Morning Joe Has a Good Explanation for the Racist SAE Kids: Rap Music

Your favorite morning program came in big on Wednesday morning, as hosts of Morning Joe Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough shared the mindblowingly original assertion that the reason the Sigma Alpha Epsilon frat bros at University of Oklahoma were singing that racist chant is because they were negatively influenced by the lyrics in rap music.

On Tuesday night, Waka Flocka Flame–who has performed at the OU previously for SAE but says he’s cancelled his upcoming performance there–went on CNN to express his “disgust” with those in the video. “I was more like hurt, I was more like disgusted,” he said. “Because I knew those kids, I performed for those kids. They made me feel like a brother.”

He continued: “I really felt like I was down with the fraternity, like I was SAE. You couldn’t tell me no different. So for me to see that video, I was like, damn, thats what y’all do behind closed doors? That disgusted me.”

As Mediaite points out, Brzezinski, Scarborough and guest Bill Kristol did not get Waka Flocka Flame’s point. After following a longer segment on the topic by saying, “We can’t stop talking here” (maybe you should try), referencing his interview on “another network,” and sort of laughing at his rap name (well, that was mostly Scarborough), Brzezinski said she doesn’t get why the rapper would be upset because he is partially to blame:

I look at his lyrics, and I’m thinking, why wouldn’t you ask this guy, why would you go on this campus, and if you look at every single song I guess he’s written, it’s a bunch of garbage. It’s full of n-words, it’s full of f-words. It’s wrong. And he shouldn’t be disgusted with them, he should be disgusted with himself. That’s all I have to say.

Scarborough also weighed in:

Anybody who watches Empire knows that 70 percent of the audience is white! The kids that are buying hip hop or gangster rap as Mark [Halperin] wanted us to call it, it’s a white audience, and they hear this over and over again. So do they hear this at home? Well, chances are good, no, they heard a lot of this from guys like this who are now acting shocked.

Perhaps he should have listened to rest of Waka Flocka Flame’s comments: “To me, I really can’t blame the kids. To me, I feel like that’s passed down.”

Willie Geist was the only mild wisp of fresh air blowing through the studio this morning, pointing out that “there is a distinction” between white men singing a racist chant about hanging someone and a black man rapping lyrics he wrote.

Brzezinski moved on by saying, “You’re right Willie. It’s absolutely not the same.”