Newst Gingrich critique of OWS nearly literally reduces MSNBC’s Mika Brezinski to tears

posted at 12:01 pm on November 21, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
[ Double Standards ]   

“Disgusting!” “Arrogant!” “Un-self-aware!” OK, I’m not sure that last one is even a word, but you get the general idea.

These were just a few of the adjectives that came to the not-terribly-crowded mind of Morning Joe co-host Mika Brezinski during a segment this morning on Newt Gingrich’s critique of the Occupy movement.

Newsbusters provides a transcript of Brezinski’s remarks, echoed and enlarged upon by Columbia professor and guest Jeffrey Sachs. But you need to watch the video to get the full import of Brezinski’s profound shock and outrage. At cue 1:49, her voice quavers and she actually seems on the verge of tears.

BRZEZINSKI: Wow … 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.

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

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. I’ve got nothing else. I’m so disgusted by that that something horrible is going to come … I, I, am I alone here? Am I overreacting? 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? 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? And why is he surging in the polls? I don’t get it. I mean, to hear Newt Gingrich standing on literally [sic] his high horse, after taking advantage of the system, cashing in, being the biggest, literally the biggest hypocrite in the Repubican field, probably in politics today. The biggest hypocrite. 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 [sic] made my skin crawl. I can’t believe he resonates.

The video begins with the Gingrich comments that “literally made Brezinski’s skin crawl.” A transcript follows:

All the Occupy movements start with a premise that we all owe them everything. They take over a public park they didn’t pay for, to go nearby to use bathrooms they didn’t pay for, to beg for food from places they don’t want to pay for, to obstruct those who are going to work to pay the taxes to sustain the bathrooms and to sustain the park so they can self-righteously explain that they are the paragons of virtue to which we owe everything. That is a pretty good symptom of how much the left has collapsed as a moral system in this country and why you need to reassert something as simple as saying to them: ‘Go get a job, right after you take a bath.’

Gingrich’s words are emotionally charged, and I can understand a liberal taking offense at his view that the left has “collapsed as a moral system in this country.” But one is hard-pressed to pinpoint a single criticism that isn’t accurate and truthful.

Not to mention more measured than those used by Vice President Joe Biden and fellow Democrats in their wholesale dismissal of the Tea Party as terrorists, hostage takers, and worse.

I was unable to find a video clip or transcript of Mika Brezinski’s angst over these defamatory comments directed at a group that—like the Occupiers—is “protesting … the incredible abuse of power.” Maybe I just didn’t look literally hard enough.

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