You don’t exactly have to be Nostradamus to know what is going to happen when Big Media Matt writes the following:
I say this as someone who likes their show and watches it almost every day, just like I hope people like my blog and read it every day.
He was talking about Morning Joe.
In the off-chance he was unintentionally trolling his commenters, that is even better.
*** Update ***
Also, if there is anything better than starting the vacuum right underneath the couch a sleeping cat is on, I don’t know what it is. SPROING!
Comrade Jake
Yglesias has something of a talent for identifying stupidity and weak arguments. If he watches Morning Joe every day, it’s only because it provides him with plenty of material.
Comrade Stuck
Matt is too kind. Elevating Morning Joe that way.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Hearing the ER doc say "Mr. Cole you’re one lucky man. If your neighbors hadn’t heard the screams and applied tourniquets, you’d be dead."
AkaDad
You’re just bitter that Yglesias is copying your schtick.
I lol’d.
sgwhiteinfla
Somehow I have become addicted to watching Morning Joe every morning. I don’t know how it happened and I spend about 90 percent of the time talking myself down from kicking in the Tee Vee in and yet each morning I keep coming back for more. Scarborough has to be the most intellectually dishonest bloviating asshole on Tee Vee bar none. Hannity is a face painter who actually believes his rhetoric, Bill O is just a narcisist but Scarborough actually knows better and still lies straight through his teeth. The fact that he only yells and screams at the female guests including Mika makes him an even bigger asshole in my opinion and shows him to be the classic coward. What Mika’s dad did to him a couple of weeks back was frikkin priceless and I hope Scarborough never lives that down.
I really hope that MattY was saying that tongue in cheek because if he really likes Morning Joe imma have to start questioning his logic even more than I usually do.
bayville
This can’t be the same Mike Barnicle that formerly worked at The Boston Globe who was guest hosting for Scarborough? This must have been Steve Barnicle or Tim Barnicle or Barnacle Boy from Spongebob.
Because the Mike Barnicle who formerly worked at The Boston Globe has long ago been discredited as a top-notch journalist due to serial problems with plagiarism.
Matt must have been halucinating or the transcript is incorrect.
Just Some Fuckhead
@bayville: Nah, he’s Irish American so he was rehabilitated by the Irish-American News Network.
Dulcie
@bayville: Nope, it’s the same plagiarist. Chris Matthews brought him back from the dead – it’s that Irish Catholic commonality (Russert, Matthews, Carlson, Redstone, etc.)
The Grand Panjandrum
The last paragraph of BMM’s post is priceless. My experience with Morning Joe is basically to set a timer to see how long it takes me to hit the remote and change the channel to the Travel Channel (and with any luck I can watch a rerun of Tony Bourdain getting drunk and eating well cooked pork.)
The mix of cats and vacuum cleaners always has the potential for entertainment. Who knew a cat could hit a vertical leap of 73 inches from a dead sleep. Good times.
demkat620
I think that show is just hilarious. They take themselves so seriously and it is amusing( in a watching a train wreck kind of way) seeing Mika be Joe’s work wife on air.
Her dad must be so proud.
blogreeder
I think it was an example of very dry humor. Is Matt usually funny like that?
Punchy
So’s going to an off-leash dog park with greyhounds, to show peeps who think their dog is fleet of foot what speed really is.
Game. Set. Match.
serge
I think Mika’s the reason we all tune in, me in small batches; overdosing on Pat Buchanan and Mike Barnacle (yes, sic) is painful. Her father’s candid remarks were quite refreshing.
I won’t suggest that you go to the Rude Pundit’s casa and search for one his later Mika descriptions. And I won’t say that I sorta agree…
Laura W
THANKS FOR THE MIKA THREAD, JOHN.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXXO
Comrade Stuck
When Barnicle says bloggers are mostly just doing it for "Therapy" reasons, I think on the whole he is wrong. But for me, he was spot on. As I’ve stated here and elsewhere, before George Bush scared the pazzoolies out of me during the 2000 campaign, I had hated politics and avoided them as much as possible, though, I still at least keept track of major news. Excepting the late 90’s when I was part of a Forest Service travelling circus doing forest surveys throughout the west. I missed about all of the Monica/Clenis stuff, with no regrets.
I did take up blogging primarily to vent on wingnuts and mostly enjoyed it, and fully realize my baltherings are largely uninformed bullshit. But now it seems the wingnuts are cuckolded for the time being, and I really do hate quarreling with other libs about minute details and what constitutes good progressivism. I’m not a policy wonk, though I respect those that are. So far, Obama is doing what I’d hoped for, and since I approve of compromise, he will have a bigger shark to jump for my disapproval.
