Appearing on Friday's The ReidOut, Vanderbilt University professor and former MSNBC political analyst Michael Eric Dyson treated viewers to the kind of venomous trash talk that apparently qualifies as political analysis that said America suffers from an idolatry to whiteness and claimed that the GOP would have barred Jesus from being given a cup of water while he was dying on the cross.
Towards the end of yet another deranged, hyperbolic segment about Georgia's voter law, host Joy Reid asked Dyson about his recent meeting with President Joe Biden, and whether he thought the President would push for the Senate to get rid of the filibuster to help pass his agenda.
This led Dyson to hyperbolically respond by invoking Jesus two days before the start of Holy Week:
I think he's contemplating it seriously when he sees the consequences. What he needs to do is fill these busters with some fear of the government. These are the kind of people that would pass a law to keep Jesus from be -- getting a cup of water while he's dying on the cross.
Earlier in the segment, Reid asked Dyson to react to the Georgia law and so Dyson replied by insisting it was necessary to see it through the lens of "Jim Crow-ology."
That way, Dyson argued, one would realize that white, male Georgia Republicans see the Voting Rights Act as "merely an inconvenient interruption of white supremacist power" and they want to ensure through their perverted "white imagination" that African Americans would lose the desire "to exercise the franchise."
Dyson continued to hurl even more unvarnished, poisonous gaslighting of viewers to hate their fellow Americans:
This is Jim Crow, this is Jane Crow, this is their kids, this is the nesting of white supremacy. And if we're trying to pretend we don't know, this is the weaponization of conspiracy theory, and it now has come to the place where we find so reprehensible. And I end by saying this: Brian Kemp and Raffensberger and those, that crew, you fought against, you know, Donald Trump -- you wanted to get back in his good graces -- so, as you pointed out paradoxically, you undermine the very ostensible legitimacy you possess to defend yourself against him now to hand him the plate. The real religion -- the real politics in America is whiteness and whiteness unhinged.
Host Reid's predictable response was to agree: "Yeah, that is sad but true -- sad but true."
This episode of MSNBC's The ReidOut was sponsored in part by Legal Zoom. Their contact is linked. Let them know how you feel about them supporting such incendiary trash talk.
Transcript is below:
MSNBC's The ReidOut
March 26, 2021
7:10 p.m. EasternJOY REID: It does seem like there's two pieces to what they're doing. One is saying, "Republican voter, we know you're less than motivated because we lost these elections in Georgia, so we're going to motivate you by guaranteeing that you will win because if you don't like that black voters vote a lot, you can challenge their registration. If that doesn't work, we'll just put in a board and flip the election to what you want it. That feels like they're saying to those January 6th people who sieged the Capitol, "We'll make sure that you never have to ever experience losing again." That is what this feels like. And not just this state, but all over the country.
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: And to echo you, Joy, and to provide a coda, we will give you the symbolic -- the symbolism. We will arrest a black woman who is legitimately elected to represent voters in Georgia and, on January 6, we will allow you to storm the dome -- the most sacred space in civic America -- and allow you to have at will and do what you will. And so not only are we subordinating a woman who is legally designated as a legislator and then to subject her to criminal penalty, we will allow you to go free.
If that's not a chronology -- let's put it right -- it's a Jim Crow-nology. And when we do a Jim Crow-nology, we understand that the Voting Rights Act is merely an inconvenient interruption of white supremacist power. What we have here is mail-in voting, as in white males. And they are in for voting, but they are not in for anybody else voting. They want to restrict it every way they can. And look at the machinations -- the imagination it takes to try to figure out how to deny black people to vote. Black people have been quite literal. We want to exercise the franchise. Therefore, we want to march to the polls, and we want to pull that lever. Used to be dipple that chad. And white imagination has been -- has been galvanized in order to subvert it.
So this is nothing more -- I mean, President Biden is right. This is Jim Crow, this is Jane Crow, this is they kids [sic], this is the nesting of white supremacy. And if we're trying to pretend we don't know, this is the weaponization of conspiracy theory, and it now has come to the place where we find so reprehensible. And I end by saying this: Brian Kemp and Raffensberger and those, that -- that crew, you fought against, you know, Donald Trump -- you wanted to get back in his good graces -- so, as you pointed out paradoxically, you undermine the very ostensible legitimacy you possess to defend yourself against him now to hand him the plate. The real religion -- the real politics in America is whiteness and whiteness unhinged.
(...)
7:16 p.m. Eastern
REID: Very quickly, you met recently with President Biden, Michael Eric Dyson, with other historians. Do you think that Joe Biden is ready to do that -- to get rid of the filibuster? Very quickly, we're out of time, very much out of time.
DYSON: You know, I think he's contemplating it seriously when he sees the consequences. What he needs to do is fill these busters with some fear of the government. These are the kind of people who would pass a law to keep Jesus from begetting a cup of water while he's dying on the cross.
REID: Yeah, that is sad but true.
GEORGIA STATE REPRESENTATIVE ERICA THOMAS (D): You said it.
REID: Sad but true.
