Calling them "Cheetos-eaters living in their mothers' basements," Joe Scarborough, angered by criticism by conservative bloggers of a segment on last week's Morning Joe, has told them to boycott the show.
Last week, Morning Joe ran a clip of the crowd chanting at a Romney campaign event. Morning Joe superimposed a screen graphic indicating that the crowd had been chanting "Ryan!" Romney was then seen instructing the crowd to instead chant "Romney-Ryan!" Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski proceeded to rip Romney for what was depicted as an egocentric display. In fact, there is considerable controversy as to what the crowd was chanting, with various people reporting from the scene that the crowd had in fact been chanting "Romney," so that Romney's action was gentlemanly, not egocentric. Listen and judge for yourself. On today's show, Scarborough ran a clip of the campaign event, but without the Morning Joe screen graphic that was at the heart of the controversy. View the video after the jump.
So Scarborough criticizes conservative bloggers as "Cheetos eaters living in their mothers' basement." And he instructs them to boycott his show. But Morning Joe failed today to display the screen graphic that it had originally aired that cast Romney in an unflattering light. The war between Scarborough and the conservative blogosphere rages on.
Note: John Heilemann of New York magazine joined in the castigation of conservative bloggers, referring to them as "circus freaks."