Scarborough: 'John Gibson got caught in an anti-gay tirade' 
When actor Heath Ledger died earlier this week, Fox host John Gibson outraged many viewers by his anti-gay jokes relating to the actor's role in the film Brokeback Mountain.
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were particularly vocal about the incident, with Brzezinski saying it "made me nauseous" and asking, "I don't know how you stay on the air after doing something like that, quite frankly."
Gibson issued a statement about the incident on Thursday, but it failed to satisfy his critics, who called it a "non-apology apology." In a follow-up segment on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Scarborough and Brzezinski also continued to express their outrage.
"He was actually laughing," Scarborough said of Gibson. "Heath Ledger's death, this young father's death, was a punchline."
"This isn't a Matthew Shepard thing where somebody is ridiculed or hated because they're gay," Scarborough went on. "He had contempt for Heath Ledger because he played a gay man in the movie. ... I'm just wondering what type of mindset, what type of worldview somebody has to have to say something that hateful."
Scarborough then played played a clip of Gibson saying, "I have received comments regarding remarks I made on my radio show the other night after the shocking death of Heath Ledger. I'm sorry that some took my comments as anti-gay and insensitive"
"What the heck was that?" asked Brzezinski.
"It's one of those apologies where you don't just say, 'I'm sorry,' Scarborough explained. "What he said was, 'I'm sorry if you were offended that I mocked the death of a young man.'"
David Shuster chimed in with "I'm sorry that John Gibson appears to have lost his mind."
"John Gibson got caught in an anti-gay tirade," Scarborough stated. "Why don't we just call it what it is? ... I'm not politically correct, so I'm not waving the GLADD flag. ... I am telling you, though, He Got Caught mocking the death of this young father because this young father just happened to play a gay man in a movie. Talk about being homophobic."
"That was a joke of an apology that he had there," Brzezinski concluded.
This video is from MSNBC's Morning Joe, broadcast January 25, 2008.
| 
del.icio.us 
