I’ve promised you excerpts from the Countdown podcast. I’ve been a little derelict, so here’s one going up simultaneously with the ‘cast itself.
I cannot be certain which scumbag I hate more today, Joe Scarborough or Samuel Alito. The grotesque, unfeeling, inhuman, arrogant, condescending, holier-than-thou attacks on John Fetterman for not healing FAST ENOUGH from a STROKE to please the slime of our society like Joe Goddamned Scarborough almost defies description: “John Fetterman’s ability to communicate,” he wrote, “is seriously impaired. Pennsylvania voters will be talking about this obvious fact even if many in the media will not…This is painful to watch regardless of one’s politics.”
Who in the hell do you think you are, Scarborough? Everybody who has ever known you – anybody who has ever known any of the 10 or 20 different Joe Scarboroughs who have darkened our horizons – everybody knows your ability to communicate has been seriously impaired for 30 years! Never mind Joe Scarborough’s impenetrable dialect and frequent malapropisms. What he has said through the length of his public career has been “painful to watch regardless of one’s politics” and it has rarely been the same thing twice. Things he has said have not been honest, not been true, not been consistent, not been anything but self-serving and destructive.
And unlike John Fetterman, who in his debate Tuesday night was about ten times as coherent as Herschel Walker and twenty times as coherent as Donald Trump, and who was still less painful to listen to than Mehmet Oz claiming that a woman’s fundamental right to have an abortion should be decided by herself, her doctor, and local political leaders!... unlike John Fetterman, who has gotten better, IS better, and who is getting better still, there are no mitigating factors for the impenetrable unintelligibility of Joe Scarborough and the fact that he has not been the same person for three consecutive years running, at any time in the last three decades. There are no mitigating factors for whatever is going on in Joe Scarborough’s mind at the moment. Or is not going on there.
First, Joe Scarborough was a doctrinaire prostitute for Newt Gingrich, regurgitating poorly memorized buzzwords on the House floor pushing the Gingrich Contract on America and perpetrating that assault on democracy that was the Clinton impeachment. Then he suddenly and without explanation quit Congress. Then he resurfaced on MSNBC, spewing the standard diseased mind garbage of an anti-democracy Republican on television, while off it, constantly lobbying management for favors for Republican friends, calling the Democrats quote “the party on the side of death,” interfering with what was said and who appeared on other shows, threatening to accuse his own employers of prejudice against him because he was a Conservative, attacking co-workers in public and getting away with it though it was a violation of NBC rules.
Then he STOPPED thinking THAT way. Suddenly and without logic or explanation, he morphed overnight from right wing primetime firebrand to calm and sage bothsideser.
The transformation defied logic and defied the orderly processes of an uninjured mind. And it was not the LAST transformation. Suddenly Scarborough re-re-reinvented himself as the man who was going to mainstream Donald Trump to the MSNBC audience in 2015 and 2016. And in that whitewashing, Scarborough never once addressed the obvious fact that Donald Trump’s brain has never worked correctly and whatever has been secretly wrong with it for decades, worsened perilously no more than ten years ago. And Scarborough never once asked Trump ‘why do you say things that make no sense?’ and ‘have you had an aneurysm or concussion?’ or ‘have you used drugs that can interfere with or damage your cognitive ability?’ Scarborough never once wrote nor said ‘Donald Trump’s ability to communicate is seriously impaired. Voters will be talking about this obvious fact even if many in the media will not.’
And after months of positioning Trump as a realistic candidate for president and not insane or dictatorial or a threat to everything America stands for, and after months of seeing Trump in private, and after months of advising Trump…suddenly and without explanation Scarborough’s mind abruptly changed again. A re-re-RE-reinvention as a fervent never Trumper. And just as quickly, as if there were no copies of his fawning interviews with Trump, or his vacuous wife’s fawning interviews with Trump, or their sycophantic visits with Trump, or the infamous photo of Scarborough and Trump both doing Trump’s inane thumbs up gesture – Scarborough tried to pretend -- believed in his dubious mind -- that nobody would ever remember that during the critical months in which the media transformed Trump from an unacceptable destroyer into just an eccentric rule-breaker that he, Scarborough, was one of Trump’s many media whores.
And Joe Scarborough’s attack on John Fetterman is somehow worse than it seems. Because for every American – every human being – recovering from any illness, any injury, any physical problem, any emotional problem, but especially a stroke or an aneurysm or Alzheimer’s or just a concussion – Joe Scarborough’s attack on John Fetterman was a slap to all of their faces.
The brain is fragile, incredibly precise, incredibly resilient, and John Fetterman’s performance Tuesday night was miraculous and inspirational – especially if you have been touched, even in the mildest of ways, by head trauma. I have told this story before. At the age of 21 I stupidly ran head first into the side of a New York subway train. Fortunately I escaped with nothing more than a serious concussion. Nearly all the symptoms cleared within six months. But some pertaining to depth perception and vision are now in their 42nd year and I do ocular muscle exercises that help considerably. In fact I did them this morning.
But less than an hour after I hit my head, at the emergency room in Elmhurst Hospital in New York, I was asked to provide a family contact. I selected my father. I gave them his likely whereabouts, with no problem. I gave them his phone number, with no problem. I gave them his name, Theodore, with no problem. And then the nurse asked for my full name and I could not for the life of me remember my middl name. Keith. Something. Olbermann.
My middle name is Theodore. The brain is so fragile and its functions so delicate and so precise, that I could immediately remember that my father’s name was Theodore, but it took me literally hours before it came back to me that my own middle name was also Theodore.
And instead of looking at John Fetterman and saying he’s still fighting it but god damn it his recovery is astonishing, Joe Holier-Than-Thou Scarborough, Joe Quit-Congress Scarborough, Joe Break-Up-Other-Peoples-Marriages Scarborough, Joe Don’t-Ask-Trump-If-He’s-Stoned-Or-Brain-Damaged Scarborough, Joe My-Brain-Won’t-Let-Me-Be-The-Same-Person-Three-Years-In-A-Row Scarborough attacked Fetterman, attacked people who criticized him for attacking Fetterman, attacked the media who would NOT attack Fetterman, and then welcomed as a guest a man who used to literally pretend to have hearing and vision problems in order to get away with interrupting his guests, sabotaging his co-hosts, and making inappropriate remarks to women: Chris Matthews.
Scumbag Joe Scarborough. Scumbag.
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And I’m still not certain he’s worse than Samuel Alito. After his nonsensical address to the “Heritage” Foundation Tuesday, there is no excuse to permit the Supreme Court (excuse me, the Supreme Republican Religious Court) to continue in its present form, nor for Alito to continue to serve on it. Maybe he can resign and we can replace with Joe Scarborough. You didn’t know Scarborough was a lawyer? Sure. In 1993, he was the lawyer for Michael Frederick Griffin, and it was on March 10th 1993, that Michael Frederick Griffin went to the Pensacola Women’s Medical Services Clinic in Florida, waited for an abortion provider named Dr. David Gunn to walk past him, and then he shot him, three times, with a shotgun, in the back. And the lawyer defending him was Joe Scarborough.
Scumbag in the law. Scumbag in Congress. Scumbag on Television. Scumbag… to John Fetterman and every American who is differently abled.
