Watching Rachel Maddow on MSNC, doing her show from New Orleans. She is gangly, she is very academic, which means that she is very smart, she is a little easy on the eyes, but more than anything else, she is a badass.  We watched her from her early days as an analyst during the election and, uncharacteristically for liberal, she kicked conservative ass without any reservation. My girl, no pun intended has some serious balls! But more than that she takes incredible pains to educate and pursue informed discussion.  On the badassitude, she is in rarified territory.

For some, it is easy to confuse being a badass with having badassitude. The 2 things are different. A badass has capabilities in a particular area of life or endeavour that stand out when measured against other people’s abilities in the same area of endeavor. Badassitude is how one carries, manifests and internalizes that quality of being a badass. When one scores high on the badassitude scale, one’s effectiveness in the area in which they are badass is highly acute.  In a manner of speaking, a person who scores highly on the badassitude scale is, lethal. Tiger Woods for instance, in the specific endeavor of competitive golf is a badass who is literally off the charts on the badassitude scale. He is lethal. In golf.