.@JoeNBC Scarborough to critics: Bloggers calling me out are part of the “Cheetos brigade”
This is what you call doubling down on the dumba**ery, folks:
“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough is pushing back against attacks from The Blaze, Buzzfeed and a number of other websites that charged he used an out-of-context video clip to mock Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
Scarborough attacked his critics during his Monday morning show, suggesting it had more to do with conspiracy than accountability.
“This began the great debate among the Cheetos brigade as to whether I, who has declared that he is voting for Mitt Romney, is trying to throw the election by doctoring a tape and cracking a joke,” Scarborough said. “Really, guys? Your conspiracy theories are getting out of hand — the poll conspiracy where you have Fox News in the pro-Obama conspiracy camp to throw the election for Barack Obama? It’s getting out of hand. Like, this two-second frenzy is just silly.”
Scarborough cited Hot Air blogger Jazz Shaw as one of the skeptics of the claim that his “Morning Joe” show was playing fast and loose with the clip to bolster his case, then had some harsh words for those that originally called attention to the clip in question.
“Guys, if you want to help Mitt Romney get elected, put down the Cheetos, get out of your mom’s basement and call your friends. And tell them why Mitt Romney should be president. Because these conspiracy theories aren’t helping Mitt, Paul [Ryan] or the Republican Party. And at the end of the day it makes them silly,” he continued.
What doesn’t “help” Romney/Ryan 2012 (nor an informed public) are deliberately established false narratives from left wing news outlets like Joe Scarborough’s that help people to form their opinions of candidates for better or for worse. If Scarborough had any journalistic integrity he’d admit he clearly made a mistake, apologize for the error, and then move on. Instead, he pushes back on people who did the research, who pieced together the story he and his “trusted” video editing staff failed to do, and who in the end told the real story of what happened at that campaign rally. Furthermore, for Joe to act like this isn’t a big deal in the scheme of things is ridiculous, especially if you got a look at his reaction what he thought Romney had initially done at the rally in the first place (bolded emphasis added by me)
On Wednesday, MSNBC’s Morning Joe kicked off a discussion about Mitt Romney’s reliance on running mate Paul Ryan to excite supporters by airing footage of an Ohio rally the evening before. In the clip, Romney is shown taking the stage with Ryan as supporters inaudibly chant. According to the subtitle provided by MSNBC, the crowd is chanting, “Ryan!” — before Romney interjects and leads them in chanting, “Romney! Ryan! Romney! Ryan! There we go, alright, that’s great!” Host Joe Scarborough’s exasperated reaction to the footage, which made Romney look hapless and a bit desperate, went viral. “Oh, sweet Jesus!” Scarborough said, burying his face in his hands. He added, “What do the Catholics say? Holy mother of God, we pray for our sinners now in their hour of peace?” But the subtitle in the clip misrepresented what actually took place. BuzzFeed was present at the event, and took note that the crowd was actually chanting Romney’s name, before he encouraged them to add his running mate to the chant.
Simply put, this story wouldn’t have been news at Politico nor MSDNC nor any other left-leaning news outlet if it weren’t for what was alleged to have happened at the rally that in actuality did not happen the way select “news” outlets decided to reported it.
As to Scarborough more or less saying in the scheme of things that this story is not worth spending much time on, that’s just his desperate way of trying to get people to move on and forget about his gross error in judgment in failing to get it right in the first place. These are the EXACT type of stories that need to be fact-checked and amplified if it is determined concretely that they were misreported. The report made Romney look like a fool desperate to make sure the crowd loved him as much as it loved Paul Ryan. If people didn’t check behind stories like this to either verify what was reported or to correct/clarify/debunk them, false patterns would develop and negative impressions about people would be drawn from those stories that could be entirely inaccurate.
On the other hand, I’m sure if this error-filled story was about Joe Scarborough, Joe would want to make sure the record was corrected and done so ASAP. But it’s not. It’s about the GOP candidate for President, who Joe’s network doesn’t support (even though Joe himself claims to), and the more Romney is painted by its hosts in a negative light the better the (already not very high) ratings are for his bosses when it comes to their core viewership: liberals.
Once upon a time, Joe Scarborough understood what it meant to do the research and get the facts right before you went to air with them, and to correct himself in the event he was in error. For the Morning Joe cast and crew that time, obviously, has long since passed.
Sidenote: If the bloggers out there who did the digging to get this story right are nothing more than basement-dwelling Cheetos eaters, what does that make the notoriously wrong NBC editing crew?