Landsnark

Her longer, golden hair is very very attractive. Shame she changed it.

Yep. But it's a case of "how will anyone know how smart we are if we don't tell them?" No one would have known what a clever move was made, so... And they would have been mocked if they hadn't made the change. We mock Morning Joe every single day, and it's a tiny tiny TV show. ESPN is probably 1000x bigger than Morning Joe and sports media is 20x bigger than political news, so the memes and 2 news cycles of second-guessing and taunts and ridicule would have made it into every sports radio show, every sports web site, throughout FB and Twitter, and self-referenced on ESPN's own pundit shows. I suppose what ESPN did was worse, because it spilled into Morning Joe as cause for mockery and tut-tutting. And it furthers the political notion that we're a nation of snowflakes and snowflakery, and nothing is more important these days than the right to be offensive and mock those who are offended. The worst thing you can be is a social justice warrior and now it's another layer on that pile that adds to why one side hates the other. When in actuality, the truth of it all was probably, "I see Robert Lee is at UVA to open the season. Ugh. That woman was just killed over the statue, move him to the Youngstown State/WVU opener." "OK boss" And then the enterprising young staffer lets the media know how well ESPN thought around the corner on this one, and the world shits on the move cuz it's easy. Internet! The climate today is it's worse to be sensitive than it is to be stupid. Yay Trump.

He wasn't banned. They just assigned him to another game. ESPN has 100s of game day analysts. It's the type of throwaway decision that is actually a sound idea, but due to ESPN's poor handling of PR, and the current culture where any perception of PC sends the masses into a furor, it becomes a major issue and "proof" of "what's wrong these days."

ESPN's thinking was to neatly avoid the ceaseless memes and mockery and dirt bag internet humor they'd be faced with because Robert Lee was doing the game in Charlottesville. They weighed having to deal with that garbage and the following questioning vs just moving the dude to another game and sidestepping it all in total. And of course it backfired. Most of the loudest criticizing ESPN would be the loudest to wonder why ESPN didn't do something at the outset. The chattering class chatters. The opening montage of Trump being a howling idiot on consecutive days was as funny as it is sad.

!!!! Therapy? How is that an issue? Jesus Christ, she can't do anything right, can she? Her voiceover was awful. She's got to have more self-awareness to understand it's that control and modulation that (apparently) people LOATHE. She's so careful. People HATE that. So they elected Donald Trump. Because Hillary's optics, amiright? She says she screwed up and let everyone down... nope. Not good enough. Too plastic. If only her self-written memoir of her failed candidacy was MORE self-flagellating and excoriated herself and dished the ugly scoop on her inadequacies. What a phony, right? She should've had the black anchor from SNL's news read it. Those voice should be polar opposite and then people would just listen to the story.

The prolonged acid in the bathtub scene was as uncomfortable as Trump's pig blood bullets story. I had to mute it the two times it was on. I really hate Joe & Mika together. They have 0 chemistry and it's just constantly disjointed. Her interjections are never appropriate or salient. He barges through others' moments to speak. It doesn't lend energy to the show it is confusing and irritating.

C'mon... comparing statues of Confederate generals put up in the 1940s to obliquely intimidate non-whites to statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson is a straw man argument. Lifted straight from right wing radio. Barnicle is an idiot. Listening to him meander through his half-baked thoughts is such drudgery. The totality of what he says has no nuance or insight. And he meanders through a word salad hoping he'll strike the right turn of phrase or observation. He has no idea what makes Trump tick, and I feel as if before he gets going on a mini-rant, he takes a deep breath and wonders to himself if this time he'll get it right.

No ma'am, we do NOT like him. I hope he's never on the panel again. If I were on the panel with him I'd have grabbed him by that tie and shook the F out of him and slapped his smug face while explaining false equivalencies... except I wouldn't because it may have caused Hallie Jackson to view me in a bad light and I really, really want her to like me. I'd had like 2.5 cups of coffee and actually imagined that scenario while he was explaining that the real villains here aren't violent white supremacists. The producers must have liked him because they had him move seats and bounce around the set during different segments. When he was asked to stay, he had such a smug look on his face. (He'd have been an obsequious Death Eater politician in a Harry Potter movie.) His intentionally incendiary comments must've caused angry FB page comments and Twitter to blow up in the MSNBC universe. I doubt he believes his idea thoroughly, and instead is looking for notoriety. He couldn't truly defend his thesis to something like a panel of rhetorics profs. FWIW, I don't support Antifa, but I do support everything anti-fascist. But we do loooove some Hallie Jackson. 50/50 at some point she's gonna kick a question over to that goof Heilemann and catch him flat footed, mooning over her. And he's gonna blurt, "You're so pretty!" and then cover his mouth and turn red. Mika has less gravitas than Mary Matalin's purse lint.

