News flash: Eugene Robinson has just been named Dean of the Alice In Wonderland School of Journalism. Where "who, what, when" etc. is replaced by "who cares?", and when it comes to crimes against political correctness, verdict first, trial later.
On today's Morning Joe, WaPo columnist Robinson expressed surprising indifference to his unawareness of the causes that led Mizzou President Tim Wolfe to be driven from office. Asked by Joe Scarborough as to the reasons for the prez's departure, Robinson replied "I haven't been on campus; I don't know . . . I don't know what those specifics are." When Scarborough then asked "isn't it troubling that you don't know, a Pulitzer Prize winner" and "is this a complete failure of the national media to report?" Robinson flippantly suggested "the national media should always have done a better job in getting to the bottom of everything."
What might explain Robinson's insouciance at the spectacle of an incurious press and a president forced from his job for reasons unspecified?
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Students have a right to protest obviously. I think what concerns me the most is the power of college football, the power of college sports, that once the football team said we're not going to play on Saturday, the hell with due process. The hell with any of it. The football team wins and this college president is thrown out and we're all scratching our heads going, okay, so what did he -- is he a racist? Is he a bigot?
EUGENE ROBINSON: You know, I haven't been on the campus, so I don't know. But obviously, as far as the students are concerned, it's what the administration did not do rather than what it did. You know, there are a lot of African-American students and other minority students on that campus who obviously feel that for whatever reasons, that the campus was not made to be a friendly, accepting and supportive place in the way that --
JOE: Right, Gene. I guess what I'm saying is what are those reasons? What are the specifics? I've been reading since this photograph was taken, looking for specifics of systemic actions that have made students feel excluded. What are the specifics?
ROBINSON: And I don't know what those specifics are, but what I do know --
JOE: -- Isn't that troubling to you that you don't know, a Pulitzer Prize winner? This guy is run out as president of a university because a football team said we're not going to play and neither you nor I reading these articles know what he did to evoke this type of response. Is this a complete failure of the national media to report?
ROBINSONll Maybe the national, the national media should always have done a better job in getting to the bottom of everything.
