices carry over the sound of the crowd, and if we ought to be yelling in order to be heard and if we should stop talking when the crowd is yelling. So just as a physical matter I'm not sure what to do. And I also don't want to be rude to my colleagues here. I'm not running this show — I'm part of a four-person panel that is a tertiary thing. I am a very small cog in this machine, so I don't want to be a distraction. But, that said, I can't say that it's not nice that people are being so nice to me. It's very flattering. I don't know what to say but "Thank you," I just keep saying, "Thank you."

Megan: Do you read your own press?

Rachel: I read some of it. I actually haven't read really anything recently. I read a little bit of the response to finding out I was getting my own show. There was a strange thing that happened with The New Republic, they ran that piece and then Glen Greenwald at Salon having written that long rebuttal to it but I just thought that was like, whoa. That was a discussion of me as an issue rather than of me as an individual. And I found that fascinating academically. But I try not to read too much. It warps your sense of importance and your sense of self. I need to focus on what I think, so that I can stay original. Does that make sense?

Megan: Yeah, absolutely. Do you have some idea what you might do with your new show that's going to premiere in about a week to be original?

Rachel: [laughs] Week and a half! Week and a half! Two weeks from yesterday! I mean, the mission of the show is that at 8 pm there is "Countdown." And at 10 pm, there is "Countdown." At 9 pm, there is something in the middle that needs to hold that audience as much as it can. That's what the corporate mission is, and that's what the program I deal with was created, that's why they asked me to do it because they think that I'm the best person to do that. So, that's the mission. What's the strategy to get there? The consistent advice that I have received, and I've received it from — and I've received it from people in my personal life from whom I regularly take advice, I've received it from people who I don't know but who I respect in terms of what they've accomplished in media — across the board, the advice from everybody has been "Figure out a way to be yourself." And there's a big difference between TV and radio in the way that they are produced. Radio, it's me and one other person. The maximum size of me and my team is three people and two of them are part-time. I mean, it's a very solitary enterprise. And my reading, and my writing — my radio show is scripted — it's cone of silence, big time. A television show has a cast of thousands that are involved in producing it and therefore it is much more of a process. It is much easier to start off as me and end up losing it. It is much easier to start off as my show and end up with another approach. And so I want to find a way so it can be show.

I don't really think that I can compete on the level of "TV Bot," you know, the normal, generic TV host. I'm not that pretty. I'm not that accessible, I'm not that... all of these other things. I'm on specific things, they like what I've got already, so we need to find a way to reproduce that on a show every day. And that's been my entire purpose, figuring out a way to make it to most me as possible. And that's the strategy.

Spencer: As someone in whom the netroots and the blogosphere is very invested, someone that speaks our language, someone who tries specifically to bring our perspective out, do you think it will be hard? Do you think you'll be getting more scrutiny from MSNBC, from the corporate side, than a right-wing addition to the line-up would?

Rachel: I feel like I could answer that in theory and academically, but my experience thus far is that MSNBC has not nudged me. At all. The only experience I've had is to say, "I'm not interested in talking about this topic and if you guys are going booking me for a long time to talk about that topic, I've gotta say I don't have much to say about blank topic, so, you might not want to book me." And they've been like, "Oh, c'mon, you want to talk about it," and I've said, "Nope, I don't want to talk about it," and that's it. That's been the extent of my editorial back-and-forth as a guest on MSNBC. They've never gone there with me, ever.

And I have asked management, upon them offering me the show — and I have no idea how I would've responded if they answered the other way— but what I asked was two things. I asked "Are you looking for me to be different than I am? Talk about different things, or seem different that you've already seen?" Second question, "Do you want me to change the way I look?" I asked the questions because I was curious, but I literally have no idea what I would have said had the answer been anything other than "No, you're fine, we picked you because we like you." But the answer was, "No, you're fine, we picked you because we like you."

Megan: Did you think they would ask you to grow your hair out, dye it blonde and get Botox or something?

Rachel: I guess I was curious as to whether they secretly wanted that but felt they couldn't bring it up because I'd get mad. And who knows what it will eventually be like, and who knows from here on out. They're launching the show, and working on a very short time frame, but it's not been my experience so far.

Megan: Something I wanted to ask, that you brought up a little earlier, is this idea of being seen as An Issue as opposed to a person. Obviously your personal life has come into play in some of the coverage, in terms of being the first lesbian to have a news show. How does it feel to have your personal life out there in a way that it wouldn't be if you were heterosexual or divorced or whatever.

Rachel: Yeah, you know, there is definitely a fascination with the personal lives of people that are on television. I get that, it's a visual medium, that's how we connect to people. I have never been closeted, like, never — I came out when I was 17. I couldn't be closeted even if I wanted to. So I'm out, that's not an issue for me, it's not a decision for me, it's not something I've ever thought about my whole adult life. More than half my life, I've been out. I think it is something that of more interest to people that are thinking about me for the first time than it is for me in talking about it. I don't, this is going to sound crazy, I don't like talking about my personal life. I don't like talking about the media. These aren't my topics. I'm really interested in Afghanistan. That's what I want talk about. My radio show today — you know, I was here and then I ran across town to the Gates Center and was like "Okay, okay, okay, finally I get to talk about Iraq now! Ok!" I geek out on the news.

Earlier: Rachel Maddow For President (Of Cable News, That Is)