Thread by @frodofied

The debate around @JoyAnnReid and any views she once held and then blogged about is deeply troubling to me, and for some reason, deeply personal.

First, most whole human beings, every single one of us, have held views in our past that today we would be embarrassed by.

Fact.

1/

A decade & more ago, blogs, for those who read them & those who wrote them (I was both) hardly felt like permanent records.

I know that seems silly now, but this truly is a different world than it was then.

And that world was even more different than the ten before that.

2/

It is only in the last five years that we've begun to understand what these new technologies and modes of communications mean to our lives, and the implications are still being revealed on a daily basis.

Tread carefully these paths we must lest they open to swallow us all.

3/

There's no one with any real sense who would watch @JoyAnnReid today, Joy one of the fiercest & most articulate resistors anywhere on broadcast television, and think her homophobic, or even prejudiced generally against the #LGBTQ community in any way.

It's just not there.

4/

It astounds me, in particular, how many white heterosexual males, are clutching their pearls at anyone's past homophobia.

Stop it.

Stop it now.

It's utterly effing ridiculous.

Even now barely half of this country supports gay marriage, so take your faux shock elsewhere.

5/

I was there.

I'm gay. I lived through all of it. I know.

Acceptance of homosexuality is conditional almost exclusively to exposure. Even most progressives I knew back then were only theoretically accepting; still freaking out if one of their own children came out.

6/

Hell, I knew MANY gays and lesbians who would grow upset at open displays of affection between two members of the same sex because of their own internalized self hatred.

So, if ten years ago Joy Reid felt that way she had plenty of damn company.

7/

As I've written at length in the past, if Joy Reid exhibted open hostility to gays now, or avoided booking them on her shows, or treated them differently than the rest of her guests, and denied she did so then those old blogs would matter.

8/

They would matter b/c they would show a pattern.

But she doesn't, so they don't.

What they do show is that Joy, like almost ALL of hetero Americans, and I mean like literally 98.5% of you, has evolved on #LGBTQ issues.

Good for her.

And good for us.
And good for America.

9/

As for any 9/11 conspiracy theories she might have held, I have to say almost everyone I know has held them at some point since the attacks.

It's hard not to.

Those videos are fucking convincing.

She just happens to have the bad luck of writing them down on the internet.

10/

I still cannot get over the fact that we're forced to keep having these pointless debates based on the faux outrage manufactured by people with nothing better to do with their time than comb through @JoyAnnReid's old blog posts.

Apparently with their finest tooth combs

11/

I hope the executives at @NBCNews and @MSNBC have the sense to understand that the motivation behind this constant attempt to damage Reid's reputation is based more on race and gender than it is on anything to do with gay rights or anything else.

12/

And as for fellow journalists who are aiding Reid's attackers and openly gunning for her, again, with all the faux outrage they can muster, you should be ashamed and embarrassed for yourselves.

If you aren't, I am for you.

@brianstelter at @CNN we see you.

End/