Joy Reid is a liberal media sacred cow and she isn't going anywhere
Joy Reid is obviously lying, but she has apparently reached sacred cow status at MSNBC.
On her show last Saturday, Reid defended her claims that her old blog was hacked and that someone inserted comments on it to make it look like she had been uncomfortable with gays.
In one post she said that gay advocacy groups “seek to organize very young, impressionable teens.” In another, she said she refused to watch “Brokeback Mountain,” featuring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal because, “I didn’t want to watch the two male characters having sex … Does that make me homophobic? Probably.” (I’m not sure it means she’s homophobic so much as it means she missed out.)
After nearly a week of insisting that the words weren’t hers and that she had digital investigators examining the evidence, she admitted on her show that, “The reality is, they have not been able to prove” that her blog was hacked.
That’s because there is nothing to prove, and she instead could have done what she did in December when similar blog posts that she wrote resurfaced. In those posts, she made jokes that suggested Gov. Charlie Christ, D-Fla., was gay and when she was confronted with them, Reid apologized.
But on Saturday, Reid pleaded the media equivalent of temporary insanity.
“I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things, because they are completely alien to me,” she said in a line that should be memorized by every middle school student caught passing a note.
And that was it. Reid, who somehow holds status in liberal politics by way of her weekend morning show, was defended by her colleagues Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, Lawrence O’Donnell, and others.
It’s not that Reid should lose her job for having once held outmoded views, it’s that at its foundation, her place in the media is supposed to depend on her credibility.
Now that she tried to pass off a bizarre and unbelievable story about being hacked, it should be ripped apart for good.
But it doesn’t work that way.
Fareed Zakaria continues to host a show on CNN and publish a column in the Washington Post although he was found on multiple occasions over the course of years to have been a plagiarist. Prominent media ethicists concluded that Zakaria took credit for work that wasn't his and yet he's allowed by CNN to weigh in on world events for an hour each Sunday.
Donna Brazile, a former CNN contributor and top ranking official at the Democratic National Committee, is still booked for TV news segments, including on ABC, though she has denied, then admitted, then denied again that she shared questions with the Hillary Clinton campaign in advance of a CNN debate during the 2016 primary.
Credibility isn't a factor for the sacred cows. That’s why Joy Reid isn’t going anywhere.