A story is here. Some sample quotes:
bq. Ms. Harris-Perry will be the only tenured professor in the United States — and one of a very small number of African-American women — who serves as a cable news host…
bq. …In an interview that day, she recounted numerous times when she had watched political strategists on TV and wondered why political scientists had not been booked instead. “Part of the way I end up here is, I think the ivory tower has a ton of brilliant information that doesn’t show up for ordinary people,” she said…
bq. …“They’ll go with you to nerdland, but you have to earn their trust.”
Given that this blog is focused on bringing political science to politics and current events, we probably have not said enough about Harris-Perry’s prominence. This blog’s M.O. is a little different from hers, in that we don’t typically write the kind of stuff that would earn us columns in The Nation (even when those columns name-check David Mayhew). But I agree very much with the thrust of her comments above. And there are glimmers that even television news may be edging ever so slightly toward the ivory tower. As Henry noted, MSNBC cited George Edwards’s On Deaf Ears immediately preceding Obama’s State of the Union address, simply to note that it was unlikely to affect public opinion much. That is a very welcome change.
Here’s hoping that Harris-Perry can bring even more cable television viewers to nerdland.