Jingle Bells Gets the Joy Reid Treatment: Now It's Racist, Because Why Not Ruin Christmas?

Look, if there's one thing we've learned over the years, it's that nothing says "holiday spirit" quite like a former cable news host dredging up century-and-a-half-old minstrel show trivia to declare war on a tune that's been jingling bells since before the Civil War. Enter Joy Reid, the ex-MSNBC personality who parted ways with "The ReidOut" earlier this year, timing that, let's be honest, feels like a gift to anyone tired of prime-time grievance theater. 

She's got 1.3 million Instagran followers hanging on her every biased repost, and this week, she decided to drop a Yuletide bombshell: "Jingle Bells" isn't just a sleigh ride classic; it's a covert Confederate dog whistle mocking Black folks.

The clip she shared, now going viral faster than fruitcake at a family gathering, features some guy decked out in a Santa hat and ugly Christmas sweater, eyeballing a plaque in Medford, Massachusetts, where James Lord Pierpont supposedly penned the ditty back in 1857. "This is where a racist Confederate soldier wrote ‘Jingle Bells’ to make fun of Black people," blares the on-screen caption, like a Black Friday sale sign for outrage. 

The video piles on: Pierpont was broke, so he whipped up the original "One Horse Open Sleigh" for minstrel gigs where white actors in blackface lampooned Black people fumbling through winter frolics. Oh, and get this—Pierpont later ditched his abolitionist kin up North to fight for the Stars and Bars, cranking out pro-slavery anthems on the side.

Reid, never one to let a good grievance go unamplified, slapped her own caption on it: "Lord have mercy." That's her way of saying, "See? Even Santa's got skeletons in the sleigh." The video name-drops a 2017 Cambridge University Press paper, "The Story I Must Tell: ‘Jingle Bells’ in the Minstrel Repertoire," where author Kyna Hamill observes, "The legacy of ‘Jingle Bells’ is, as we shall see, a prime example of a common misreading of much popular music from the nineteenth century." Hamill adds, "Its blackface and racist origins have been subtly and systematically removed from its history."

Fair enough; history's messy, and minstrelsy was a vile stain on 19th-century pop culture. But here's the kicker, and it's a big one: Hamill herself has been pushing back hard against this exact spin for years. Back in 2017, she told the Boston Herald flat-out, "I never said it was racist now," stressing that her work zeros in on the song's performance history and origins, not some grand verdict on Pierpont's authorial intent or a call to cancel carols. She's not out here auditioning for the Grinch; she's a theater historian unpacking how tunes like this got sanitized over time. Yet here we are, 2025, with Reid's repost breathing fresh life into the distortion, turning academic nuance into social media napalm, because everything in Joy's joyless mind is racist if you can think it so.

Over on Fox's "Outnumbered," panel treated Reid's share like the latest front in the endless culture skirmish. And the X-verse is lit up like a Christmas tree on fire, with people blasting out parodies ("Jingle bells, Joy Reid smells...") and eye-rolls about how this is peak "race-baiting rhetoric" from a woman who seems constitutionally incapable of spotting a silver lining without first hunting for the tarnish. Her allegiance bias in all her reporting over the years is obvious as she sees racism in every story.

At the end of the day, if we're cherry-picking 1850s sheet music to torch holiday playlists, what's next, banning "Rudolph" for bullying the differently nosed? 

Reid's got her lane, and it's paved with perpetual victimhood, but maybe, just maybe, we can let "Jingle Bells" jingle on without the scarlet letter. After all, the real horror show isn't American history, it's pretending every old lyric is a personal attack on the present. 

Dashing through the snow with a little less sanctimony? Now that would be music to anyone's ears.

If you like Brain Flushings and want to Buy Me a Coffee, I would appreciate it, as it supports my work. Obviously, there is no pressure but I certainly wouldn't stop you.

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Boston Mayor blasted for sending list of her critics to police

Boston's Democrat and comrade Mayor Michelle Wu, whose most significant accomplishment was being born Asian American, is facing criticism from conservatives for her Orwellian/"Nixonian" tactics. Her administration has come clean and admitted to creating a list of her biggest critics and providing those names to local authorities.

