All you need to know about why people on the right were dissatisfied with Kathleen Parker as the supposedly conservative counterweight to Eliot Spitzer on the pair's recently-canned CNN show was crystallized on Morning Joe today. The panel unleashed an absolute gush-a-thon over Parker, Mika Brzezinski declaring her "one of my favorite people" and Willie Geist describing her as "a great writer."
For good measure, the MSNBC folks delighted in dumping on rival CNN. Mike Barnicle took top trash-talking honors, claiming Parker had been "brutalized" at the network.
View video after the jump.
Watch the Morning Joe crowd shower Parker with accolades while pulverizing poor CNN. Parker's name arose in the context of Mika displaying a column about "born-again feminism" Parker had written in the current Newsweek, edited by Morning Joe guest Tina Brown.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: One of your writers in the very first issue is one of my favorite people, Kathleen Parker, has a piece --
TINA BROWN: She has a great, great piece about how getting to know these women in the Middle East and what they're going through has really sort of re-energized her as a feminist, which is very interesting. The American feminist movement got a little stale or a little self-regarding. It's by learning more really about what these women are going through --
WILLIE GEIST: She's a great writer.
BRZEZINSKI: I can't wait to catch up with her. I'm so glad to see her emerging on a number of different fronts. [Inaudible] she has her column. We're trying to get her on the show. I'm just, you know, I'm so glad that she's done with that [makes sound of disgust], that situation wherever she was before--at an unnamed network.
MIKE BARNICLE: She was brutalized by her professional experience.
BRZEZINSKI: She was.
BROWN: She was wearing her abaya on that show; it was pretty tough.
H/t to readers Andrew M. and Motherbelt for helping me hear "abaya," a burka-like gown.
