President Obama was characterized as behaving like “a d—” by an editor of Time magazine on the right-wing show “Morning Joe,” an egregious gaffe that aired live because the delay button wasn’t activated. Thus, the atrocious legacy of Obama being the most abused and disrespected president in American history continues.
Mark Halperin, the editor in chief at Time, as well as an MSNBC analyst, who first asked if the seven-second delay button was on, proffered a pungent opinion of Obama’s intense press conference on June 29. Obama verbally smacked the GOP around in regards to raising the tax ceiling to save the American economy.
“I thought he was a d— yesterday,” Halperin said with a smirk creeping up the side of his face.
UPDATE: MSNBC officially suspended Halperin indefinitely for befouling the airwaves with his uncouth comments. A short time ago, the television station delivered this statement to the press:
“Mark Halperin’s comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable. We apologize to the President, the White House and all of our viewers. We strive for a high level of discourse, and comments like these have no place on our air. Therefore, Mark will be suspended indefinitely from his role as an analyst.”
It was a detestable and premeditated attempt at crude humor at Obama’s expense that exploded in Halperin’s lap and sent linguistic shrapnel flying all over the set. But it’s particularly reprehensible because Halperin is the editorial lord over arguably the most respected and influential news magazine in the world. With one episode of verbal diarrhea, Halperin managed to take public political discourse a couple of notches lower, and it was already hovering at subterranean levels with respect to depictions and caricatures of the president. Halperin should be sacrificed by MSNBC and Time.
Host Joe Scarborough, a more moderate Republican, comparatively speaking, could have blasted off with as much heat generated in his head over this episode. He was irate that the obscenity slipped through his show’s internal controls, thereby crashing onto the airwaves with cruise-missile intensity.
“Delay that. Delay that,” Joe could be heard pleading with his producer to snatch that word before it could be heard on the air. “What are you doing? I can’t believe … don’t do that. Did we delay that?”
You could almost see the volcano rise in Scarborough when he learned the word “d—” fell into cyperspace. “We’re going to have a meeting after the show,” Scarborough said with blow-torch intensity to his quivering underlings.
Just minutes later, Halperin quickly apologized to the president and viewers for his choice of words. “Joking aside, this is an absolute apology. I shouldn’t have said it. I apologize to the president and the viewers who heard me say that,” Halperin said.
Later in the show, Halperin again apologized, saying, “I can’t explain why I did it. It’s inappropriate, disrespectful. I’ve already apologized, and I will again to the president. I’m sorry, I’m sorry to the viewers … It is disrespectful. What I said was disrespectful to the president and the office, but it also lowers our discourse.”
He also tweeted to his followers, “I want to offer a heartfelt and profound apology to the president and the viewers of Morning Joe. My remark was not funny. I deeply regret it.”
Halperin should regret what he said, but he should also regret losing his job at Time as well as his coveted analyst spot at MSNBC. Lowering on-air dialogue to the lowest common denominator will set the nation on a perilous and irreversible course toward anarchy.
–terry shropshire
