Somewhere along the line at a Washington function I've met
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough. He's a nice guy.
So I am curious to know whether Joe and his crew over there at
MSNBC's Morning Joe are aware of the real origin of
the title of their show?
The "Joe" comes from one Josephus Daniels, the Secretary of the
Navy for President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921). Secretary Daniels
was a progressive reformer like his boss (and his Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, a young man named Franklin D. Roosevelt).
One of Daniel's "reforms" was to ban wine from the officer's mess
on Navy ships -- and substitute coffee instead. As one might
imagine, this particular reform didn't go down all that well with
sailors, and coffee on Navy ships acquired the nickname "Morning
Joe" in honor of Secretary Josephus Daniels.
Alas, also like his boss President Wilson, Daniels was a
thoroughgoing racist, as
noted in my posting nearby, "Two Presidents and the Court:
When Bigotry Takes the Bench."
The nationally prominent owner and editor of the Raleigh News
and Observer in his native North Carolina, where he vividly
practiced a scurrilous racism, Daniels shrieked that Wilson's
predecessor Theodore Roosevelt (before Taft) and opponent in the
1912 election had insulted "the sensibilities of every man in the
South" by inviting black leader Booker T. Washington to lunch at
the White House during TR's tenure. He insisted that "the
subjection of the Negro, politically, and the separation of the
Negro, socially, are paramount to all other considerations…short
of the preservation itself of the Republic." He prided himself as
owner of the News and Observer, proclaiming his paper
was "the militant voice of White Supremacy." And, not to be
forgotten, "Morning Joe" Daniels segregated the U.S. Navy.
There's more, lots more -- a hat tip here to Bruce Bartlett's
informative book Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried
Past -- but you get the picture. This was someone who gives
the words "overly ripe" a new meaning.
So the question in these quarters as we listen to the Sotomayor
debate, where accusations of racism have been raised, is this:
Does Joe Scarborough realize his show is named for the phrase
coined for Josephus Daniels? Do the suits at MSNBC realize the
titter potential from a show that could quickly be tagged the
"Morning Racist"???
Just asking. As Joe surely knows, the record of our friends on
the left with issues of race…a record bequeathed by the likes of
Josephus Daniels is…ahh…a bit dicey. Some would argue it's the
storyline for the American left. And since the left runs
MSNBC…
