Self-righteousness, thy name is Joe (Scarborough)

By Richard K. Barry 

The show is named after me, and
the facts are what I say they are.

As I wrote recently, Joe Scarborough, of MSNBC's Morning Joe, went on a tear about coverage in The New York Times's Home section of Mitt Romney's ostentatious California dwelling. He claimed, incorrectly, as it turned out, that the Times was treating Romney fundamentally differently than it treated earlier Democratic candidates. 

As Salon.com described it:

Morning Joe Scarborough angrily rambled at length about a Times Story – on the front page of the Home section — about Mitt Romney's big, tacky house, and how his neighbors hate him and he is always calling the cops on people who smoke weed on the beach. The main problem is, Romney bought a big, expensive house by the beach, and then decided to quadruple its size, and predictably his neighbors have complaints about this.

As Alex Pareene continued:

This made Joe Scarborough mad for about 20 minutes, that this story was published, because in his imagination the New York Times would never publish a story like this about a liberal. That is false, obviously, as the Times pointed out a bit later in a statement that linked to four separate 2004 stories about... John Kerry being super rich. You and I may remember a veritable sea of coverage of Kerry’s prodigious wealth, from basically every source imaginable.

The fact that Scarborough was simply wrong about the bias didn't slow him down a bit. He continued to argue that he is right because has a general impression that he is right. Wouldn't want to confuse Joe with the facts.

To compound the absurdity of this, Scarborough added that The New York Times was "thin-skinned" for taking offence. It's a news organization being accused of bias by the host of a popular public affairs program based on nothing but his gut. I don't think a push-back says anything about the relative thickness of their skin.

I can only say that I saw the program on which all this happened. Scarborough was at his self-righteous worst. He was clearly bullying other panelists, some of whom were not agreeing with him.

Just say you were wrong, Joe. Give it a shot. It's a skill that would come in handy for you.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)