Actress Susan Sarandon doesn’t seem as ready to forgive MSNBC host Joy Reid for her past homophobic rants as so many others seem to be. Sarandon also wonders why Reid’s bosses are so willing to look the other way.
Sarandon took to Twitter to slam what she seems to agree is MSNBC’s role in covering up Reid’s past slurs against gays with a quote from a story highlighting that cover up posted at Huffington Post.
“It is striking — and disturbing — that Reid’s colleagues and her employer aren’t demanding answers about her seemingly contradictory statements on the alleged hacking,” reads the April 30 HuffPo piece Sarandon shared with her 500 thousand-plus Twitter followers.
Sarandon’s Tweet is a rare example of a liberal member of the Hollywood elite attacking liberal MSNBC for its actions or its perceived inaction.
Indeed, the HuffPo article takes MSNBC to task for what the author says is turning a blind eye to Reid’s past blogging as well as her attempt to get out of having to answer for it.
“Joy Reid has apologized for writing anti-LGBTQ posts on her old blog, but she still has not answered important questions about her honesty and journalistic integrity,” HuffPo’s Hayley Miller wrote.
The article goes on to chronicle the homophobic slurs found on Reid’s blog post in the mid-2000s in a time before she was plucked out of obscurity by MSNBC to be an on-air cable host. Initially, Reid claimed her blog was “hacked” and the homophobic slurs surreptitiously added to her old blog posts. But that story fell apart and soon she “apologized” for the slurs.
The HuffPo piece also notes that Reid’s discovered slurs “aren’t a major departure from what she’s already owned up to.”
The HuffPo writer wants to know why so many of Reid’s fans — not to mention her bosses — are so willing to just forget about her past slurs when the same violations would not be forgiven for others.
“It is striking — and disturbing — that Reid’s colleagues and her employer aren’t demanding answers about her seemingly contradictory statements on the alleged hacking,” Miller wrote. “In her initial statement, Reid said a cybersecurity expert had ‘identified … unauthorized activity’ on her blog that resulted in numerous ‘fabricated’ posts. But on Saturday, Reid said her hired experts couldn’t prove it.”
MSNBC has not bothered to hold Reid to account for her many conflicting stories on the decade-old posts, Miller notes.
“If the network can’t be trusted to seek truth in its own organization, how can it expect its viewers to trust it to seek truth from the highest levels of the government?” Miller asked.
Miller ends her article excoriating MSBC for its lack of integrity. And with Susan Sarandon giving the article her apparent nod of approval via Twitter, it appears that she also wonders what happened to the left-wing cable network’s integrity.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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