For the dog-bites-man news category: Joe Scarborough had a moment of intellectual schizophrenia today.
On MSNBC's Morning Joe, co-host Willie Geist and Politico.com executive editor Jim VandeHei were discussing a Politico story about internal political pressures at National Public Radio (NPR). Apparently, NPR's top political correspondent Mara Liasson was asked by NPR executives to reconsider her appearances on Fox News, for concerns over Fox's perceived political bias.
Scarborough pointed out the obvious:
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Well I just want to say, I love NPR and I listen to NPR, but I've been listening to reformed, pot-smoking hippies for the past thirty years on NPR with a very substantial left-wing bias - and I don't care that they eat tree bark like Euell Gibbons, and I don't care if they are still smoking pot in their sixties. They put on great radio. But for NPR - for NPR, the leadership at NPR to question the bias of Fox News is a joke. They have been biased - again, I still listen to them, because like "The New York Times" they are the best at what they do. But, please, that is a laugh. NPR -
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: It's very soothing listening, too.
SCARBOROUGH: It is soothing, it is very soothing. Just put a mirror to your face, NPR.
From this, one might conclude that Scarborough finds liberal bias highly entertaining - after all, that's what NPR does best. He certainly couldn't be suggesting that NPR has better programming than your average talk-radio station, otherwise, why would the "reformed, pot-smoking hippies" need a government subsidy? Wouldn't they be commercially viable by now?
The point is, NPR is a radio form of Ambien - an brilliantly effective cure for insomnia, and a danger for individuals operating heavy machinery (such as a car, for example). "Soothing" is one way to say it, but another would be that it quite frankly isn't good radio. I doubt very seriously that Scarborough would waste his time on such drivel.
Now, one can easily see his point on the hypocrisy of NPR executives - but in trying to split the difference between hammering a liberal radio network and praising Fox News, Scarborough bounced it off the upright.
