So while watching the Nevada results, former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw came on air to speak about the caucus. He gave his "working man's" spiel about how we need job training and community college access to the masses. Chris Matthews joked about Brokaw sounding like a Bernie man. Brokaw replied "Oh no" and then went into another spiel about how Sanders has no foreign policy experience and doesn't have a plan to pay for his lofty goals. Then he turned back to job training, and my jaw dropped. Well, as a Bernie supporter, dropped further to be more exact.
On air he told the story of a female friend who recently graduated from some fancy college and was left with a $100K debt to her name. According to his story, he asked this female friend what her major was. Upon hearing that she had been some sort of arts major Brokaw said, again on air: "I thought to myself she should start dancing on a pole for a living."
Matthews freaked out for a second and underlined that that was simply Brokaw's thoughts and not something he said aloud. Brokaw confirmed that he never actually said it, except for on the air of course, and then laughed as they went to commercial.
I looked for a link to this exchange but so far at least it's not on the web. Apparently however this is a story he's told on the air before because I did find this Twitter link from last year:
https://mobile.twitter.com/tonyquartararo/status/591587189106089985?p=v
So, my question is… How does a MSNBC justify having someone who openly and apparently repeatedly suggests that women in debt should become pole dancers, on their airwaves? Does he think it funny to be 100G in debt? Does he think it funny for someone to be a pole dancer? Does he think that’s what female art majors (as opposed to international finance majors) deserve for going to expensive schools? Would he say this to a female family member? Would he say any of this on national airwaves if it was about a male?
Lots of questions. Here's where you can ask NBC some of your own: contact.nbcnews@nbcuni.com
Tom Brokaw says he won’t sit at the old anchorman’s home with a drool cup. But maybe he should?
