MSNBC's Joe Scarborough Blasts Glenn Beck On Twitter

As America is poised to slide into the slow-news month of August, our top media professionals seem poised to spend the next 30 days at each other's throats. Lou Dobbs is calling Rachel Maddow a "teabagger queen!" Bill O'Reilly is yelling at Lou Dobbs! Rick Sanchez is mad at the Fox News Network! And CNN's Jon Klein really needs a hug and a nap. Now, Joe Scarborough's joining the Fight Club, gunning for Fox News's weepy newscomedian, Glenn Beck.

At issue are remarks that Glenn Beck made on the vertigo-inducing AM funny farm known as Fox And Friends. Beck said that President Barack Obama had "over and over again" shown himself to be "a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture," later adding, "I'm not saying he doesn't like white people, I'm saying he has a problem ... This guy is, I believe, a racist."

This morning, the Morning Joe kaffeeklatsch, without Scarborough himself, tore into Beck.

[WATCH]

BUT! Joe, wherever he was, had Twitter at the ready, which he used to blast out his own take on the matter: "Conservatives attacked the Dixie Chicks for saying much less about President Bush than what Beck said about President Obama."

Fighting words! And, as the Washington Independent's Dave Weigel points out, these were words with historical resonance, as far as Scarborough's broadcast career goes:

This was a key moment in the early 2000s culture wars, and Scarborough covered it every time he had an excuse to. On a Sept. 12, 2006 episode of "Scarborough Country," the host plugged one upcoming segment as "The Dixie Chicks's stunning new attack on George W. Bush, stunning only because it is such bad PR! Shut up and sing, baby! Shut up and sing!" In the segment, about Natalie Maines calling President Bush a "dumb f**k," Scarborough gloated at their lack of country radio success.

Weigel wonders, "Will we see weeks of coverage of Beck's comment on Scarborough's morning show? Will he book people who want to punish Beck, as he booked country singers, actors, and radio hosts who were attacking Maines?" Time will tell. But if you'll permit me to offer my own hopes on the matter, the one thing I'd ask is for Glenn Beck to not end up on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, like so:

Please. Please. No.

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Comments

[DemonSmurf]

Ok so maybe they did pick him up on it.

[Cye]

Historically, in the South particularly, if you had any black ancestry - no matter how distant - you were simply regarded as black.

For instance, the term "quadroon" was used to describe a person with one quarter 'black blood'. If that person went on to have a child with a white person, their offspring was called an "octoroon" - a person of one-eighth 'black blood'. And so on, so that anybody with black ancestry could never be allowed the privellege of calling themselves white or identifying with white people.

To radical right wingers and racists then, the fact that Obama had a white mother does not "redeem" from the charge of being racist. Because to them, he's simply a black man.

[hauty007]

All the Media pundits are yelling, bickreing, back stabbin, sorta like CONGRESS, LOL.
Why are things coming apart @ the seams.
USA is spinning, dizzying debt & spending.
Where are the jobs, 10% or 20.5M Unemployed.
Mortgage Chaos
Kluncker joke.
1.7T Health Care Bill.
Lowest June Retail Sales in Decades...
Maybe these are some of the reasons, people are scared.
What's gonna on w/ our Country?

[Mikey5099]

The aftermath of eight years of Bush and Cheney, that's what...

[krocklin]

Exactly. President Gore would have prevented all this.

[Bernard Silverman]

Glenn Beck is a great deal more entertaining on TV with the sound off.

All those wild gesticulations and facial contortions make for great TV.

No need for wacky commentary.

[Belisarius]

what exactly is a "teabagger queen"?

[Lolasmom]

YEAH, but they still have Pat Buchanan. Not much difference between Buchanan and Beck.

[colee7]

The 4 people making mundane observations about it are just as silly. Who is the guy from WaPo and what is he contributing besides calling someone irresponsible? The news has become so weird. We need to start drawing more arbitrary lines where entertainer and news reporter is concerned.

[dauntingideas]

Beck never ends with all of his hateful talk and completely insane tactics. I completely agree with this article.......and cannot even imagine the liberal media saying half of what Beck does about the Country now.

Here he was today trying to spark his 10 million fans to rise up in an American revolution.

http://dauntingideas.com/content/glenn-beck-calls-american-revolution

[urbanlife]

It time for this BS to be rained in, boycotting Beck's sponsors is not nearly enough. People fed up with this crap should boycott everything FOX. Don't view Fox programming of any kind, including sports. Every African American player in the NFL should refuse to play in any game broadcast on this network. The NFL should terminate its contract with Fox and we as citizen's should take to the streets and openly protest outside of any local Fox affiliate. Don't support Fox, enough is enough......

[JenniferEccles]

good post. cutting the flow of money to unhinged talking heads, particularly Glenn Beck, would be effective.

[the mean in meaningless]

Only that for every honorable, sane person who boycotts Beck's advertisers, there's some nut purchasing two of every relevant item.

[loveu2]

let's go back to hiring "newsmen" who just report the news. When channels try to combine the news and entertainment, neither happens.

[vgirl1]

BOYCOTT BECK's sponsors.

[noel ece]

boycott all whiners!

[wwoody]

it is really hard for me get angry with a guy who is obviously mentally ill, it's not what he says that is frightening.It's what he believes in to be true, that is frightening.

[novoorganum]

What I find appalling is that Beck, Limbaugh, Dobbs are permitted a public platform to communicate their hate speech, while those who have something intellectually to offer are marginalized like, Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, Paul Krugman, Bernie Sanders, Kucinich and many others.

[POLINUT]

Co-signed!

[loveu2]

wouldn't you love to see a program of news hosted by Dennis Kucinich? I'd watch that for sure.

[ENOUGH1]

Glen, how can President Obama not like white people, when he is half wife. Did all these crazies come out of the woodwork for the past presidents?

[kinase]

I'm sure everyone here felt the same way when Bush was called a racist (by Kanye West) or a Nazi (by Keith Olbermann)...right???

[jonez]

Kanye West is not a commentator on a news station. And Nazi could mean many things.

[oli33]

Thank you. Finally somebody said it! They didn't say anything about boycotting Kanye when he said Bush was a racist. That is why this arguement holds no water. No consistency from the left.

[POLINUT]

errr....that is because it was TRUE.

[OnReflection]

That issue involved Katrina !

Remember that catastrophe ? And I don't mean the the levies breaking!

[denicci1977]

Does the opinion of President Obama saying the police "acted" stupidly arresting Prof.Gates in his own home REALLY compare to Bush having cake with McCain during Hurrican Katrina while poor people drowned to death or stewed in their own filth for days without food, water, or medical care ?

[JenniferEccles]

or Barbara Bush in New Orleans saying that living in that arena on a cot in the middle of human stench was really working out for those people.

[SJW1]

Well there's no real comparison, the policies of Bush, along with his response to katrina, can bring someone to that conclusion... Also Bush wasn't born from and raised by Black women...

[DofG]

para. "I'm not saying he hates White people! I'm saying he has a problem with White people!" Yeah Glenn, I get it. He (Obama) has a problem with White people, not White people!