The popular MSNBC chat show Morning Joe is the subject of a ridiculous new uproar. Last week the show’s co-hosts, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet privately with President-elect Donald Trump. Scarborough and Brzezinski stand accused of hypocrisy because they’ve been very critical of Trump over the years, calling him a dangerous fascist, comparing him to Hitler, and making various other pointed criticisms. Now, their appalled detractors say, they’re bending the knee, normalizing Trump, playing the access game, et cetera. So many disgusted viewers changed channels that viewership was down 12 percent Tuesday.
Look, I hold no brief for Scarborough or Brzezinski. I’ve appeared on Morning Joe once or twice, but not recently, and I don’t pine to be asked back. I don’t watch Morning Joe because my late first wife and I tuned out public affairs television in 1998 amid blanket coverage of President Bill Clinton’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. Our reasons weren’t partisan, but parental: Watching the news created an unacceptable risk that we’d have to explain what a blow job was to our very young children. Later, I opted against bringing television journalism back into my life because watching video ate too much time. You can’t skim it! To my mind, the World Wide Web rendered TV news obsolete. My cell phone is far superior for breaking news because when there’s new information it pings me and when there isn’t it leaves me alone—it doesn’t fill dead air with blather. Besides, any must-see video will turn up online, often with more thoughtful analysis.
Now that I’ve persuaded you not to watch cable news, allow me to defend two of its best-known practitioners. Scarborough and Brzezinski make their living as political journalists. Political journalism is a job that requires you to talk to creeps. Not every politician is a creep, of course, nor even most. But creeps do get elected or appointed to political office with some frequency, most especially nowadays, and it’s no use pretending they aren’t there. Indeed, creeps often make excellent sources because the same weak impulse control that makes them creeps may cause them to blurt out something newsworthy. Everybody who has ever been a reporter is well aware that the job requires you to spelunk regularly into unsavory caverns. Indeed, interviewing evil people is much more interesting than interviewing saintly ones.
I’m particularly taken aback that people are going on Twitter to condemn Morning Joe for not boycotting Trump. “Such ass kissers,” said Neo Jane. “And this is why I’m done with MSNBC,” added Waltb31. “The news organization NEVER cared about American democracy. Only ratings through appeasement.” So tell me this, Neo Jane and Waltb31: If you object so strongly to legitimizing Trump, why are you still loitering in Elon Musk’s MAGA cesspool?
Did Scarborough and Brzezinski grovel at their private meeting? Almost certainly they did; Trump is famous for demanding it. But so what? If you think reporters don’t kiss sources’ asses to acquire access you’re a fool. Noble as it may sound, nobody ever scored an interview by saying, “I plan to confront John Doe about his contemptible lies.” I mentioned my first wife. She was a notoriously lethal writer of political profiles, but, working from home, if she was trying to seduce someone into granting an interview she’d order me out of the room. “I don’t want you judging me for being too good at this,” she’d say. “Get lost.”
