The Rachel Maddow Show   |  March 01, 2013

Value not a guarantee in homemade show props

Rachel Maddow confesses to viewers that sometimes frugality undermines the quality of the show's props.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> who are on "the rachel maddow show," one of our weaknesses is that we enjoy our props too much. the trick for us is coming up with ways to explain something better with props that we can just scrounge up and that cost just about nothing so we don't blow our props budget. we start off with an enormous props budget, but we blow it anyway because we get too excited. so we end up trying to injury rig things for cheap. for example, when i wanted to explain is that one-time presidential candidate herman cain was secretly an art project, we ended up cobbling together that thesis with canvas and black paint and two wooden dowells. when we found out that there were no cameras in the courtroom during former illinois governor rod blagojevich 's trial, we acted out part of the trial. we had transcripts, but it turns out that wigs were expensive. so we instead just went with giant name tags and all of our own hair. sometimes our projects work. other times our cardboard bar graph refuses to stick to the wall. whether or not our diy adventures have had their intended effect, it's fair to say that they have been relatively benign. there has never been anything relatively scary about what we have been able to do with props, even as it's been occasionally painfully stupid that said, set down your craft paper and glue guns and pay close mind. have i seen the future of diy. it turns out the future of stuff you can make at home is a little alarming. it's potentially lethal and designed to be so. deadly arts and crafts you can make yourself at home that won't bust the budget,