This phrase “fluff piece” doesn’t do this Times celebrity blowjob justice:
LAST week on the north lawn of the White House, the morning after the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski held court on the grass, presiding over a special Sunday edition of their MSNBC daily news program “Morning Joe.” As they sat beside one another in directors’ chairs — Mika in a black evening gown with a plunging neckline; Joe in a dinner jacket (sans tie), both of them wearing dark sunglasses — they exuded the reckless, easy glamour of old-style Hollywood stars: Rock Hudson and Doris Day (but Doris Day with a tan and killer abs).
A few hours before, at the MSNBC after-party, they’d hobnobbed with the actors Alec Baldwin and Bradley Cooper; and as they received guests for the dinner post-mortem (Jon Meacham of Newsweek, Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post, Rick Stengel of Time), Joe teased their younger co-host, Willie Geist, that his sunglasses looked like the BluBlockers from Mr. Cooper’s movie “The Hangover.”
It was hard, for a moment, to remember that these cinematic presences were established journalists and political wonks who spend three hours every morning debating the news of the day with an Elysium of commentators.
Make it stop.
(h/t Elisabelle)
frankdawg
I still wish someone would ask Joe if the was any truth to the rumors that he was screwing that young intern that turned up dead in is Florida office under mysterious circumstances.
DougJ
@frankdawg:
I agree.
MoeLarryAndJesus
“Political wonks”?
More like wanks.
Tonybrown74
Isn’t Morning Joe the lowest rated of the opinion shows on MSNBC? Why do they continue to fluff him up is beyond me.
Napoleon
Good God was that bad.
Bob
“Journalists” “political wonks”? That’s not a blow-job, it’s tong in the ass, and dirty ass at that.
Ben
Any article with the words “killer abs” in it doesn’t qualify as any kind of story, profile, or even analysis. This isn’t what America needs right now — and certainly not from the New York Times.
That it was in the “Fashion & Style” section tells you more about “Morning Joe” than any of the words in the piece.
Keith
W…T…F?
And when was the last time an original ep of M*A*S*H aired, anyway? 30 years?
kommrade reproductive vigor
Jesus Christ. That’s more nauseating than than a thousand forced viewings of 2 girls 1 cup.
However a brief dip in the cesspool suggests this kind of “writing” is a feature, not a bug for Ms ScHILLinger:
Wait. It gets WORSE:
Had enough? No? Take THAT:
de stijl
@Tonybrown74:
That may be a factor of it’s 5-8 am time slot.
stevie314159
Elysium of commentators?
How true. Morning Joe: where brain-dead hacks go to their final resting place.
whetstone
I was hanging in there until “Elysium.”
Off to hug the toilet.
Yutsano
Once again, words fail. Can we carve up the carcass of this turkey that is the New York Times now?
burnspbesq
Jeez. Don’t you get it?
You enable the behavior by reacting to it. You drive traffic to this shit when you write about it. Which makes them believe that people want it.
How complicated is this?
TuiMel
Yes, it is hard to remember, because it is so untrue. The “Morning Joe” routine is not for me. Mika is worse than Joe. She and Joe remind me of the highschool QB and his cheerleader girlfriend who are leveraging (ad nauseum) their highschool glory days. I don’t know if Mika is as dumb and whiny as she comes across or if that is the personna that keeps her in her job. That they are not as bad as “Fox and Friends” is damning w/ feint praise. The national media is just parody of itself.
TR
Jesus Christ. That’s the journalistic equivalent of a reacharound.
sloan
I remember flipping past that and being shocked that MSNBC wasn’t showing prison porn like they usually do on the weekends. I lasted about 10 seconds then turned off the TV.
Martin
Heh. I read ‘Elysium of commentators’ as ‘Asylum of commentators’. Looking at it again, I still read it that way.
JGabriel
It’s not that bad, you just have to know the code. For example, in the last paragraph quoted …
… cinematic presences is code for douchebags, and an Elysium of commentators is code for assholes.
What do you mean I’m just changing words to avoid coping with reality?
.
