You all really wished Out had put Rachel Maddow on the cover of their Out 100 issue (and in all fairness, so did editor Aaron Hicklin), but you can catch her every night on her MSNBC show.

When Sarah Palin told Greta Van Susteren that the Eisenstadt hoax was started by "some blogger — probably sitting there in their parent's basement wearing their pajamas blogging some kind of gossip or a lie," a lot of people, myself included, took offense.

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The year's drawing to a close, which means it's time for gay glossy Out to celebrate 100 homo movers-and-shakers who made 2008 so damn great!

The journos over there are slowly leaking some of their honorees, including Rachel Maddow, who tops the list. And with good reason - Maddow's catapulted to fame as a pundit over at MSNBC, which in turn gave her a prime time slot. Well done, Maddow.

Activist Evan Wolfson and NPR correspondent Ari Shapiro also made the cut, as did film makers Jarvez Sharma and Tom Kalin. You can see a few more of the honorees over at the mag's website.

Also, the Out team just sent out a press release informing us - and thereby the world - that comedienne Chelsea Handler will be hosting their annual Out 100 gala at Gotham Hall.

[Maddow shot by Roger Erickson, others by Greg Lotus]

Speaking of Rachel Maddow - the MSNBC newswoman and avowed lesbian interviewed Barack Obama last night.

We've included videos down below…

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British journalist John Gapper received loads of criticism yesterday after describing Rachel Maddow as a "chirpy gay liberal." Feeling a unfairly attacked, Gapper took to his blog today to explain his comments, which he says were woefully misconstrued:

One is the meaning of the word “chirpy”. To me, and to most British people, chirpy means lively and fun. I used it because one of Ms Maddow’s appealing qualities is that she is humorous and cheerful, a welcome contrast of the self-aggrandising, bombastic style of various of her male counterparts (I will not mention any names, for fear of yet more emails).

Unfortunately, a lot of US readers seem to have taken chirpy to mean bird-brained and irritating, so they got annoyed. That was not what I meant.

The second problem was my describing her as gay when I did not mention the sexuality of anyone else in the piece (or indeed my own). In fact, Ms Maddow is gay, and openly so, as noted in some recent articles about her, including this one in the New York Times.

I included it because I thought it said something interesting about the US culture wars (yes the ones that I strayed into) that a gay woman was now one of the most popular talk show hosts on American television.

Well, it's not that interesting - all the right-wing folk watch Fox News, anyway, so they may not even know Maddow exists. (Well, except Tim Graham, who's afraid of lesbians.)

Damn! David Frum, who once made money writing speeches for President George W. Bush, turned the tables on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow last night.

Hoping to discuss the apparent disorganization within the Republican party, Maddow asked Frum to explain his "reservations" on the John McCain's campaign. Rather than addressing Maddow's question, Frum comes out with this:

You were talking throughout the show about the matter of tone in our politics, and yet I think we are seeing an intensification of some of the ugliness of tone that has been a feature of American politics in the past 8 years. This show unfortunately is itself an example of that problem, with its heavy sarcasm and snearing and disregard for a lot of the substantive issues that are important… We're all going to have to do better than we've been doing, including in the past 40 minutes.

Obviously caught off guard, Maddow wonders if Frum actually thinks her tone can be compared to some of the vitriol unleashing against Barack Obama.

Slick, slimy Frum replies, "I don't think that's an important question. I think the question is, given the small plate of responsibility that you personally have, how do you manage that responsibility?"

Maddow's not buying his bullshit and the two get into a debate on what Maddow calls the "false equivalence" that has saturated our political culture. For example, comparing McCain's involvement with the Keating Five to Obama's friendship with William Ayers.

In the end, they agree to disagree: Frum prefers petrified discourse, while Maddow appreciates a little fun. Guess which side we took…

Check out the video, after the jump…

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Katie Couric has done an ample job of resuscitating her reputation.

Once the piñata of television news — everyone got a turn beating her, and she had to hang there and take it — she's quickly rebranded herself as respected journalist and, before that, got a reprieve from media critics bashing her when Keith Olbermann took some of the heat away.

But as Couric exits the stage, temporarily, it's no longer Olbermann who's filling the void of short-lived attention spans by media critics. It is, actually, another woman.

Her name is Rachel Maddow, and the industry freakin' loves her.

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Tim Graham is the portly Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center, which sounds very Marshall McLuhan but in actuality is a conservative watchdog group. So already you know what station he likes to make guest appearances on (hint: rhymes with "box").

And Tim Graham, like any other red-blooded American male, is fascinated by lesbians, most notably MSNBC's Rachel Maddow…

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