Joe Scarborough (left) called fellow MSNBC host Keith Olbermann's comments 'rhetorical extremism.' | Composite image by POLITICO Scarborough: Olbermann 'reckless'

Joe Scarborough is going after a fellow MSNBC host, calling out "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann for saying Scott Brown — the Republican Senate nominee in Massachusetts — is “homophobic” and a “racist.”

Speaking during his “special comment” Monday night, Olbermann folded nearly all of the negative attacks Democrats have tried to pin to Brown in recent days into one scathing rant.


“You have heard Scott Brown speculating, talking out of his bare bottom, about whether or not the president of the United States was born out of wedlock,” Olbermann said of the Republican who is leading in the polls against Democrat Martha Coakley in the race to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). “You have heard Scott Brown respond to the shout from a supporter that they should stick a curling iron into Ms. Coakley's rectum with the answer, ‘We can do this.’”

“You may not have heard Scott Brown support a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, or describing two women having a child as being quote, ‘just not normal,'” he continued. “You may not have heard Scott Brown associating himself with the tea party movement, perhaps the saddest collection of people who don't want to admit why they really hate since the racists of the South in the '60s insisted they were really just concerned about states' rights.”

Summing up his case against Brown, Olbermann concluded, “in Scott Brown we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude-model, tea-bagging supporter of violence against woman and against politicians with whom he disagrees.”

Soon after the broadcast, Scarborough, the host of “Morning Joe,” responded on Twitter, calling Olbermann’s attack “sad.”

“It is no longer enough to simply disagree with someone. These days some feel the need to call opponents evil. It happens on both extremes,” Scarborough tweeted. “Just as when [Glenn] Beck called the President racist, this sort of rhetorical extremism must be discouraged. It cheapens the debate.”

“How reckless and how sad,” he added. “I called out Beck repeatedly this summer. I called out [Rush] Limbaugh last week. I call out both sides all the time.”