Quiddity
Have you noticed that, in profile, Mika Brzezinski looks a lot like Ayn Rand?
licensed to kill time
__
Mika always gives off more of a battered wife vibe to me. She acts like she’s scared of Joe. Not that I watch that trainwreck of a show anymore. I cannot stand that smug, smarmy, fleececlad ignorant and proud of it little turd of a scar, bro!
All those guys (Hannity, Rush, O’Reilly etc) have that same smug bully vibe. Blechh.
@ Elizabelle : “Am thinking this story is part parody, right? I mean it’s got to be? Don’t it? ”
I was thinking the same thing while reading it, hmm.
I have to add that while I was reading that article, we had a 5.0 earthquake here (SD/Baja) that shook my whole house. I thought at first it was a reaction to the drivel, but USGS tells me different! Mother earth does not approve of Mika and The Scar, it seems.
(copied from previous thread cuz I’m lazy)
Martin
@Keith: Hey, the NYT, if nothing else, knows their demographics. Too bad they’ll all be dead in 20 years.
arguingwithsignposts
If you consider Uncle Pat, Peggy Noonananana, Pastor Meacham and the likes “Elysium,” um… okay.
Likewise, if you think Mika is “poised” or “accommodating, ur not watching. She’s more confrontational than Schmoe at times
Someone said once, “sometimes it’s better to just walk on by.”
Elizabelle
Does anyone think the writer was partly going for parody?
Because the article achieves that.
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Since you mentioned Michelle Bachman.
Did anyone else catch Andy Borowitz’s new gig on last night’s inaugural episode of “Need to Know”? (PBS Friday nights, hosts are the reverend Jon Meacham and Allison Stewart)
Borowitz presents news headlines of the coming week. To wit, along the lines of
Zach
So Joe Scarborough is gay?
maus
Fuuuuuuuuck youuuuuuuu. I don’t want celebrities discussing politics. I don’t even want stars. I want no-names that are smart and capable and qualified by learning and merit, not who birthed them.
PeakVT
Can we carve up the carcass of this turkey that is the New York Times now?
I call dibs on the graphics department.
MAJeff
I’m happily “not fluent” in Fashion/Style.
Cliff
So is there a course on fellatio that aspiring journalists have to take in school, or do they just pick it up naturally once they get into DC?
arguingwithsignposts
@PeakVT:
I’ll call dibs on the data/multimedia dept. Those folks rock.
arguingwithsignposts
@Cliff:
I’m not aware of it in any curriculum I’ve looked at (and I’ve looked at far too many). It seems to be a Village artifact, like a parasite (cf., This American Life, Act 2)
Ailuridae
What exactly does it mean to be a “(moderate) liberal”? The only person on that show on a day to day basis who could be described as discernibly left of center is Barnicle but he doesn’t attempt to discuss policy.
If Mika were in the Senate the list of Democrats to her right would certainly be less than five and possibly just Nelson.
arguingwithsignposts
@Ailuridae:
Well, he does, but he does so poorly. I have lost a lot of respect for Barnicle since he joined the Schmoe team (used to love reading him on the AP wire long before the Internets distributed his column for free).
And Mika has *never* sounded left/liberal to me. It’s some kind of weird libertarian contrarianism that I can’t make out.
bkny
oooh, and a shoutout for the village queen — you just know they are special:
That morning, Tina Brown, the editor of The Daily Beast, had joined the group. When she entered the studio and complimented the host on her dress, Mika rolled her eyes, glanced at Joe, who was dressed in a fleece jacket and jeans, and said, “We do clash,” and added, “Sally Quinn says you can always tell couples that aren’t working because they dress like they’re going to two different parties.”
JGabriel
Cliff:
You learn it on the job, while interning.
.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Holy Crap. I didn’t think it could get worse than the quote. Mike is like Joe’s wife? Joe is “so Alpha”? Elysium of pundits? Good god. When does the contrarian pushback against this kind of circle jerk begin? (rhetorical, I know, I know…). I made it about half way through last weeks hyperventilating stroke of Mike Allen. This looks even worse.
Mark S.
Jesus, this thing goes on for pages! The creepiest thing for me was when she started talking about other morning show lineups like they were her parents:
It’s like she was an orphan and she substituted these people for her parents. I’d watch my back, Mika; Liesl may decide Joe’s her new daddy and knife you in a dark alley.
