Joy Reid is the latest to criticize Stephen A. Smith for his controversial comments targeting her and other prominent Black women.
What did Joy Reid say about Stephen A. Smith’s criticism of her and other Black women?
The former MSNBC anchor appeared on the latest episode of the Naked Sports podcast with Cari Champion, discussing her exit from the network in February and the criticism she received from Smith, who blamed her firing on low ratings. Reid then compared her numbers with those of Smith.
“He said I got fired for ratings, and I’m like, ‘Excuse me, sir. You got 100 million dollars for a show with half my ratings at my worst.’ I had to literally Google his numbers,” Reid said. “I’m like, ‘How many people listen to his show? Is it like 4 million people?’ Dude, that’s like average CNN. That’s not that high.”
Reid said her ratings and viewership are not the main issues with Smith. She believes he benefits from his remarks about Black women to appeal to white audiences.
“They’re paying you, not for your number, my friend. They’re paying you because you are willing to say the nasty things about Black people that they want to say,” Reid said. “You’re willing to take their denigration of Black women and put it in the mouth of a Negro. And because you’re willing to put the denigration of Black women in particular into a Negro’s mouth, you now think that ‘Oh, I must be a freaking political genius.’ But just be clear, you’re not being paid for your numbers, you’re being paid for what you’re willing to do to us for white people’s entertainment.”
Cari Champion and Michelle Beadle also called out Stephen A. Smith over his controversial comments
Over the past several months, Smith has criticized well-known Black women, including Michelle Obama, Cari Champion, Jemele Hill, Jasmine Crockett and Kamala Harris. In November, Champion and Michelle Beadle, who left ESPN in 2019, both shared their grievances against Smith on their respective social media platforms, according to Yahoo! Sports.
Beadle criticized Smith for several things, including his partnership with Papaya Gaming after the company was accused of false advertising and rigged games, as well as replacing her time slot on Mad Dog Radio for his Sirius XM radio show that launched in September. She also blamed ESPN for allowing Smith to “run rampant” and that the company “pays him a gazillion dollars to get a lot of stuff wrong and yell” on-air, per Yahoo! Sports.
Meanwhile, Champion, who co-hosted ESPN’s First Take alongside Smith and Skip Bayless from 2012 to 2015, responded to Beadle’s comments with her own video, calling out the Queens native for his treatment of Black women and asking whether he would react to Beadle the same way.
“But Beadle just came for you yet again, like she did when I worked at ESPN,” Champion said. “I wonder do you have that same smoke for her that you have for Jasmine Crockett, Michelle Obama, that you sometimes have for me and Jemele Hill.
“Do you have that same smoke? I’m sick of it. Keep the same energy and I call you and I root for… but you keep that same energy sir, for everybody,” she added.
Smith responded to Champion and Beadle’s comments in a November episode of his Straight Shooter podcast, stating that he had never known who Beadle was while separately denying the comments Champion made about him.
Stephen A. Smith responds to Dan Le Batard’s comments about him
In November, sportswriter Dan Le Batard commented on Beadle’s remarks about Smith, criticizing him for some of the things he has said and done in the past.
“A lot of people are going to enjoy that downfall because a lot of people don’t like the climb and don’t like many of the things that Stephen A. Smith has done,” Le Batard said, according to Awful Announcing. “I want to have the larger conversation about everything happening around Stephen A. Smith politically where he’s being used as a very useful tool by the right, but also profiting with great results on all the conquering that he wants to do, but bringing to his doorstep, fights that are much larger than the ones he was having when it was just sports.”
Smith responded, stating that he did not care what Le Batard and others have said about him and his work-related deals.
“I’m very aware of what’s going on, I just don’t care as much as you do, Dan Le Batard,” Smith said on an episode of his Sirius XM show, Straight Shooter, per Black Enterprise. “I don’t care as much as other people might care because guess what, I don’t feel the way that you feel, and I don’t share your politics.”