Politically hip? "Morning Joe" not living up to the hype (Ouch !) [View all]

[SoCalDem]

http://www.depauliaonline.com/opinions/politically-hip-morning-joe-not-living-up-to-the-hype-1.2880811#.UAVorZGG5ad

Politically hip? "Morning Joe" not living up to the hype

By Timothy Lydon

Published: Monday, July 16, 2012


In the latest issue of The New York Times Magazine there is a full page spread for the MSNBC talk show "Morning Joe." The ad features co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski walking down a Manhattan street in the fall. They are dressed in black, in contrast with the pink glow on the concrete from Radio City Music Hall. In the image below, Willie Geist, the show’s pop culture authority is on set checking his smart phone. The images are coupled with laudatory pronouncements: "...unlike anything else on morning television," writes The New York Times; "An important wake-up call for political and media leaders," says the Associated Press; "Appallingly Entertaining" reads the capstone endorsement from The New Yorker.

This glossy advertisement is an appropriate representation of the show: a well-honed, appealing image, butultimately facile . Viewers get only as much analysis as can fit between commercial breaks, but hardly enough to awaken any sort of political consciousness.

Brzezinski has celebrity fever (as evident by her puckered lips in the magazine spread), Scarborough plays his classic rock, Geist has his irony - winking at all 20-somethings out there watching - and all the guests on the show know it’s going to be a good time in the morning, void of anything substantial like corporate malfeasance, executive pay, financial deregulation, and inequalities in education and healthcare for children of color.

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And how can the “Morning Joe” newscasters criticize the financial institutions responsible for the 2008 recession when these very same institutions pay for commercials on MSNBC’s sister channel CNBC?

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