Is MSNBC's Morning Joe the Sitcom of Cable News?

MSNBC's morning wake-up show, Morning Joe, is what would happen if your family turned its Thanksgiving dinner into a television show, with each of your crazy relatives talking over each other as they opine about the day's swirling political storms, celebrity scandals and whatever else passes for news in the 24/7 world of cable TV.

Meet Morning Joe's Dad and Mom: Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski

Joe Scarborough, a former Congressman from Florida who later hosted a sleepy cable TV show called Scarborough Country, plays the sweater wearing dad on Morning Joe, a regular cheeseburger eating guy who just happens to have an inside track on "the truth" because of his four-term stint as an actual United States Congressman.

Joe's TV wife, Mika Brzezinski, the real-life daughter of former President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, plays the mom on Morning Joe. The cast members even fondly call Mika "Mommy" because she plays the thankless role of fun stopper on the show, a shushing librarian who reins in the crazy relatives when they go too far and devolve into Animal House-style frat boys throwing peas and corn at each other at the dinner table.

Mommy Mika wears the journalistic J on her pretty form fitting dresses proudly, one time going so far as to stand up to one of the Morning Joe producers by attempting to burn the copy for a story about Paris Hilton with a cigarette lighter, than tearing and shredding it, rather than read the faux news content because the Paris Hilton story was placed as the lead story ahead of what Mika deemed more important news that day, a major shift in the Iraq war. (See You Tube video of Mika Brzezinski-Paris Hilton copy shredding incident here.)

Meet Morning Joe's Son: Willie Geist

Joe and Mika's son on Morning Joe is the charming rascal Willie Geist, an overgrown teenager who seemingly emerged from nowhere into the cable TV news world to become not only Mika and Joe's TV son but also the host of its half hour warm-up show, Way too Early With Willie Geist. It is unclear as to what Willie's role on Morning Joe is other than to report on oddball news stories, show off his even rows of Crest White Strip teeth, and generally act boyish and clever. (Even Willie's name is a throwback to famous TV son Wally Cleaver on classic sitcom Leave it to Beaver. A coincidence? We think not.)

In one segment of Willie's News You Can't Use, Willie got mommy Mika mad by reporting on a million dollar offer made to the OctoMom by a pornography production company. As mommy Mika turned increasingly stern and upset, putting her hand up at one point and crying, "Stop," daddy Joe was unknowingly caught on camera laughing so hard at the mommy-son skirmish he had to blow his nose. (See Mika get mad at Willie for doing OctoMom porn story here).

Meet Morning Joe's Crazy Uncles: Pat Buchanan and Mike Barnicle

Of course, every sitcom dysfunctional family needs a couple of crazy bachelor uncles, and these roles are filled by Pat Buchanan and Mike Barnicle on Morning Joe (with Pat Buchanan being decidedly the kookier of the two). The conservative Buchanan (MSNBC host Rachel Maddow likes to call him "Uncle Pat"), who makes Archie Bunker look like a flaming lib, recently stuck one of his two right feet in his mouth when he wrote a column for WorldNetDaily complaining about the number of Jewish people on the Supreme Court. "If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats," Buchanan wrote. "Is this the Democrats' idea of diversity?" Buchanan has long been accused of being anti-Semitic. Even Newsweek ran an article last year called "Is Pat Buchanan Anti-Semitic?" in which Newsweek's Jonathan Alter cited such examples as Buchanan's claim that "it was impossible for 850,000 Jews to be killed by diesel exhaust fed into the gas chamber at Treblinka" as well as his odd penchant for defending Nazi war criminals.

Mike Barnicle, Morning Joe's other crazy uncle, adds no apparent contribution to the show other than to make mysogynistic comments such as the time he described Hillary Clinton as "looking like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court." Mike Barnicle is perhaps best known for having to resign as a columnist from the Boston Globe after two suspicious incidents: writing humorous observations in one of his columns that just happened to also be included in comedian George Carlin's book Brain Droppings, which Barnicle claimed to have never read (although he was later seen recommending the book on a video recording taped prior to the published column) and allegedly creating a fictional couple to flesh out an article he was writing about parents of children with cancer.

Meet Morning Joe's Neighbors: Tina, Arianna and the Boys from Politico

As with any Thanksgiving dinner in TV sitcom-land, assorted neighbors and friends drop by throughout the Morning Joe show, with such media luminaries as The Daily Beast's Tina Brown, The Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington, and the guys from Politico.com joining in the noisy coffee klatch while sipping confections from Starbucks, the show's very visible sponsor.

Be sure to tune in tomorrow morning when Joe substitutes celebrity gossip from Access Hollywood for Mika's hard news report, and crazy Uncle Pat complains there are too many Jewish people in Israel.

Sources:
http://www.mediaite.com/online/pat-buchanan-thinks-that-the-supreme-court-is-too-jewish/
http://www.newsweek.com/id/124012
http://mediamatters.org/research/200801230004
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Barnicle
Morning Joe, MSNBC