On Friday night, MSNBC’s ReidOut host Joy Reid injected more venom into our body politic, declaring parents speaking out at school board meetings to be “bankrolled by conservative organizations…controlling the puppet strings” and that they, along with Republicans, are akin to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Nazis, Pol Pot, and Soviet Union due to their opposition to books seen as racial divisive and sexually explicit.
She also stated in her opening rant that the GOP is responsible for “attacks on Asian-Americans and Jewish people” and whenever Americans don’t have “safe roads and clean drinking water” thanks to “selling white grievance and rage” and “demoniz[ing] China.” Of course, none of those things were true.
Reid began the show by invoking The Catcher and the Rye as “an American classic” whose “themes” have been occasional sources of controversy and opposition to certain classroom materials by the Moral Majority in the 1980s. But after that, things flew off the rails.
“Coincidentally, book burning and banning happened to be staples of fascism and communism. The Nazis did it, Hitler imposing ridged censorship on newspapers and burning all literature he considered dangerous,” Reid began, never pausing to realize the implications of her dangerous rhetoric.
She went on, citing the other brutal regimes as having censored books and other mediums:
The Soviets banned books too, along with the Chinese Communist Party and the Pol Pot regime and pretty much everyone else who was terrible. Cuba’s communist regime has banned books, newspapers, radio channels, and heavily restricted access to the internet for its citizens. So, hey, Republicans, wokeness is communism but book banning isn’t? Make it make sense. It is literally another case of everything old is new again[.]
Reid argued that the parents concerned about what’s been going (and not going on, due to COVID-19) are fake: “[T]he great parent revolt is bankrolled by conservative organizations and think tanks and shaped by political operatives, who are controlling the puppet strings so that you think this is just about regular moms and dads advocating for their kids.”
Asking viewers to go deeper, she said the focus on education has been “about…riling up white voters” and “distracting” them because that’s “what modern Republican politics is all about” since it’s not “about governing.”
Instead, she said the right has been unfairly attacking and condemning Asians (and the Chinese specifically) and Jews: “[I]t’s about selling white grievance and rage, the same rage that produces attacks on Asian-Americans and Jewish people and on our Capitol. Rather than fight inflation, let’s howl over critical race theory. Instead COVID relief, let’s demonize China and mask and vaccines.”
“Rather than policy let’s give them anger, racialized anger to distract from the fact that people have hit the pandemic rock bottom, that they can’t afford a hospital visit or don’t have safe roads and clean drinking water or bridges that don’t fall under them,” she added.
Moving to her panel, former Obama U.S. Attorney and MSNBC analyst Joyce Vance argued the tens of millions on the right are “appeal[ing] to people’s worst instincts” with a Florida bill looking to, as per Vance, ban teaching of slavery.
Going to former Republican and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) adviser Kurt Bardella, Reid wondered if the right “care[s] that they’re taking their concentrated small electorate and enraging it in ways that become dangerous and drive people toward anti-social behavior, even violent behavior?”
Think about the irony of that one for a second. Joy Reid is accusing a group of people of incitement.
For his part, Bardella went full Leeroy Jenkins and said the media need to explicitly refer to the GOP as responsible for dirty air and water and high taxes (click “expand”):
[T]his is also a reason why the Republican Party is bending over backwards to try to limit who can participate in elections because they know that this way, this way ensures that their party will never grow. Their party’s going to only get smaller. You and I know when the playing field is equal, there’s more of us than there are of them. Well, they know that, too. That’s why they’re doing this whole thing in the first place and the representative was 100 percent right when he pointed out in the amazing speech that they’re doing this because they don’t want to talk about why there is income inequality. They don’t want to talk about why the quality of life isn’t going up for a large amount of people yet, people continue to vote for them. They don’t want to have that conversation. This is all magician, this is all the distraction, smoke and mirrors, so that people don’t realize that the reason why their standard of living isn’t going up, it’s because of Republican policies.