Stroszek
I remember when Mika the Liberal railed against expanding food stamp programs in the stimulus bill because it was “just welfare.” This occurred shortly after one of the most respected center-right economists in the country published a widely read paper identifying food stamps as being several times more efficient and effective than the tax cuts that bloated and weighed down the bill.
mai naem
I watch some of this show pretty much every weekday morning. The friday before the WH Correspondents Dinner, Mika was just soooo excited about the dinner. Quite disgusting. She wasn’t that excited about the 08 election. She acted like a high schooler waiting for the prom. My favorite(or maybe least favorite) part of Morning Ho is Maria Antoinette Bartiromo who can always find something stoopid to say. Like, this week she called Hank Paulson and George W. Bush heroes. Heroes, this fool who is considered some kind of financial journo called them heroes.
Crashman
The phrase “held court” should be banned from American English.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@mai naem:
Bartiromo? Not surprised. I caught her on the Tweety show, the short one, just before the ’04 election and she was quite literally cheerleading for Bush, talking over the other guests and mocking them for criticizing Bush or saying even remotely favorable things about Kerry. She’s got that same “high school bitchy” thing as Palin and the Survivor girl on the View. “OBESITY!”
I never watch this show, but I’ve read that when Mika’s daddy is a guest on the show, he treats both hosts like nitwits, suffering them ungladly.
Mark S.
Also, is it just me or does Scarborough look like a bloated, twenty years older version of Chandler from Friends?
Ailuridae
@arguingwithsignposts:
Basically I think anyone who talks about how “Real Muricans” feel (and Mika does) and assume that’s the direction the country should go in can’t actually be discernibly left of center.
She’s likely pro-choice and she seems to be a foreign policy realist but she’s a deficit scold, she parrots the talking point about upper income taxes affecting the middle class etc. The furthest left you can put her in the political spectrum is the dead middle.
As for Barnicle, I basically agree with Somerby that the Irish American commentators that NBC employs are little more than trained seals for Jack Welch and his horrible corporatist meets New Age politics/philosophy. During that amazing segment (youtube should have it) when Andrew Ross Sorkin demanded that anyone name a successful company with union employees Barnicle sat there like a fucking moop
Here it is
de stijl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ailuridae:
I swear, class and money are the biggest problems in political journalism today. Like Charlie Gibson pontificating that 200K/yr was middle class. Essentially, they’re older versions of the kids I knew in college who thought their top ten percent background was the norm.
Wasn’t Barnicle an apologist for Bush? Always willing to bash Gore and Kerry? I have seen him push back a few times, but I don’t watch Scarborough and I quit watching Tweety regularly around the time of the Sunny Nobility remark, but as you say, Barnicle always seemed to me one of the head boys in Monsignor Russert’s Beltway CYO club.
Elizabelle
@Mark S.:
Yes. You called it.
Other odd things in an article replete with them:
Now do Joe’s views disturb only liberal viewers?
You don’t have to be a liberal, or even a Democrat, to be very, very afraid of the health insurance status quo. But that nuance is so lost on the NY TImes, in so many stories.
mai naem
I figure at some point the real story behind the dead intern Lori Klausitis will come out and Joey will go down in flames and most of his so called teevee buddies will respond with the “Joe who?” when asked questions about him.
BTW, I didn’t realized Mike Barnicle was considered a liberal. Really??? I am pretty sure he’s pro-life. He troll concerns about the deficit just like Joey and Mika. His wife is some kind of bigwig at BofA. The only thing I hear him say is “Who gives a crap about healthcare, people need jobs.” I just want to shake Mika up and down when she goes on and on about obesity and food. I am sure Mika can go to Whole Foods and spend $200 on a grocery trip. I wonder what Mika would get if she was making $300/wk with kids? Does she really think she is going to be able to afford seafood and expensive proteins?
Elizabelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Jim’s comment: I never watch this show, but I’ve read that when Mika’s daddy is a guest on the show, he treats both hosts like nitwits, suffering them ungladly.
Article goes there too.
