The Internet Archive Trashes Joy Reid's Dubious Claim That Hackers Made Her Look Homophobic
MSNBC host Joy Reid is making national news—not for revving up her fans in the anti-Trump Resistance, but for homophobic remarks that have surfaced from her now-defunct blog and years-old tweets.
If it feels like you’ve heard this one before, it’s because you have. The issue is bubbling up yet again—and this time, Reid’s excuse for the comments has taken a turn toward the truly bizarre.
First, some background: A full decade ago, when she was still a morning talk show host in south Florida, Reid edited a politics blog called The Reid Report. She used that blog to write, among other things, an ugly string of posts attempting to out then-Florida Governor Charlie Crist as gay, repeatedly referring to him as “Miss Charlie,” calling his marriage to a woman a fraud, and even speculating about their sex life and wondering if Crist’s wife had to cope with him “ogling the male waiters” on their honeymoon. She also suggested that if Crist somehow made his way onto John McCain’s 2008 ticket, he would be too preoccupied doing things like picking out “flamingo-shaped napkins” to get anything done in the White House.
A lefty Twitter user laid all these findings out in a November 2017 Twitter thread, with receipts from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine:
Days later, Reid, who was by then hosting her own weekend politics show on MSNBC, apologized for the posts, which she called “insensitive, tone deaf and dumb.” She also pointed to her friends in the LGBTQ community as evidence she’s not homophobic. Crist accepted her apology on Twitter, and everyone seemed to move on, satisfied that Reid—like many Democrats—had simply “evolved” on the issue of LGBTQ equality in the intervening years.
But on Monday, things got weird again. After the same Twitter user unearthed even more offensive content from Reid’s old blog using Wayback—which archives publicly available internet content even if it’s been removed or deleted by its author—Mediaite published an extensive story about the latest posts. Among the deeply offensive posts contained therein (and far from an exhaustive list):
Reid defending the former NBA star Tim Hardaway saying that he hates “gay people,” by saying “most straight people cringe at the sight of two men kissing...Does that make me homophobic? Probably.”
In the same post, she went on to write that it’s “intrinsic” for heterosexual people to believe that “homosexual sex...is...well...gross.”
A 2006 post counting down the “totally not gay celebrities of the year,” a list that included Clay Aiken, Tom Cruise, and Anderson Cooper at No. 1.
Idly floating an “interesting question” about whether you could “manipulate the genes of your unborn child” to make sure they’re not gay.
Promoting the insidious and deeply old stereotype that gay men are just predators and pedophiles seeking out “impressionable teens.”
An obsession with the movie Brokeback Mountain (its premise of a love story between two men was “too out there” for her, and she said again that she just didn’t want to watch a sex scene between men).
When Mediaite reached out to Reid about those posts, things took a strange turn: Instead of just apologizing, as she’d already done once before, Reid insisted the blog posts published under her name were the work of “unknown, external” hackers:
In December I learned that an unknown, external party accessed and manipulated material from my now-defunct blog, The Reid Report, to include offensive and hateful references that are fabricated and run counter to my personal beliefs and ideology.
I began working with a cyber-security expert who first identified the unauthorized activity, and we notified federal law enforcement officials of the breach. The manipulated material seems to be part of an effort to taint my character with false information by distorting a blog that ended a decade ago.
Now that the site has been compromised I can state unequivocally that it does not represent the original entries. I hope that whoever corrupted the site recognizes the pain they have caused, not just to me, but to my family and communities that I care deeply about: LGBTQ, immigrants, people of color and other marginalized groups. So Reid is arguing that hackers wormed their way into the Wayback Machine to edit her archived posts to add more anti-LGBTQ content to smear her. Splinter has reached out to Reid and MSNBC for comment and will update this post if and when we hear back.
MSNBC host Joy Reid is making national news—not for revving up her fans in the anti-Trump Resistance, but for homophobic remarks that have surfaced from her now-defunct blog and years-old tweets.
If it feels like you’ve heard this one before, it’s because you have. The issue is bubbling up yet again—and this time, Reid’s excuse for the comments has taken a turn toward the truly bizarre.
First, some background: A full decade ago, when she was still a morning talk show host in south Florida, Reid edited a politics blog called The Reid Report. She used that blog to write, among other things, an ugly string of posts attempting to out then-Florida Governor Charlie Crist as gay, repeatedly referring to him as “Miss Charlie,” calling his marriage to a woman a fraud, and even speculating about their sex life and wondering if Crist’s wife had to cope with him “ogling the male waiters” on their honeymoon. She also suggested that if Crist somehow made his way onto John McCain’s 2008 ticket, he would be too preoccupied doing things like picking out “flamingo-shaped napkins” to get anything done in the White House.
A lefty Twitter user laid all these findings out in a November 2017 Twitter thread, with receipts from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine:
Days later, Reid, who was by then hosting her own weekend politics show on MSNBC, apologized for the posts, which she called “insensitive, tone deaf and dumb.” She also pointed to her friends in the LGBTQ community as evidence she’s not homophobic. Crist accepted her apology on Twitter, and everyone seemed to move on, satisfied that Reid—like many Democrats—had simply “evolved” on the issue of LGBTQ equality in the intervening years.
But on Monday, things got weird again. After the same Twitter user unearthed even more offensive content from Reid’s old blog using Wayback—which archives publicly available internet content even if it’s been removed or deleted by its author—Mediaite published an extensive story about the latest posts. Among the deeply offensive posts contained therein (and far from an exhaustive list):
Reid defending the former NBA star Tim Hardaway saying that he hates “gay people,” by saying “most straight people cringe at the sight of two men kissing...Does that make me homophobic? Probably.”
In the same post, she went on to write that it’s “intrinsic” for heterosexual people to believe that “homosexual sex...is...well...gross.”
A 2006 post counting down the “totally not gay celebrities of the year,” a list that included Clay Aiken, Tom Cruise, and Anderson Cooper at No. 1.
Idly floating an “interesting question” about whether you could “manipulate the genes of your unborn child” to make sure they’re not gay.
Promoting the insidious and deeply old stereotype that gay men are just predators and pedophiles seeking out “impressionable teens.”
An obsession with the movie Brokeback Mountain (its premise of a love story between two men was “too out there” for her, and she said again that she just didn’t want to watch a sex scene between men).
When Mediaite reached out to Reid about those posts, things took a strange turn: Instead of just apologizing, as she’d already done once before, Reid insisted the blog posts published under her name were the work of “unknown, external” hackers:
In December I learned that an unknown, external party accessed and manipulated material from my now-defunct blog, The Reid Report, to include offensive and hateful references that are fabricated and run counter to my personal beliefs and ideology.
I began working with a cyber-security expert who first identified the unauthorized activity, and we notified federal law enforcement officials of the breach. The manipulated material seems to be part of an effort to taint my character with false information by distorting a blog that ended a decade ago.
Now that the site has been compromised I can state unequivocally that it does not represent the original entries. I hope that whoever corrupted the site recognizes the pain they have caused, not just to me, but to my family and communities that I care deeply about: LGBTQ, immigrants, people of color and other marginalized groups.
So Reid is arguing that hackers wormed their way into the Wayback Machine to edit her archived posts to add more anti-LGBTQ content to smear her. Splinter has reached out to Reid and MSNBC for comment and will update this post if and when we hear back.
https://splinternews.com/the-internet-archive-trashes-joy-reids-dubious-claim-th-1825506987