TUESDAY: Two cheers for Goldberg's latest column!

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2025

Also, Morning Joe devoured by ads: We start today with two cheers for Michelle Goldberg's new column. Headline included, this is the way she starts:

Republican Women Suddenly Realize They’re Surrounded by Misogynists

In 1982, Phyllis Schlafly, perhaps the most important anti-feminist in American history, debated the radical feminist law professor Catharine MacKinnon. Schlafly believed that sexism was a thing of the past; to her, if women had different roles in society than men, it was due to their distinct talents and inclinations. She herself, she said, had never experienced discrimination.

MacKinnon pointed out that Schlafly, who’d written extensively about defense policy, had wanted a position in Ronald Reagan’s Pentagon. Any man with Schlafly’s considerable accomplishments, MacKinnon argued, would have been given a job. Schlafly had to concede that her feminist foe had a point.

An ambitious woman who is willing to absolve the right of misogyny can go far, but rarely can she achieve the same status as a man. That’s especially true today, in a Republican Party that’s increasingly giving itself over to the most retrograde forms of sexism.

[...]

Much has been made about the rebirth of gutter antisemitism and racism within the conservative movement. There’s been less public alarm about the resurgence of unapologetic misogyny. Last month, there was an uproar over the support that the Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, offered to Tucker Carson after his softball interview with Nick Fuentes, the influential antisemite. We’ve seen far less backlash to Heritage’s hiring of Scott Yenor, who believes that workplace discrimination against women should be legal, as head of its B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies. Among the sort of young men who revel in transgressive antisemitism—which is to say, among much of the conservative movement’s rising generation—calls to repeal women’s right to vote have become commonplace.

As we noted a few weeks ago, a backlash form of sexual politics seems to be quite widespread now within the MAGA world. That said, some version of that inclination is on display, night after night, on the Fox News Channel, celebrated by flyweight male performers and tolerated by their female counterparts.

The silence about this phenomenon is deafening, including in Goldberg's column. To appearances, no one wants to talk about or get in a tussle with Fox.

Then too, there's the new, revamped Morning Joe. As an apparent part of the switch from MSNBC to MS NOW, what was once the smartest hour in cable news is now being eaten alive by a tsunami of TV ads.

The ads now come early and often during the 6 a.m. hour. (Large chunks of the hour are often rebroadcast during the 8 a.m. hour.) Meanwhile, as Mika Brzezinski keeps breaking away for the next round of pharmaceutical ads, Joe Scarborough has been missing from the program over the last three broadcast days (last Friday, this Monday and Tuesday).

Who knows? There may be some sort of economic necessity behind the blizzard of ads. Meanwhile, Mika-sans-Joe has spent the last three days pounding away, in repetitive fashion, at the "war crime" allegation concerning Pete Hegseth and the September 2 second strike.

Left behind are the remarkably intelligent, lengthy discussions about Ukraine and Russia, Gaza and Israel which featured contributions from a highly qualified stable of highly experienced players. At the same time, we seem to be returning to the desire to lock one or more of the bad people up, the very focus which probably backfired on Blue America during the last election.

Almost surely, Pete Hegseth won't be getting charged or locked up, or possibly even fired, due to the events of September 2. Beyond that, it's very unlikely that the Trump administration will ever release the videotape of the second strike on the September 2 alleged drug boat. 

Meanwhile, we have yet to see Morning Joe say a word about last week's two-day outburst from President Trump—his "shocking" rants about all the human "garbage" he has managed to spot in the state of Minnesota. Beyond all that, what happened to the idea that Blue America needs to focus on the day-to-day, daily life issues which hit voters where they live?

New ownership seems to be dismantling Morning Joe's first hour with an amazing increase in ads, accompanied by a return to a highly self-involved elite tribal focus. 

What happened on September 2 was, and still is, an actual news event. But it isn't the only news event, and a lot of voters won't understand a relentless, amazingly repetitive focus on that topic.

We Blues! All too often, our elites can't seem to step outside their own self-involved frame of reference. We've suffered from this inclination for the last sixty years. It helps explain how President Trump found his way back to the White House.

Where in the world is the host of this show? And why are the new corporate bosses airing that blizzard of ads? 

A partial explanation: Where were Joe and Mika last Friday? For one explanation, click here.

Where has Joe been in the past two days? We have no idea.