Joe Scarborough is rapidly becoming the Piers Morgan of MSNBC: someone so insufferable he’s able to unite left and right through a brotherhood of mutual loathing. The left might agree with Morgan in spirit on the issue of gun control, but he’s so smug and insufferable on the topic, it hardly matters.
A similar backlash appears to be brewing towards the “Morning Joe” host. While I have no doubt the left loves the so-called Republican’s daily dose of Republican-bashing, he’s become so personally unbearable, it, well, doesn’t matter. In an open letter to Scarborough’s co-host, Mika Brzezinski, TV Newser’s Gail Shister unloads both barrels:
After more than five years of silently enduring your bellicose co-anchor’s condescension and almost pathological interrupting, you finally took him on instead of resorting to your passive arsenal of withering looks and audible sighs. Good for you.
Granted, calling Scarborough’s behavior “chauvinistic” doesn’t carry the same firepower as, say, “Back off, bitch!” but it’s a start. You’re finally acknowledging that dirty looks and long sighs don’t work with a narcissistic bully, no matter how many times he promises never to do it again. …
Scarborough, like another male host on your very network, is deeply in love with the sound of his own voice. Whether someone else – including, or maybe especially, you — is speaking at the time is irrelevant. He’s all id, all the time. Real men don’t do impulse control. Ever wonder why so few “Morning Joe” regulars are women?
To a bully, there are two words that never apply: unexpressed thought. …
Think of this as a clarion call on behalf of all women – and their daughters – who acquiesce to verbally abusive men. Stop being a victim and make yourself heard. The next time your co-host interrupts you, look him dead in the eye, raise your voice (this is key) and say, “Let me finish, Joe, please!”
I wouldn’t go as far as to describe Scarborough as “verbally abusive,” but that he’s a jerk deeply in love with the sound of his own sanctimony is, I think, a place where right and left can find common ground.
Kumbaya, baby!
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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