'Morning Joke'

Few shows on cable news, with the exception of Fox’s “Red Eye,” are as awful as MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

At least with “Red Eye” most folks are mercifully in bed at 2 a.m.

Waking up to Joe Scarborough, the self-anointed pseudo-guru of pop culture now manning MSNBC’s morning slot, is, in a word, unbearable.

Joe’s the one in the middle, the one who does most of the talking. He’s flanked by two excellent journalists, John Ridley and Mika Brzezinski.

Noted author, filmmaker and socio-political commentator Ridley has much to offer morning viewers, but is invariably engaged by Scarborough in petty racial badinage that reduces him to nothing more than the show’s “token black.”

Mika, the daughter of foreign policy expert Zbigniew Brzezinski and sculptor Emilie Anna Benes, first caught my attention on the early morning news show, “CBS Up to the Minute.” This woman of class and sharp wit is the show’s news reader and can only work in the occasional cutesy comment. Thanks to “Morning Joe” she is now the darling of the blogosphere for refusing to report on Paris Hilton.

Three hours of constant early morning chitchat, in the worst sense of the word, is mind-numbing.

Scarborough feigns fairness while spewing conservative drivel. His constant flow of silly sarcasm is confusing. In short, he is full of himself, monopolizing the show’s discourse.

As an interviewer, he is no Don Imus.

For the first 10 minutes of this morning’s show, viewers were treated to Joe’s assessment of the “Live Earth” concerts – how nobody wanted to watch such “awful music groups” and “listen to Al Gore telling them they are going to burn in hell.”

Folks, the dumbing down of America is almost complete.
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Postscript: MSNBC will be checking the political pulse of Americans throughout the day.