Mika Brzezinski: Beyoncé 'jumped the shark' by being too sexy on GQ cover

MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski, who was criticized last year for striking a sexy pose in Vanity Fair, now says that Beyoncé "jumped the shark" by being to risqué on the cover of GQ magazine.

GQ deputy editor Michael Hainey appeared on Thursday's Morning Joe to discuss why the magazine had chosen Beyoncé as the "#1 Hottest Woman of the 21st Century" and to weigh in on rumors that the singer lip-synced the national anthem at President Barack Obama's second inauguration.

"Is that actually her?" panelist Donny Deutsch asked upon seeing the magazine's cover with a scantily clad Beyoncé, who Brzezinski defined as "naked."

"This is her real, as we like to say, body of work," Hainey explained. "This is her true body of work."

"I actually am going to look like a bitter, jealous woman right now, but I think she's jumped the shark, between the lip-syncing thing and all this nudity," Brzezinski opined. "She just doesn't need to do it... You know, I had a problem with her Pepsi spokesmanship issue. Well, I just think that a beautiful star like her has a lot of influence and I wouldn't be pushing liquid sugar, actually, on our kids."

"But now she's naked on the cover of GQ," the MSNBC host added. "And she lip-synced for the president."

"That's not naked," Deutsch pointed out. "You are beautiful smart and accomplished woman, what do you have to be angry about?"

"Oh, God," Brzezinski grimaced. "There's a level to which you lose sight of yourself."

In the October issue of Vanity Fair, Brzezinski had come under fire for showing too much leg in her sexy Vanity Fair photo, while co-host Joe Scarborough appeared conservatively posed and dressed.

"My jaw literally dropped when a friend sent me the link to Vanity Fair's new joint profile of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski—and I hadn't even gotten to the text yet," Alyssa Rosenberg wrote in a column for Slate. "It was the picture that did it: Scarborough in a blue suit and blue, open-collared shirt lounging comfortably in a chair next to a butcher block table. On which is perched Brzezinski, his Morning Joe co-anchor, posed with her left leg skyward, ass just barely covered, balanced on one spindly black high heel."

"The takeaway: A man is a man and a woman is a table-top ornament."

Watch this video from MSNBC's Morning Joe, broadcast Jan. 24, 2013.