Rachel Maddow Hosts 'The McVeigh Tapes' ... Rachel Maddow!!

I saw this at Andrew Breitbart's Twitter stream and just now found some media tidbits.

Ellen Gray, at Philadelphia Daily News, offers a hint of condemnation, but doesn't go far enough:

McVeigh's victims were silenced forever, but their killer, it turns out, lives on in 45 hours of audiotapes from interviews he gave for Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck's 2001 book, "American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing."

The cable network has married the previously unreleased audio from the interviews with McVeigh to what MSNBC describes as "state-of-the-art computer re-creations" - resulting in footage that at times looks a bit too much like video-game animation for comfort.

I don't care where you fall on the use of re-enactments in news documentaries: There's something a bit cold about most computer animation and superimposing an impassive McVeigh-like mask on the face an actor only adds to the chilling effect of hearing the Oklahoma City bomber describe how he killed all those people and suggesting that victims' families need to "get over it."

But then graphics aren't the only aspect of MSNBC's presentation of "The McVeigh Tapes" that left me a little queasy.

In introducing the special, host Rachel Maddow can't resist an attempt to peg the Oklahoma City bombing to current events.

"Nine years after his execution, we are left worrying that Timothy McVeigh's voice from the grave echoes in a new rising tide of American anti-government extremism," she says.

You want to go there, Rachel? Really?

What happened in Oklahoma City wasn't some tea party - it was mass murder. Invoking the name McVeigh in the face of some angry rhetoric is (and we can only pray will remain) overkill.

It's more than that. It's evil.