Morning Joe & The News...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - These are, as Paul Simon might say, the days of miracle and wonder. This is the long-distance call. The country is riding the electric political rails and all bets are off. Americans have been treated to roller-coaster rides operated by fools such as Herman Cain and Michele Bachman, and Americans still must endure the nastiness of Republican politics as the party rolls in the mud while choosing its 2012 presidential nominee.

On television, the pundits launch their "away with words" exercise early in the morning. There is enough grist and gossip to satisfy any junkie's appetite. You want to know how much money Mitt Romney made last year. It's there on TV. You want to know if it's true that Rick Santorum's wife used to date and live with an abortion doctor, well, that's there, confirmed on talk TV. You watch enough of it and you get the idea that information is not only King in politics, but that it is food for the beast, our national news media.

One gent on TV even has his own particularly weird history: Republican Joe Scarborough, co-host of Morning Joe on MSNBC.

A former congressman from Florida, Scarborough is fond of assailing Democrats, and of attacking President Barack Obama at every opportunity. The cable channel is not Fox News, but there are moments on the morning show that it may as well be the pro-Republican Fox.

The 49-year-old Scarborough's tenure in Congress (he served from 1995 to 2001) was largely unremarkable. He arrived in Washington as part of the Newt Gingrich revolution at the polls and served until his strange resignation four months into his fourth term. In leaving, Scarborough said, about his two children, "The realization has come home to me that they're at a critical stage of their lives and I would rather be judged at the end of my life as a father than as a congressman."

Little was said nationally in July of that same year, when an aide, 28-year-old Lori Klausutis, was found dead in Scarborough's office in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Police investigated and later declared there was no evidence of foul play, but critics have argued there are too many unanswered questions about her death. Klausutis was married at the time.

The hyper-yappy Scarborough had divorced his wife, Melanie, two years earlier. Rumors of philandering swirled around Scarborough's days as a congressman, although little mention of it gained the attention of the national press. His aide's death came in the middle of another sensational congressional mess - the search for then-California Congressman Gary Condit's missing aide, Chandra Levy. Her story captured major headlines and eventually chased Condit out of office. Coverage of Scarborough's role in the death of his aide never materialized. Condit was a Democrat.

A published coroner's report said Lori Klausutis died from blows to the head, and some investigators speculated that she may have hit her head on a desk when falling. Her body was discovered shortly after 8:00 a.m. on July 20, 2001 by a couple arriving for an appointment in the congressman's hometown office.

Scarborough was criticized for his zeal in appearing on local television to say doctors had told him of his aide's heart problems, leading supporters to note that she may have had a heart attack prior to the fall that caused the head injuries. No such finding was noted in the autopsy report, however.

On Morning Joe, Scarborough has excoriated Republicans for moral lapses, and no one more than thrice-married presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, a man who has admitted his adultery, but said he is a new man since marrying his former congressional aide wife, Callista. The Lori Klausutis death is never mentioned on the show, which centers on dissecting national politics.

Scarborough later married another woman, Susan Waren, in October, 2001. She was a former aide to Republican Jeb Bush when he was governor of Florida and later worked in a similar capacity in Congress.

It is all perhaps unimportant in the Big Picture scheme of things. Joe Scarborough is not a public servant anymore, and he is not running for any elected office. He can swat-away inquiries from the press all day long and keep the topic of his young aide's death off his popular show, but it's part of the narrative, yet more information for the interested viewer.

And it should be known...

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