Media Research Center writer Mark Finkelstein is weirdly obsessed with MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s manhood — or, rather, that it manifests itself in ways he doesn’t like (though he probably wouldn’t object if a host on a right-wing channel said the same things). Finkelstein complained about it in a June 2022 post:
Such a tough hombre, that Joe Scarborough! On Thursday’s Morning Joe, Ragin’ Bull Scarborough twice fantasy-bragged about what he would do if he saw someone taking photos of security areas in the Capitol, claiming he’d threaten them with feeding them the camera.
Joe’s flight of macho fantasy came in the context of a discussion of a Capitol tour Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia had given the day before the January 6 riot. Video later emerged of a member of the tour taking pictures during the tour. Scarborough claimed it was of security areas such as metal detectors. But as NewsBusters analyst Kevin Tober has noted, that is apparently not true. The Capitol Police reviewed video of the tour and found nothing suspicious.
As we pointed out at the time, Tober and Finkelstein ignored the fact that Loudermilk had long denied there was any tour at all. Finkelstein huffed further in an October 2022 post:
Joe Scarborough’s masculinity is so fragile that he needs to repeatedly brag about his toughness on national TV. Back in June, we caught Scarborough boasting that he would beat up Capitol tourists if he caught them taking pictures.
But he probably shouldn’t disparage other men for being “emasculated” by Donald Trump. That would be leading with his chin. The subject was Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance. At a recent Trump rally with Vance in Ohio, the former president told the crowd “J.D. is kissing my ass he wants my support so bad.”
Scarborough chose to open his Morning Joe show on Tuesday with a long rant about how he wouldn’t tolerate anyone who tried to “emasculate” him.
The irony is that in posing the question to Willie Geist as to whether he’d ever had a job where he’d allow someone to emasculate him, Scarborough could be seen as attempting to emasculate Geist, who good-naturedly responded with an abashed smile, and laughter followed.
So eager was Scarborough to make his point, that he even paraphrased the late, great Rush Limbaugh’s line about men having their private parts put in a lockbox.
So yes, you can be sure that if anyone ever tried to cut in line in front of Muy Macho Joe at Murray’s Toggery Shop on Nantucket, Scarborough’s favorite summering spot, Joe would send that person flying!
[…]Scarborough really needs to stick to the news, and work on his masculinity issues with his therapist. If anyone ever sacrificed his masculinity, or certainly his integrity, it’s Joe Scarborough himself, who built his career at MSNBC by sacrificing his erstwhile conservatism.
Says the guy who’s spending in inordinate amount of time writing about Scarborough’s purported masculinity issues. Maybe Finkelstein’s the one who needs to work things out with his therapist. But he won’t, because the MRC pays him to maintain this complex, and he let it out again in a January 2023 post:
Such a tough hombre, that Joe Scarborough!
On Friday’s Morning Joe, Scarborough said “I’d die before continuing to negotiate against myself” like Kevin McCarthy is doing. Scarborough alluded to McCarthy as “the snowflake, triggered, weak variety of Republicans that appear to be roaming Capitol Hill today.”
The table-pounding Muy Macho Joe said that instead of negotiating, he would “stare down” the holdout Republicans.
Undoubtedly, Scarborough’s only words to the holdout Republicans would be: “do you feel lucky? Well, do you?”
Of course, rather than having the courage to remain in the GOP and fight for change, Scarborough scuttled off to MSNBC and has spent his time there sucking up to the liberals in the exec suites, in his audience, and in his elite Nantucket set.
More complaining came in a March 2023 post:
Muy Macho Joe Scarborough swaggered about his manhood again on today’s Morning Joe. Scarborough mocked men who fire AR-15s at gun ranges “to feel like real men, cause they obviously don’t in real life.”
Scarborough made his comments in the context of discussing the Nashville school shooting, as he condemned Republicans and gun manufacturers for the current state of our society.
So, if guys insecure in their masculinity go to gun ranges to feel like real men, what kind of guy repeatedly goes on national TV to boast about his machismo?
