Joy Reid of MSNBC Apologizes For Having Come Too Strong on Charlie Crist, ex Fl., Gov
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| 'What a blow of fresh air' |
MSNBC host Joy Reid issued an apology on Sunday for a series of blog posts nearly a decade ago, mostly critical of former Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, that has been criticized as homophobic and “anti-gay.”
“This note is my apology to all who are disappointed by the content of blogs I wrote a decade ago, for which my choice of words and tone have legitimately been criticized,” Reid said in a statement shared with NBC News, which, like MSNBC, is owned by NBCUniversal.
The blog posts were unearthed on Thursday by Twitter user @Jamie_Maz.
"From 2007 to 2009 @joyannreid authored a dozen homophobic posts not only attempting to out Charlie Crist as gay, she attacked & mocked him for being so," @Jamie_Maz wrote in the first of a series of tweets about Reid.
The Twitter user noted Reid repeatedly referred to Crist as "Miss Charlie" in her posts and speculated that his 2008 marriage to a woman was a fraud and part of a “veep marketing strategy.”
During the time she wrote those blog posts, Reid was a morning talk radio host and blogger covering Florida politics.
"Among the frequent subjects of my posts was then-governor Charlie Crist, at the time a conservative Republican, whose positions on issues like gay marriage and adoption by same-sex couples in Florida shared headlines with widely rumored reports that he was hiding his sexual orientation," Reid wrote in her apology.
"At no time have I intentionally sought to demean or harm the LGBT community, which includes people whom I deeply love. My goal, in my ham-handed way, was to call out potential hypocrisy," Reid added.
Crist, who served as Florida’s governor from 2007 to 2011, supported a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in 2008. He later apologized for supporting the amendment, telling Watermark Online, an online LGBT publication based in Orlando, "I’m sorry I did that. It was a mistake. I was wrong. Please forgive me."
Now, it is Reid who is seeking forgiveness for, as she put it, “insensitive, tone-deaf and dumb” comments.
"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," she wrote.
"Re-reading those old blog posts, I am disappointed in myself. I apologize to those who also are disappointed in me. Life can be humbling. It often is. But I hope that you know where my heart is and that I will always strive to use my words for good. I know better and I will do better," Reid wrote.
Brooke Sopelsa, NBC News
In all fairness to Joy, I said as much about hypocrite ex-governor Crist. Of coarse one thing is for the criticism to be coming from a gay man who knows this guy is gay and want to use the language this old queen deserved than a blogger that is straight. We both could say the same things using different adjectives but I belonging to that same group will be given more leeway and rightly so than an outsider. Such is true if you substitute gay for any other group. Her remarks could easily be taken as saying that Crist as a gay man was feminine because gay men are that way since she called him "Miss" That would make it unfair and homophobic. I never called him 'Miss' because of that implication and it did not cover my point which was he was an old guy pretending like everyone was blind but did called him a "closet queen." It had nothing to do with the masculinity of the guy. He was a coward but referring to him in the feminine sense would be unfair to both gays and women.
I'm still glad she cleared the air and apologized and now we can move on in discussing the crazy orange man in the White House.
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