As we’re in the midst of the Advent season, let’s all remember Joy Reid, the gift that keeps on giving. Reid, in her role as an MSNBC host...
As we’re in the midst of the Advent season, let’s all remember Joy Reid, the gift that keeps on giving.
Reid, in her role as an MSNBC host and cultural ambulance chaser, can be counted on for the lowest-common-denominator hot take in almost any situation. Who else would call for a “Trump crimes commission” on the air or ask Pete Buttigieg if the use of the word “heartland” is a racist dog whistle?
In her latest flight of ridiculousness, Reid all but straight-out called Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk a racist in a rant about his use of the term “Karen” to describe Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Warren had complained that Musk won Time’s “Person of the Year” award because, according to her, he hadn’t paid enough taxes.
“Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else,” the senator said in a tweet Monday.
Never mind that Time’s “Person of the Year” award doesn’t necessarily mean what people think it does; it denotes the year’s biggest newsmaker, even if the individual has made news for negative reasons. (One assumes Adolf Hitler didn’t get named “Man of the Year” in 1938 for contributions to world peace — the same way the Ayatollah Khomenei’s 1979 naming and Vladimir Putin’s 2007 award didn’t come because of their services to humanity.)
Musk went viral by responding to Warren in a follow-up tweet, saying, “[I]f you opened your eyes for 2 seconds, you would realize I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year.”
“Don’t spend it all at once … oh wait you did already,” he added.
“You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend’s angry Mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason,” Musk said in a later tweet. “Please don’t call the manager on me, Senator Karen.”
This one aggrieved Reid, who said on her Wednesday show that Musk had “misappropriated” the use of “Karen” — slang for a certain breed of white woman who’s always calling the manager — from “black vernacular for misogynistic purposes.”
“Elon wasn’t happy, so he did what he always did and stomped his little feet and insulted Senator Warren, calling her an angry mom and referring to her as ‘Senator Karen,'” Reid said.
The reason Warren’s insult to Musk wasn’t really an insult was that an investigation from ProPublica “found that in 2018, Musk paid nothing in federal income taxes and less than $70,000 in 2015 and 2017.”
As Musk told tech columnist Kara Swisher in September, according to financial website Benzinga, this is “misleading stuff” since it only deals with his personal taxes and he doesn’t draw a salary from his companies.
“I do have stock options,” he said, adding, “Just before my stock options expire, I am forced to exercise and my tax rate is 53 percent and it’s not particularly low.”
But enough about that, because why would Reid attempt to crucify Musk on the facts when she can just as easily imply he’s a bigot?
“So for so many reasons — being a freeloader and a selfish and disrespectful one, and for misappropriating black vernacular for misogynistic purposes — Elon Musk is the absolute worst,” Reid said.
I dunno — have you checked any mirrors lately, Joy?
In case this wasn’t bad enough, Reid also had Senator Karen — er, Warren on to talk about how “the part that makes me really angry about this is on behalf of every public school teacher, every waitress, every computer programmer, every street cleaner who actually paid taxes, and that means they paid more than Elon Musk did in federal income taxes.”
You can break out your two-inch Stradivarius and start playing the world’s tiniest violin for teachers and street cleaners at 2:30 in the MSNBC video:
Rather hilariously, Senator Karen talked about how Musk is the one with a “thin skin.”
The only people who seem truly offended here, however, are both on screen.
Musk had the last laugh on this one, responding to a Daily Caller reporter’s retweet of the video with this bon mot: “(Lack of) Joy Reid is a lobbyist for Sen Karen.”
As for Reid, be thankful that she continues to gift us with her unique presence. Who else, after all, so thoroughly represents what’s wrong with MSNBC in one convenient package?
“Karen” is, of course, in wide cultural usage by everyone. Teachers use the word. Everyone on your child’s playground uses it. So does everyone in the office and everyone still commuting via Zoom. Every Karen has doubtlessly called another person a Karen at this point. People named Karen use it and then laugh nervously to see if anyone got the joke.
That’s not “misappropriating black vernacular for misogynistic purposes.”
It’s noting that Elizabeth Warren is a noisy Karen whenever a capitalist entrepreneur is feted for something other than insisting other capitalist entrepreneurs pay 85 percent marginal tax rate.
Anybody who gets huffy over the fact Musk called Warren a Karen is a … well, you can probably guess.
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