Several months ago when HBO started advertising its upcoming "John Adams" miniseries on CNN and other channels, my husband and I decided to upgrade our DISH network subscription so we could get HBO and watch the series. As part of the package we also got MSNBC, which I thought was an added bonus in that we could watch Keith Olbermann.
I wasn't prepared for Joe Scarborough.
What an idiot!
For some reason (my age perhaps) I can't seem to sleep past about 4:30 in the morning. Today I was up even earlier. And when I am up and not yet inspired to write something, I channel surf to see if anything interesting is in the news. Thus I discovered "Morning Joe" which is a show with a lot of interesting guests who never really get to say anything because egomaniac Joe Scarborough, like his t.v. cousin egomaniac Chris Matthews, interrupts every guest he has with attacks on Barack Obama or stupid comments about how the fed should keep lowering interest rates forever. His female sidekick, who is supposed to be the liberal counterbalance to his conservatism, I guess, has become as idiotic as he is. Of course, he interrupts her continually as well, because as the name of the show implies, it's all about him.
Like FOX and CNN, MSNBC made Jeremiah Wright a six day (seven if you count today) story. And no one did it better than good old morning Joe.
Starting last Thursday, when Bill Moyers began this idiocy by releasing clips of the already taped interview with Wright, Joe and his sidekicks began the piling on with non-stop interviews meant to let everyone know that with the return of the Wright story, Obama was doomed. On Friday, they continued the condemnation of Wright, and Obama for not "throwing him under the bus" (the trite phrase every single pundit is using because of course they are all such lemmings they can't even come up with their own phrase). The cable shows were quieter on Saturday because the regular guys are off the air, and also because the actual interview with Wright was not controversial. But the story was still stewing in the political world, and no one had come to Obama's defense. In the meantime, McCain was condemning Obama, and ads began in some southern states using the Wright sound bites from his sermons.
Sunday evening the story expoded again when Wright spoke at the NAACP convention and put on quite a show. It was entertaining and informative, and only somewhat controversial. CNN and MSNBC ran it live as if they were following a car chase, waiting for the crash or hail of bullets from the cops. CNN had commentary for three hours.
By Monday morning, Joe and his moronic sidekicks were at it again, denouncing Wright and Obama, and saying Obama was weak and doomed and Hillary was now kicking his butt. The glee with which they spewed this nonsense was obvious. They interrupted things to show Wright's speech at the National Press Club as if it was a new car chase, one that would be even more exciting and bloody. And, of course, it was. The actual speech was fairly mild, but the Q and A made Wright look like a madman, high from the attention he was getting.
So Joe and gang were at it on Tuesday morning, ready to plan the debates between Hillary Clinton and John McCain because Obama was going to have to go back to Chicago and lick his wounds. He was now dead as a presidential candidate, according to their very astute analysis.
So when Obama finally got around to watching the video of the speech on Tuesday morning (he had been busy campaigning all day Monday and had only seen some of the transcript) he apparently exploded, and held a press conference in which he denounced and separated himself from Wright.
Did that stop the story? Of course not. This morning, Joe and buddies couldn't stop talking about it, with female sidekick asking every guest who came on if Obama's statement came too late.
Jeez!!
If anybody doesn't see a racial double standard here then they are deaf, dumb and blind.
John McCain actively solicited the endorsement of John Hagee who has called the Catholic Church "the great whore" and said the people of New Orleans brought the hurricane on themselves because God was angry with their depravity. He openly supports Israel based on an interpretation of one book of the Bible which supposedly says Jesus will not return until Israel occupies the entire Holy Land, even though the other part of that prophecy is that most of the Jews will die. There are numerous clips of this guy spewing his disgusting hateful ideology, yet good old morning joe never shows them, nor do any of the other networks.
The Clinton shill George Stephanopolous who loves to question Obama about Wright, also questionned McCain about Hagee, but though McCain expressed disagreement with Hagee's views, he said he was still happy to have his endorsement. That was apparently okay with George.
So why did George let McCain get away with this? Why does morning Joe not make a five day story of the disgusting and anti-American (unless you don't count New Orleans as part of America) speech of Hagee and demand that McCain do something about it, the way he demanded Obama do something?
There can be only two reasons. One is that you treat the black candidate differently than you treat the white candidate. The other is that corporate America (of which the media is the main propaganda tool) wants Obama destroyed.
In the meantime - during the six day Wright funfest, there was not a single story about any of the issues important in this primary season. Not one story on energy, including Hillary and McCain's ridiculous gas tax holiday proposals, on the housing market, the broader economy, Iraq, with its highest American death toll in over a year, or Bush's itchy trigger finger poised at Iran.
The news media neither informs nor educates us. They distract us, so that they can get their guy or gal in the White House, and get Congress to do their bidding.
