Joe Scarborough: self-hating Southerner?
Scarborough -- originating from the "cracker counties" of the Florida panhandle -- sometimes likes to stress his Southern upbringing, and describe himself as a "simple country lawyer" who attended two southern state universities.
But the Morning Joe host has developed an ugly habit of mocking southern Republicans by putting on their supposed accents. We've caught Scarborough doing that twice in the case of House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, who at least sports an accent. Check out this instance of Scarborough fantasizing Comer saying [at 0:25], of his supposed lack of evidence against Joe Biden regarding Hunter's influence peddling:
"We ain't got nuthin' but a squirrel fryer and a hound dog."
Today, Scarborough tried to ridicule Speaker of the House Mike Johnson of Louisiana. Calling him "Jesus's man in Congress," Scarborough, putting on a heavy southern accent, imagined Johnson saying [at 1:47]:
"All you got to do is look at the Bible. That's what I do."
Regional accents are great. America would lose a lot if everyone spoke blandly like a network news reader. But the simple fact is that Mike Johnson doesn't have a detectable Southern accent, or a lagniappe of a Cajun twang.
Have a look and listen to this clip of Johnson at a recent news availability. Not a hint of a below-the-Mason-Dixon-line drawl. By coincidence, last week I was in Johnson's home town of Shreveport, Louisiana. Believe me, he doesn't sound anything like the typical native. He could represent Nebraska.
The irony is that Scarborough's spiel today, quoting a New York Times column by Never Trumper David French, was about how "MAGA men" like Rudy Giuliani and Johnson are obliged to "lie." But not only does Scarborough—the man who summers on Nantucket—engage in some nasty condescension to Southerners, he was the one manufactured Johnson's supposed accent.
Scarborough, who occasionally touts his Baptist background, really hates Johnson's religious talk and then relates it to those MAGA men: "this guy that uses Jesus as a political shield, and claims that he may be the Aaron or the Moses. What does he do? He embraces the Big Lie."
For her part, Mika Brzezinski gloated at the prospect that Rudy will not have "a penny left to his name" when the two plaintiffs in the defamation case are "done with him."
As we have noted, Scarborough has attacked Trump for speaking of illegal immigrants "poisoning the blood" of America. But breaking out an ugly medical metaphor of his own today, Scarborough described MAGA Republicans as having been "infected" by Trump.