And the best news is, that most of the rage I’ve had for Bush/Cheney and their policies has melted largely away, and replaced with simple disgust and a general regret that my country let it happen. I fully expect things to get better, even if they remain royally fucked up. I will watch the Inauguration with glee and high hopes for Obama and his family, with a little prayer for his and their safety.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’ll admit to adoring Mika. I don’t care if she occasionally offers half-assed rebuttals to Beady-Eyes or otherwise fails to carry progressive water each and every down. She’s playing in someone else’s game under rules enforced by the corporate media.
Fuckhead hearts Mika.
Xenos
I am also a fan of Mika. She was in my class at college, talked to her a couple times, found her to be a perfectly nice person. What was notable was that she was not a raging right-wing asshole like her older brother, who went to the same college and proceeded to a sinecure at the Rand Corporation. Lest I heard, he was a minor adviser to the McCain campaign. Sic transit magnus rectum.
After a year of watching morning Joe on a daily basis, I can’t do it anymore. Scar is a bigger asshole every month, like Imus but without the erudition. Scar is so intimidated by Mika, and by Erin Burnett, that he has gone beyond joshing to abuse. Mika gets paid well to put up with it, but I sure as hell won’t watch it for free.
jane
Your cat will be on the phone to the cat-abuse hotline.
sgwhiteinfla
It has gotten to the point where Mika is scared to share her own opinion unless she apolgizes profusely before hand for even having one. Its truly sickening, especially when she has the nerve to accuse anybody else in the media of being sexist. I’m like what about the arsehold sitting right next to you?
But if you want to see a woman make Scar lose his cookies you need look no further than Rachel Maddow. I know it kills him now that she has a show on the same network because she kicked his ass all over the place whenever they were on a MSNBC together. Youtube is full of clips where she made him STFU. But the best one is the one where he walked off set because she didn’t accept his logic after one of his patented "What you don’t know because you have never held office…." diatribes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nFpK-_A4Ws
D-Chance.
Now, was that Matt speaking for himself, or Matt speaking for someone looking over his virtual shoulder?
One can never really tell anymore, what with his balls locked in the corporate box…
JL
I’ve been out most of the day but I did record the CNN’s coverage of the Messiah.
I did not receive MSNBC on my cable until six months ago. When I first started watching Morning Joe, Joe was on vacation. I thought that it was a pretty decent morning show, then Joe came back. He is so narcisstic that you can only watch it for a few minutes at a time.
TrishB
@Xenos,
Small world. We may or may not know one another. I was in the suite next to Mika’s one year in the Greylock quad. She was a kickass young woman back then and her brother was just an ass from everything I heard.
Laura W
@sgwhiteinfla: Ah yes…I do not even have to (can’t bear to) watch it again to recall the moment. It was the inspiration for my most apoplectic email to MSNBC about Joe Blow to date. I am pretty sure I used all caps and did not proof my work.
Zuzu's Petals
@serge:
Linky please?
sgwhiteinfla
Zuzu
here you go
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mk18af8z9Y
Fencedude
Am I the only one who finds Joe’s diction to be incredibly obnoxious?
He always sounds like he’s trying to talk down to someone.
Xenos
Trish! Morgan Mid-East, right?
That is what you get for not using an anonymous name on the internet. I know who you are and not the other way around.
Actually, I need the anonymity due due to the incredibly juvenile character I displayed in those days. I can’t let my persona be sullied by an association with my real identity.
Zuzu's Petals
@sgwhiteinfla:
OMG, hi-larious…thanks.
I just love how Scar thinks he is schooling Zbigniew Brzezinski on Middle East policy. Is he that lacking in self-awareness? Evidently.
Zuzu's Petals
@Fencedude:
He really might be the most unctuous guy out there. Hannity is close, but too buffoonish to really qualify.
Those Kids Today
Mika?
She makes Alan Colmes look like a pit bull.
Laura W
@Fencedude:
mo’ bettah
sgwhiteinfla
Zuzu
The thing about it is that happened on a Friday. On Monday Scar came back with a "dossier" supposedly proving he was right and MIka’s dad was wrong. But if you google "Taba" just like Brizenski told Scar to you will find that he was absolutely right and Joe was absolutely wrong. But I just found it the height of cowardice that he didn’t bring Mika’s dad back on if he wanted to revisit the issue. And of course Mika was the biggest milquetoast ever in defending her own father. Thats why I really can’t stand her, no matter how I try factor in the fact of how much of an asshole Scar is to her.
TrishB
Xenos,
Bingo! Holy shit. Let’s not talk about incredibly juvenile character during college days. I for one have spent an heroic amount of time blocking out (some of) those days.
