MSNBC's Joy Reid
“Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”
- James Baldwin
Seemingly apropos of nothing but shameless Red-baiting weirdness, MSNBC host Joy Reid tweeted today about two of Donald Trump's three wives hailing from Eastern European countries.
"Donald Trump married one American (his second wife) and two women from what used to be Soviet Yugoslavia: Ivana-Slovakia, Melania-Slovenia," Reid's tweet read.
There is so much wrong with this statement, beyond the sheer creepy xenophobic signaling oozing every word, it's difficult to know where to start.
First, while Yugoslavia during the Cold War was indeed a communist state, it was not Soviet. Following a brief alliance with the Soviet Union following World War II, Yugoslavia under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito was expelled by Stalin from the Soviet-oriented Cominform (Communist Information Bureau) in 1948 and remained independent of Soviet influence. Yugoslavia was the only communist state in Europe not to join the Warsaw Pact.
History 1. Joy Reid 0.
Second, the socialist state of Yugoslavia was a federation of six separate republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Serbia, which included within its borders the two autonomous provinces Kosovo and Vojvodina.
So, while Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia, Slovakia was not; rather it was part of Czechoslovakia, along with the Czech socialist republic.
Geography 1. Joy Reid 0.
Geography 2. Joy Reid 0.
Unsurprisingly, these simple facts were immediately pointed out to Reid by countless people on Twitter.
In her attempt to correct herself, however, Reid wound up doubling down on her error. "Melania is from Slovenia (which plus Slovakia used to be Yugoslavia)," she tweeted.
Again, no. Slovakia was never a part of Yugoslavia. It was the "-slovakia" part of "Czechoslovakia." See how that works?
History 2. Geography 3. Reid 0.
This is not the first time Reid has flubbed European history in service of anti-Russian posturing. Back in September 2016, Reid sent a series of tweets designed to smear the vile Republican presidential candidate's penchant for lauding Russian leader Vladimir Putin by suggesting that she believed Russia was still a communist state.
Needless to say, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Russia may certainly be authoritarian, but it is definitely not communist.
MSNBC, the cable news network home to Reid's weekend show AM Joy, has a history of questionable geography skills. Its graphics department has virtually annexed the West Bank to Israel and claimed Jerusalem as its capital. In 2013, a map showing four upcoming stops on a presidential bus tour of New York and Pennsylvania got the locations of all four cities completely, egregiously wrong. The following year, a map shown during primetime's All In with Chris Hayes inexplicably spelled the word "Iraq" incorrectly.
"Irak"? Really, @allinwithchris graphics person? pic.twitter.com/J3iKuhCrpJ— Nima Shirazi (@WideAsleepNima) September 4, 2014
But Reid's recent Soviet snafu isn't a mere typo or simply the result of intellectual laziness. It's ignorance couched in the nativism and nationalism of McCarthyite demonization.
Look, Donald Trump is already a loathsome, shitbag sociopath. Efforts to expose, oppose, castigate, and marginalize him and the threat his administration and supporters present to the entire world are vital. His awful wives, past and present, don't deserve any sympathy. But, with all this in mind, there's no need to use base xenophobia and Cold War-era Red Scare tactics to achieve these goals. And it's even more embarrassing to get basic facts wrong while doing it.
A couple years ago, Joy Reid delivered the inaugural Ida B. Wells lecture at Wake Forest University. Wells, the fearless journalist and fierce civil rights and suffrage activist, once noted, "The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press."
As a journalist with an often daily platform on a major news network, Joy Reid needs to do a much better job at educating - both herself and her audience.
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MSNBC is a liberal news source, right? One of those liberals keep citing in their Russia hack fantasies?
ReplyDeleteIn the whole world, the people with the most reasons to dislike Russia are Eastern Europeans. *I* am Eastern European - Ukrainian. Multiple members of my family are dead, and dozens more refugees because of the Russian invasion in the last few years.
ReplyDeleteThat this awful woman is trying to discredit everyone east of Germany as Russian-worshipping monsters is... Well, I am deeply upset by her comments.
Worse, I have been following her on Twitter, and she has not apologised. She has not retracted her comments. She has not posted corrections.
As bad as Russian interference in the US elections are, it is NOTHING to what Russia has done to Eastern Europe. That she is fine with her xenophobia, when she no doubt (I am not American, so I can't say for certain) worships "social justice" issues like "Black Lives Matter" - what a hypocrite. What a racist. What an idiot!
Well, she's on tv. With her own show. She must be an accredited authority. There IS a difference between journalism and stenography, but we're conditioned too well. I mean, lets go back to the opening round of operation "Iraqui Misery" and the presence of "Embedded Journalists"...hmmm Chaperoned might be more accurate. Control of the narrative is the Prime Directive, and the ministry of propaganda rewards faithful sycophants with 'access'. The leadership of the neoliberal world order have much in common with mushroom farmers...
ReplyDeleteSo, Thanks. Finding the nuggets of truth and wisdom scattered around the web may be easier than searching the Library of Alexandria, but having guides does help.