Melissa Harris-Perry’s Email to Her Staff (This is Absolutely Shocking)

[jberryhill]

156. Let me explain

Do you know what this is:



That's a plow. That's the kind of thing you used to hitch up to a horse or ox, and then cut furrows into the ground to plant crops.

In the early 1900's a boy was plowing a field on the Farnsworth family farm. As he went back and forth with the plow and the horse, he got the idea that he could use that back and forth action to draw a picture in the field by adjusting the plow along the furrows. Decades later, that boy, a boy named Philo, who was using a plow like that on the farm, Philo T. Farnsworth would become the inventor of the cathode ray tube - the picture tube that used to be the front screen of television sets.

After television sets were invented, the broadcasters came up with the idea to have regularly scheduled programs called "shows" on them.

Well, tonight, you are going to watch, on your television, a show. It's a show on MSNBC starring - a woman! On the show, a woman is going to talk about politics, on your very own television, thanks to Philo Farnsworth who figured out how to transmit signals as pictures to television sets by plowing a field as a boy.

The woman, on the show, on your television, is named Rachel, and she's going to be talking about politics, and sometimes about boys plowing fields on this show. They even named the show after her. They call it the "Rachel Maddow Show" and it is a show on MSNBC which you can watch on your television, and the woman, whose name is Rachel Maddow, is going to talk about politics on the Rachel Maddow Show!