1) So: Many people know I am close friends with @JoyAnnReid. Few of you know I was the first person to publish her, roughly 18 years ago. We didn't meet for at least a dozen years.
2) At Salon, I kept track of her work and read her blog, "The Reid Report," after that. In 2008, when we started our blogging platform "Open Salon," we asked our favorite contributors who had blogs to cross post with us. Joy did so and was immediately a huge hit.
3) Our editors monitored "The Reid Report" to see if she posted anything we wanted; sometimes we'd nudge her to cross-post, and she did.
4) Obviously, none of us ever saw the kinds of homophobic posts she's now accused of. If we had, we'd have stopped publishing her.
5) Interestingly, no one has come forward and said that they read any of this garbage in real time: "Oh hey, that Joy Reid was a real nightmare, can't believe she got published."
6) Also, to my knowledge, the offensive posts had no comments on them, while the posts she acknowledges had some lively comments debates.
7) Now, can I claim I read every word she posted? Of course not. But I did read it enough to know that she did not regularly reflect the attitudes she's accused of here.
8) Maybe most important, I write this to say: I've followed Joy's writing for @17 years. She did not appear out of nowhere, to me, and wind up with a television show. Some of her critics imply that. Which only shows their own isolation
9) Because let's be honest, too often a great black writer seems to appear out of nowhere. Sometimes that makes them vulnerable to criticism; sometimes it makes them just magical. Those of us who followed the politics of race, class and gender more than a decade ago know Joy Reid
10) Again, I cannot say with certainty none of these posts she's disavowed appeared on her blog way back when. I can just say: I've been reading her for 17 years. And I don't believe they did. Thanks for reading.