And what kind of guy repeatedly writes about someone else’s claims of machismo? Finkelstein was at it again in a May 2023 post targeting Scarborough through Tucker Carlson:
In the course of a long Morning Joe segment today focusing on an exposed Tucker Carlson text message to a colleague that the way some January 6th rioters were beating up an Antifa guy isn’t “how white men fight,” Michael Steele commented:
The fact that something like that could be sent to a colleague and it sort of sits there, and nothing happens or comes from it, and it’s not until you get into this sort of adversarial, prosecutorial setting in which it becomes public or potentially becomes public that they see some reaction. So it really speaks to the culture inside the building in many respects that that type of communication doesn’t rise to a point where, you know, he’s brought in by the leadership of the company saying, what the hell are you talking about, how white men fight?”
If Steele is shocked that there would be no immediate corporate repercussions for Tucker saying that in a private communication between two people, how about a TV host bragging—live on the air—about how he would threaten and attack someone merely doing something he didn’t approve of? Steele need look no further than across the morning’s panel, at certified very-white-man Joe Scarborough.
Finkelstein grumbled again in another May 2023 post:
Turns out, Joe Scarborough was referring to Donald Trump when speaking on today’s Morning Joe of “the most insecure man in public life.”
The show kicked off today with Mika Brzezinski touting vigilant Trump litigant E. Jean Carroll attempting to add new cash demands every time Donald Trump calls her a “wack job” on television — in this case, on the CNN town hall.
Scarborough took issue with how Trump twice described his lawyer in the Carroll matter addressing him as “sir.” Scarborough claimed, and Willie Geist agreed, that Trump’s supposed inclination to quote people calling him “sir” is proof of his “overwhelming insecurity.”
Geist claimed “that was just an excuse to tell another ‘sir story.'”
But when it comes to overwhelming insecurity on television, Joe could just have easily been talking about himself.
By this time, Finkelstein has compiled a bullet list of his previous anti-Scarborough rants that he just copies and pastes into newer posts — something else he might want to talk to a therapist about. Still, he whined some more in a September 2023 post:
The Biden White House can cross Morning Joe off the list of media outlets that need to be urged to get tougher on House Republicans regarding their potential opening of an impeachment inquiry on Biden.
The Morning Joe crowd is already on the job, devoting its opening segment today to trashing Republicans for even considering an impeachment inquiry against Good Ol’ Joe.
And the effort was led by none other than Muy Macho Joe Scarborough. As we’ve documented on a number of occasions, as here and here, Scarborough has a habit of boasting about just what a tough guy he is.
Mighty Joe was back at his macho bragging this morning, saying that if anyone dared speak to him the way Matt Gaetz spoke to Kevin McCarthy, he’d tell him to “F-O” — even if it were “Satan at the Gates of Hell!” Joe Scarborough: tougher than the Devil himself!
Finkelstein tried to hang a purported flip-flop on Scarborough in a Nov. 15 post:
Muy Macho Joe Scarborough thinks he is one tough hombre.
And Scarborough’s manly uber-manliness isn’t confined to the serene byways of 30 Rock. To the contrary, Scarborough’s machismo extends, quite literally, to the halls of the Capitol!
As we noted last year, Scarborough fantasized about beating up a Capitol tourist taking photos somewhere Joe didn’t like.
[…]Tough stuff! The kind of thing Scarborough no doubt learned while summering on the hardscrabble streets of Nantucket.
So it was paradoxical, to say the least, to find Scarborough clutching his pearls this morning over others engaging in tough talk in the Capitol. It’s one thing for urbane TV anchors to decry the “junior high” sound of it all. But it’s different from Mr. “I’m Gonna Make You Eat It.”
Today’s Morning Joe opened with a shocked, stunned, and appalled Scarborough condemning the exchange at a Senate committee hearing yesterday between Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin and Teamsters president Sean O’Brien.
In June on X, O’Brien challenged Mullin, a former MMA fighter prior to coming to Congress, to a fight. O’Brien’s social media post called Mullin a “clown” and “fraud” and ended with, “You know where to find me. Anyplace, Anytime cowboy.”
Scarborough mocked Mullin. Putting on a macho voice, Scarborough imagined Mullin saying, “I’m going to play by man rules. I’m takin’ off my ring. I’m going to fight ya!” Scarborough threw in a couple of “come-ons” to express his disapproval of Mullin’s behavior
Seems Scarborough doesn’t want anyone challenging his reputation as The Toughest Dude on Capitol Hill.
Finkelstein then trotted out his bullet list of Scarborough talking about such masculine things. What kind of man keeps this kind of bullet list?