Well, that didn’t take long.
Shortly after MSNBC announced the most ironically named host in cable TV history — Joy Reid — was out at the network, Rachel Maddow came on air and named the real culprit: not the corporate shake-up, not ratings, but race.
“I will tell you, it is also unnerving to see that on a network where we’ve got two — count ’em — two non white hosts in prime time, both of our non-white hosts in prime time are losing their shows, as is Katie Fang on the weekend,” Maddow said in a dispirited rant-lite at the outset of her Monday show.
Several outlets reported that the final episode of Reid’s prime-time show, “The ReidOut,” would air this week.
It’s not entirely clear that the cancellation was necessarily an out-and-out firing, but it was pretty obvious from reports that for her to remain at all, if the option were on the table, would involve a radical demotion in responsibilities; to quote one-hit wonder Semisonic, it was basically the network saying, “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
What’s ironic about Maddow’s rant-let is that Reid is being replaced by not just one non-white person but three: According to The New York Times, a new panel show hosted by Alicia Menendez, Michael Steele, and Symone Sanders-Townsend will appear in Reid’s old time slot.
However, you do have to respect the race-hustle by the network’s highest-profile, mayonnaise-white host, particularly as it comes in the midst of a corporate shakeup at the cable network being supervised by the new president, Rebecca Kutler.
It was long known that significant changes were going to be made at MSNBC — if not in terms of the network’s ideological cant, which will remain firmly progressive if the shift is any indication.
Parent company Comcast is spinning its cable assets off, which doesn’t just mean that neither of the two corporations whose initials make up MSNBC’s name (Microsoft and NBC) are still directly involved in the network. It also means that, as a news channel, it won’t have access to the very considerable resources of NBC News.
Maddow went on to say that you’re going to be seeing new anchors, obviously, “but one thing you cannot necessarily see is that the people who get our shows on the air, they are really being put through the wringer.
“Dozens of producers and staffers, including some who are among the most experienced and most talented and most specialist producers in the building, are facing being laid off. They’re being invited to reapply for new jobs,” she continued.
“That has never happened at this scale in this way before when it comes to programming changes, presumably because it’s not the right way to treat people and it’s inefficient and it’s unnecessary and it kind of drops the bottom out of whether or not people feel like this is a good place to work, and so we don’t generally do things that way.”
Guess it’s too late to tell them to learn to code.
Anyway, here’s a highly paid white Karen basically telling her audience of frothing progressives that, if Kutler and Co. make more significant changes, it’s because they’re all perfidious covert racists. Which is why, um, they took a job at restructuring MSNBC in the same mold it’s already in, just slightly more sustainable and with more reliable hosts. Sure. Makes sense:
Wow. Rachel Maddow just did her MSNBC show and ripped MSNBC management for firing Joy Reid. She even implied that they were racist for firing multiple minority hosts.
If you were management, would you allow an employee to imply that you’re a racist? ????pic.twitter.com/nIYGS729kv
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) February 25, 2025
Oh, and by the way, she wasn’t the only one melting down after the decision. Naturally, Joy Reid cut a lachrymose clip — although she could be forgiven, given that she was just given the boot:
Joy Reid breaks down sobbing while addressing being fired from MSNBC:
“My show had value!” pic.twitter.com/T1dOabN7DT
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 24, 2025
“My show had value,” she insisted. “Where I land is that … I felt that I went hard on so many issues, whether it was the Black Lives Matter issues of a young baby, or a mom or dad that was killed, or um, when we opened up people’s eyes to the fact that Asian Americans were being targeted and not just black folks, that or went hard for immigrants who’ve done nothing but come to this country.”
Which can be done by any podcaster with a MacBook and a decent camera these days. And that’s probably not what we’ll remember her for, anyway. Instead, this will likely be our parting impression of Joy Reid’s time at MSNBC, from election night:
MSNBC’s Joy Reid says a Trump election has given the Israelis the green light to carry out “a complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza”:
“Nobody wants Donald Trump more to be president than Bibi Netanyahu, who is backed by a far-right coalition that would like to clear-cut Gaza that… pic.twitter.com/U7uQqtV636
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) November 6, 2024
UNHINGED: MSNBC’s Joy Reid claims that Kamala Harris auditioned for president “flawlessly” and ran a “perfect campaign.”
Seriously. She actually said that. pic.twitter.com/DmSyPc1pEd
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) November 6, 2024
Joy Reid is going to get sent to a mental institution.
She has completely gone off her rocker. pic.twitter.com/7ru4xgkwMX
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) November 6, 2024
Now cracks an ignoble nut. Goodnight, sweet princess, and may flights of nurses sing you to a long rest, preferably inpatient.
But remember: She got fired because she was black, not because she was crazy and unwatchable and the face of the network’s dysfunction. Right. That’s the ticket, Rachel.
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