SHORT WEEK, SHARP DECLINE: The painful discussions of Morning Joe!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2014

Part 2—Harvard professor “explains:” It’s hard to fathom the sheer inanity of our journalistic elites.

Sometimes they call in the Harvard professors; often, this makes matters worse. Consider Dr. Laura McNeal’s performance on today’s Morning Joe.

The gang had already discussed the finding of the grand jury in Ferguson, with Willie Geist Jr. showing, again, that he knows the right things to say but hasn’t done basic homework.

Eventually, Mika summoned the expert. To watch this segment, click here:

BRZEZINSKI (11/26/14): Joining us now from Atlanta, law policy analyst at Harvard Law School and assistant law professor at the University of Louisville, Dr. Laura McNeal.

You’ve worked closely with police departments on how to work with youth in urban communities. First of all, what do you make of the interview with Officer Wilson, and do you feel that he answered to some of the really screaming questions out there in terms of race and how he treated Michael Brown right before his death?

Mika referred to Wilson's interview with George Stephanopoulos. Needless to say, Professor McNeal found the interview “quite disturbing.”

Below, she starts explaining why. Do you notice anything about the way she recounts the basic events which ended in Michael Brown's death?

PROFESSOR MCNEAL (continuing directly): I found Officer Wilson’s interview to be quite disturbing, to be honest. He stated that he could not have done anything differently. But if you consider you have an unarmed teen walking, jay-walking, in the street, with a handful of cigarillos that ends up on the floor in the middle of the street in a pool of blood dead, clearly he could have done something differently.

And so I also found it disturbing that he seems to have such little remorse. I mean, there is a loss of a child’s life and he just seemed very almost stoic with respect to his response.

The professor engaged in a familiar form of story-telling. In her account of what happened that day, an unarmed teen was jay-walking with cigarillos. He then ended up dead in the street.

That account eliminates such parts of the story as may reflect poorly on Brown. As we’ve seen in the past, this is a story-telling technique of the propagandist.

That said, the professor said that Officer Wilson “clearly could have done something differently” that day. In the most obvious sense, that’s plainly true, of course.

But what should Wilson have done that day? For the first of several times, Scarborough chose to take the plunge.

His question led straight to the M-word:

SCARBOROUGH (continuing directly): What could he have done differently that day?

MCNEAL: Well, part of the problem is what the tragic death of Michael Brown represents is the practice of using adult policing practices on youth. Currently here in the United States, very few police departments actually include training on things such as youth developmental competence, meaning how do you de-escalate a situation from jay-walking to keep it from escalating to the point of murder?

Warning! As this segment proceeded, Brown proceeded from a “teen” to a “youth” to a “child.” We’ve also discussed that practice in the past.

At any rate, ninety seconds into the segment, the professor had dropped the M-bomb. Because Wilson hadn’t been trained, he had committed a murder!

No one questioned the professor’s use of that word. That said, Scarborough tried, two more times, to get her to specify what Wilson should have done differently. At the end of the six-minute segment, Geist Jr. also gave it a try.

In our view, those questions for Professor McNeal produced one of the most fatuous segments we’ve seen in some time. Here’s why we say that:

None of these people actually know what happened that day. Did Wilson speak rudely to Brown, or did he speak politely? Did Brown attack Wilson in the way Wilson described, or did something different occur?

The professor has no real idea, but she seemed to have no idea that she has no real idea. She just kept churning her true belief concerning what Wilson should have done.

We suggest you watch that horrible segment and weep for the fate of your nation. One word of warning:

If you watch the segment, you’ll see the professor say that Wilson evinced some “implicit bias,” some “unconscious biases,” during his interview with Stephanopoulos. You’ll see Katty Kay jump in to say that the professor is “absolutely right.”

Our question:

Is it possible that Kay’s reactions to these events are driven by some sort of “unconscious biases?” Such thoughts rarely trouble the spotless minds of upper-class players like Kay.

All around the world, the upper classes have always behaved in these ways. They can always spot the unconscious biases of those in the lower classes.

This panel’s silly, scripted discussions were hard to watch this day. We strongly suggest that you review the professor’s words of advice.