I don’t understand this show. Why does the camera sit squarely facing Morning Joe as his partner, Mika, tilts toward him at an odd angle?
Part of the answer may be that they’re not exactly partners, but that Mika is a sidekick. I am aware of the optics of talk shows where the host sits at a desk and the sidekick sits on the couch on an angle. But this is the only news program where the two “anchors” sit akimbo. The visuals are very odd. In fact, sometimes she turns in a complete 90° angle so that she is in profile. She is not as tall as Joe, so that doesn’t help either.
When I first viewed this show, I found it very puzzling. It looked as if the woman is pretty obsequious to the man, in terms of both body language and in the way she defers to his comments. She may begin an argument, but Joe kinda talks right over her and she yields very quickly. She acts very much as a second fiddle; she gazes at him as if he’s some sort of News God and she is just a visiting Girl Scout whose principal responsibility is to fawn at his wonderful words of wisdom. She sits too closely to him, so when she turns to genuflect, she goes into full profile. It is an attractive profile, but please.
Later, I found out that she is the daughter of former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. How odd. That connection alone commands respect in the world of politics and government. Does she need a job this badly?
She frequently talks over Joe to be heard in a somewhat passive aggressive way because the guy never shuts up, of course, but in a manner that weakens her presence by acting as a supplicant to him. It is not good for her image, it is not good for the viewer to watch this on-camera lowering of self-respect. She seems a bright, capable anchorwoman and doesn’t need to be under his largess. I wish she would take over from Elaine Quijano, the truly awful anchor of CBS News, whom I watch on streaming media. Yikes. The queen of flat affect! More on her later.
