December 9, 2017
MSNBC News Anchor Apologizes after Homophobic Blog Posts Revealed
Ryan Lynch READ TIME: 2 MIN.
MSNBC Anchor Joy Reid publically apologized Monday after a Twitter user found homophobic remarks on her blog.
The posts came around the 2008 presidential election and centered around rumored Republican vice presidential candidate Charlie Crist, according to Pink News. Reid used the slurs on Crist across several posts, referring to him as "Miss Charlie" and calling his marriage to a woman a fraud.
"I can just see poor Charlie on the honeymoon, ogling the male waiters and thinking to himself, 'God, do I actually have to see her naked,'" Reid said.
She later made negative references to television show "Will and Grace" and openly gay actor George Takei. Reid also said Crist would hire an interior decorator to add "flamingo-shaped napkins" to the White House.
"Let me be clear: at no time have I intentionally sought to demean or harm the LGBT community, which includes people whom I deeply love," Reid wrote in the apology. "My goal, in my ham-handed way, was to call out potential hypocrisy. Nonetheless, as someone who is not a member of the LGBT community, I regret the way I addressed the complex issue of the closet and speculation on a person's sexual orientation with a mocking tone and sarcasm. It was insensitive, tone deaf and dumb."
She continued: "There is no excusing it - not based on the taste-skewing mores of talk radio or the then-blogosphere, and not based on my intentions."
She also apologized to Crist.
"In addition to friends and coworkers and viewers, I deeply apologize to Congressman Crist, who was the target of my thoughtlessness. My critique of anti-LGBT positions he once held but has since abandoned was legitimate in my view. My means of critiquing were not."
"In the years since I went from blogger to opinion journalist, I have also learned, through brilliant friends and allies in the LGBT activist community, how to better frame my critiques of those who challenge people's right to love who they want, marry them, and walk in the world as fully free people."
MSNBC has not made an official comment on the situation as of publication time.
