The vast majority of conservatives -- other than those of us who are media monitors -- skip "Morning Joe" every day. What's surprising is how many times the starring couple -- Joe Scarborough and his third wife Mika Brzezinski -- have been skipping their own program this year.
Meghan Blonder and Thaleigha Rampersad at the Washington Free Beacon did the ugly math. Between May 27 and Nov. 15, Scarborough and Brzezinski appeared together on just 70 of 124 episodes. Scarborough missed 29 shows, while Brzezinski skipped 41! That's one out of every three workdays. In July, she was out for two consecutive weeks, appearing on only about half of that month's episodes.
We know Mika wrote a book called "Know Your Value," so did she negotiate in her contract she could skip one out of every three shows? Does that sound like the work schedule of the average American? Maybe she thinks if Rachel Maddow can grab $25 million a year for just working Monday nights, why should she have to drag herself to the microphone at 6 in the morning?
This is funnier when you recall Joe and Mika primarily broadcast from a studio built at their home in Jupiter, Florida, a trendy location for the wealthy. There are an estimated 75 professional golfers in the area. Many cable-news stars appear from their Florida mansions. They joke the Fox News stars are just miles from Mar-a-Lago, so the Trump interviews can happen quickly.
Neither half of this power couple was present for 16 shows, leaving the "Morning Joe" bench players -- Jonathan Lemire, Willie Geist and BBC correspondent Katty Kay -- to fill in.
The Free Beacon reporters cited the opening of the Aug. 29 episode: "I'm Katty Kay, in for Joe, Mika and Willie. Everybody's off except me. I'm so sorry." She hosted a segment that day touting a Vox.com article titled "Are We in a Crisis of Rudeness?" The author referred to incidents like "students leaving class unannounced," but Joe and Mika's morning hooky never came up in the conversation.
For a little spice in this punch bowl, we hear from a gossip on Substack using angry anonymous sources -- never my favorite source. It's apparently staffers claiming their overlords "barely show up, and the rest of us are doing triple the work." These gripes also included: "Every day is a scramble. Who's hosting? What's the tone? Who's running the ship? No one knows."
Who is griping? No one knows.
The absenteeism came to an abrupt end when MSNBC lowered its flag and they became the dreadfully named "MS NOW." Blonder and Rampersad noted the couple's ongoing perfect attendance streak -- three whole weeks -- is their longest since Memorial Day. In fact, their record before Nov. 12 was a whopping seven days in July, marking one of the only two full weeks they both worked during that period.
Nobody who routinely skips this show thinks that America needs more mugfuls of "Morning Joe" and Mika -- like we need things like Scarborough's risible rant last year that the decrepit version of Joe Biden was the "Best Biden Ever." That wouldn't have fit the letters MS NOW. It was more like MS 1996.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM
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