Meet the Press Fades to Black

This Sunday’s Meet the Press on NBC focused its second half hour discussing issues facing the black community with Bill Cosby and Dr. Alvin Poussaint, authors of Come on People, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) who represents South Central Los Angeles, and Washington, DC Mayor Adrian Fenty.

Billed as the beginning of a series of in-depth discussions on challenging issues facing the Obama presidency, new host David Gregory (still missing Tim Russert), sought to juxtapose the Cosby/Poussaint philosophy of parental and personal responsibility against the more traditional and liberal philosophy of Congresswoman Waters, and Mayor Fenty as the moderate middle.  Setting the stage, Gregory replayed portions of candidate Obama’s Father’s Day 2008 where he channeled the Cosby/Poussaint philosophy:

Yes, we need more cops on the street. Yes, we need fewer guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Yes, we need more money for our schools, and more outstanding teachers in the classroom, and more afterschool programs for our children. Yes, we need more jobs and more job training and more opportunity in our communities.

But we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child – it’s the courage to raise one.

Regardless of the differing philosophies there was general agreement on the problems, a routine recitation of the dire statistics, and unfortunately no real in-depth discussion on the solutions.   

Read the transcripts at NBC’s Meet the Press website. 

Comments welcomed.

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