steemit | MSNBC host Joy Reid still has a job. Despite blatantly lying about time-traveling hackers bearing responsibility for bigoted posts a decade ago in her then-barely-known blog, despite her reportedly sparking an FBI investigation on false pretenses, despite her colleagues at MSNBC being completely fed up
with how the network is handling the controversy surrounding her, her
career just keeps trundling forward like a bullet-riddled zombie.
To be clear, I do not particularly care that Joy Reid has done any of
these things. I write about war, nuclear escalations and the sociopathy
of US government agencies which kill millions of people; I don't care
that Joy Reid is or was a homophobe, and I don't care that she lied to
cover it up. The war agendas that MSNBC itself promotes on a daily basis
are infinitely worse than either of these things, and if that isn't
obvious to you it's because military propaganda has caused you to compartmentalize yourself out of an intellectually honest understanding of what war is.
What is interesting to me, however, is the fact that Reid's bosses are protecting her career so adamantly. Both by refusing to fire her, and by steering the conversation into being about her controversial blog posts rather than the fact that she told a spectacular lie in an attempt to cover them up, Reid is being propped up despite this story constantly re-emerging and making new headlines with new embarrassing details, and despite her lack of any discernible talent or redeeming personal characteristics. This tells us something important about what is going on in the world.
Who else would advance the point-blank lie about "17 intelligence agencies" having declared Russia guilty in US election meddling months after that claim had been famously and virally debunked? Who else would publicly claim that Edward Snowden's NSA leaks did not benefit anyone besides Russia? Who else could oligarchs like Comcast CEO Brian L Roberts, whose company controls MSNBC, count on to consistently advance his agendas?
While it's easy to find someone you can count on to advance one particular lie at one particular time, it is difficult to find someone you can be absolutely certain will lie for you day after day, year after year, through election cycles and administration changes and new war agendas and changing political climates. A lot of the people who used to advance perspectives which ran against the grain of the political orthodoxy at MSNBC like Phil Donahue, Ed Schultz and Dylan Ratigan have vanished from the airwaves never to return, while reporters who consistently keep their heads down and toe the line for the Democratic establishment like Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid are richly rewarded and encouraged to remain.
