Scarborough: Blowback to Obama’s Cheesecake Factory quip is ‘stupid’
Joe Scarborough’s blunt word for the Cheesecake Factory backlash was “stupid,” and he has a fair point. A former president making a mild joke at a restaurant chain’s expense is about as low-stakes as politics gets. The speed with it turned into a cable news controversy says more about how desperate everyone is for a fresh angle than about anything Obama actually meant.
Still, I’d want to know exactly what the joke was before fully signing on. Context matters, and if the quip had a sharper edge than the clips suggest, some of the reaction might be less ridiculous than Scarborough makes it sound. But his larger complaint rings true: treating every offhand remark as a calculated insult drains the air out of real disagreements.
What connects here is the endless loop of outrage that both parties feed. Each side pretends the other’s latest comment is a crisis, and the audience is expected to take sides on nothing. Scarborough is right to call that dumb. The smarter move would be to let a joke be a joke and save the anger for something that actually matters.