Television
Feb 22, 2019
The lead: “life on the street”

ICYMI: Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough, Mike Barnicle and Willie Geist discuss the societal problems of gun violence and social media in the wake of “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett being charged with a felony for allegedly staging a hate-crime attack to promote his career. “Superintendent Johnson in Chicago gave us the lead. And the lead isn’t Smollett—the lead is life on the street. The lead is the hundreds and hundreds of families, people, young people, old people in Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston–you name the city–who live under the threat of the gun each and every day, each hour of every day. And young people being killed, shot on alleyways, on sidewalks for whatever: For wearing the wrong hat, wearing the wrong gang colors, things like that. These young people, many of them are immediately forgotten, their names never even appear in the paper,” says veteran columnist Barnicle. Listen to more of the conversation here.