Joe Scarborough is the slipperiest guy on TV
Scarborough is the slipperiest guy on TV, and one of the most disingenuous.
He’s not horrible to watch until he starts in with the political analysis, where he switches into “take whatever position keeps my opponent most off-balance, even if I have to lie” mode.
90% of the time, he takes on the guise and argues from the point of view of whatever demographic can be invoked to make the Democrats look bad and the Republicans look good. See? He’s not saying he believes Obama is a secret black supremacist Muslim, he’s just saying that “blue collar rural folk” believe that. And he’s saying it as often as he can, but it’s just analysis! He swears! He would never use his show to try to influence public opinion against Obama. Perish the thought!
If his opponent makes a good point, he starts pushing their buttons as fast as he can; changes the argument to something he knows they can’t resist talking about so he can get away from the previous argument before it becomes obvious to everyone viewing that he was wrong or, more importantly, that Barack Obama or the Democrats are right about something important.
If that doesn’t work, he will start in with the “you’re just a partisan” crap as if he’s as clean as a spring breeze, then he will play it off as “a joke” if the guest/host/pundit becomes offended or points out that he was a Republican Congressman, and therefore not one to use the “partisan” card with any sort of credibility.
But that’s his real fallback, the “can’t you take a joke?” line. If a Democrat or a pro-Obama guest on his show starts making a good point or a good refutation of one of Joe’s points, he will start in by—like you see a lot of trolls on Fark do—just saying the most outrageous things he knows he can get away with, reserving with the “you liberals are so damned X” line when he gets into real trouble and needs a quick escape.
It doesn’t even matter if he believes what he’s saying or not, it only matters that he trip up any Democrat or pro-Obama guest on his show as quickly as he can if he sees that they have something smart to say.
In other words: his job, as HE sees it, is to do everything he can to block his guest (who is actually his opponent) from getting their point of view across while promoting his point of view any way he can. That’s not analysis, that’s propaganda. He’s not the only one guilty of it, but he’s one of the worst offenders, and he’s one of the best at it other than Limbaugh himself.
It’s just another way to bully his guests into the positions he wants them in. O’Reilly relies on yelling, cutting off mikes, and making his mean face for direct intimidation of his guests who say things he doesn’t like. Scarborough goes for the old “high-school” routine: hitting the smaller guy harder and harder as he smiles and laughs, telling him the whole time that his increasingly more forceful blows are “just a joke” and doing everything he can to humiliate his guest when it becomes too much and they complain about his disingenuous tactics by turning around to the whole class, throwing his hands up in the air, and crying out “little guy just couldn’t take a joke!”
The only one I’ve ever seen able to keep up with him is Rachel Maddow, though there are some guests Scarborough knows not to try it on. Biden is one of these people; Scarborough is actually quite afraid of him, but he would probably just shout him down like any other if he were just a lowly pundit/commentator like Maddow. But she knows exactly what he’s doing as he does it, and she deftly side-steps his blows, driving him absolutely insane as she does it. But she’s not good at it because she’s extra smart of whatever, she’s good at it simply because she’s not willing to put up with it and doesn’t let it frustrate her.
And that’s the real area where the mainstream media have given the right a big boost. They’ve packed the political shows with right-wing bullies and while the representatives of the moderates and the left are all expected to be “serious” and “above” the sort of thing they hired the right-wing guys to do on purpose! That’s what I see starting to change on MSNBC with Maddow.
I like Morning Joe. I’ve watched it since Joe first started hosting. It’s not Joe’s presence that pisses me off. I don’t want them to fire him or anything just because he’s a dirty debater. That’s life and, more importantly, that’s politics.
What bothers me is the fact that they won’t bring on anyone with actual balls for a regular segment to balance out the show. I like Mika, but whenever he pulls this crap, she just sits there and giggles until he’s done because he’s taught her that if she tries to refute him with honest, factual assertions, he will be willing to say anything to humiliate her. He’ll even bring up her family and her personal life if he feels the need to humiliate her more thoroughly; in case she actually scores a point while his back was turned or something. Then, once again, after he has humiliated her he will play it off as a “joke” and deride any audience members who write into point this out by saying “Oh, she can take it!”
I was actually pulling for MSNBC to replace Mika with Maddow rather than give her her own show. That would be an awesome show, and would have ratings-gold fireworks nearly daily.