So, now you know who I am, but who are you? If you don’t want to answer here, there’s always trishb at gmail dot com. Yeah, I keep it simple.
Xenos
@TrishB: One word: facebook.
gnomedad
Starting it while the cat is in my wife’s lap.
Litlebritdifrnt
I click between Morning Joe and GMA when I am getting ready for work, it all depends on the stories, if GMA has some incredibly cute story and is interviewing witnesses who have absolutely no command of the English language then it is click back to morning joe, if Scar is bloviating about something and sounding totally obnoxious then it is click back to GMA even if they are obsessing about a kitten caught in a drainpipe.
Polish the Guillotines
Friends of mine had a cat that was stone cold deaf. He loved — LOVED — being groomed with the vacuum cleaner.
Zuzu's Petals
@sgwhiteinfla:
Wow, what a weenie.
MikeJ
Since someone in the last thread made reference to a Peggy Nooners column about who Obama ate dinner with, I feel it is my duty to bring up a previous column of hers. I bring it up every chance I get, and have mentioned it at least once a day to someone I know since election day.
"I do not know what the Democratic Party spent, in toto, on the 2004 election, but what they seem to have gotten for it is Barack Obama."
Just Some Fuckhead
23 Hours!
El Cid
I try to watch the show, but when Scarboy and Mika are both on, I can’t bear to watch Scarboy always bluster and yell over Mika so she can’t get a word in edgewise, even when she really, really tries.
I’ve complained to their show e-mail before, but Scarboy’s just such a loudmouth, sexist, raging dick that it doesn’t help.
It makes me so mad I could almost find myself alone in Scarboy’s office and strangely fall backward and bash the back of my head open against a desk, or so would declare a suspended Medical Examiner previously found to have falsified autopsy evidence.
Comrade Kevin
Why does Scarborough always look like he has just sucked on a lemon?
Having his show start at 3AM here makes him easy to avoid.
Laura W
@Litlebritdifrnt: O/T…have you seen Clatterford? I’m an Ab Fab freak, so I suspect I’ll love it. (I know the tone is totally different, but French/Saunders/Lumley are all involved.) Thinking of ordering season one, at least.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Laura W:
I have seen snippets of it. I followed the Vicar of Dibley, which I though was absolutely brilliant (but then I adore Dawn French, she is just so naturally funny). Dawn and Jen are comic geniuses that I think will not really be recognised until they are gone (sadly). Jo got caught up in the whole Dawn and Jen thing and has gone along for the ride. (Prior to her major accomplishment was "Sapphire and Steel" truly awful) Funny thing about the whole crew, Dawn is married to Lenny Henry, a brilliant black comic who never really got a break here in the US despite his obvious talents (other than the shrunken head in Harry Potter). Jen is married to Ade Edmonson whose most recognizable role was as the punk idiot Adrian in "The Young Ones" crazy part of it is despite their hooking up and marrying during the eighties and the height of their fame they are still married (Dawn to Lenny and Jen to Ade). Dawn and Jen continue to be the best of best friends. I like that.
Laura W
@Litlebritdifrnt: Sold. It’s already in my amazon cart. I can’t imagine not enjoying it.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Laura W:
PS) Jam and Jerusalem (the original title) is basically a take on the Women’s Institute which has actually become quite trendy in the UK (after being considered boring until reinvented by "Calendar Girls") WI members are famous for thier jam (jelly) making skills and they begin every meeting by singing "Jerusalem" There was an episode of a Gordon Ramsey show (can’t remember which one) where he had a gang of WI women to taste test some deserts, he went up there expecting to see a bunch of 60+ biddies and was greeted by a group of 30/40 something hotties who have rediscovered the WI and are basically reinventing it. I believe that the entire premise of Clatterford is the WI organization.
Cataphract
Totally OT but I got an ad from the National Review in the mail today–guess they got my name ’cause I reads me some Foreign Affairs & National Interest.
Man, all the flyer offers is straight up nastiness:
"If you don’t like it, pass it along to a neighborhood bleeding-heart liberal just to tick him or her off."
…"spineless socialist mental-midget brother-in-law"…
…"vertebrate-challenged Europeans"…
If you are a serious publication why would you stoop to this incredibly immature name-calling? Especially when the views you support and expound upon in your publication have been proven bankrupt by millions of voters recently? "Just to tick off a liberal?" That’s fucking retarded.
Now back to my wife, who says I’m passive-aggressive for not putting her chardonnay back in the fridge. (She thinks I’m secretly mad ‘cuz I wanted to get a bottle of red, but really I’m just a thoughtless tool who forgot to put the vino back in the fridge.)
