NYC Letter: Today's Big Stupid -- Mika Brzezinski

Day 1,034 of CHOPE

This Saturday past at the Thanksgiving Family Forum, Newt Gingrich slammed the OWSers, telling them to "go get a job, right after you take a bath". If you are old enough to remember Country Joe And The Fish you will recognize Mr. Gingrich's slam as the clichéd parental exhortation at the dinner table in the 70s. Sticks and stones -- and please pass the peas.

Of course, some people -- too beautiful for this world -- are excruciatingly umbrageous to even a whiff of meanness.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI'S ANTI-NEWT RANT
DRIVES HER TO EMOTIONAL BRINK

November 21, 2011 (NewsBusters) - Mika Brezinski began today's Morning Joe by tearing into Newt Gingrich for his recent suggestion that Occupy protestors should "get a job, right after you take a bath." ... So strongly ran Brzezinski's rage that more than once her voice quavered and she seemed on some sort of emotional brink.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Wow. It's really not surprising, coming from me,* but that's about the most arrogant and un-self-aware, and those are probably the only words I can use [inaudible] for any politician in this Republican field to say.

JEFFREY SACHS [income redistributionist and Columbia prof]: Disgusting.

BRZEZINSKI: Disgusting.

SACHS: Absolutely disgusting. No sense of any meaning at all of this. Absolutely revolting, actually. And especially when what they're protesting against is the incredible abuse of power, the criminality on...

BRZEZINSKI: That he participated in.

SACHS: ...Wall Street and so forth that he--he has taken his millions of dollars. It's shocking!

Mr. Sachs, was born in 1954. Apparently he was cocooned from the harsh rhetoric of the 70s -- and this year's Democrat rhetoric as well (and this and this and this). [Pause.] No. Mr. Sachs was not cocooned. He is pretending outrage to push Ms. Brzezinski beyond the Morning Joe proscenium.

BRZEZINSKI: Someone needs a bath, and I don't think it's the people from Occupy Wall Street. That's all I'm going to say. [Word meter on.] I've got nothing else. I'm so disgusted by that that something horrible is going to come ... I, I, am I alone here? [Tremolo.] Am I overreacting?

Overacting, Mika. You are overacting.

I'm sickened by that ... It's fair to say he's in the 1%, correct? He's telling the 99% to take a bath and get a job? Really?

Presto! Ms. Brzezinski, herself a one-percenter, has ever so gently folded you into the OWS. So very gently you may not have noticed the degraded OWS atmosphere that now envelops you.

Really, I wonder how they do that right now. How, given the state of this country, how anyone's going to just get a job and take a bath. Who is this man? Who does he think he is?

Obviously Marie-Thérèse, Queen consort of France and Navarre: « Qu'ils mangent de la brioche. »

And why is he surging in the polls? I don't get it. I mean, to hear Newt Gingrich standing on literally [sic, Ms. Brzezinski means something like "unbelievably"] his high horse, after taking advantage of the system, cashing in, being the biggest, literally [sic, Ms. Brzezinski means something like "certainly"] the biggest hypocrite in the Repubican field, probably in politics today. The biggest hypocrite.

Ms. Brzezinski evidently isn't keeping tabs on Nancy Pelosi. Or John Kerry (and this and this). Or these two-faced folks. And there is the structural hypocrisy of the OWS itself (and this).

And then to cast aspersions and to speak down to these people as if -- plghhh -- they should be flipped away? It's disgusting. It's absolutely disgusting. It's a very angry way to start the show. I'm extremely sorry. But it's the first time I'd seen that. And it literally made my skin crawl. I can't believe he resonates. [Word meter off: 196 words later.]

Has Mr. Gingrich's innocuous cliché really sickened Ms. Brzezinski? Is she really disgusted? Her skin crawled? Oh, puh-leeze. "Get a job. Take a bath." These are not crushing put-downs. These are not fell psychic blows.

Ms. Brzezinski's near-tears performance is meant to bolster the MSM portrayal of the OWS as latterday Joads. If your burg has been occupied by an OWS mob, you are more likely to be nodding with Mr. Gingrich than having an empathic vomit with Ms. Brzezinski.

OWS is not a serious force for social justice. It is a conglomeration of mobs. Ms. Brzezinski takes this conglomeration seriously, which is one of oh-so-many reasons (and this and this) not to take Ms. Brzezinski seriously.

CHOPE.

Sticks and stones, Mika! Sticks and stones!

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* NewsBusters notes this alludes to her acknowledged personal animus toward Mr. Gingrich. Mr. Gingrich apparently insulted Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former National Security Adviser under Carter -- and Mika's father -- in some forum with him in the audience. Celebrity politesse dictates that insults be made at a remove, for example, on a morning talk show empaneled with agreeable bobbing heads.

Posted by Damian at November 21, 2011 10:00 PM