Any good lawyer will tell you that you should never ask a question in public when you don’t already know the answer. Thank heavens that MSNBC’s Joy Reid isn’t a lawyer, much less a good one.
Liberal activist? Sure. Loose-lipped firebrand who once had the audacity to claim that archived versions of her blog were hacked to include homophobic comments about then-Republican Florida Gov. Charlie Crist? Absolutely. (There was no evidence to back that up, which Reid herself admitted.)
Malapropist extraordinaire who once alleged, on air, that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp “bioengineered” a white electorate to beat Stacey Abrams in the 2018 gubernatorial race? Totally.
But a lawyer? No, not even a Lionel Hutz-level hack jurist. And thank ye heavens — because Reid’s guest on her show Friday was Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice. In the interview, Reid asked the conservative activist why she wanted to ban books like “All Boys Aren’t Blue” from public school libraries.
Justice’s response it essence was: Because the book involves rape, incest, pedophilia and sex toys. Yeah, a trial lawyer might have seen that one coming. It wasn’t the last time Joy and her team probably wished they’d done some case prep, either.
Reid began the interview by playing a clip of Justice saying that parental rights involved “direct[ing] the upbringing of their children,” including “their values, education, their morals, their religious and character training.”
She then asked if she still believed in this definition.
“Yes, it’s a God-given right to direct the upbringing of your children,” Justice responded.
A-ha! Reid pounced! “Do LGBTQ parents and parents of LGBT kids, do they have parental rights?”
Should sexual content be banned from school libraries for young students?
“Every parent,” Justice responded. “Every parent has the fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their kids.”
… oh. That didn’t quite go as planned.
On to the next point, which is that a Washington Post report in May found that, of over 1,000 book challenges the Post looked at for the 2021-22 school year, the majority were filed by only 11 individuals filed them and each individual had filed 10 or more challenges. These “serial filers” were responsible for 60 percent of the filings nationwide.
Similar results were reported in Florida in an August by the Tampa Bay Times, which found that only two individuals, a father in Clay County and a high school teacher in Escambia County, had filed about 600 out of about 1,100 complaints filed since July 2022.
“Why should 13 people get to decide what books tens of thousands of children get to read?” Reid asked.
“Well, I’m thinking it’s probably because those 13 people saw what some of the content was in the books,” Justice said. “Explicit, graphic sexual content — and I’m happy to talk about some of that content if you would like to.”
Reid did not: “Well, this is the question again — the books that are being banned, I want to give you …”
“No books are being banned,” Justice shot back. “I want to be clear, no one is banning books. Write the book, publish the book, put it in a public library. We’re talking about a public school library.
“Children don’t have unfettered access to the internet at school,” she continued. “I did a records request and I wanted to see what kind of internet sites are banned in schools. If we’re going to talk about banning, and the subject matter in the books that moms are concerned about, they’re the same things that kids don’t have access to on the internet.
“So it just feels very hypocritical, right? Why is no one out there protesting for, you know, ‘Free the internet in schools!’?”
Reid didn’t bother to answer this question. She’s no lawyer, but not even Clarence Darrow could defend Pornhub in public school classrooms.
Instead, she moved onto another tired feint: Conservatives aren’t banning pornographic graphic novels which, in one case, the author specifically stated was not for children from public school libraries, they were also banning controversial classics.
Toni Morrison’s “Beloved.” Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five.” “The Diary of Anne Frank.” Judy Blume. Books about the civil rights movement. One gets a tear in one’s eye thinking about the brave liberals keeping the paleoconservative philistines from starting a pyre of classic works outside each and every public school in the nation.
Oh yeah, and they were trying to ban “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and “Gender Queer,” the two pieces of pornographic trash that have drawn the most complaints. But, ahem, forget about those, let’s move on. Kurt Vonnegut! Toni Morrison! Anne Frank! Have you no shame, Tiffany Justice?
As Justice pointed out, these requests weren’t made by Moms for Liberty at a national level, but merely local chapters — over which they have no influence. Reid countered that conservative activists were simply using software to find objectionable words and advocate for books being taken out of school libraries without even knowing what was in them.
“The question I’m asking is, what is the expertise that you have — and other Moms for Liberty advocates have — to decide that a book, an award-winning book like ‘All Boys Aren’t Blue,’ isn’t appropriate for students to read?” Reid asked.
Remember that maxim about not asking a question you don’t know the answer to? Yeah, here’s where Reid probably started regretting not, at least, taking the LSATs:
WARNING: The following video contains graphic language that some viewers will find offensive.
Moms for Liberty co-founder shuts down Joy Reid who tries to make the case for why a book about pedophilia should be allowed in public schools:
“Tell me what the content around the strap-on dildo or the rape of a minor child by a teacher” should be allowed in schools. pic.twitter.com/LRQ0wUBrVJ
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) January 20, 2024
“What a tragic story of a young man who is anally raped by his adult family members,” Justice responded. “You have incest, rape, pedophilia … in what context is a strap-on dildo acceptable for public school? That’s my question to you. Tell me what the context around the strap-on dildo or the rape of a minor child by a teacher — we’re talking about a public school.”
Reid then tried a final gotcha by asking Justice what the name of the main character in “All Boys Aren’t Blue” was. Justice answered correctly. Nice job, Joy. Nevertheless, she persisted; Reid then went on to claim that, after all this, Justice was still “not an expert in this book.”
“I don’t have to be an expert to know dildos are not for public school,” Justice said.
QED.
The full interview, which doesn’t look much better for Reid, is here:
Cable news, even at the best of times, can devolve into two people who are talking past each other. It’s generally infuriating, not elucidating. This, however, managed to be a wonderful anomaly.
Reid’s talk of “book bans” — language redolent of the days when the owners of San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore could get hauled into court on obscenity charges for selling Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” — is bunkum, and she knows it is. However, she also knows that conjuring images of those dark times for the far-left can and has been used to successfully smuggle filth into public school libraries.
Reid expected to have that debate on those terms, painting Moms for Liberty as an organization diametrically opposed to the rights of liberal parents. From the very first moment, she was stymied — and was then put in a position where she was forced to defend foisting pornography on children while tiptoeing around the lewd squalor that made it indefensible.
Even good lawyers would have a hard time wallpapering over this smut. But at least they would have known not to stumble into the quagmire Reid did by sticking to questions they knew the answer to.