Do other morning shows have flexible hosts? I know they do on sports radio talk shows and TV/radio shows. It's a cheap way to audition talent and get talent experience. I feel bad for poor Steve Kornacki. He's no different than Chris Hayes, but he's a bench player who sometimes has to be on in the 6am hour for Morning Joe and randomly appear on other shows through the day.

They didn't say much in any of the segments I watched, but I didn't watch the whole show all the way through. Coming out of a break they ran Steven Miller's insane performance on Fox and after just looked at each other like this for a few seconds O_o and said they'd address it later. Don't know if they did. Did the author of "Devil's Bargain" ever get on the show? They teased his appearance. He want to college with Spicer at a 99% liberal college. Spicer was, of course, an aggressively politically conservative douche bag. You know the type in college. Like the bad guys in Animal House. Spicer's nickname in college was "Sphincter." Hilarious. Bad idea for them to air twice the year old segment about Trump and nuclear bombs. Painted Joe and Mika as simpering drama queens. Mika looks particularly bad.

His hyperbolic Tourette's syndrome is going to maybe get millions of people killed. Fair game to mock him and those who support his idiocy. Remember, 3/4 of Canada is easily within reach of a nuclear warhead from NK that probably cannot fly straight. In that regard, Trump is your spokesman. So...

To be fair, Clark has had hours and hours and hours of time on the show. He's a great guest. Every time he's on, I buy his book.

Has Joe use "Panhandle bias" yet this morning? See, cuz he's just a simple country boy from the Panhandle of Florida. Dontcha know? Did they discuss the phone conversations Trump had with world leaders? Those are fucking bonkers. Did they speculate who could have leaked them? It's not Spicey or Rancid, they're gone. Who is wearing the white hat in the white house?

Who is this guy? That guy was so angry at Acosta, I thought he was a Stephen Miller surrogate. Then Joe joined in, and I was like... ah, ok. I get it. Blood in the water and let's all be offended and normalize Miller's insanity.

I wonder if anyone in the studio was even listening to Cotton and were just watching the clock tick to the next break. No one said, 'huh, wait. wha??" He said there needs to be a higher minimum wage... without saying it. Ok then. Let's get on that. Perhaps that's an accommodation that the right will make to the left... let them enact racist, classist, xenophobic immigration (and presumably policing) laws, and the left gets to raise the minimum wage. 'Murica! That shining beacon on the hill! Tom Cotton has probably been punched in the face 20,000 times. He is the kind of smug prick who apparently dares you to punch is face.

That was un fucking believable. His segment was so deeply depressing. Apparently numbers show that Americans have most of America's jobs, so we don't need immigrants we need to pay white people more because something. Smart, Senator Cotton. Rill smrt. Joe was so greasily disingenuous when he compared Clinton's trust numbers to Trump's. It's so fucking laughable. Since 1994 the right wing has been screaming that Hillary is a liar and an enemy to their agenda. Then it really got organized when the Internet coalesced and Fox News found its voice. Despite her total lack of lies and zero evidence of anything, fucking idiots think she's not trustworthy. She's had 9 Congressional investigations into Benghazi, and AG and the FBI investigate her emails. Nothing. But still she's the liar. Trump lies to everyone's face over things that are immediately, visibly verifiable, but he's not as bad as Hillary. Goes to show what an absolutely shitty job the Dems do in directing public discourse and propaganda. And, a byproduct of that is verifiable proof there is no such thing as collusion between media and organized liberal political groups. MSNBC is not the analogue of Fox.

I remember them saying that and I remember thinking at the time, "Oh, she's just an out of work pro caught having said yes to a shitty job and trying her best." Yeah, that was wrong. She's clearly rancid trash. When she was first on the show for Trump, off camera she said to them something like, "Anything for a buck," or something similar. I think she said something more vulgar and cynical but I'm not going to work hard enough to remember.

Stephanie was on this morning. She said that until Scaramucci's business sells, he cannot be a paid employee of the White House. So for at the moment he's "volunteering." And she broke it down further. She knows a lot about the guy, and does NOT seem to like him.

She doesn't have to say the words, but to get all squirmy and affect her faux, overwrought squeamishness is just weird. Wednesday evening on Chris Matthews his chyron actually had "fucked" written out when they discussed Scaramucci. His and his guests' eyes were hilarious when they all read it at the same time.

