**UPDATED WITH VIDEO**
This morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough broke the news that – are you sitting down? – the media are biased against Sarah Palin.
The comic potential for this revelation is nearly unlimited.
The Morning Joe Brew Crew provided some very interesting insight, however. Scarborough led Brzezinski into talking about the insider’s view of the main-stream media attitude toward Palin after her introduction as the Republican VP candidate:
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Mika, you defended Sarah Palin when she first came out because you saw the press respond so negatively to her but you noticed over the past several months a really, really negative reaction to you defending Sarah Palin.
[...]
BRZEZINSKI: I'm telling you that when she came out on the scene I was– thought it was refreshing. I thought it was exciting. I thought it was interesting. And I also saw a lot of people behind the scenes looking for ways to find a way to bring her down because of her ideology. And I was excited by her ideology because I thought, wow, a very interesting, forty-something, my generation, working woman with five kids on the national stage could really inject something into this conversation about things like abortion.
So now we have an eyewitness account to the media’s attempt to smear Sarah Palin into oblivion.
Color me surprised.
At any rate, what exactly was the attitude of the main-stream press?
BRZEZINSKI: What I hated was, what I saw happening behind the scenes, among my colleagues in the media, where there was this rabidness.
Rabid, you say? Surely that can’t be the case– is there anyone to stand up for the media, perhaps a columnist at a well-known newspaper?
PEGGY NOONAN: Yes.
SCARBOROUGH: But before –
NOONAN: From the get-go.
SCARBOROUGH: Before they knew who she was.
NOONAN: Absolutely, they looked at her and they didn't like her– it was unjust.
Perhaps not. Noonan goes on to explain:
NOONAN: Yeah, they– Palin from the moment she came out, people looked at her kids and sort of went after the kids. It was vicious. It was offensive. It made me use in a column a word I wouldn't normally use, rhymes with witch, talking about the people in the media who had just decided to gun for these kids. I mean, it was just awful.
There are things during this segment that come down rather hard on Palin – Noonan calls her “frazzled and over-responsive and– yammery,” for example. That is hardly as shocking, however, as an open admission from a member of the mainstream media that they were, in fact, “rabid” in their bias against Sarah Palin during the campaign.
One wonders which of the media members were especially rabid. The full transcript is below.
Morning Joe
06/12/2009
07:36:43 AM
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Okay. That's interesting, that was Sarah Palin just on the "Today" show with Matt.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Why does anybody try to defend the targeting of a 14-year-old girl?
BRZEZINSKI: With us now, columnist for the Wall Street Journal and author of Patriotic Grace, Peggy Noonan. Peggy?
SCARBOROUGH: Peggy, what would happen, Peggy, if – oh, I don't know –
BRZEZINSKI: And David Gregory still with us.
SCARBOROUGH: – A conservative talk show host made a joke about a Democratic national politician's 14-year-old daughter? I'm just curious.
PEGGY NOONAN: The reaction would not be positive in our great land, I think I can – fairly be said. I also think when you're doing live TV you do and say a number of goofy things every day and every night.
BRZEZINSKI: Letterman is not live.
NOONAN: And the –
SCARBOROUGH: Amen to that.
BRZEZINSKI: It's a taping.
NOONAN: And the people who are your stupid targets should sometimes not take the bait. Keep moving. You know what I mean? She should – Mrs. Palin shouldn't wind up in these arguments on morning TV. She should be out there making herself a successful, sober, serious governor of the state of Alaska during a difficult time.
SCARBOROUGH: Let’s talk about that for one second –
BRZEZINSKI: Very interesting.
SCARBOROUGH: No, we were just talking – not David but the rest of us were talking off air a couple breaks ago about how we were surprised. I thought Sarah Palin needed to go to Alaska, keep her head down, study up, make sure the next time she gave a national interview she wasn't rambling, she was very focused and very presidential. Boy, I sure didn't see that on this last swing east. She still seems to be rambling. She still seems to be falling back on maybe some little rhetorical tricks that got her elected in Alaska.
NOONAN: Study up and learn the name of the president of Pakistan and learn what's going on in Iran and all of that stuff can be done. Sometimes it just takes time to sit back and be thoughtful. Do you know what I mean? Not just know facts but be thoughtful. It would be good to see her attempting to be thoughtful person. No, she has seemed on this trip frazzled and over-responsive and – yammery.
