MSNBC's talking head David Shuster said on-air of Chelsea Clinton's role in campaigning for her mother: "But doesn't it seem like Chelsea's sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?"
Could David Shuster be any more unprofessional? Does he not realize that he's talking about the daughter of a woman who is the first female candidate to be vying for commander in chief? ... Hey, but it's just about Hillary's kid, so she's fair game, as is all things anti-Clinton. Evidently Shuster has decided to channel Chris Matthews.
We all know MSNBC is in the tank for Obama. But this is indefensible. Shuster built up quite a reserve during the Libby trial. But this frat boy, anti-Clinton wingnut channeling tirade targeting Chelsea Clinton has proven that he's not up to the job or the position to which MSNBC has bestowed on him. ...
It's one thing that MSNBC attacks Hillary Clinton in every show on MSNBC, while building her male opponent up. But minus Dan Abrams, with "Tucker" at least allowing pro-Clinton people on the set, which is more than you can say for Keith Olbermann these days, there is no positive reporting whatsoever on Clinton. But Shuster's latest behavior is not only unprofessional and unethical, but beyond all common decency.
The really sad part is that because of something in the air at MSNBC, David Shuster thought he could get away with it.
That the self-important men on MSNBC, to include Chris Matthews, and now David Shuster, don't understand that by attacking Chelsea Clinton in this way they are attacking all women, shows you the lengths that our media will go to destroy Hillary Clinton, doing everything they can to bring her down to a pimp level politician, even at the cost of using her daughter to do it.
I can't wait to see what Bob "the Daily Howler" Somerby will have to say about this. But this is only an outlier for the Establishment media because previously they've left trashing Chelsea to OxyContin radio. But this kind of stupid, nasty, goofy conduct is standard operating procedure for our Big Pundits. And it's getting steadily worse, not better.
Our Establishment press is seriously, big-time dysfunctional.
The small-minded and cold-hearted man delivered a classic slimy non-apology apology on 02/08:
You know how we ran this clip of women from The View; Chelsea Clinton had called them. Last night on Tucker's show we ran the same clip, and out of that I said a lot of things about Chelsea. I praised her and said Americans should be proud of her. I know Mike Huckabee has praised the Clintons for how they've raised her. The fact of the matter is all of us, everybody loved Chelsea Clinton. We also talked about the fact that Chelsea Clinton, as the campaign has acknowledged, she's making calls to these super-delegates to help her mom get the nomination, which can be the unseemly side of politics. Last night I used a phrase, some slang about her efforts. I didn't think that people would take it literally, but some people have, and to the extent that people feel I was being perjorative about the actions of Chelsea Clinton making these phone calls, to the extent that people feel I was being perjorative, I apologize for that. I should have seen people would see it that way. I'm sorry. (my emphasis)
To state the obvious: An actual apology would be something along the lines of "I said something very inapproprriate. I'm sorry." Someone in his position with a tiny bit of style would have followed it up with a letter or phone call to apologize directly to the person he insulted. But people with that kind of class apparently find it hard to make the cut in the competition to be part of the punditocracy.
But saying, "to the extent that people feel I was being perjorative, I apologize for that", is not an apology. It's a sneer. Short version: Anyone who thinks this was offensive is a jerk. I'm sorry some people are jerks."
But the Clinton campaign is using this to jam the jerks at MSNBC over their general malpractice as political reporters and commentators: Hillary Campaign Goes To War With MSNBC Over Chelsea "Pimp" Comment by Greg Sargent, TPM Election Central 02/08/08. I've been saying here for some time that one of Clinton's biggest assets as Democratic Presidential nominee would be that she knows the mainstream press is blatantly hostile to her and that she will be willing to fight them over it, which Obama would also have to do if he is the nominee. (The Big Pundits admiration for Obama will disintegrate at approximately the exact moment when it becomes clear he has the delegates to win.) Sargent reports:
This is really something. The Hillary campaign has just gone to war with MSNBC, dispatching a top Hillary adviser to launch a lacerating attack on the network on a conference call with reporters moments ago.
On the call, top Hillary adviser Howard Wolfson suggested that there's a "pattern" of reprehensible comments by MSNBC personalities, and said outright that the Hillary campaign could no longer "envision a scenario where we would debate on that network given the comments that were made and have been made." ...
That he would effectively rule out future debate appearances for the time being strongly suggests that the Hillary campaign discussed this in some detail beforehand and decided to launch this broadside against the network. It also suggests that the Hillary camp sees the potential for political gain in drawing media attention to negative and sexist comments made on MSNBC about her and her daughter.
It's a basic fact about American politics, and a critical weakness of American democracy, that out national press corps is major-league broken. If there is such a thing as being grandly pathetic, they may have achieved it. Anyone who doesn't recognize this as a serious problem is missing one of the most basic elements of understanding what's happening in American politics right now.
