Most mornings, after making a cup of cold brew coffee (Chameleon is very good and reasonably priced—$8.99 for a bottle that will last me five days), I grab my laptop, plop my frail, aching body on the couch, and turn the television on. I tune the dial to MSNBC, not because I am a “wonk” or “politics nerd,” but rather because the shows I actually enjoy watching (i.e. Golden Girls, Jersey Shore: Family Vacation, and House Hunters) steal too much of my attention while I scour the internet for newsworthy celebrity gossip.
Morning Joe is far from intellectually stimulating television—it’s essentially Good Morning Connecticut, filmed for a national audience by MSNBC—but acts as an effective white noise in my otherwise quiet apartment from 7:30 to 9:00 a.m. most mornings. As I scroll through the hottest goss, I listen to Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough and Donny Deutsch (worthless) and Willie Geist (my prince) and Eugene Robinson (too good for this but understandably thrilled to accept the check) and whoever else they’ve coerced into sitting beside them (often boring men with bad ties) as they groan about whatever Trump did this morning, promote some new worthless book they claim will change lives, or interrupt each other’s obvious points with more forcefully delivered obvious points—often while actually saying “to your point.” This squawking is book-ended by Mika saying something rude to or about Joe, who will in turn say something rude to or about Mika and then end the segment. Like most on-screen sexual tension, the knowledge that it actually culminated in a sexual relationship makes it considerably less sexy and more akin to the frustrating banter of an old married couple. (Think Niles and Daphne pre- and post-coupling.) Keep your flirty hatred for each other in the bedroom, you two!
Where am I going with this? Reader, I don’t even remember. Oh right, their desk. It’s gross! Coffee is an integral part of Morning Joe’s identity (the ‘o’ in the logo’s ‘Joe’ is a coffee stain. Clever!), but instead of giving everyone a nice official Morning Joe mug filled with java or whatever these people drink in the mornings—you know, keeping the desk uncluttered and on-brand—they fill the mugs with water (presumably) and also hand them a drink of their choosing. Most days this means the table is filled with a mug and giant Starbucks cup for each guest. Combine those vessels with more mugs containing pens and highlighters (which are almost never used, mind you), and the myriad stacks of paper (again, unused) assigned to each warm body and you have a table that looks—forgive me—like utter shit.
This is what the lower-third of any random Morning Joe screenshot usually looks like:
Trash! That’s a pile of trash. Joe and Mika are drinking a mug of water each, a Vita Coco, and two javas—one iced and one ???. Three of these drinks have plastic straws in them—and all of them have their ~let’s be sanitary~ tops still in place.
For a peek at what happens when those tops are removed, look at this screenshot from a different morning:
Can’t see them? Look closer:
Show some respect! Also, Mika, I can see your bag. Put it under something, it’s blocking the beautiful projection of a lawn. Also, it’s about to tip over.
If I walked by this desk, I would instinctively start grabbing things and muttering words like “filthy” under my breath.