I haven’t cracked open a Parade Magazine lately, but I guess they’ve started this “Sunday Joe” section in the back part of the magazine where Minka Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough hash something topical out. Topical is being a bit generous. The he said/she said thing is also played out, but I guess the demographic of Parade is 48-89 year olds, and they don’t want to take on any real issues of the day. Better yet, I’ll just assume that “Morning Joe” probably covers a LOT of that stuff, right?

The question this week: “Should Sugar Be Regulated?” Fair enough, “Morning” Joe Scarborough and Minka “I Coulda Been a Contenda” Brzezinski should be able to “spar” over this easily.

Right out the gate, Minka actually answers the question! I assume this is because she’s marginalized enough on Morning Joe as is, perhaps Joe will actually stay the course and “spar” on this question. Minka addresses the very real problem of America consuming ways too much processed foods and high-fructose corn syrup (which is in most everything food these days). Perhaps she’s goading Joe with her answer as she’s goes right in to the “government should probably regulate this” and her cherry on top “…put a tax on soda”.

Joe Scarborough, the wet fart of the republican revolution of the early mid-90‘s, wastes no time labeling Minka’s answer as a “vision of the nanny state that is so overreaching”. As a small-government conservative who takes offense to that notion, he clearly is not interested in answering this question either. Instead, he continues to marginalize Minka, who as an abused co-host, tightens her lip and insists on answering the question by saying that kids ingest a lot of sugar, and that parents need to educate themselves to feed their kids a proper meal.

What’s more insulting, besides Joe essentially patting Minka on the head and saying “Oh, you silly gir/socialist”, is his blanket paint-by-numbers republican rhetoric that he masks as an answer. Here’s the short list:
“I grew up in a middle-class family”
“Most of my breakfast were flavored kids cereals”
“I was healthy and slender because I led an active life, [just like everyone in the olden days]”
“My grandmother poured sugar on everything and lived to be 93”
It’s just condescending, pandering, nonsense. He does say that American kids need to get off the couch and go play, but then insists that Americans have changed a lot of their bad habits. It wouldn’t be because that socialist Michelle Obama’s first lady pet initiative that kids get active, or food and drug administration push of what consists a balanced meal for children that a blind dog could understand and implement. The NFL’s Play60 intuitive that also wants kids to stay active. They also address the copious intake of sugar and try to get children to demand better drinks, which is presumably where it should start.

Asking our children to be active, however, isn’t some new concept that just came to be in the past decade, as Joe suggests. It may not look it, but this “small government” Joe trying to take away a victory from Obama by acting as if Americans came to this health conscious solution long ago. I may be stretching a bit too, but I think the right-wing’s pettiness is always apparent and is engrained on their DNA, so for Joe to lob that out there instead of providing something rhetorically is unsurprising.

Not finished condescending to his co-host Minka, he says that she’s just talking a big game “but when she goes home at night she probably has Cap’N Crunch Crunch Berries and Cocoa Krisipies” he then adds “Am I not tell the truth?” Minka replies “No, you’re not.” Then this tete-a-tete then breaks down foodie habits amongst the two and never really dovetails back in to the question of sugar being regulated. If I was the reporter transcribing this I would’ve quit, or just stopped them and been like “So, you guys are just doing this instead of answering a pretty straight forward question in at least an entertaining manner?” Better yet, drop this nugget on America defender Joe and say that recently reports show that an alarming number of pre-schoolers are showing up to their first dental appointment with 6-10 cavities. Gee, I wonder how those got there? If this doesn’t show a trend of the too much sugar being in a kids diet, I don’t know what else could.

I wondered if Minka Brzezinski actually had more going for her than being a Joe Scarborough punching bag and did a little of that old time internet searching. This only confirmed the notion I got from the Parade article: Minka somehow thinks she’s upholding some journalistic bona fides, and then Joe Scarborough wipes his feet on her bona fides and tells her to get back in the kitchen. It’s the way a husband from a upper middle class family would talk to his stay at home wife. From time to time she would happen upon a little opinion of her own (sometimes supplanted by The Oprah), then over breakfast, unleash this opinion on a half awake, half caffeinated husband, pretending to read the sports section of his paper. He would grumble something about something, then tell her she needed to pick up eggs from the supermarket.

With all this talk of women’s rights and standing up for themselves in the ever increasing regressive attack on their rights, it’s a shame to see that women with the visibility and exposure of a Minka Brzezinski marginalized by white men oaf’s with that tongue-in-cheek jabbing and prodding. Not only to take it, but to shrug it off as it is what it is. That our female news anchors, who should be the pioneers of the women’s rights and freedoms, especially in navigating a brutally male dominated work environment, are reduced to the Today Show created, Fox News Channel perfected “skirt” that reads news headlines and nothing more.

What’s even more ridiculous is the news anchor thinking that they are a real journalist of some sort and demand that respect and bona fides therein. Ann Curry comes to mind. I can’t count the number of times I’ve read that she’s pretty much anti-The Today Show shenanigans, yet every morning there is she is tottering around in high heels and short skirt, talking about the serious seriousness of dogs needing shampoo to battle split ends. Then once a year NBC will let her travel to some far away land, poke the indigenous people and file some real journalism piece for Dateline or something.

Granted this is all easier said than done. Of course I understand the nature of the business the ladies may find themselves in, but at a certain point, there ARE representing their sex, and influencing future generations of young idealistic women who actually want to do something progressive for their gender. When Minka Brzezinski opines in her book “Knowing Your Value" that in in the early days of Morning Joe after “'After child care, on-air wardrobe, makeup, travel, and the other ridiculous expenses that women in this business end up taking on, the job was actually costing me more than I was being paid", you have to wonder if this is really the kind of person you want representing you to the masses. The fact that the way she comes across as a woman who knows her place, solidified for me that while there may be money to be had being the “skirt”, there’s no respect in it. That respect is what future generations are built on.