ChrisB
I tried to watch Morning Joe during the campaign on the mistaken belief that what was said on the show might actually matter. I shortly realized that even a political junkie like me did not need to start the morning watching an asshole like Joe Scarborough.
mcd410x
Classic comment on matty’s li’l blog …
Conservatively Liberal
Joe Scarborough sucks ass. I have never watched Morning Blow and I never intend to, a few episodes of Scarborough Country was enough for me. I can’t stand listening to that smarmy simpletons drivel without wondering how he can talk without drooling on himself.
You want to talk about a scared cat? I used to manage a campground & mobile home park in Spokane and the owner lived on premises with his family. His son and I are best friends and grew up together. We loved mechanics, tools, riding dirt bikes, hopping up our rigs and heading out to Spokane Raceway Park for grudge matches. We picked up the garbage at the park and hauled it to the dump in a ’77 Ford F-150 4×4 that had huge mudder tires and a lift kit on it. It had a 400-M engine that we pulled and replaced with a 460 big block, which we cammed, headered, put a high rise intake manifold and Carter ThermoQuad carb on. It was powerful and loud, and you could floor it on dirt and watch the earth fly past the side windows as it tore the ground up.
What does this have to do with a cat? Glad you asked! ;)
One day I went out to pick up the garbage just like any other day at work. I fired the truck up and it rumbled and roared as I revved the cold engine. I usually started the truck with the door open and it was parked up against the side of a building, so I could hear the engine real well. This time I could hear some periodic rattling and banging around under the hood. It wasn’t a mechanical noise so I revved the engine a few times and listened to it trying to figure out what it was. About that time I noticed a few tufts/clumps of white fur drifting out from under the hood and fenders. That is when I remembered that the owner’s white cat (who never ever goes outside) had escaped the the day before, and I guess they never found it. I did!
In a panic I cut the engine but just as I was reaching for the key I heard a soft thud/bang from under the hood and a bunch of white fur came blowing out. I cut the engine and as I stepped out of the truck I saw a white streak as the cat dashed off like a rocket. I tried to catch the cat but it was long gone. I went and got the owner and we popped the hood on the truck, expecting to see a mess. There was fur everywhere and the alternator belt was broken, but no blood or kitty parts. Everyone went looking for the cat but had no luck.
I went home and when I returned to work the next day the cat was back at home. The owner said that she was at the door that morning so he gave her a visual check and had an appointment later that day for the vet to check the cat out. The cat looked like it had been through hell and back. Its pristine white fur was spotted with grease and oil, plus black marks from the fan belt. A strip of fur the width of the fan belt was missing, and a ‘pink stripe’ ran from the front edge/top of the left shoulder, across the back and to the rear edge/top of the right shoulder. Stripped bare, not a hair left on the pink stripe. No cuts or bleeding, no red spots. Just a pink strip of skin with two black stripes running parallel, edging it like a GT stripe on a car. The cat’s forehead had a ‘pink bald spot’ about the size of a quarter, centered above the eyes (like where the M would be on Maine Coon cats) on the forehead from jumping into the fan.
That was the extent of the damage. The vet checked out the cat and gave it a clean bill of health. The owner and I agreed that the cat must have used eight lives just trying to get out from under the hood as I was revving the engine. The cat had parked itself in the fan shroud (next to a warm radiator), so when I fired the truck up the spinning (and clutchless) fan presented a pretty solid wall that the cat couldn’t jump through, though it is clear that it tried! Right before I cut the engine I had pushed the choke in and the dropped engine idle allowed the cat to jump through the fan and into the alternator belt, which pulled the cat up into it, stripping its fur before (luckily!) the belt broke.
Lucky kitteh! Funny thing is that it was never interested in going outside again. The owners could leave the doors open and the cat would curl up by a door and watch the world go by.
Smart kitteh.
cosanostradamus
.
Yes you do.
.
robertdsc
You must have missed the sign on his office door that says "Dead Intern Storage".
Ninerdave
Giving a dog peanut butter.
GuyFromOhio
If you ever have to ask yourself why your cat fucking hates you, this will be near the top of the list.
Cats may forgive by the next feeding, or maybe the one after that. But a cat will never forget that kind of stunt.
Janet Strange
@Conservatively Liberal: Wow. Thanks for a great story.
I’ve bookmarked your comment so that I can share it with my daughter who loves both animals and engines. (Two of her pets are named after motor vehicles.)
Cruel Jest
I did watch Morning Joe for a while (Geeks for Mika!), but I could only take so much. It’s just a primate enclosure/sociological experiment with Joe Scar as the Alpha feces hurler. I never learned a thing.
Re: Update: I have many fond memories of VTOL felines.
Quaker in a Basement
All this time you’ve been giving us the impression Tunch is cranky for some unknown reason.