Disappointingly, MSNBC convention coverage will include hour-long blocks plus sporadic doses of the-smartest-bestest-politician-ever Joe Scarborough who revealed today that he intends to deliver propaganda from the right in his usual mediocre, abusive manner. It’s stupefying that anyone in MSNBC’s prospective audience is thrilled by Joe’s many starry-eyed references to his allegedly glorious political past.
Dullard Joe shrinks whenever guests such as David Shuster appear on the stage and by simply showing up illuminate the irrelevancy of his heydays in DC circa 1990 something persona. It’s unseemly how he summons enforcer Willie Geist to break the kneecaps of those he perceives present a challenge to his flaccid image. Mika Brzezinski appears more often as Joe’s arm candy than as his co-host.
Salon editor and Clinton soldier Joan Walsh remains Joe’s conditional liberal ally. This morning she reinforced the talking points of Rev. Eugene Rivers who acts as if he’s standing-in for Republican strategist/Rev. Joe Watkins. Apparently it is dangerous to even suggest that if Obama loses it may be because a majority of Americans are not quite ready for a black president. Walsh maintains that Clinton was a victim of sexism but racism has not affected Obama’s bid.
Walsh was her liveliest when Rivers announced that black clergy across the country were incensed by Obama’s reply to Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren’s question, “At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?” Obama’s response, “Well, I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade,” had Walsh clicking and clacking disapproval (as if Clinton would have delivered the liberal pro-choice mantra in a more sensitive or digestible manner?)
As for McCain she stated: “He was there! He was funny! He was firing back!”
No one asked Walsh how funny she thought McCain was being when he told this joke at a Republican Senate fund-raiser in 1998:
“Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?
Because her father is Janet Reno.”
It might have been edge of the seat entertainment had someone asked Joan if she laughed along with McCain when a supporter, referring to Hillary Clinton, asked him “how do we beat the bitch?”
McCain went on to say that it was an excellent question. Et tu, Walsh?
Obama’s campaign should be asking those questions of “former Clinton supporters” now appearing in ads as Democrats for McCain, not through surrogates on Morning Joe, but in rebuttal ads.
MSNBC commentators are wondering aloud why are there 1,000 protesters in the streets, what do they want, who cares what they want? Yet, are endlessly pushing the notion that 1,000 Clinton supporters will wreak endless havoc for Obama during the convention.
Who cares about anyone in this circus? The pundits, the protesters, the hatchet people dispatched by the Clintons, McCain and Obama – apprentices in the art of propaganda and self-promotion – failures at civil discourse.