Love how after Mika explains how the GOP failed on health insurance, she lays it at the feet of the Democrats. "The question is, now what are Democrats going to do? They have to do something. Harold?" And spineless bag of [vulgar reference to anatomy in the plural] Harold Ford burbles some nonsense about how repairing health care is now the Democrats responsibility and they need to cut deals. The minority party. Who just won. Whose product DID become law but was deformed by recalcitrant Republican impediments and Republican governors refusal to embrace. Then that frog faced fuck from Tennessee or Kentucky or wherever bellowed at Mika to not interrupt him and explained how the ACA was destroying his state, and demanded Democrats capitulate. Then, Mika says that you can trace the culture of lies and Presidents lying all the way back to Clinton. She said it without conviction because she was trying on Daddy's shoes to see how they fit her. And as she said it you could tell she didn't like how the words sounded coming out of her mouth. But she still said it. What a fucking moron. Bill Clinton invented lying. Any idea why this popped up as Joe's go-to theme about 4 months ago? Never before on the show. Joe used to LUUUUURV him some Bill Clinton. Said he was the best politician ever. Said that for years. I know it's a personal thing that must have occurred recently, but what could it have been?

She made fun of Bush's White House this morning, saying it was always embroiled in controversy and they often failed to get the right messages out. She was being self depricating in saying how bad the Bush White House was, but it was SO MUCH better than Trump's. Probably close to the truth.

It's possible they're in London to work on a project. Joe probably has a few irons in the fire and that's why he's in another part of London midday. I did not miss them today, fwiw. Nicole Wallace is such a good host. She's so talented. Something happened from the period when she got fired from The View to today. She must have been coached. She used to be a nasty true believer who would defend insanity out of hand. A more reasonable KellyAnn Conway. I suppose that was an act she thought she had to put on to play the part of right wing avenger. All the "girls" up and coming at MSNBC are fucking great. There's a wave of talent on the come-up there. So smart, sharp and funny. Katie Tur is so loveably goofy and sincere and funny and smart and WILL NOT TAKE YOUR SHIT at the same time.

Nicole Wallace is so good. And I like John Heilemann. Together, though, they are a stripe too giggly and a little too loose when coralling the dummies on the panel. Things shouldn't go so far that Gene Robinson is cracking jokes. Gene Robinson should never make jokes. He should only ever be erudite and pleasantly disapproving of Republicans. And giving Donnie too much space is a huge mistake. He's sooo weak on policy and when he's juxtaposed against heavyweights, you realize his TV time is a waste of your time. As you watch Nicole, you see that she's a hundred million miles beyond Mika. Nicole actually reads. She actually DID the job she covers. She knows all the players personally. She knows Sergei Lavrov and knows people who work with him and against him. She's read everything on everything and pulls from that information intelligently with a light, amusing touch. Her shows move and touch the right spots quickly and move on. She's so good.

The group this morning made a salient point. "Imagine if Obama had done... " Just take a moment and imagine if Obama's press office: Misspelled official messages, graphics, and printed materials all the time. The base of Trump's support that refuse to be moved by misspellings would break their ankles leaping to declare Obama's press office as "lazy" and "uneducated" (and I'm being super careful and polite) with every ounce of the connotations you'd assume regarding racial stereotypes. It wouldn't be the polite hum you hear from Morning Joe, it'd be a deafening roar repeated and repeated and repeated. Same circumstance with Trump, though? ... silence. Imagine if Obama's press office: Lied. Routinely. About observably known facts. We're now talking impeachment 24/7. Illegitimate President. The visceral hate from the right would subsume all right wing media constantly and forever. Imagine if Obama had an off-the-record meeting with Putin, who he wouldn't condemn for helping him beat Romney, and when pressed about the content of the secret meeting, said to Fox News: You're a liar, the media are liars, it's none of your business what was discussed, I'm the President. Just imagine. The derision, the anger, the media coverage isn't even at a high enough pitch yet. Today the crew mentioned a list of Fox News reporters who have had enough of the press office. I doubt that will show up on Fox News anecdotally, but even their work-a-day reporters are turning away.

Gah. If only he'd give guests room to breathe and speak. They occasionally have brilliant guests on the show and they should be permitted to arrange complex thoughts over time. The author of the book on Bannon has the whole Trump phenomena figured. That was a good segment. Right now the Dems should stand up and become aggressive. They should block every single thing Trump does at all times, but adopt his agenda. If Trump says, "Made in America!", Dems should say "Made in America! Trump is a liar who manufactures in China," and then roll out their plan, even if it's completely identical to Trump's plan. They should run against Obamacare loudly, but suggesting only tiny changes, Repubs say repeal and replace? Dems say Improve and Increase. Trump's messages resonate? Ok. Steal them. About 35% of the American electorate are objectively stupid. Say the right words to the morons' faces, while making Trump look like a dope. Landslide victory.