Monday, July 13, 2020

Oh, Joy-Ann!

MSNBC just made it official: Joy-Ann Reid, usually referred to simply as Joy Reid, is taking over Chris Matthews' old weeknight time slot permanently.  Her new program, punningly named "The Reidout," premieres July 20.
I won't be watching of course, as I have had a problem with Reid ever since I heard that she questioned Florida politician Charlie Crist's integrity over his sexual orientation in a mocking matter on a blog and deflected blame for it to hackers, probably the most implausible explanation for incriminating prose since . . . since . . . well, memory of a similar incident fails me, but you can read what I said about it here.  I used to like Reid, as I said before, but her political-correctness spiel and her smugness wore thin over time, and now it's almost threadbare.
When the press noted that Reid was the first black woman to host a show on MSNBC, I was wondering, "Why this black woman?" - for the reasons above. If they wanted a black woman to helm the 7:00 PM Eastern slot, couldn't they have tried to steal away Abby Phillip from CNN?  (My mother wanted to see Ali Velshi get the time slot.)  But it is what it is, and if I watch cable news at all in that hour, CNN's Erin Burnett is my only recourse.   
As for Reid's two-hour weekend morning program, "AM Joy," that's being phased out in favor of her new weeknight gig, with no indication as to who will take over that two-hour time slot.  I vote for Steve Kornacki.  Maybe it's important for someone like Reid to look at the news from a perspective involving race and politics, but we need Steve to look at the news - especially politics - through his expertise with numbers.  (As for Ali Velshi, he has an earlier two-hour weekend time slot.)  As Trump and Biden try to pin down their bases and look for swing votes in what promises to be a tough presidential election campaign, and as COVID-19 will likely ravage the nation long after the last ballot is counted, we need a numbers guy like Kornacki, whom I would have preferred to see replaced Matthews on weeknights, to have a show of his own.  Maybe not for two whole hours, but we certainly need him.
As for the loss of Matthews back in March, I must admit I'm already missing his Winston Churchill references.  

1 comment:

Steve said...

UPDATE: "AM Joy," it turns out, is remaining on the air, and she apparently doesn't want to give it up. MSNBC viewers now have the (dis)pleasure of seeing her for nine hours a week.