Okay, I admit it, I have no one to blame but myself. Now that it's dark at 5 AM, I go down to the basement to run on the treadmill until sunrise, and I'm a more or less captive audience to whatever is on TV at that hour but that doesn't mean I have to watch Morning Joe.
It's just that I scroll through as the commercials come on and it goes Fox, Morning Joe, Squawk Box, Bloomberg, Weather Channel, Jewelry Channel--what is that?-- and then ESPN 1, ESPN 2,3,4 unto infinity.
Morning Joe replaced Don Imus, so that had to be an upgrade. Imus, as he got older and lost not just a few neurons, went from being loathsome but sometimes funny to simply loathsome--so whatever replaced him had to be better.
But, in the case of Morning Joe, just barely.
This morning, they played a clip from the Democratic Presidential debate in which Martin O'Malley was asked about the reluctance of Democrats to use certain language or phrases, like "Radical Islam" and the questioner actually phrased it in an interesting way, "Isn't it possible that in avoiding more strident phrases you appear faint hearted?" To which O'Malley replied, well our best defense against fundamentalist Muslims, like ISIS, has to be our own loyal Muslim population. Why alienate them with language they may find offensive?
Personally, I'm with Mr. O'Malley. Language can be "politically correct" for a reason. Some phrases might offend when you don't intend or would never dreamed offense would be taken.
But Joe Scarborough stares into the camera like a Donald Trump spin off, and repeats over and over, "How stupid do you think we are? How stupid? How stupid?" Of course we do not think all Muslims are "Radical Islamists," but some are.
The answer to Mr. Scarborough's question is: In your case, very stupid.
To drive home the point, Joe had some over sized guy with a shaven head, who looked to be at least seven feet three hundred pounds who was there to agree with Joe. This Incredible Hulk said this is what is wrong with Democrats: they are afraid to offend, even their enemies.
Which put me in mind of that wonderful episode from Band of Brothers in which Lt. Winters finds himself in a trench running along a dike at night with about 20 soldiers, looking to find a German detachment which shot up some American patrol. The Germans are shooting their machine gun with tracer bullets in the general direction of the American camp some miles down the road, out of range.
"Why are they shooting?" Winters whispers. "Why are they giving away their position?"
"Maybe," the soldier at his shoulder says, "They ain't as smart as you or me?"
Winters quickly organizes an attack on the German outpost and follows up with a surprise attack on an entire SS company, which he annihilates.
What made me think about this is the big bully on the Morning Joe set who was supposed to make us all feel happy and safe we had the Incredible Hulk on our side. And I thought, "No, he is like those stupid Germans firing off their guns." Stupid does not win the day.
Truth be told, Mr. Scarborough is simply not very bright. He has great star quality hair, but he is simply not smart enough to be on national TV.
His blond eye-candy co host, Mika Brzezinski, is supposed to be the balance, the Democrat, but she is no smarter than he is and she almost never disagrees with him. Her haircut is even better than Joe's, but again, neither is ready for prime time or even for off prime time, for early morning time. They are just too dumb.
English TV, at least as I remember it, is populated by people who are brighter than average. This means discourse, thought are elevated rather than sunk to the lowest common denominator. The English do not apologize or celebrate stupidity. Americans, or at least American television producers do celebrate really inane people and we all suffer for it.
One wonders, with all the people in this country who could provide insight, who could ask the question which needs to be asked, who have thought beyond the fraternity beer keg party level of depth on a wide variety of issues, why has MSNBC or CCN or any of these national networks decided to put these bozo's on the screen, to give them the microphone to reach millions? Why are these people on stage?
As George Carlin would say: It's a mystery!
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