On this morning’s episode of Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough and his fellow panelists dove deep into the University of Missouri race controversy, focusing on the forced resignations of university president Tom Wolfe and chancellor R. Bowen Loftin. During the discussion, Scarborough did the unthinkable, and asked the question we’ve all been pondering since this story broke: what did these men do to deserve this?
Scarborough’s point was fair—the media hasn’t uncovered or reported a single piece of evidence to suggest that either man turned a blind eye to complaints of harassment or abuse—but the panel, in true MSNBC panel fashion, proceeded to give him a lecture in Sensitivity 101.
Watch:
It’s a word circus:“Students have the right to protest, obviously,” he continued, saying, “I think what concerns me the most is the powerful of college sports… once the football team said they weren’t going to play Saturday, the hell with due process.”The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson offered, “There are a lot of African-American students and other minorities who feel for whatever reason that the campus was not made to be a friendly, accepting, and supportive place.”“But what are those reasons? What are the specifics? I’ve been reading since this photograph was taken, looking for specifics of systemic actions that have made students feel exclusive,” said Scarborough. The photograph that Scarborough referenced features the entire Mizzou football team locked arm-in-arm that was Tweeted from head coach Gary Pinkel.“I don’t know what those specifics are,” admitted Robinson.
Stunning.
We’re so far down the rabbit hole with these “racial incidences” that Joe “Mainstream Liberal Media” Scarborough is the only sane man in the room. During the entirety of this eight minute segment, we hear multiple panelists making every excuse in the book for these student “protesters” without ever actually demanding an answer.
At around the 4 minute mark, Scarborough and his guests fall down the “there has to be more to this” rabbit hole, and again, Scarborough’s expression tells me that he feels like he’s losing his mind. Why did the president and the chancellor resign if not even the media can articulate what did or did not happen to the students who complained about race-based aggression on campus?
WaPo’s Eugene Robertson isn’t particularly interested in the answer to that question; instead, he focuses on defending the idea of these protests. Finally, Scarborough broke:
“Isn’t that troubling Gene, that you don’t know? A Pulitzer Prize winner? This guy is run out as President of the University because the football team said ‘we’re not gonna play’. And neither you nor I reading these articles know what he did to invoke this type of response. Is this a complete failure on the national media to report?”
(What’s more troubling is that Gene doesn’t really seem to care; he’s happy to 1) take the students’ word for it, and 2) leave it at that.)
What happened to these people? Shouldn’t we be investigating this? No, no, no! To investigate is to question, and to question is to perpetrate another microaggression on students who apparently will settle for nothing less than heads on the platter.
This should terrify you.
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