WASHINGTON, D.C., October 9, 2022 – I am a huge, huge fan of The ReidOut with Joy Reid, The Cross Connection with Tiffany Cross, and The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart, all of which are news-based shows on MSNBC, the most addictive television cable channel for “news junkies” like myself.
As a veteran journalist from The Bahamas, who relocated to Washington, D.C., in 1975, my main sources of daily news when I moved to Washington were The Washington Post; WRC-TV (Channel 4), with anchors Jim Vance and Doreen Gentzler; and the CBS Evening News with anchor Walter Cronkite.
Over the years, the decline in newspaper readership and remarkable technological advancements, gave birth to an increased range of news sources in the 1990s, including the founding of MSNBC and its website “in 1996 under a partnership between Microsoft and General Electric’s NBC unit, hence the network’s naming,” according to information gleaned from the Internet.
It was in 1996 that I initially returned to The Bahamas “permanently” after living in Washington, D.C., for 21 years. Having formerly established myself as one of the leading journalists in The Bahamas – which included a one-year journalistic training program with the London Evening Standard (1968 – 1969) – on my return to The Bahamas, I became Editor of The Freeport News in Grand Bahama and later transferred to Nassau as Editor of The Nassau Guardian, one of The Bahamas’ leading newspapers.
In my office in both Freeport and Nassau, the television was “permanently” locked on MSNBC throughout the day; hence, the reason why I am still a die-hard fan, having returned to D.C. in 2013 in a diplomatic capacity as Press, Cultural Affairs, and Information Manager at The Embassy of The Bahamas. Of course, after the change of government in The Bahamas in May of 2017, my diplomatic credentials were revoked; however, as a naturalized American citizen since September of 1982, I decided to remain in D.C. rather than return to The Bahamas.
Because of the mismanagement of the country by the new Free National Movement (FNM) government — politically, economically and in other areas of good governance – the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP), the political party that I support in The Bahamas, won the general election held on September 16, 2021, by a landslide, and I am back in a diplomatic capacity as press consultant at the Bahamas Embassy.
In addition to being an avid fan of MSNBC, I also enjoy watching certain game shows, and when The ReidOut replaced Chris Matthews in the 7 p.m. weeknight timeslot, I had a difficult decision to make because “Let’s Make A Deal” and “Jeopardy” are also aired on between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. on ABC. Suffice it to say, I am no longer as dedicated a weeknight fan of “Let’s Make A Deal” and “Jeopardy” as I used to be. Depending on what Joy and her guest are discussing at the time, I now occasionally switch to ABC for a quick update on the game shows, but I am always back with Joy to see WHO WON THE WEEK.
I became a dyed-in-the-wool Joy Reid fan when she hosted The Joy Reid Show on MSNBC on Saturday and Sunday mornings. On one occasion I recall writing a strong letter as Press, Cultural and Information Manager at the Bahamas Embassy protesting a remark made Malcolm Nance linking The Bahamas to an issue related to something that took place in Trinidad and Tobago.
It is true that many Americans tend to politically group all the former British colonies in the Caribbean together as one, and given this fact, I ordinarily would not have written such a letter, but Malcolm Nance is one of the most knowledgeable media commentators on terrorism, intelligence and insurgency and I could not allow his remarks wrongly implicating The Bahamas to go unchallenged. However, I never got a respons e from the producers of The Joy Reid Show.
When Joy Reid took over the daily 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. time slot on MSNBC, I thought that Tiffany Cross and Jonathan Capehart were excellent choices to replace her on Saturday and Sunday mornings, respectively. They have proven that I was correct, and I seldom miss their shows.
This morning’s “The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart” (October 9) was exceptionally good and, as usual, it allowed Capehart, an Associate Editor at The Washington Post, to demonstrate his superb journalistic skills during his interviews.
Capehart’s interview with Wes Moore, the Democratic Party candidate for Governor of Maryland, revealed that Moore has strong ancestral roots in Jamaica. A U.S. veteran, author, entrepreneur and television producer, Moore would be the first African-American governor of Maryland if elected.
Moore was born in Takoma Park, Maryland. His father was William Westley Moore Jr., a broadcast news journalist, and mother Joy Thomas Moore was the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and also a media professional
His father died on April 16, 1982, when Moore was nearly four years old, and in the summer of 1984, his mother took him and his two sisters to live in the Bronx, New York, with their grandparents. His grandfather, Rev. Dr. James Thomas, a Jamaican immigrant, was the first Black minister in the history of the Dutch Reformed Church. His grandmother, Winell Thomas, was a Cuban who moved to Jamaica before immigrating to the United States and was a retired school teacher.
“In 1998 and 1999, Moore interned for Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke. He later became involved with the March of Dimes before serving in the Army. Moore later worked at Deutsche Bank in Manhattan and as an investment banker at Citibank from 2007 to 2012 while living in Jersey City, New Jersey.[22] He also interned at the United States Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Tom Ridge,” according to Wikipedia.
After leaving the military, Moore founded BridgeEdU, a social enterprise dedicated to helping students in their transitions to the freshman year of college. Students participating in BridgeEdU paid $500 into the program with varying fees. Upon becoming CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation, Moore took a lesser role in BridgeEdU as the organization’s chairman. BridgeEdU was acquired by student financial services company Edquity in 2019. A Baltimore Banner interview with former BridgeEdU students found that the program supported them in their first year, helping them to progress toward graduation.
In 2010, Moore founded his own company, Omari Productions, to create content for networks such as the Oprah Winfrey Network, PBS, HBO, and NBC. In May 2014, Moore produced the three-part PBS series Coming Back with Wes Moore, which followed and celebrated the lives and experiences of returning veterans.
In September 2016, Moore produced All the Difference, a PBS documentary that followed the lives of two young African-American men from the South Side of Chicago from high school through college and beyond. Later that month, Moore launched Future City, an interview-based talk show that explored best practices used to solve problems in other American cities and examined how those same ideas could be applied to Baltimore, with Baltimore’s WYPR station.
From June 2017 until May 2021, Moore was CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organization that attempts to alleviate problems caused by poverty in New York City. The foundation combines investment principles and philanthropy to assist programs that target poverty in New York City.
In March 2020, Moore and former Baltimore Sun education reporter Erica L. Green wrote Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City, which explores the 2015 Baltimore protests from the perspectives of eight Baltimoreans who experienced it on the frontlines. These individuals included: Marc Partee, a former major in the Baltimore Police Department; activist Tawanda Jones, the sister of Tyrone West; Baltimore Orioles owner John P. Angelos; attorney Billy Murphy Jr., who represented the family of Freddie Gray; Greg Butler, a former basketball star who was arrested for obstructing firefighters during the uprising; state Delegate Nick Mosby; Anthony Williams, the operator of the Shake and Bake Family Fun Center; and public defender Jenny Egan.
With such a background, it’s not surprising that Moore is leading his Republican nominee for Governor, Dan Cox by 60-to-20, in recent polls as revealed during his interview with Jonathan Capehart. It’s worth noting that Cox has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump, but not by popular Maryland two-term Governor Larry Hogan.
Of course, Jamaica has a rich history of individuals with strong ancestral backgrounds in that country making major contributions to the United States politically – like current Vice President Kamala Harris and the late General Colin Powell, who had a long and distinguished career in the military and was U.S. Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005.