When your taxes are too high and billionaires are getting tax breaks, that’s because of Republicans. When you don’t have clean air, clean water, it’s because Republicans gutted regulations. Republicans are scared to death of engaging in those substantive issues. It’s why the President the other week in his press conference very pointedly pointed out what are Republicans for? And I’ll tell you, Joy, the media needs to step it up and do a lot better here. They need to understand that. What colors all of their rhetoric, what colors all of their opposition to overwhelmingly popular policies is race and not including that context in their coverage of things like infrastructure, Build Back Better, filibuster, Supreme Court, voting rights, not including that context is a disservice to millions of Americans.
At the end of the show, The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes denounced these parents as “snowflakes,” which is ironic considering his aversion to criticism and mentions of how he’s thrice married (click “expand”):
[T]he banning is an extraordinary sort of, you know, throwback. It does feel like we’re — we’re back in the 1950s here. And it does reflect the sort of — the contempt that just assumes that — that going after a couple of bad words in a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust is the way to — to really, you know, win support from the base.
I’m really also struck by the — the snowflakery of all of this. You know, the people who said, well, we don’t care about — we shouldn’t care about feelings. Apparently, they meant your feelings, but not their feelings, because they are very, very tender. And so to — to watch Republicans passing legislation in places like Texas saying, please do not say any words or teach us any facts that make us uncomfortable and they think that other folks are snowflakes? It’s a blizzard down there.
Reid comparing Republicans and school board parents to those that carried out the Great Leap Forward and the Holocaust was made possible thanks to the endorsement of advertisers such as Farmer’s Insurance, Flonase, and Life Alert. Follow the links to see their contact information at the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the relevant MSNBC transcript from January 28, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s The ReidOut
January 28, 2022
7:00 p.m. EasternJOY REID: We begin The ReidOut tonight with an American classic, The Catcher and the Rye, by the famous literary recluse J.D. Salinger. The book was published in 1951 introducing us to the funny yet troubled Holden Caufield, a prep school kid and anti-hero who’s disillusioned with society who has a thing against phonies in the adult world. Themes of angst and alienation are prominent in the book. But at its core, it’s a story about a teenager’s dramatic in difficult struggle with having to grow up. The Catcher and the Rye is also one of the most controversial novels in modern American history, a favorite target of the censorship crowd. The biggest reasons for the periodic sturm und drang are the books use of profanity and sexual references. It has also been disparaged as anti-white, anti-family values, immoral or even violent. It was first banned in Oklahoma in 1960 and then several more times after that, reaching a fever pitch during the Reagan era when books became a target of the so-called Moral Majority, the religious right’s national movement at the time. Here’s an NBC clip from 1981, the year President Reagan took office.
[NBC CLIP]
REID: Coincidentally, book burning and banning happened to be staples of fascism and communism. The Nazis did it, Hitler imposing ridged censorship on newspapers and burning all literature he considered dangerous. The Soviets banned books too, along with the Chinese Communist Party and the Pol Pot regime and pretty much everyone else who was terrible. Cuba’s communist regime has banned books, newspapers, radio channels, and heavily restricted access to the internet for its citizens. So, hey, Republicans, wokeness is communism but book banning isn’t? Make it make sense. It is literally another case of everything old is new again, because this exact tactic has hijacked present day American politics. Just like back in the ‘80s, the great parent revolt is bankrolled by conservative organizations and think tanks and shaped by political operatives, who are controlling the puppet strings so that you think this is just about regular moms and dads advocating for their kids. But strip off that veneer and it’s about so much more. It’s about getting up the Republican vote by riling up white voters. But it’s also about distracting those voters because distraction and slieght of hand is basically what modern Republican politics is all about. I mean, it sure ain’t about governing, it’s about selling white grievance and rage, the same rage that produces attacks on Asian-Americans and Jewish people and on our Capitol. Rather than fight inflation, let’s howl over critical race theory. Instead COVID relief, let’s demonize China and mask and vaccines. Rather than policy let’s give them anger, racialized anger to distract from the fact that people have hit the pandemic rock bottom, that they can’t afford a hospital visit or don’t have safe roads and clean drinking water or bridges that don’t fall under them.
