Morning Joe on MS(nob)NBC

I get up early every morning mainly because I take at least 2 hours to "wake up" before I can actually function. Others I know get up singing, all full of joy and hope for the coming day. These people rattle off fifteen things I need to do or check on today before I've even poured my first cup of essential juice - coffee. They are lucky to get two words out of me, namely, uh and huh.

So, as you might imagine I plop down in front of the TV with the clicker and rotate through the cable news channels. I'll start with Fox and Friends if I'm in the mood for goofy. I'll pop over to CNN and to see which oh so serious news program they are airing this month. CNN has some sort of revolving door in their studio A because the host(s) never seem to last very long. It's very odd.

I then swing over to CNBC for the business news which I often find the most informative news I'll see all day. Plus, I love the daily Obama bashing from the business leaders, it's very cathartic. If I'm in the mood for beauty I'll hit Headline News and watch Robin for a while. Oddly I never really take notice of the news... Eventually I'll punch 70 on the remote. That's where we find Morning Joe up in these parts.

MSNBC is the anti-Fox channel. Everyone knows this. Those who hate Fox generally love MSNBC. In order for the operators of the anti-Fox network to feign balance they put up a show that features an ex-republican congressman, Joe Scarborough. It takes roughly 2 minutes of listening to him to invoke nausea. I am quite certain the phrase "are you still taking" was coined because of him. He's an impolite blowhard that talks and talks but says absolutely nothing. Even when he says something you might agree with you still feel like slugging the guy. 

His co-host Mika Brzezinski, a liberal apologist and Democratic Party stooge, barely gets a word in edgewise. Believe me you're not missing much - she rarely says anything even slightly off script, but she is a human being deserving of respect and the time to have her say. Joe, however, talks over her continuously to the point where you see the wind taken out of sails and she gives up. I often wonder if she's there for atheistic value only as she is quite good looking. Occasionally she gets 20 seconds to complete a sentence (because Joe is momentarily distracted) and her political shallowness and in-the-know snobbery is revealed.

As bad as these two are it's the rotation of regulars that starts to get to you after a while. The anti-Fox crowd really thinks this show is sophisticated and thoughtful as opposed to the knuckle dragging and mouth breathing over on Fox. What they are is a cadre of snobs. Even the so-called conservatives they allow in the studio are there because they will mock or denigrate conservative, religious or fly-over country values. If these conservatives stray from the allowed guidelines they are summarily banished.

We never see Patrick Buchanan on the show anymore. Buchanan served his purpose during the Bush years because he was highly critical of the Bushes - Sr. and Jr. At some point he strayed, said something that roiled the waters and he is gone. Mark Halprin, a left leaning journalist (aren't they all) once said something slightly critical of Obama when he believed they were off the air and he was banished for months.

It isn't even what is actually discussed, dissected and beaten to death on the show that betrays the snobbish devotion to leftist elitism, it's also what is ignored. Rarely have I heard a word about the serious scandals this administration is involved in even in passing. The gun running scandal called Fast and Furious would put Watergate to shame in scale and outcome. If it had happened under Bush it would have been a daily topic. The apologetic devotion to liberal sensibilities even when all evidence would indicate failure is jaw dropping. Then Joe himself gets to riffing on one of these subjects (it is his show after all) and in slightly over 2 minutes you feel like throwing up.

There are three regulars that if I see any of them I instantly hit the back button on the remote. As nauseating as Joe Scarborough is these three make me convulse uncontrollably. Al Sharpton is obvious, even his mother is repulsed. It is Donny Deutsch and Eugene Robinson that literally make me sick. Robinson in particular is an abhorrent little man so blinded by his leftist elitism and race-bating ideology that every word from his lips is 180 degrees out of whack.

To be fair, every once in a while - particularly when Joe and Mika are out - that the show is actually informative. They do have interesting guests that are allowed to stray form the liberal elitist playbook. Of course these same guests show up at Fox too. It can be fun to gauge the mood of the liberals by watching them say slightly critical of - actually it is confusion over - Obama administration foibles. Make no mistake, by the time November 2012 comes around Barack Obama will again be walking on water on the Morning Joe show!


CW