In today’s edition of “Democrats Sure Got It Good,” I give you the far-left Daily Beast, which is preparing the excuse of “she forgot” to save MSNBC anchor Joy Reid, not only from years of documented gay-baiting, but from the fact that she likely lied about being hacked.
In a lengthy piece titled “Claims by Joy Reid’s Cybersecurity Expert Fall Apart,” the Daily Beast — where Reid is a columnist (now suspended) — does a superb job of knocking down each and every claim coming from Reid’s so-called security expert, Jonathan Nichols, who just two days ago said he had smoking gun proof Reid had been hacked and is therefore not guilty of authoring dozens of anti-gay posts during the late aughts.
Unfortunately for him and Reid, nothing he said panned out to be true, or even close to true. Every bit of doubt Nichols has tried to cast, either on the archives (hacked!), or the screenshots of the homophobic posts (altered!) has, according to the Daily Beast (and others), “failed to withstand scrutiny.”
At this point, even Reid and Nichols are backing off the claim that the archives of the Wayback Machine were hacked. This means that dozens of homophobic posts and childish acts of gay-baiting were published on Reid’s now-defunct blog, the Reid Report, in real-time.
Apparently, we are now supposed to believe … … … actually, I do not even know what we are supposed to believe anymore. There is no proof Reid was hacked, period, including in real time in the late aughts. The only excuse Reid has left, it would seem, is for her to claim that while she was actively writing on the site she did not notice some malevolent force adding anti-gay material under her name.
This is preposterous. Anyone who has ever run a blog knows exactly what you published, and you return to those old post frequently to read the reader comments, check for typos, link old posts to newer posts, and a half-dozen other editorial reasons. Reid appears to want us to believe she did not notice some 50 anti-gay posts published on her site while she was working on her site. That is absurd, but it only gets more absurd.
Reid also wants us to believe that that this malevolent hacker was “responsible for two consecutive updates sandwiched between Reid’s legitimate ones” in a live blog Reid was running about the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Alito:
The updates report that Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch was using his questioning time to metaphorically fellate the judge. “Oh, look, Orrin Hatch is putting on his Supreme Court knee pads to save Alito,” one line read. The post’s title, which Reichmann says the hacker changed, was “Brokeback Committee Room,” another reference to the film about gay lovers. All the contested material in the post is present in the earliest archived copy, which was captured the day after the hearing.
With their hacking story now collapsed, Nichols told the Daily Beast, “We’re kind of reevaluating as of yesterday.”
Well, luckily for Reid and her expert in muddying the waters cybersecurity, when you are a Trump-hating leftist, one seen as ideologically pure by our illustrious media, there is no need to reevaluate, because the media are building a safety net for you. Believe it or not, this is how the Daily Beast closes its damning piece of reporting:
If she wasn’t hacked, it doesn’t necessarily follow that Reid is lying. Her decision to hire a security consultant to investigate the posts, and a lawyer to demand the access logs for her blog account, suggests she genuinely believes at least some of the posts were planted. After 12 years and tens of thousands of written words, Reid simply may not remember.
It’s possible that in the end Reid will discover her adversary isn’t a determined hacker, but a far more dogged foe: The Joy-Ann Reid of years past, writing in a voice she can no longer recognize as her own.
So there you go, folks… Joy forgot.
She did not lie.
She forgot.
Although Reid has every motivation to lie (a national figure hitting her zenith in the establishment media while making tons of money), that is not what happened, you see, because Joy Reid would never lie. Although she was rounding 40 at the time this gay-baiting was published, although she has already admitted to gay-baiting Charlie Crist, although her Twitter feed at the time matches the gay-baiting on her site… She forgot.
Do you not understand that only an unsophisticated rube believes a Joy Reid would throw a bunch of lies against the wall hoping at least one would muddy the waters enough to save her skin? Do you not understand that only a right-wing racist and sexist believes a Joy Reid would lie to her own employer, to the rest of the media with this wild goose chase?
No, no, no, no… Joy forgot, y’all.
Which can only lead one conclusion…
Of course, I am talking about forgiveness.
Yes, we must forgive Joy’s apparent homophobia — expressed to a degree that would get any conservative or centrist blacklisted — but most of all we must forgive Joy for lying because Joy forgot.
And so, just like her other ideologically pure NBC colleagues — homophobe Alec Baldwin, rape-denier Andrea Mitchell, abuse-enabler Mika Brzezinski, serial liar Brian Williams, accused stalker/groper Mike Tirico, accused harasser Chris Matthews ,and accused harasser Tom Brokaw — forgetful Joy remains an Elite Media Thought Leader, and if you dare question her integrity or moral authority, that can only mean you hate America and black people and women. So shut up.
We now return you to the destruction of Laura Ingraham’s career for using the word “whining.”
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