And on with the “new genre: morning-news-romcom-vérité” stuff.
(I first thought “romcom” was something Donald Rumsfeld might have stood down from, but apparently not.)
Ah yes. That damn “stirring the pot intellectually.” Got to arbitrate that away, at all costs.
arguingwithsignposts
@mai naem:
I only remember reading his columns in the early-mid-80’s and he was a heckuva writer, but didn’t spend a lot of time on policy for the AP IIRC.
@Ailuridae:
That is a stunning clip. It always amazes me how these asshats equate the company’s dipshit performance with the union’s ability to bargain for decent benefits. As if the management had *nothing* to do with the failure of the company.
Derek
I’ve never turned on MSNBC in my life, as far as I know; cable news is repulsive, and the opinion shows are even worse. Is this guy’s last name really “Barnicle?” Because that’s hilarious.
FlipYrWhig
@Mark S.: Yes, definitely. Also a hint of the obnoxious older brother on The Wonder Years.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Heh. Let’s see you’ve got War and Pestilence. Krazy Kat Harris can be famine and Orly Taitz can be Death.
DougJ
@Ailuridae:
Yes, that’s about right.
DougJ
@Mark S.:
He does.
Mark S.
@Ailuridae:
The NFL? That would have shut those guys up.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Exactly. I would guess about two thirds of the clowns on TV are fairly progressive on social issues, but they don’t have a clue how poorer people live and frankly don’t give a shit. That’s all their corporate masters care about.
FlipYrWhig
@kommrade reproductive vigor: I want Jan Brewer and Sue Lowden in the horsey set.
frankdawg
@mai naem:
No,I am afraid this is a cold case that will never be solved.
@Derek:
Barnacle Bill the Putzwad is(was?) a columnist for the Boston newspaper. He pulled that populist bullshit off so well that people always assume he is ‘one of us’ but Mike has always had his own interests first. Like Bill O’lie-ly only without all the obvious political rants.
Xenos
@Mark S.: The obvious answer to the claim that no successful corporation has unions was that the very network they were on is thoroughly unionized. But the people in front of the cameras are at-will employees, so unions are just for the little people, and they obviously must not matter at all. It was a stunning bit of blindness on the part of the whole group.
Comrade PhysioProf
Jeezus motherfuck.
Malron
If Mika has killer abs I might be tempted to actually tune in.
The Rock Hudson analogy was pretty interesting, considering Joe is a phony moderate who needs to come out of the closet and admit he’s a wingnut.
ChrisB
@MAJeff:
That was an awesome comment.
As for the article, I had to stop reading before I vomited. Does it point out later on that Joe Scarborough is the biggest asshole on television?
No? I didn’t think so.
asiangrrlMN
@kommrade reproductive vigor: I hate you for this comment. You know why? First of all, I had to look up 2 girls and 1 cup. That was bad enough. Then, I read the excerpts, and I had to agree with you on the conclusion of 2 girls and 1 cup being better than the drivel peddled by Ms. Schillinger.
As for Joe and Mika, ugh. I only liked the clip I saw in which Mika’s dad thoroughly dismantled Joe.
mike kay
how would the NYT stenographer know about Mika’s abs? she was wearing a dress that covered her lower torso?
I mean did he sleep with her?
asiangrrlMN
@mike kay: I believe the author is a she, and we women know these things. are you Mike Kay? If so, what happened to your caps?
Mike Kay
@asiangrrlMN: I forgot to put on my caps on this morning.
Tom Q
Barnicle is a bit of a slippery guy to classify, politically. Someone I know once referred to him as a bleeding heart conservative — largely a liberal on the lunch-pail issues, though willing to toss all that aside on certain days over abortion or “atriotism”. He’s the kind of guy who’d have seen no contradiction whatever in pulling the lever for Ted Kennedy and Reagan in the same election.
Which makes him a decent fill-in for Matthews, who has similar bi-polar tendencies, but certainly not a respectable represenative of “the left” on TV panels.
celticdragonchick
*sigh*
You know…we are a social species and people do go to parties. Even I get tired of being angry and raging about whatever is pissing me off that day.
