MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough spread some fake news on Wednesday’s show during a discussion about a Florida teacher being under investigation for showing Strange World, a film that has a gay character. For, Scarborough, the story fits a pattern as he accused the state of “trying to create a past, a sanitized, homogenized past that never existed” by targeting books about Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente.
Addressing PoliticsNation host Al Sharpton, Scarborough declared, “And Rev, we've seen also, teachers being nervous about the books talking about Roberto Clemente and the challenges he faced as a ball player, Hank Aaron, the challenges he faced racially as well.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis has come out and accused those who temporarily removed books about Clemente from libraries of being activists trying to get a headline. It is simply false to say that Florida is trying to prevent children from reading about Clemente and Aaron and it will remain false no matter how many times MSNBC repeats it.
However, facts don’t mean anything to Scarborough and he continued in his rant, “I mean, for me growing up, and again, I grew up in Mississippi and I grew up in Alabama, I grew up in Georgia, I grew up in northwest Florida, the very conservative bastions, these are things we understood in, like, 1971.”
It is fashionable for people like Scarborough to compare today’s Republicans to the racists of the 1950s, but for Scarborough, today’s Republicans are actually worse, “on issues like this, and my gosh, it’s again, we’re not even going back to the 1950s here.”
Scarborough then tried tie his fake news back to the teacher who showed Strange World, “This is trying to create a past, a sanitized, homogenized past that never existed and then the ambiguity—one final thing, the ambiguity is the intent. You pass these ambiguous laws, you scare the teachers, so now they’re afraid to play Disney movies because somebody may get fired for Disney movie if there's a character in a Disney movie that you don't like.”
As for Sharpton, he began his response by not only accusing Republicans of wanting people to believe blacks are inferior, but also hyping President Biden’s economic record:
When you raise the part about Hank Aaron, the real-- one of the real effects of this is that if I'm a student in Florida and I look at the data that black wealth is 10 percent of the white wealth and that blacks are almost doubly unemployed to the whites until the last couple of unemployment data that came out that Biden has, kind of, narrowed that, I would think that without knowing the history that blacks are just incompetent and less than able.”
As for the Strange World controversy, Sharpton longed for somebody to dunk on DeSantis at a debate:
I’d love to see at a presidential debate if Ron DeSantis does in fact run, somebody ask him if he has gays that work in state government or do you have a policy that gays can’t in state government, so that he can be dragged into court for discrimination. If you’re going to do this to teachers, tell us on the record whether you allow people to work in the governor’s office or state institutions that are gay.
Does Sharpton seriously believe DeSantis wants to ban gay people from working government jobs? Where did that idea come from? Probably the same fictitious universe that Scarborough got his Hank Aaron/Robert Clemente talking point from.
This segment was sponsored by Nutrisystem.
Here is a transcript for the May 17 show:
MSNBC Morning Joe
5/17/2023
9:04 AM ET
JOE SCARBOROUGH: And Rev, we've seen also, teachers being nervous about the books talking about Roberto Clemente and the challenges he faced as a ball player, Hank Aaron, the challenges he faced racially as well.
I mean, for me growing up, and again, I grew up in Mississippi and I grew up in Alabama, I grew up in Georgia, I grew up in northwest Florida, the very conservative bastions, these are things we understood in, like, 1971 when, you know, Hank Aaron was playing baseball in ’72 and '73, we understood that, I mean, you'd read Sports Illustrated and understand that Hank Aaron faced so death threats, Roberto Clemente, faced yes, yes, institutional racism that was still in place across the Deep South whenever he went south, there’s still places in the north and on issues like this, and my gosh, it’s again, we’re not even going back to the 1950s here.
This is trying to create a past, a sanitized, homogenized past that never existed and then the ambiguity—one final thing, the ambiguity is the intent. You pass these ambiguous laws, you scare the teachers, so now they’re afraid to play Disney movies because somebody may get fired for Disney movie if there's a character in a Disney movie that you don't like.
AL SHARPTON: When you raise the part about Hank Aaron, the real-- one of the real effects of this is that if I'm a student in Florida and I look at the data that black wealth is 10 percent of the white wealth and that blacks are almost doubly unemployed to the whites until the last couple of unemployment data that came out that Biden has, kind of, narrowed that, I would think that without knowing the history that blacks are just incompetent and less than able.
If I understood the history, I'd say well, this is a pattern that we're trying to overcome of institutional racism, so it really has a lot of implications that we’re not looking at the danger of not telling real history.
Secondly, on the thing about the teacher and gays, you know, when I ran in 2004 for president, we had same debates, I’d love to see at a presidential debate if Ron DeSantis does in fact run, somebody ask him if he has gays that work in state government or do you have a policy that gays can’t in state government, so that he can be dragged into court for discrimination. If you’re going to do this to teachers, tell us on the record whether you allow people to work in the governor’s office or state institutions that are gay.
