Newsbusters caught Joe Scarborough backing away from his criticism of Bill O’Reilly this morning, but this statement of Joe’s caught my eye:

SCARBOROUGH: Media Matters went after Bill O’Reilly, and I just have to put a little asterisk here, I went after Bill pretty hard too, because I thought what he said was ridiculous. But I heard a lot of people this weekend, like liberals, on the Upper West Side, as I was walking up and down Broadway, you know, people smoking dope, saying “hey Scarborough, I think you’re being a little tough on O’Reilly.” GEIST: Really? SCARBOROUGH: Yeah, I did, I did, I seriously — and some people around here saying it may have been blown out of proportion. I don’t know.

There’s probably no place further culturally from the old Scarborough country, Pensacola, FL, than New York’s Upper West Side. Maybe there’s some secret left-wing water additive in NYC’s water supply. This would explain Giuliani’s shift on some issues to the right as well as Scarborough’s move to the left.