(….)
7:08 p.m. Eastern
JOYCE VANCE: [T]hey’re willing to appeal to people’s worst instincts in order to lock up the vote and American democracy has to mean more than that. In the language of this Florida bill, which tries to prohibit teachers from teaching and look, let’s — let’s not put too fine of a point on it — the terms of the bill are neutral but this bill is really about teaching slavery. We know that from some of the comments that some of the legislators have made and the notion that you could learn about slavery in a meaningful way without feeling uncomfortable, what kind of an education would that be?
(….)
7:11 p.m. Eastern
REID: [I]n Texas, this attempt to target some 850 books that one Texas lawmaker has said it might make students, meaning white students, feel uneasy. There’s a theme to them. 62.4 percent of these books pertain to the LGBTQ community, plus community. 14.1 percent can pertain to sex education —
KURT BARDELLA: Umm hmm.
REID: — 8.3 percent pertain to race. There’s a — there’s a rhyme and a reason to this that is not different from the 1980s when I was in high school and to your thinking, as somebody who was a Republican and was on the strategic side and political side, do Republicans think that by doing this — do they understand they’re not expanding the electorate by doing this, right? My question is, do they care that they’re taking their concentrated small electorate and enraging it in ways that become dangerous and drive people toward anti-social behavior, even violent behavior?
KURT BARDELLA: No, they don’t, Joy and this is also a reason why the Republican Party is bending over backwards to try to limit who can participate in elections because they know that this way, this way ensures that their party will never grow. Their party’s going to only get smaller. You and I know when the playing field is equal, there’s more of us than there are of them. Well, they know that, too. That’s why they’re doing this whole thing in the first place and the representative was 100 percent right when he pointed out in the amazing speech that they’re doing this because they don’t want to talk about why there is income inequality. They don’t want to talk about why the quality of life isn’t going up for a large amount of people yet, people continue to vote for them. They don’t want to have that conversation. This is all magician, this is all the distraction, smoke and mirrors, so that people don’t realize that the reason why their standard of living isn’t going up, it’s because of Republican policies. When your taxes are too high and billionaires are getting tax breaks, that’s because of Republicans. When you don’t have clean air, clean water, it’s because Republicans gutted regulations. Republicans are scared to death of engaging in those substantive issues. It’s why the President the other week in his press conference very pointedly pointed out what are Republicans for? And I’ll tell you, Joy, the media needs to step it up and do a lot better here. They need to understand that. What colors all of their rhetoric, what colors all of their opposition to overwhelmingly popular policies is race and not including that context in their coverage of things like infrastructure, Build Back Better, filibuster, Supreme Court, voting rights, not including that context is a disservice to millions of Americans.
REID: Yeah, and — and money.
(….)
7:53 p.m. Eastern
CHARLIE SYKES: [T]he banning is an extraordinary sort of, you know, throwback. It does feel like we’re — we’re back in the 1950s here. And it does reflect the sort of — the contempt that just assumes that — that going after a couple of bad words in a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust is the way to — to really, you know, win support from the base. I’m really also —
REID: Yep.
SYKES: — struck by the — the snowflakery of all of this. You know, the people who said, well, we don’t care about — we shouldn’t care about feelings. Apparently, they meant your feelings, but not their feelings, because they are very, very tender. [LAUGHTER] And so to — to watch Republicans passing legislation in places like Texas saying, please do not say any words or teach us any facts that make us uncomfortable —
REID: Yeah.
SYKES: — and they think that other folks are snowflakes? It’s a blizzard down there.
REID: Yeah, they — I think they should all be in this position here, because I think they want us to all suckle them.
SYKES: Yeah.
REID: They’re just like babies.