Yesterday, Morning Joe hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough declared rap music to blame for that hateful video out of an Oklahoma University fraternity. Weighing in on their theories last night, Jon Stewart was having none of it.
It all began when rapper Waka Flocka Flame talked to CNN’s Brianna Keilar two days ago. Flame said he was “hurt and disgusted” by the fraternity's video, especially because he had performed at their university and the students there had made him “feel like a brother.”
In response to that interview, Brzezinski bashed the rapper on Wednesday's Morning Joe, saying he shouldn’t be disgusted with the racist frat boys, he should be “disgusted with himself” for producing songs that are "a bunch of garbage" full of “N-words” and "F-words."
In case that segment hadn't made clear enough where the duo was placing blame, co-host Joe Scarborough added, "The kids that are buying hip-hop or gangster rap, it's a white audience, and they hear this over and over again... They heard a lot of this from guys like [Flame] who are now acting shocked."
Not one to abide flagrant racism, Jon Stewart used his show to call out the pair. "The kids on that bus weren’t repeating a rap song they had heard," he reminded. "They were gleefully performing one of their fraternity’s old, let’s call them anti-negro spirituals... Black rappers did not introduce that word into the vernacular."
He went on, “How come when conservatives talk about African-Americans, they say, ‘These people need to take responsibility for themselves — pull up those pants, get a job’? But, when white people do something racist, they’re all, ‘What? You can’t blame them! How could those poor children know wrong from right after they’ve been driven into madness by the irresistible hippity-hoppity?'"
There's definitely something driving us all into madness here, and Stewart is the only one making any sense.