I watch (actually listen to) Morning Joe on MSNBC
3SNL isn’t bad either.
https://pagesix.com/2017/05/04/joe-scarborough-and-mika-brzezinski-are-engaged/?_ga=2.174104865.262561096.1493946423-36443488.1484111516
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/04/how-joe-scarborough-and-mika-brzezinski-kept-their-relationship-secret-so-long
- 5 comments, 8 replies
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Wow that show hasn’t changed at all since I stopped watching it like 5 years ago.
@katylava
My take on Morning Joe:
I had never gotten into cable news at all until last 2016 during the election frenzy (except during disasters and wars), so I never had to opportunity to get sick of Mika, Joe, and co. In fact I’d never seen or heard the show - ever - until last summer.
A lot of annoying stuff goes on there - Joe thinks quite highly of himself, and talks over everyone. (Sometimes Joe apologizes for drowning other voices out - perhaps he apologizes 1 time out of every 50th or 500th incident, if that often?)
The Morning Joe crew brags on and on about how much advice they give to various politicians and influencers that said politicians and influences didn’t take. They seem to think that any advice they offer is solid gold. This is a hazard, I suppose, of being a TV commentator.
Sometimes they do cheap shots on someone or something, or offer opinions that could have clearly benefitted from a cooling off period before being spoken, which is a another hazard of a live show for anyone.
As for Scarborough’s history with the Gingrich agenda and other standard conservative agenda items, I ignore those. I’m not listening to him because I agree with his politics. Whether I will listen to someone depends on how interesting or informative they are, as much as on any given political agenda or POV. Anyway, right now, Scarborough and the show are a decent source on Trump and on the way Congress and the govt work in practice.
I like Morning Joe (for the moment), as the show is (to me, relatively speaking) mercifully less heavy on hosts and guests with highly predictable, dead-weight, pre-scripted POV talking points for the purposes of “spin”. The hosts and guests seem to me to talk like intelligent, informed, passionate, often funny adults, even when someone offers up a groaner or acts like an ass (Scarborough). They would be interesting people to sit next to at a dinner party.
Contrast Morning Joe with any “one from each POV” CNN talking-head conversation, during which it’s unlikely that either the hosts/guests or the viewer is going to learn anything beyond in-bubble position-confirmation, and a viewer might well die of boredom anyway.
Or contrast Morning Joe with the apparently endless party-line distortions on Fox.
So I like the show. Kinda fun. With actual intelligent content (sometimes, or frequently). For the same reason I like Bill Maher’s conversations with his guests - Maher tries to get any guest who is inclined to offer up the usual pro-forma boring POV BS-spin to loosen up and talk like an intelligent adult.
Would that there were more shows like these. I like the give and take, as long as it is reasonably informed, intelligent, respectful, and sounds more like honesty than like some scripted MOTD.
Anyway, the SNL cold open last night was funny as hell. Or so I thought.
He just became less intelligent than her father.
@cranky1950
Because he proposed to Mika?
Did he just become something other than engaged? I thought most of his other characteristics were of long standing?
PS - Scarborough is an intelligent guy, but he was never (my opinion) in ZB’s league, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he agreed with that. Besides, it can pay to be nice to your prospective FIL.
@cranky1950
PPS
Or do you think that both JS and ZB are both idiots?
Or do you think that JS, ZB, and MB are all idiots?
The fathers of Polish Princesses are always more intelligent than their husbands.
I’ve never had occasion to watch morning joe. Some of us have to work for a living.
@cranky1950
I get a slightly condensed version on podcast. Sometimes I dvr it using sling. Never catch it live.
This also kinda reminds me of an interview with David Justice. When asked why he divorced Halle Berry, he replied, "I got tired of always being wrong."
Guess Halle was not really acting in BAPS.
@cranky1950
Joe will get to be “always wrong” a lot in that marriage, if they interact in private “issue conversations” in the same way they interact on TV.
But if their private ways of settling issues off-lens resemble the the show habits, then Mika will get to be “always wrong” even way more. Or else she will be to be steam-rolled by his thoughts, his loud voice, his inability to let others complete sentences.
Or perhaps, since he stomps on her speech or interrupts and mansplains several times an hour every day (it can be painful to listen to, and the other males on the show don’t behave that way at all), perhaps he’ll concede the conversational ground more to Mika in private. Or perhaps the on-air chemistry will change.
