As recently as the 1970s there were scattered reports of journalists taking bribes. Paola some called it at the time, or as it was also known, envelope journalism, because, you know, that’s how the money typically arrived, stuffed in envelopes. The practice was common in big cities, especially among newspaper reporters, a beleaguered tribe that was easily tempted to pad their wallets with bribe money, because they were typically paid very little to ply their trade. Some things never change. The people paying the bribes, who include the rich and powerful politicians. Public Relations folks, were often looking to kill negative stories or plant positive ones. Sometimes they were paying for access. Maybe they wanted to secure an editorial board meeting or get a reporter to cover a press conference or run a news release. The bosses probably knew what was going on, but they likely looked the other way, because the thinking was that if reporters got bribes, well, they wouldn’t complain so much about being paid so little. A lot of people might assume that the practice of journalists accepting bribes is a relic of the past. If so, a lot of people would be wrong. The only thing that has changed over time is the currency. The coin of the realm is different. That’s all back then. What greased the wheels of journalism was cold hard cash. Today, it’s access which leads to high readership or big ratings or a book deal which leads to, you guessed it, cold hard cash. For many reporters, anchors and opinion writers, access is everything they don’t just want access to documents, files, reports and other kinds of information they feel they need to be able to interview elected officials directly, preferably on camera, and if that access is cut off, while those seeking it could be in real trouble. So in order to ensure access, some people may feel like they have to bend the knee, kiss the ring, or betray their principles, and the ones with the most to lose might be eager to do all three of those things, all of which leads us to the unfortunate and embarrassing tale of what happened when two of the most passionate and unrelenting Trump hating journalists on television, MSNBC, Mika Brzezinski and her husband and Morning Joe co host Joe Scarborough did something they would have likely never done in the highly unlikely event that Kamala Harris had won the election, they made a secret pilgrimage to mar a Lago on November 18 to meet with President Elect Donald Trump. The obvious purpose of the visit, even as acknowledged by the couple, was to re establish contact with Trump and smoke the peace pipe. Trump has frequently threatened retaliation against his critics, detractors and enemies. Joe and Mika fit into all three camps. You can see why they were so eager to hop on a flight to Florida to hang their heads and beg forgiveness from Donald el duce, the person voted most likely to become America’s first dictator, Donald Trump. We won’t know for a while whether the Don is the forgiving type, or whether he invites Joe and Mika back to mar a Lago for a nice take dinner, if they agree to bring the ketchup, whether these three narcissists can ever again play together in the same sandbox. Who knows? What we do know for now is that a lot of the liberals who normally tune in to MSNBC to watch Morning Joe are absolutely furious with what they consider an unforgivable act of take your pick, cowardice, hypocrisy, opportunism, even betrayal. In fact, they’re angry enough to change the channel. Yep, they’re voting with their remotes following the visit, the show’s audience tanked. It plummeted from an average of 1.1 million viewers to 618,000 viewers, a drop of 43% it’s ugly, but hey, this is what it looks like when a peacock eats Crow and.