Before I dive in to the meat of my column this week, a few caveats: 1. I understand that 'I Hate My Teenage Daughter' is a sitcom and therefore not to be taken overly seriously. 2. Like everyone else, I adore Jaime Pressly and think she is enormously talented.

With that said, let me begin.

The premise of 'I Hate My Teenage Daughter' is this: two moms -- best friends -- were nerds growing up, and they spoil their daughters in an attempt to provide them with the perfect youth they didn't have. Instead, they've raised monsters. The show gets going when both women are called into school because their daughters have locked a wheelchair-bound fellow student in the bathroom.

The 'Morning Joe' crew (weekdays, 6 AM ET on MSNBC) looked genuinely saddened Wednesday morning as they discussed the tragic death of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers University freshman who committed suicide after his roommate secretly broadcast his sexual encounter with another male student on the Internet.

"It was a hate crime," Donny Deutcsh said of the actions of Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, who made the tape. "They should prosecute these kids to the hilt."

Mika Brzezinski tried to understand why Ravi and Wei did with they did:

"It's unbelievable cruel. . . I wonder if these perpetrators had any clue just how cruel they were being . . . I think technology has given this veil of, 'well it's OK, we can do it' . . . and there are not a lot of ramifications."

It's an incredibly sad story that people seem to still be trying to get their minds wrapped around. What do you think -- should Clementi's roomates be charged with a hate crime? Do you think Mika has a point that the ease of technology desensitizes people so much that they have trouble considering the consequences of their online actions?