Oh, wow. What am I going to watch tonight? As a political junkie and a sci-fi nerd, I feel both sides of me ripping each other apart over tonight's TV lineup.

On the Sci-Fi Channel, Starbuck and Apollo return for the final season of the greatest TV drama ever, ever, ever, despite the spaceships and silly robots. The Battlestar Galactica mythology will sort itself out. The humans will find Earth and then, when it's out on DVD, all that happened before will happen again, as I watch the series, opening to conclusion, over and over and over again.

But tonight MSNBC will air something that hasn't happened before. Air America Radio host Rachel Maddow will sit in for Keith Olbermann on Countdown. Now, I don't know for sure whether an openly lesbian liberal has ever hosted a prime time news broadcast, but it sure feels historical and long overdue to me, especially on MSNBC.

Recently, MSNBC has faced both a lot of turnover and lot accusations of misogyny, and both are intertwined.

Here was the lineup last year:
Don Imus (white hetero guy) in the morning.
Tucker Carlson (white hetero guy) in the afternoon.
Chris Matthews (white hetero guy) in the early evening.
Keith Olbermann (white hetero guy) in the prime time slot.
Joe Scarborough (white hetero guy) in post-prime.

Then Imus made his now infamous "nappy headed hoes" comment about the Rutgers' women's basketball team and got himself canceled. So, MSNBC rejigged its schedule, put Scarborough in the morning and handed the sensationalist lawyer Dan Abrams (white hetero guy) the late slot.

Then reporter David Shuster was suspended for suggesting that the Clintons were "pimping out" their daughter Chelsea on the campaign trail while he was sitting in for Carlson. Then, in an unrelated move, Carlson too was canceled.

Now, for months, rumors have been circulating on the blogs that MSNBC was considering replacing Carlson with Maddow, making her the most prominent lesbian on cable news. I thought that was a perfect match: of all Air America's hosts, she's always been the most incisive, the most charming, the funniest and yet, not a blowhard at all. That's saying a lot considering that Rush Limbaugh still rules the airwaves and even Air America's Randi Rhodes was suspended this week for calling Hillary Clinton a "whore."

But did Maddow get to replace Carlson? Nooo. Instead, MSNBC replaced Carlson with yet another white hetero guy, David Gregory and his show Race for the White House. Now, I've got nothing against Gregory -- he's a hard-ass journalist who won't accept press briefing dodges from President Bush -- but still, he's another white hetero dude. I thought MSNBC was supposed to be the progressive station.

That said, Maddow is a regular panelist on Gregory's show and the show can only last until November. What happens then?

Well, I imagine that depends on how Maddow does tonight on Countdown. On her radio show, she's made it clear that scoring a TV show is her ultimate goal; it's just a matter of proving herself to MSNBC and waiting for them to get with the program and stop handing shows to hetero white guys. It's called diversity, folks.

Whatever I decide upon (and BSG is available as of noon online, and Countdown clips will be available tomorrow), I'll be rooting for her.

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