Joe Scarborough impressively calls BS on the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson over his claims that Barack Obama is being victimized by his critics by their, er, claiming victimization from Obama’s policies and positions. No, Joe doesn’t skewer the hypocrisy of claiming victimization through victimization, nor does he remind Robinson of the Democratic Party’s pandering to victimization cliques as electoral strategy. He does, however, remind Robinson that his allies on the Left did exactly the same thing to George W. Bush, and that he recalls the warm response to the film that fantasized Bush’s assassination. But Mediaite focuses on what will almost certainly be the main takeaway from the clip:

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Gene how is that any different, because I made the mistake of turning on this network in prime time last night and my head almost blew off, how is that any different from what Democrats did to George W. Bush from day one, from what Republicans, I will say this, did to Bill Clinton in 1992. I can read you the columns that were written before George Bush was sworn in by Washington Post columnists that you work with, talking about how George W. Bush has no legitimacy.

Steve Krakauer notes that this isn’t the first time Scarborough has criticized his network’s prime-time programming:

Just to be clear, if he was watching MSNBC prime time last night, his head was almost blown off byLawrence O’Donnell, in for Keith Olbermann, or Rachel Maddow.

This wouldn’t be the first time Scarborough has called out his colleagues in prime time, although not by name. Even so, that led to a clamping down by MSNBC management on inter-network squabbling.

We’ll see shortly whether Joe gets his wrist slapped over this.  The last time it happened, Joe got a public dressing down from management.

The context for this was the coverage of the Ground Zero Mosque, which Robinson claimed was being used by conservative talkers to convince Americans that they were being victimized by Barack Obama.  That, however, was Obama’s own fault for endorsing the mosque one day and then claiming not to have done so the next.  Yesterday, Atlas Shrugs (via The Right Scoop) found audio of the mosque’s leader claiming five years ago that “the US has more Muslim blood on it hands than al Qaida has on its hands of innocent non Muslims.”  Neither Allahpundit nor I posted the audio, not because we were hiding it, but just because (in my case, at least) I didn’t find the argument all that compelling, or all that unusual.  Jeremiah Wright said worse, and Code Pink and other antiwar groups have made the same or similar statements for years.  Be sure to check out the audio at either or both sites, though.

The GZM is not terribly interesting as a news story any longer, since (a) it’s not getting built any time soon, and (b) the midterms won’t be won or lost on the GZM but on the economy, the deficit, and out of control spending.  It does make for a good comment magnet, but outside of when high-profile politicians talk about it, there isn’t much more to be said that hasn’t already been said. Except, perhaps, this excellent essay from The Anchoress, which gets to the heart of why this debate has been skewed by hypocrisy:

Resistance to a proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero is not about bigotry or xenophobia; the demonstrated tolerance of Americans during the last nine years belies those unhelpful charges. Rather, the rancor is an amalgam; it is constructed of built-up feelings of anger, powerlessness, indignation and—most potently—disillusioned self-awareness and resentment against ham-handed, disdainful leadership.

Anger alone would be manageable. In our therapeutic culture we know that before a psych patient can get well, he needs to touch a needle to the crux of what is eating at him, like an interior boil-lancing, and sometimes it takes a lot of roundabout discourse and venting to locate it. Until the thing is touched upon, though, there is no chance of healing, just a general sense of disease, failure, and hurt.

We could find it, lance it, and start healing. But America is are being told—by the very people who have spent decades promoting the primacy of “feelings,” over thought, and who have declared that “a feeling is neither right or wrong”—to shut up, to not express its feelings, to not even have feelings, because those feelings are bad, stupid ones that are very, very wrong.

Be sure to read it all.