In one of the more absurd, if creative, defenses of the MSM yet, Mike Barnicle has blamed the media’s liberal bias on its reaction to “talk radio.”

Morning Joe actually got off to a refreshing start today, with Mika Brzezinski frankly acknowledging that the MSM leans heavily left, that she herself tends to vote Dem, and that the liberal media needs to diversify politically, bringing in more conservatives.  Mika even implied that the only politically diverse news network is . . . Fox!

It was Joe Scarborough’s recent personal brush with liberal media bias that set off the conversation . . .

The New York Times Magazine ran an interview with Joe in yesterday’s edition.  Scarborough had explained to NYT reporter Deborah Solomon that he lives with his family in DC and commutes to NYC, where he keeps a pad. But that didn’t stop the Times from including this question in the published back-and-forth: “how do you justify living apart from your family?”

Excerpts from Morning Joe discussion:

JOE SCARBOROUGH: You’ve talked about this: the liberal mainstream media really needs to take a look a long, hard look at their mindset, and that will explain why they have lost faith with middle America.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: I think they need to diversify. I think they need to diversify, just like they make an effort to get women and African-Americans and latinos in the media to represent different world views, they need to get people of different political affiliations in the media. Because they’re all the same: except for Fox.

And a bit later . . .

BRZEZINSKI: I think we’re at a point where we need to be honest about our political affiliations so we see just how, where, we lean–where the entire press corps leans.

While not flatly denying Mika’s point, panelist Mike Barnicle did his valiant best to defend the MSM . . .

MIKE BARNICLE: I don’t know that all newspaper reporters are liberal, I don’t go that far –

BRZEZINSKI: I don’t think you could say “all,” I’m asking if the bulk of –

SCARBOROUGH: I can tell you that 90%–every one of these studies that comes out after the election, for the people that will admit it, 90% voted for the Democrat. And it’s happened time and time again. Barack Obama’s joke was funny at the correspondents’ dinner, because he said: “most of you covered me. All of you voted for me.”  They laughed because it was the truth.

It was then that Barnicle broke out his risible theory amounting to “it’s Rush’s fault.”

BARNICLE: What happens in the print media might be an overreaction to the absolute craziness that you hear on so much of talk radio.

SCARBOROUGH: You don’t hear craziness from other people on the left?

BARNICLE: You do.

SCARBOROUGH: I can, I can play you tapes of crazy, crazy, crazy from the left.

BARNICLE: They’re not as popular cause they’r not as funny and they’re not as good at it.

You just knew that Joe wanted to name Keith Olbermann, but Mika, seeming to sense that, intervened to avoid MSNBC internecine warfare from breaking out.

BRZEZINSKI: OK, OK, OK.

BARNICLE: No doubt, no doubt.

SCARBOROUGH: I mean, out there, bizarre, woo!

BARNICLE: There aren’t as many on the left as there are on the right and they’re not nearly as popular.

SCARBOROUGH: They’re pretty powerful. I can tell you this. I would guess that you’ve voted for more Democrats than Republicans in your life, same with Mika.

Mika can be seen nodding her head in assent.

BRZEZINSKI: I’m not afraid to be honest about it.

SCARBOROUGH: Pat Buchanan and I have voted for more Republicans than Democrats in our life. And yet we all can sit around here and look at a situation and parse it out. I attack Republicans as well as Democrats, Mika you go both sides, Mike you do, and the same with Pat. It’s not that hard to say this is what I believe, but come on, let’s look at it objectively.

** Media legend has it that Olbermann was in fact once discovered curled up in the proverbial fetal position.  As Lloyd Grove of the Daily News wrote of an Olbermann stint on MSNBC before his current Countdown gig: “producers reportedly had to pry him from a fetal position under his desk to get him to go on the air.”

UPDATE: As reader zert_28 at Free Republic, where this article is cross-posted, has aptly stated: “Barnicle has it backwards. Conservative talk radio became popular as a counter-point to liberal media bias.”  The same might be said in explaining the success of Fox News.

UPDATE DEUX: Check out Chris Buckley’s column at the Daily Beast suggesting that Scarborough, on the strength of his new book, become the new face of the Republican party.