The plight of sad Rachel Maddow of MSNBC was revealed in the Times this weekend, as expected. The clearly underpaid anchor splits her time between a 275-square-foot tenement in New York and a 140-year-old cabin in a remote corner of Massachusetts, where she is forced to moonlight as garbage hauler. She has no proper shoes, or even a television, so she drinks fermented "sugar-cane juice" and dreams of a bygone "golden age." But things are looking up!

In this morning's Times it emerged that Maddow's new show doubled its predecessor's ratings "in a matter of days." Such gumption! It took the liberal pundit's mentor, Keith Olbermann, years to get to that point, and he probably never had to save up to fix a broken chimney. Maddow is also beating CNN's Larry King among 25-to-54-year olds. So the Times is calling on MSNBC to at least buy poor Maddow a TV set, already:

...Ms. Maddow insists that she has never watched either [Larry] King's program or the 9 p.m. program on Fox News, "Hannity & Colmes..."
"I worry every day about the homogenizing forces at work in my professional life," she said, adding that it can be difficult to preserve creativity within cable's production process. It helps, she said, that she does not own a television at home.
Even so, Ms. Maddow said, she has finally committed to getting a set, primarily so that her companion can watch her program. With Ms. Maddow delivering MSNBC a record audience, it might seem that the least the network could do would be to deliver her a television.

Then again, Maddow is very superstitious, telling the Times, " A handkerchief can never be put in another pocket after it has been in one pocket." Ack, wait, actually maybe leave her living like a pauper! You're going to jinx her otherwise!