(Re Joe’s mansplaining and overtalking: it’s legendary to the degree that every new viewer comments on it, its part of the common knowledge about the show; in fact Joe’s habits of overtalking sometimes transform into a form of self-aware self-parody. He stomps on his other daily/weekly regulars also, but not nearly to the degree he does to Mika. He stomps less often on the irregular invited and special guests. Joe’s barging in more loudly that everyone else is so obvious and frequent that it’s a standard “embarrassment to watch or listen to” joke. Mika tends to hold her ground and get her point across tho when he does this. She pushes back. She doesn’t quit.
Mika also jumps in a bit, cutting off other regulars (and Joe) also, but it’s tiny fraction of Joe’s habitual practice and she’s not natively so loud.
To some degree this is the format of the show and Joe and Mika are the hosts. But this is also just Joe’s personality, according to journalist reports from those who worked with Joe over the years. Joe’s been, according to reports, extremely confident and very enthusiastically vocal all his life. And he’s aware of his public personality, and relishes it to a degree. But he’s not a demogogue, and his show runs on genuine thoughts and discussion, not bashing and spinning and scripted talking points, and that makes the show stimulating.
Reportedly, when he was brainstorming for a show for this AM time slot after Don Imus talked himself out of a job with racist comments, Joe specifically wanted Mika as his sparring partner; because differing political orientations; because she was smart and very well informed; and because she acted like she didn’t give a hoot when he tried to impress her or run over her on a previous encounters.
So: after nearly a decade of working together in this “grab the floor” format live on camera, perhaps the two have figured out ways to live with each other’s quirks and bull-headedness.
Re Halle Berry
She may be the Hollywood princess of the century and need to dominate all in her private life. Or not.
Or Justice may have defaulted into letting her make the relationship work and then was perhaps shocked that an ambitious Hollywood star took over and ran things her way. Or he was blinded by her being gorgeous. Who knows or cares? We aren’t hearing Berry’s POV here (not that I want to). I have no idea about that.
And if she ran over him all the time, he did have the choice of engaging, and standing up for himself, and trying to improve be the relationship. No idea whether he attempted to work at that or not. And I don’t care.
But sometimes there’s no fix.
I have heard a number of males complain that their female partners run everything in their lives, while failing to realize that they themselves acted like they wanted to be passive about all those matters. And I have heard a number of females complain that their male partners withdraw and don’t engage, without seeming to be aware that the conversations haven’t been two-sided for a long time. Seems to me there’s usually or often plenty of room for each person to examine themselves as much as they note the other party’s conduct.
And of course sometimes one person or the other won’t or can’t adapt or communicate. Not everything is the fault of both.
Relationship require, in my experience, a fair amount of daily active awareness, engagement, and work. In our culture, more often than not, it seems to me that the females do the majority of that work, often with the males being barely aware the work is happening or necessary. But that is just one of many possible or commonplace relationship patterns.
Some persons say they simply want an easy relaxed “be happy, live and let live” relationship and be unable to see that the other person may feel there’s no point to such a relationship pattern and why would anyone live that way?
So who’s right? ; )
Imagine (as a thought experiment) what life would be like if many females and other “relationship maintainers” chose to treat relationships and households with an attitude of “I wanna come home to a peaceful house, deal with practicalities and people a little, deal with stuff that’s my domain only, and do what I want otherwise. Everyone be cheerful, please. Let someone else make the daily family emotional stuff happen.”
If no one in the household picked up those tasks of making and implementing choices and strengthening bonds and monitoring family members, and neither partner in question wanted to do that work, and they wouldn’t or couldn’t collaborate, then aside from parenting activity and work, what is even the point of making a household and a family (excepting from $ and convenience)? Many persons simply don’t want to live in intimacy with another and then feel “alone” or “un-listened” or “humored” at the end of the day and those feelings can occur on either side or both sides. In that case one or both parties might prefer to be single.
Perhaps that’s where our society is headed. Seems not ideal, tho, and much would be lost. There is a genuine richness that comes out of serious and genuine deep relationships.
Oh well. If I’ve just proven I know too little and talk too much, what else is new?
Enjoy being cranky.
@f00l Cranky is as well as cranky is gonna be. Fretting over the next 6mos. The way retailing is going cranky may enter the ranks of “them”, and he may have to “consult”. However until things shake out everything is fine.
@cranky1950
I am betting you can out-cranky most people in N Georgia and points nearby. I predict you survive and thrive, while still being cranky.
Must say that I’m impressed by y’all’s intelligent discussion and opinions; it’s most refreshing!