"The list was made in response to a request from the Boston Police Department after the Mayor had been harassed and physically intimidated by individuals for several months outside her home, at city functions such as the annual neighborhood parks coffee hours, and at other public events," Wu spokesman Ricardo ["Little Ricky"] Patron said in a statement to the Boston Herald.

The acknowledgment by her staff that it had compiled the list came after it was uncovered in an email obtained through a public records request by Wu's opponents, the outlet noted. It is not clear if her opponent is also on the list, but it's very likely.

The tactics used by the administration,  raise concern over whether Wu and her administration are attempting to silence or intimidate her critics, many of whom have protested outside of her home, like the left did outside the homes of SCOTUS justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. 

"The request (from police) came after many of the individuals on the list repeatedly impeded the Dorchester Day Parade to harass Mayor Wu and her family and staff, yelling through megaphones at her and her children for nearly ninety minutes as they marched in the parade despite being asked by parade organizers to leave the parade route," Little Ricky said, according to the Herald.

The Herald reported that Wu's actions drew comparisons from some critics to the late President Richard Nixon, who was famous for compiling lists of political opponents. It is also reminiscent of banana republics--the kind that doesn't sell clothing, and the lists the IRS and FBI have compiled against conservatives.

Wu aides Tiffany Chu and Brianna Millor were also cc'd on the email, which was sent after protests at the mayor's home in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston last year, after which an ordinance was passed in Boston prohibiting protests outside of the Democrat mayor's home during certain hours, but not outside the homes of Republican officials as far as we know.

Wu was sworn in on November 2018. She is a staunch advocate of the socialist "Green New Deal" and as mayor signed an ordinance divesting companies in the city that derive more than 15% of their revenue from fossil fuels, tobacco products, or prison facilities [where, ironically, many in politics belong]. 

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Black folks skeptical over Omarosa's verbiage against Trump

You can't swing a dead puffin without hitting a newspaper or magazine that doesn't have at least one piece about Omarosa Manigault Newman. She's the former "Apprentice" villain who was fired three times by Trump and was rehired by him four times--the last being after he became President.

According to the left-leaning Associated Press, black folks just don't buy into Omarosa's claim that President Trump used the bad word for "Negro" or the "N" word as it is often called. And if the AP is making this claim, you just might know it's true.

The AP says the fact that Newman stayed with Trump for over ten years makes her "deeply unpopular with African-Americans who see her as a sellout for aligning herself with a president who has hurled one insult after another at black people."

Her falling out with Trump and her decision to call him a racist as she sells her new book--and in turn, his calling her a "dog"--have not been enough for many African-Americans to invite her back to the family picnic.

Too little, too late, many said.

"Her tell-all mea culpa won't win her any brownie points with most blacks," said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, author of the book 'Why Black Lives Do Matter.' "Their loathing of Omarosa is virtually frozen in stone. She's still roundly lambasted as a two-bit opportunist, a racial sellout and an ego driven hustler."

Few in the black community immediately rushed to defend Manigault Newman after she wrote a book entitled "Unhinged" about her time in the White House. It paints a damning picture of Trump, claiming without evidence that tapes exist of him using the N-word as he filmed "The Apprentice" reality series, on which she co-starred.

She has since stepped up her attacks on Trump as she promotes her book, telling The Associated Press on Tuesday that the president is "a racist, a misogynist, a bigot."

"I want to see this nation united as opposed to divided," she said. "I don't want to see a race war, as Donald Trump does."

The only war the future may hold involving race, is the race between black unemployed folks to fill out a job application faster than their competition. There has been an increase of 700,000 jobs for blacks alone since Trump took office. This is about three times as many jobs than Obama created in his entire presidency. This is now the lowest black unemployment in American history.

Puffin swinging

The Boston Herald wrote that Trump is "making life better for black Americans everywhere you look while his predecessor fumbled."

Community organizers don't "fumble," they bs.

According to Rasmussen, black support for Trump has risen to 31 percent. That's up by 13 percentage points since last year.

Omarosa needs to get together with Maxine Waters and take to the streets. There she can hawk her novel.




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