“Under what circumstances would I have P. Diddy on the show? Him saying Yes. Any day of the week. Ever. Are you kidding me?”

Rachel Maddow ambles into a Midtown Manhattan steak house on the eve of the Midterm primaries. In real life, she isn’t much different than the smiling lady with the sharp wit that comes on the “TV machine” (which she refuses to watch at home). A t-shirt replaces the smart blazer she wears on screen and a 6 ft. frame eclipses the image of the smallish figure that sits behind the desk. A mug of beer will soon stand in for her pencil, with which she sometimes scribbles notes. But nothing can replace her biting wit. And this night, with a full day of work behind her, everyone wants in on the act. “I’ll have a Bud Light,” she says. The bartender smiles to himself as he slides the beer in her direction. “What have you got against red beer,” he quips, his smile sharpening into devious points. “Does your beer have to be blue, too?”

Alana, NBC’s PR rep, laughs as Maddow’s whole face smiles. The bartender, pleased with himself, adds on: “I love your show.” He looks to me. “She’s the best.”

Anyone who knows me well, knows how I feel about cable news (and MTV JAMS)—I am addicted. Despite its hip-hop topics, The Parker Report TV show was inspired by those yammering heads on cable as well as some network newsmen who dug up the day’s issues. Meet The Press (Tim Russert’s version), Hardball (w/Chris Mathews), even the antiquated McLaughlin Group stays on the DVR taking up space. Nope, won’t erase them.

But unlike the above, Maddow infuses a heavy dose of humor into her meaty broadcasts, a mashup between Jon Stewart and Tim Russert. She mocks, she digs, she explains the process, breaking complex political mechanics down to bite-size chunks. Then she connects the dots. This methodical approach earned her a spot on VIBE’s “Juice” list this year (The Issue is on stands now).

(The very uncomfortable face-off w/Rand Paul)

Since her show debuted in September 2008 (this month she celebrates her 2^nd anniversary), she’s tanked political careers, shined a light on shady dealings and made punch lines out of hypocritical politicians—sometimes accomplishing all three at once. In one classic showing, she called out by name 22 Republican lawmakers who voted against the stimulus plan in Washington only to get “all publishers clearing house” in their home districts, holding up outsized stimulus checks for press opportunities.

Her most memorable kerfuffle came when Kentucky Republican senate nominee Rand Paul quickly found himself playing defense, facing a question about his opposition to part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. (Paul has said the government overstretched when it banned private business owners from discriminating). “I had ten questions written for him and the first one was on the Civil Rights Act,” Maddow says. “I asked the same question over and over again for like 20 minutes and he wouldn’t answer even though I know what his answer is. So it created this firestorm, but I still want to ask him those other 9 questions.”

And after a series of questions of my own, these are the other things Rachel Maddow told me:

NEXT UP, P. DIDDY

“Under what circumstances would I have P. Diddy on the show? Him saying yes. Any day of the week. Ever. Are you kidding me? I am not that great at culture interviews. Talking to people who are culturally accomplished as interviews in terms of writers, authors, musicians…But I’m trying to get better at it so I’m trying to carve out a niche for that production-wise.”

MSNBC’s SECRET COMPETETIVE EDGE

“NBC-MSNBC is the only news unit that has both broadcast and cable. That offers us, me, specifically, an opportunity that nobody else has. NBC news has all these incredible resources to put people out in the world in a way that a broadcast network can, and they will allow me to piggyback on what they do. Nobody else has that chance. I realize that even though I’m not a great traveler and I like to go home on he weekend and read comic books and not be in the media world, it allows me to put a lot more on TV than I otherwise could. And you meet people and you can do real reporting and show people what you are seeing. To be able to get out in the field using the resources of the broadcast networks but be able to say this is my opinion about what I’m seeing.”

THROUGH THE WIRE

“I really don’t have time to watch TV. And my girlfriend [Susan] is an artist, she’s a photographer so I consume a lot of visual art. That’s just because I’m staying involved in her life and career. Like I watched the entire Made Men series two years later. I still haven’t watched HBO’s The Wire though. Susan has watched it from the first episode to the last all the way through and all the way through again. She quotes to me from the Wire and talks to me about different characters who are represented by friends of ours or happenings in our lives. I have no idea.”

UNASKED RAND PAUL QUESTIONS

“I had ten questions written for him and the first one was on the Civil Rights Act. Like, he’s this uber small government guy but he is really anti-abortion. So he wants a government that’s really small but big enough to monitor every pregnancy in the country to make sure they end the way the government prefers. [Laugh] That takes a pretty big government. Let’s talk about that in Libertarian terms. And some his political associations with the John Birch Society and the other groups that his dad [Ron Paul], in particular, has been associated with. They need to answer questions about the white supremacy views of some of the people who have associated themselves with that movement. But I couldn’t get to that part of the interview and I will never get him back now.”

IN HER OPINION

“We’ve always had opinionated press… Since I’m on the opinionated side, and as a really patriotic person who cares about the state of this country, I need to be really responsible with what I’m doing. I think that has to do more with process than substance. It’s not the stories I cover it’s the fact that I am civil, it’s not the fact that I give my opinion but I can also be counted on to give the facts. There are ways to do it that are honest and good for the public discourse and ways to do it that are parasitical. And I just don’t want to be parasitic and cynical. Being in opinion media is a dangerous place to be. You can actually cause a lot of harm if you want to. I not only don’t want to cause a lot of harm, but I want to do right by this country.”

My Own "Moment Of Geek"