Lately I have been bothered by the racist overtones emanating at such an early hour from MSNBC on the new Way Too Early with Willie Geist and Morning Joe shows. Scarborough, Geist, Buchanan, Barnicle, and even Mika comprise one cool and clever klan, but their obvious disdain for all things black and their natural tilt to the right make for some rather unsettling early mornings.
On Monday morning, at about 5:45AM, on Willie Geist's new show, I was treated to the following lyrics from Bob Dylan's Hurricane as the show faded to commercial:
To the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum
And to the black folks he was just a crazy nigger.
No one doubted that he pulled the trigger.
I kid you not. I thought someone else would mention this somewhere on the Net, but I haven't seen it yet, so here I am. Maybe most people were still asleep like sensible people, but I was not.
I was awake, eagerly awaiting the media's response to news that Lucia Whalen said she didn't say what Cambridge police Sergeant James Crowley said she said in his police report.
Now I love me some Bob Dylan. I always have. Had a couple of his albums: Blood on the Tracks and his Greatest Hits. And I love his Knockin on Heaven's Door, especially Guns n Roses rendition of it. I never seemed to miss a pool shot when that song played :)
But these lyrics were Way Over the Top. It was no accident that these lyrics were cut and cued out of the whole song. Geist used to be a senior producer for Tucker Carlson show on MSNBC. Geist went to Vanderbilt.
And then today, on the Morning Joe show, Willie Geist reads a story about a black man from South Carolina, who was being charged with having sex with a horse. Geist leaves out few details, telling us that it was his second offense, that he was already a registered horse sex offender, as the deviant individual's picture was sprayed on the screen for all to view. Was that guy really newsworthy for a political news show?
I don't really need to speak much about Scarborough's and Buchanan's ongoing nonsense as it is self-evident, but because I have lived in Massachusetts for 44 years, I am well aware of Barnicle's racial tendencies:
By Suzanne C. Ryan, Globe Staff | March 27, 2004
In response to protests by the NAACP and other groups, Mike Barnicle read a 17-minute apology on his radio show yesterday for using a racially and sexually charged word to describe Janet Langhart, a former Channel 5 news personality.
Barnicle used the word "Mandingo" on Tuesday to describe Langhart -- who is African-American and married to former secretary of defense William S. Cohen, who is white -- on WTKK-FM (96.9). Mandingos, or Mandes, are members of a group of West African people. "Mandingo" is also the title of a 1975 movie in which a black male slave is paired intimately with a white female slave master.
I could go on about Barnicle. Some say that he and Imus are twins.
Meh, I just wanted to get this down and off my chest. I may add more later. I'd appreciate any other contributions to flesh it out. To me, the mornings on MSNBC are bothersome. What is MSNBC thinking? Ratings? Big tent?