Hearing Joe Scarborough utter “the phrase ‘fuck you’ when discussing Obama’s appointment of Rahm Emanuel” on MSNBC, Salon‘s Green Greenwald states (11/10/08, ad-viewing required) that he “couldn’t care any less”–except that he just can’t stomach the immense hypocrisy of “one of the most zealous crusaders against such awful filth on television”:
Scarborough led the lynch mob over the 2004 Janet Jackson halftime show on CBS–demanding that the FCC impose massive fines against CBS and MTV, among others–and has railed against “rock stars” and entertainers who use, as he used to call it (before this morning), “the F word.” Indeed, Scarborough even expressed outrage over the fact that the government would even consider refraining from imposing substantial fines on ABC when Bono, on a live awards show, used the “F word.”
Greenwald even traces Scarborough’s unrelenting “sanctimony” back to claims about his childhood–quoting the pundit having “boasted to his guest that his upbringing was so fine that he was taught not to use such words: ‘Robert, I’m glad to hear that you don’t use the words and you didn’t use them growing up. All I’ll say is, my mom put soap in my mouth more than once or twice.'”
I think this is FOX sort of fighting for free speech in their own “fucked up” way.
Um, what happened to “Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting”? This is what he said:
JOE SCARBOROUGH: The nature of this campaign has really been the steady nature of Barack Obama, the steady nature of David Axelrod, the not-so-steady nature of Robert Gibbs, only because he went to Auburn. But these are good, decent steady men that don’t go around flipping people off or screaming [f-word] you at the top of their lungs.
It was an accidental slip of the tongue and as soon as he realized what he said he interrupted the conversation and apologized.