Joe Walsh Is Running for "Morning Joe"
Joe Walsh Is Running for “Morning Joe”
The former congressman wants to jump from conservative firebrand to respectable cable news presence. There's a model for exactly how to do it.
https://newrepublic.com/article/154892/joe-walsh-running-morning-joe
Twenty-five years ago, Representative Joe Scarborough was a Gingrich Republican, swept into office in the Republican wave of 1994. He was, in many respects, one of the most radical members of that freshman class, and a leader of the ’90s equivalent of the Freedom Caucus. In the 2000s, he became a standard-issue conservative talking head. MSNBC hired him to be vocal proponent of the Iraq War on a channel that had developed an untimely reputation for leaning a little too far to the left. (They cleared out poor Phil Donahue, a critic of the war, to make room for him.
On his original MSNBC show, Scarborough Country, a transparent O’Reilly Factor clone, he was a gleeful right-wing culture warrior, devoting segments to the evils of feminists and the shameful behavior of the cursed Dixie Chicks. (Here is some representative Scarborough Country dialogue: “Pat Buchanan, let me go to you. It looks like, according to this New York Times article, that illegal immigration is exploding in Arizona and across the southwest. Do you think President Bush’s amnesty work program for illegals may be to blame?”)
Since then, Scarborough has been reborn as Morning Joe, the genial and reasonable host of a chat show beloved by liberals (who go on television a lot) and moderates (who go on television a lot) and nonpartisan journalists (who go on television a lot) alike
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The most notable thing about Scarborough’s transformation is that he didn’t actually have to atone for his past life beyond, perhaps, a dollop of mild contrition. (On the tenth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, Scarborough hosted a panel on the topic in which he downplayed his own role in drumming up support for that debacle, while playing a misleading video package that heavily suggested that Democrats who voted against the invasion had instead supported it.) It was enough for Scarborough to merely stop acting like Bill O’Reilly—a thing he did because a TV producer told him to—and start acting like Brian Williams, instead—again at the direction of a TV producer. (“You can cut out this regular-Joe crap,” MSNBC head Phil Griffin told Scarborough when he transitioned from phony populist everyman to phony genial political junkie. “Our audience is from Boston to Washington, D.C.”ng up support for that debacle, while playing a misleading video package that heavily suggested that two Democrats who voted against the invasion had instead supported it.) It was enough for Scarborough to merely stop acting like Bill O’Reilly—a thing he did because a TV producer told him to—and start acting like Brian Williams, instead—again at the direction of a TV producer. (“You can cut out this regular-Joe crap,” MSNBC head Phil Griffin told Scarborough when he transitioned from phony populist everyman to phony genial political junkie. “Our audience is from Boston to Washington, D.C.”)
As for why posh liberals seem to feel more personal affection for Joes Scarborough and Walsh than they do for, say, the young liberal people who are actually in their employ, there’s no need to psychoanalyze it that deeply. They are flattered by the approval-seeking of Republican men, and annoyed by the upstart left-wingers who insist that they live up to liberal ideals these same elites find inconvenient or unprofitable. Should Walsh find himself with an MSNBC contract at the end of all this, he will make few demands of his new audience, except that they forget how he got there..
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...are often absent. When they are there, it's with a phony backdrop. Maybe they are thinking about retiring? I'd give the show to Ron Reagan and Joy Reid!
