MSNBC personality Joy Reid’s former blog, The Reid Report, published a series of anti-gay posts, which she claims were added to the site after it was shut down, by a hacker intent on destroying her reputation and nascent cable-news career.
Reid, who discontinued the blog roughly a decade ago, apologized in December after a series of old posts emerged in which she made homophobic comments about Florida representative Charlie Christ. But she claims the newly surfaced posts, which were obtained by Mediate, were “fabricated.”
The since-deleted posts — accessed by Twitter user Jamie_Maz using a service that archives old web pages — describe cringing “at the sight of two men kissing” and perpetuate the notion that gay men prey on underage boys at a disproportionate rate.
“In December I learned that an unknown, external party accessed and manipulated material from my now-defunct blog, The Reid Report, to include offensive and hateful references that are fabricated and run counter to my personal beliefs and ideology,” Reid said in a statement provided to Mediate. “I began working with a cyber-security expert who first identified the unauthorized activity, and we notified federal law enforcement officials of the breach. The manipulated material seems to be part of an effort to taint my character with false information by distorting a blog that ended a decade ago.”
“Now that the site has been compromised I can state unequivocally that it does not represent the original entries. I hope that whoever corrupted the site recognizes the pain they have caused, not just to me, but to my family and communities that I care deeply about: LGBTQ, immigrants, people of color and other marginalized groups,” she added.
One particularly inflammatory blog post defended NBA star Tim Hardaway after he said publicly that he would not want a gay teammate:
“Keeping it real…most straight men feel exactly the same way, and would have the exact same reaction to the idea of stripping naked in a sweaty locker room in close quarters with a gay teammate. Most straight people cringe at the sight of two men kissing… Most straight people had a hard time being convinced to watch ‘Broke Back Mountain.’ (I admit that I couldn’t go see the movie either, despite my sister’s ringing endorsement, because I didn’t want to watch the two male characters having sex.) Does that make me homophobic? Probably,” the Reid Report post read.
The blog post goes on to claim that most straight people view “homosexual sex” as “gross” but are prevented from saying so due to “political correctness.”
An earlier post, written in 2006, accuses a number of celebrities of being homosexual. The satirical post was titled “totally not gay celebrities of the year,” and included Anderson Cooper and Clay Aiken, neither of whom had disclosed their homosexuality at the time.
Rachel Maddow, who is openly gay and is now Reid’s colleague at MSNBC, was also the frequent target of attack on the blog. Other posts from the same time period openly oppose gay marriage and criticize the idea that the issue should be decided by the courts.