Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough brought on Time magazine Editor Nancy Gibbs to discuss the publication’s latest cover story about toxic environments on the internet. “I think we are all probably first amendment extremists about, yes, part of our life is that people will call us stupid and idiots and that's fine,” stated Gibbs, “But at what point do you not defend speech that suppresses speech?” Ironically the writer of the piece has his own history of trolling, and so does Morning Joe and MSNBC.
“Everywhere I go I know hear people talking about the things that are being said in public, the things that are being said at campaign rallies in this presidential campaign,” Gibbs claimed, “This was all happening online and has now basically moved out of private digital spaces into public ones.”
But anyone who has watched MSNBC in the past, or present, knows they have a long history of such vitriolic language being used on live television. NewsBusters readers might remember back in 2013 when MSNBC personality Martin Bashir exclaimed that he wanted someone to defecate in Governor Sarah Palin’s mouth. Bashir’s comments resulted in him resigning from the news outlet.
And then there was former MSNBC personality Ed Schultz who infamously screamed in 2009, “The Republicans lie! They want to see you dead! They’d rather make money off your dead corpse! They kind of like it when that woman has cancer and they don't have anything for her.”
Scarborough also whined about how Mika Brzezinski has been treated online saying, “I can tell you over eight or nine years of seeing what Mika gets online. I can tell you it is 100 times worse for women. And it has to do with appearance…” But Brzezinski herself once attacked Senator Marco Rubio for his appearance, claiming he looked like a little boy compared to Hillary Clinton.
And Scarborough often allows guests to attack people he doesn’t like. For instance he let Nicolle Wallace get away with slamming Senator Ted Cruz’s fatherhood saying, “I mean, we’ve heard him read a child’s fairy tale. I mean my god. I don't know how those kids sleep.”
Ironically, Scarborough had a warning for sites that allowed trolling to occur, “And I would suggest that sites that don't monitor that hatred better are going to start losing investment and get put out of business.” It appears that the pot is calling the kettle black.