SCARBOROUGH: Yammery? Is that actually a –
DAVID GREGORY: A couple things. Whatever the facts, you know, between Palin and Letterman, I don't think anybody out there who is a parent that is not going to look up and say, hey, you want to go to war with somebody who takes on one of your kids, go for it. You know, we're all going to defend our kids. From a comment from somebody who was just making a joke or somebody who has really got a bad intention. So I don't think anybody is going to hold her to the line on that. I do think, I mean the difficulty for her right now is how does she have some continuity and the momentum when she comes out of the election with as a national figure? How does she keep that going, while at the same time sort of sitting back, governing and trying to be part of the Republican renaissance. And that's not so easy right now because the Republican party is in a difficult place in terms of actually coming up with the ideas for the new political generation and opposition and I don't think that people regard her as being there yet. She's a charismatic figure. I don't think she's leading the renaissance at the moment in terms of the big ideas. You sort of saw this play out this week between her and Gingrich.
SCARBOROUGH: Mika, you defended Sarah Palin when she first came out because you saw the press respond so negatively to her but you noticed over the past several months a really, really negative reaction to you defending Sarah Palin.
BRZEZINSKI: Well, I've defended the concept of her especially when she came out.
SCARBOROUGH: The concept of her?! [laughing] This would be what some call back-tracking.
BRZEZINSKI: No, I will tell you – I'm not back-tracking.
SCARBOROUGH: The Concept of Sarah Palin, the shocking new book by Mika Brzezinski.
BRZEZINSKI: No, I'm not back tracking. I'm telling you that when she came out on the scene I was – thought it was refreshing. I thought it was exciting. I thought it was interesting. And I also saw a lot of people behind the scenes looking for ways to find a way to bring her down because of her ideology. And I was excited by her ideology because I thought, wow, a very interesting, forty-something, my generation, working woman with five kids on the national stage could really inject something into this conversation about things like abortion.
GREGORY: That is where you were, there’s no question, that’s not inconsistent, that’s definitely where you were.
BRZEZINSKI: That's where I was. She failed along the way, several steps along the way, so that's what I meant by the concept of her. It was exciting. What I hated was, what I saw happening behind the scenes, among my colleagues in the media, where there was this rabidness.
NOONAN: Yes.
SCARBOROUGH: But before –
NOONAN: From the get-go.
SCARBOROUGH – before they knew who she was.
NOONAN: Absolutely, they looked at her and they didn't like her – it was unjust.
SCARBOROUGH: Why was that? And this isn't about Sarah Palin. This is about certain prejudices that a lot of us have in the media. What was it about Sarah Palin that caused so many really, really establishment media figures, powerful media figures, to chase after that sleazy internet story that greeted her at the Republican National Convention?
NOONAN: Oh, about the children?
SCARBOROUGH: About the children.
NOONAN: Yeah, they – Palin from the moment she came out, people looked at her kids and sort of went after the kids. It was vicious. It was offensive. It made me use in a column a word I wouldn't normally use, rhymes with witch, talking about the people in the media who had just decided to gun for these kids. I mean, it was just awful. But that was the beginning. I think the real problem for Palin became the Katie Couric interview and afterwards when she was out on the stump for two months, you know, doing stuff that wasn't substance but just palling around with terrorists and phrases like that. She was loving politics. She has a gift for politics.
BRZEZINSKI: Sure.
NOONAN: She is hungry for it – and she is really talented, but she portrayed in my view a lack of thoughtfulness that removed her from the possible pantheon of Presidents and Vice Presidents.
SCARBOROUGH: It's interesting.
NOONAN: What hurt her the most was what she did but her unveiling by the media from day one was horrible.
SCARBOROUGH: And let me say for the record her lack of thoughtfulness is what drew Willie and me to her from the beginning.
NOONAN: [laughing] She was your kind of girl!
WILLIE GEIST: And let me just say, Peggy, I really like the concept of you.
NOONAN: Thank you so much.
SCARBOROUGH: And, Mika, be do you remember – do you remember when Rahm Emanuel got me to say a word that I don't usually say? Rhymes with ‘luck.’ Right here on this show.
BRZEZINSKI: I do.
SCARBOROUGH: I would say it's a word I don't usually say.
GEIST: Are you blaming Rahm Emanuel for that?
BRZEZINSKI: What's your point?
SCARBOROUGH: No. I'm going to blame John Stewart this morning. David Gregory, thanks so much.
GREGORY: See you Sunday. See you Sunday.
SCARBOROUGH: I can't wait. In Wilmington? If it’s Wilmington, and if it’s Sunday–
GEIST: If it's Sunday, we are there.
BRZEZINSKI: Thanks, David.
