I meant to hit this story yesterday. It also exemplifies the problems I’ve posted about in the past when it comes to MSNBC.
Markos and Joe Scarborough got into a little Twitter back and forth a couple of months ago:
JoeNBC: The Sestak story is as unbelievable a cover story as Nixon throwing little Checkers under the bus. A farce on it’s face. Luckily for the White House, the media has been negligent on this story since Day 1. The press will let this laughable story slide.
markos: Like story of a certain dead intern. RT @JoeNBC: Luckily for the White House, the media has been negligent on this story since Day 1.
Markos: But if you want to talk about bullshit “scandals”, @JoeNBC, there’s this one about Joe Sestak and the White House you might’ve heard of.
JoeNBC: @markos Unbelievable. You have a long history of spreading lies suggesting I am a murderer. This is the 3rd or 4th time by my count.
Markos: @JoeNBC, I’ve never suggested you’re a murderer. I’ve noted media hypocrisy in going after Gary Condit. But he was Dem. You aren’t.
JoeNBC: Anyone in media who interviews @markos, know that you’re extending your credibility to someone who regularly suggests that I’m a murderer.
Markos: A bit touchy, @JoeNBC? Links for where I accuse you of being a murderer please.
Joe Scarborough, a person of such thin skin that he will block anyone that disagrees with him on Twitter, didn’t like that. Like a child being picked on in school, Joe ran and told the teacher principal, or in this case, the president of MSNBC. That resulted in this email being sent to Markos:
Markos,
Blog if you must, but here is my on the record statement to you which I ask that you print in full:
Yes, after I became aware of the ugly cheap shot you took at Joe on Twitter, I asked the teams to take a break from booking you on our shows for a while. I found the comments to be in poor taste, and utterly uncalled for in a civil discourse.
I’m hoping this will be only temporary and that the situation can be resolved in a mature fashion, but until then I just don’t know how one could reasonably expect to be welcomed onto our network while publicly antagonizing one of our hosts at the same time.
The DailyKos community has been among the most supportive of MSNBC, and we continue to appreciate that support.
The interesting part is how regular guests like Liz Cheney have taken bigger shots at MSNBC hosts like Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews. Greg Sargent dug up this video yesterday put out by Cheney and yet she is still welcomed on the network.
Another good reminder would be when Scarborough tweeted that Olbermann was “wreckless and sad” for going after Scott Brown. This incident also gained the attention of MSNBC President Phil Griffin, but Olbermann played the adult in this case:
We hear Scarborough apologized to Griffin for his comments. Griffin also talked to Olbermann, and Olbermann didn’t think it merited punishment. So the letter to staff (but really to Scarborough) went out instead.
Perhaps Joe could learn a little bit from the lefties on the network, like how to be a grown-up.
And what has this whole story done for Joe, besides make him look like the petty child he is? Well as Digby points out:
Now I have to assume that Scarborough is either brain damaged or must want people to look at that story again because otherwise he would have let some innocuous, snarky tweet pass by. Now we all have no choice but to rehash the whole thing in order to explain why Markos has been banned from the network.
Joe was so hurt by the comments that Markos made that he decided to blow it up into a big f’n deal and get everyone talking about it again. What a genius he is!
Last night Markos did a follow up post with the following:
MSNBC tried to talk me out of going public with this, between Griffin and another exec. But here’s the thing — neither Keith Olbermann nor Ed Schultz reached out. That spoke volumes to me, since they have my number, and I’m sure Griffin would’ve loved for them to intervene. But they didn’t. What’s that tell me? That they’re fighting the good fight from the inside and have zero interest in doing Griffin’s dirty work for him. They won’t be able to comment on this for obvious reasons, but that doesn’t mean they’re not engaged.
I really don’t see it that way. Imagine Olbermann and Maddow getting together. That’s MSNBC’s two top rated shows, as compared to Morning Joe, the lowest rated morning show in cableland. Add into that Ed Schultz. If they went to Griffin as a unified voice supporting Markos, Griffin would have no choice but to back down. Sure he could fire them all, but I’m sure that would result in Griffin being out of a job.
Instead you have entered the closed-knit group of MSNBC. It shows. Think of the outrageously racist comments Pat Buchanan has made in the past and ask yourself the last time Keith Olbermann named him “Worst Person in the World”. If your answer is never, well then you win a prize.
My MSNBC watching time has been cut down by about 75% in the past year, and I’m glad it has. Anymore I feel like you get better informed by watching CNN, and this whole story, mired in a cloak of school age brattyness, makes me more glad that I have made that switch.