A Test For Morning Joe

For some time I swore off cable news. Whether it was Fox, MSNBC or CNN. I tuned out because so much of it had become like ‘Crossfire’ on steroids.

In the spring of 2011, I saw people on Twitter in the mornings talking about Morning Joe. Jazz Shaw spoke highly of it and I decided to watch. I was glad I did. The political discussions were casual and there was always a good balance of conservative and liberal guests. Add to which they would cover sports and pop culture and I became a fan.

Sometimes there would be more liberals than conservatives and Joe would joke it was the “Democratic hour of power.” The balance would be restored the following day.

But things changed right around the time of the GOP primary. The show took on a decidedly more liberal partisan tone and Joe Scarborough suddenly became more interested in bashing Republicans than Barack Obama. As time went on, it became more absurd. It has reached the heights of ridiculousness in the last several weeks.

It started on the Friday following the Democratic National Convention when the August jobs report was released. Despite crappy numbers and a job rate falling because nearly 400,000 people dropped out of the workforce, Scarborough laughingly referred to it as “good news” and declared it was “tailwind” for Obama.

It got worse in the wake of the attacks on our embassy in Egypt and the terrorist attack on our consulate in Libya, resulting in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Romney made a statement that merited s segment of coverage on the show. Yet they covered it and Romney’s subsequent press conference pretty much the entire show for three days. In a moment that astounded me for its stupidity, Scarborough said that questioning whether or not the attack in Benghazi was planned was the right thing to do but didn’t because Mitt Romney “would not allow” them to do so as if Romney was this Svengali who tells Joe what to talk about day afte day on his own show.

The first show of the week will be the acid test. The Obama administration has been caught lying about the attacks in Benghazi. They swore up and down it was a “spontaneous” attack when they had information it was a terrorist attack. Tonight on 60 Minutes, the President of the United States declared a terrorist attack and the first murder of an ambassador in 30 years to be a “bump in the road.”

Romney did release his tax return on Friday and does merit mention. However if they talk about that and ignore the Presidents Middle East disaster, they will have essentially joined the ranks of shows like Hardball and Politics Nation.

Resist we much.