Morning Joe Misses Hindenburg, Tackles Small Chinese Balloon Instead

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for January 12th, 2010


Observations:


1) Well thank goodness the offensive repetition count was lower today, but Joe Scarborough is unending in his "coverage" of the apparent double standard in the Reid story, when no one cared about it anymore. This story belonged with Snooki somewhere today and yet, while less of a leader than yesterday, still had 51% of airtime. It’s a sad state of affairs and it seemed that the center of the revival was that a junior MSNBC writer overnight remembered Officer Crowley, thus, apparently the holy grail of the double standard was uncovered.


For me, rather than weigh in where it’s useless to, the only merit to asking for a quick end to this episode is that you will need your credibility later, arguing race is like arguing with a 5 year old, you just don’t do it, and bottom line, you might be being duped, and might harbor regret in the near future that you couldn’t see it in real time.


2) I just won’t rest on the lack of inclusion of the Wall Street bonus scandal in the Morning Joe program. It is an absolute atrocity that one of the chief advertisements for the show, run incessantly on MSNBC, involves Joe Scarborough quoted as saying “the endless pursuit of class warfare just won’t work”. Look, I think the show needs a life coach to tell them that 4 months ago when Joe’s name was on tip sheets everywhere as the next Fred Thompson, he was getting traction on a populist basis. To abandon that basis by focusing the show anywhere but the Wall Street scandal is a dilution of the show’s star’s character.


The administration's bank fee as it was divulged is lip service. The show also divulged that by the enactment of the campaign for the bank fee, the administration is in fact conceding that they are powerless to enact any reversal of a 24 trillion dollar heist that is more on their watch than the previous administration’s. That Tim Geithner is obstructing the release of information regarding the terms of the Fed bailout and the internal emails of AIG, a company the US is currently a custodian of, ad continuum without media scrutiny, is a hit on the long standing media bias claim of this show and others.


Yes, media is selective, yes it is sometimes seduced by perceptions of right and wrong rationalizing levels of coverage and intent. There is no doubt at this point that the New York Times caused Fox News. But your job, if you can really tell when they’re lying, is to confront those lies and those crimes, and not hack at the useless sand of race instead.


3) Bill and Hillary Clinton did an awful lot for the United States of America, and continue their work today. They had a powerful, insider savvy, protecting layer of professional managers marshaled to counterbalance the machine of their opposition. An opposition machine whose size, effectiveness and magnitude is unimaginable to 99.9% of the population. At the end of the day these were just two individuals who drew up an architecture. They knew what they were facing, got out a calculator, and said simply: “to beat them if they’re this big, we will need this support (Bill Gates), this lever (New York Times), this budget (Hollywood, George Soros), this visualization (Steven Spielberg), and this message (Fleetwood Mac) and a Canada-sized truckload of luck.


That the architecture worked will be covered in political science manuals forever. That it showed the difference between campaigning and governing will as well. That it was the phenomenon that made a next generation phenomenon possible, the Clintons created the atmosphere that Obama advanced, will over time to be accepted as political evolutionary fact.


To see them betrayed in these last few days, isn’t heart breaking or even disappointing. It’s a nod to their prowess. They are in fact just two individuals who thumbnailed a plan and executed it to heights before unseen.


That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.