Back in the ‘Golden Age’ of broadcast journalism, the pols and the reporters were smoking Havana fatties and knocking back scotch together after the same sort of shindigs.
henqiguai
@Tom Q(#66):
He always struck me as being the stereotypical Boston conservative blue-collar posturing democrat type; with most of the baggage of ethnic issues that is included. And let us not forget, if I am recalling properly, his having to leave the Boston Globe under that little cloud of plagiarism (again, assuming I am not misremembering).
Oh, and asiangrrlMN; next time ask around here first. I found out about the 2 Girls with their little Cup thingie on this blog and, like you, went off and viewed the video. I’m still trying to get rid of those images…
Tom Q
henqiuai, I think you’re right on the money. He would definitely have been one of those “lifelong Democrats” who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Coakley in January (or Shannon O’Brien over Romney).
And, yes, he was booted for plagiarizing George Carlin, of all people. Of course, Carlin, too, had the Irish Catholic upbringing (as did I), so I’m sure Barnicle responded to lots of his stuff.
Jim C
“Killer abs”?
Has anyone questioned Mika’s abs about that dead intern in Joe’s office?
It would be irresponsible not to speculate …
Chris Johnson
You fucker, half my brain just curled up and died reading that.
How do people that still watch TV retain any sanity at all?
…oh wait…
grumpy realist
If the NYT ever wants to know why people like me will plonk down the hard-earned cash for a subscription to the FT and turn our noses up at the NYT, the bit that has been quoted above is exhibit A.
You know what, guys? High school is over. We really aren’t interested in watching you continually tell each other how brilliant you are and how wonderful it is to be part of the in group. We’re interested in NEWS. Y’know, the stuff you were supposedly so interested in when you went to journalism school? Dead zero lacking.
Just GROW UP and get out there and do actual journalism, mmmkay? Muckraking? Hello? Actual research and reporting?
(And the reason I read the FT rather than the NYT is even the so-called fluff pieces in the FT don’t give me cliches and stupidity.)
different church-lady
Fixed.
different church-lady
@Tom Q:
Fixed.
Comrade Kevin
is the writer saying that Scarborough is gay? And what was wrong with Doris Day’s abs?
Bill Murray
@Tom Q: Barnicle had a difficult relationship with reporting ethics before he got canned for plagiarism. Possibly fabricating quotes, more accusations of plagiarism, front page article in a Boston paper that wasn’t his employer.
On the other the Carlin thing was just him being Carlos Mencia, before Mencia was cool
4jkb4ia
Oh, no. That’s in Fashion and Style. That means I have to read the weddings.
(Given Mother’s Day and the omer, I expect all of two weddings, but it’s the principle.)
Davis X. Machina
@Tom Q: My best Barnacle memory — he was on WRKO at the time — was when he volunteered to throw the switch and execute Dedrick Owen, because we were only going to have to do it when he was older anyways.
4jkb4ia
I add triumphantly that this thing is written by Liesl Schillinger, who is not a political reporter and is more known as a regular contributor to the Book Review, mostly for fiction.
4jkb4ia
Four weddings with a rabbi alone, and one with a Presbyterian minister co-officiating. All took place last night.
4jkb4ia
OK, I read the thing. ESPN3.com has made it even less necessary for me to have the thing these people are on, but it was amusing to read that people will go on the record saying that this is less of a canned situation than the other morning news programs when so much of what I hear that comes out of that is glorified gossip. I mean, we know that Mike Allen is frequently on expressing what people need to know to stay in the social network in Washington.
Cain
BTW great reference to Doris Day’s movie and song in the title.
cain
ThresherK
Slight tangent: Can’t talk about the insulated Villagers’ disconnect from people who depend on actual governance without bringing up Mohair Sam Donaldson.
He was getting 5-figure annual subsidies for a ranch (while working full time at the news, elsewhere) when people like Mika were angling to be the intern getting his coffee.
Oh, and more about Mike Barnicle: What he did to George Carlin, pales in comparison to what he did to Alan Dershovitz. Now has that well-to-do urban Easterner white male fetish with RealAmerica™. To top it off, he finds fewer acorns than Tweety.