While I like MSNBC overall, Morning ‘Joe’s’ habitual narcissism irritates me so much that I can only watch it ‘in small doses’. Even the SNL parody was hard to watch. It seems to me the reason he steps on his co-host so much is because he counts on her to find a way around him. He most likely gets a kick out of watching her persistence to state her opinion and/or be contrary to him. That’s too much work for me. If someone wants to know my opinion, then they will be respectful of my personality and give me my chance to say it. Of course, there isn’t much respect in politics, TV or other traditional industries and careers. Survival of the fittest comes in to play and dominance is vital. And that’s all good except, both male and females are required to survive and advance the human race.
I like Halle Berry but she is a DIVA. And, like many others who try to live in the public’s eye, she kind of has to be strong minded and tough skinned to put up with all the scrutiny, controversy and negativity pushed on her by those who see it as their right to pass judgement on someone else. So why would Halle’s ex-spouse be surprised if she had to be right all the time? I guess he thought he could handle it long term. lol
A long time ago, I tried to explain the DIVA concept to a young child. It went something like this…a DIVA is someone who has a specialness that we like and want to see more of. We usually end up paying or otherwise rewarding them to do this special thing that we like. Eventually, we get most annoyed by the DIVA because they have been rewarded to persist in this specialness. And when they do it all the time, it’s not special anymore. I’m not sure if I was telling the little girl it was ok to be a DIVA or not. The good news is that she still grew up to be an intelligent young lady that is only mildly tolerant of the DIVA’s in her family. Last fall, she deactivated her FB account so that her Grandmother and Aunt couldn’t continue to rant and rage against her differing political views.
And to your point about relationships, I believe doing what you want at home is the best way to go. The world is tough and home should be the place to give refuge. The approach we take is that my husband and I both have things we like and enjoy; and we each have our own areas of expertise. So we divide up the responsibilities by who enjoys a task or responsibility the most (or who minds doing it the least). He tweated an example in 2014 about him being inside doing laundry and dishes while I was outside staining the fence and doing yard work. It’s backwards, we know, but we are quite happy with the labor distribution. So, give up the traditional roles and aspects as taught in America for 200+ years. You might find a better way to your pursuit of happiness.
@aungericht
Y’all sound fine. Hope that’s true.
A lot of people are really put off by Scarborough’s overtalking. I was, in the beginning - that’s one reason I listened to the podcast. Not only could I listen, not watch, I could run it at 1.5 or 2.0 speed (the voice timbres don’t distort and words sound normal, the speed algorithm just shortens the silences). Between the podcast being edited down in length, and the playback speedup, I could bear it.
And the quality of the content is damned good. Far better than on so many shows where prof politicians and prof commentators hold forth in ways that are so pre-scripted to sell a POV that I have to FFWD thru them or just stop listening.
Over time I realized that, for a show that’s been going for a decade, that is the accepted show “chemistry” the participants have chosen to go with, and that Mika is not losing ground conversationally much, or accepting being pushed around, despite my initial impression. She always pushes back. They have a format they are happy with. Those who know the show over the years have come to accept that this is the on-air operating format. Mika is no passive voice or passive personality, and she has plenty of opportunities to go elsewhere if she wants - she’s a major star and also has the ZB connection, which makes her a kind of mythological “Washington DC mini-royalty” in aura. I suppose if she were actually much upset by Joe’s conduct on the show, she certainly had/has the choice not to be in a personal relationship with Joe, and not to get engaged to him, so I’m thinking she is holding her own.
If you ever were or are a fan of the HBO show Entourage, Morning Joe and some other morning news/talk shows did some hilarious fictional cameo segments for the Entourage character “Ari Gold” (the masterfully written Entourage super-agent character based on real-life agent Ari Emanuel, brother of Obama COS and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and brilliantly played by actor Jeremy Piven).
The in-show reason for the talk-show mini-storyline is that “super-agent Ari Gold” has written some sort of annoying and arrogant, but engaging, book on success or something, and is going round the talk shows promoting the book. So “Ari Gold” comes onto a bunch of different talk shows including Morning Joe, and each time, he acts like the biggest and funniest ass/jerk guest in each show’s history, while promo-ing the book.
I think these “fake book tour segments” on various real talk shows are on Youtube somewhere or other. I’m not sure if these segments were part of real Entourage episodes, or were stand-alone teasers for a new season of Entourage. But since “super-agent Ari Gold” was easily the best thing about Entourage and the reason most people kept watching after the first few seasons, the more “Ari Gold”, the better.
/giphy "ari gold"
