Mark Hemingway of the Federalist highlights one of the worst aspects of today’s American political discourse.
Since being dumped from MSNBC, [Joy] Reid has been making the podcast rounds. And the 40-second clip is vintage Reid; she accuses white people writ large of not being able to invent anything, rewriting history, and caps it off with a bizarre rant about Elvis that, well, completely rewrites history.
Elvis grew up in housing projects in Memphis alongside black people, credited black artists and showed them nothing but respect throughout his career, and generally did wonders for civil rights. As for Elvis stealing “his main song” from an “overweight black woman,” Reid simply doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Yes, Big Mama Thornton did record “Hound Dog” a few years before Elvis, but she didn’t write the song. It was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, two Jewish white guys. …
… Anyway, “Joy Reid is an idiot” is a long running series, and that basic observation is not what struck me about this clip. It’s that Reid is spouting the most divisive ideas of black radical leaders, rooted in broad brush anti-white racism. Which is not to say that racism didn’t exist; there’s a lot that Reid could have said that would have been both shameful and fair. … Instead, Reid accuses one of America’s greatest artists, who is overwhelmingly responsible for enriching and mainstreaming black artists in the decades to come, of only being successful because he “stole” from black people. And she mangles the facts in the process.
Yet, this kind of toxic ideology is treated as if it’s justifiable mainstream sentiment. Or at least it was at a major news corporation such as NBC, which for years reportedly paid her an annual salary as high as $3 million.
