Joe Scarborough wasn't willing to lay the blame for the police shootings on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio as we saw his buddy Rudy Giuliani and the rest of the right wing yappers over at Fox do over the weekend. He was however, more than willing to lay the blame on the protesters just as whey did, and he doesn't want anyone daring to criticize him now for his attack on the St. Louis Rams for raising their hands in protest, or his recent unhinged rant and subsequent op-ed in Politico over "hands up, don't shoot."
Transcript via Real Clear Politics:
JOE SCARBOROUGH, MORNING JOE: Sadly, these assassinations were too predictable. We've seen many protesting the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. We've heard them chanting black lives matter. Of course they do. This weekend, we heard supporters of the NYPD responding to these assassinations with the hashtag #copslivesmatter. And they of course do to all of us.
The tragic consequences of the past few months should remind everyone on both sides that in the end, words matter the most. I say that because the cop killer's hatred was fueled by an avalanche of hate speech that was directed at law enforcement officers in general over the past four months.
To listen to protesters, editors and left wing talking heads go on and on since the shooting of Michael Brown, you would be led to believe that white police officers were randomly driving through black neighborhoods searching for young black males to shoot down. And despite my own views that America's criminal justice system is too unfair to young black males, and I have said it repeatedly for decades, I was blasted on social media as a racist for calling out the St. Louis Rams players. And United States Congressmen for recklessly promoting the phrase "hands up, don't shoot."
I was worried in real time for good reason that using those inflammatory words told anybody listening to them that Michael Brown was gunned down by a white cop while his hands were raised in surrender. I was angered at the inflammatory phrase and warned that using a phrase that the grand jury itself reported was never used, slander SL cops and would make the situation worse for cops across America, and it did. Why? Because words matter. Words matter. I was worried after the tragic shooting, it was such a tragic shooting in Cleveland...
That the New York Times putting up a caption that read "police kill child with toy" again painted police officers as beasts. And it also conveniently ignored 911 calls that those cops got from concerned residents saying a suspect was waving a gun around, pointing it at park visitors, and, quote, scaring the hell out of them.
Words matter. The looting and the rioting in Ferguson were so bad that man of us, many of us congratulated New York protesters for remaining mostly peaceful while overlooking ugly words. Ugly elements of those marches, those marches in New York, show just how much hatred against police officers has been stirred up over the past four months of constant anti-police propaganda online and newspapers and, yes, on cable news.
And of course no segment on Morning Joe would be complete without Scarborough's fellow Villagers and yes-men, like Mark Halperin here, nodding their heads in agreement and using the occasion to claim "both sides" have been overheated with their rhetoric.
The people screeching on the right have been overheated. The head of the police union has been dangerously overheated. As John Cole over at Balloon Juice discussed today, someone needs to put up or shut up and show us the supposedly offensive quotes if they really believe we've heard "anti-police rhetoric" from anyone on the left.
