Say Anything Blog

Howard Kurtz sums up David Shuster’s fall from grace after saying “Doesn’t it seem as if Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?”:

In case there was any doubt, using a prostitution metaphor for the daughter of a presidential candidate is not a good career move.

MSNBC suspended correspondent David Shuster yesterday for an undetermined period for making a disparaging on-air remark about Chelsea Clinton. Meanwhile, officials in her mother’s campaign raised the possibility of punishing the news channel by boycotting future debates.

While filling in as a host Thursday, Shuster was discussing the 27-year-old’s role in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign with two guests when he asked: “Doesn’t it seem as if Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?”

Howard Wolfson, the campaign’s communications director, called Shuster’s remark “disgusting,” “beneath contempt” and “the kind of thing that should never be said on a national news network.” Wolfson appeared to suggest that Clinton is reconsidering an agreement this week to participate in an MSNBC debate Feb. 26 in Cleveland, saying: “I at this point can’t envision doing another debate on that network.”

Shuster, who plays a prominent role in MSNBC’s political coverage, told viewers last night that his words were “inappropriate. . . . I apologize to the Clinton family, the Clinton campaign, and all of you who were justifiably offended. . . . I am particularly sorry that my language diminished the regard and respect she has earned from all of us and the respect her parents have earned in how they raised her.”

It’s worth noting that the word “pimp,” as used as a verb, has (unfortunately in my mind) become a part of our national lexicon in a way that doesn’t necessarily have anything specifically to do with prostitution.  When we talk of celebrities “pimping” this product or that we aren’t saying those celebrities are literally engaging in pay-for-sex schemes.  Even my grandmother gets this.

So it’s curious to see Shuster’s career (the little of it the ignorant hack was able to build for himself) go down the tubes for using this rather innocuous (if grating) term in relation to Chelsea Clinton.  Especially in light of some of the treatment President Bush has gotten at the hands of the media.  He’s been called a liar.  He’s been called stupid.  He’s been accused of being a war criminal, a drug addict, an alcoholic, a military deserter and a co-conspirator in the 9/11 attacks.

Over the last eight years the media has collectively dragged President Bush through a rhetorical mud hole over and over again, with each member of the media trying to top the rest with the most vitriolic denunciation of his administration.  Yet through all that not one reporter was ever suspended for saying something nasty about the President.  In fact, if that had happened, the media establishment would have been beside itself in denouncing the move and its “chilling effect” on the free press.

But you make one comment about Chelsea Clinton and you’ll soon find yourself covering dog shows in Buffalo.

If you ask me this outrage over Shuster’s comment is feigned, at best, not to mention a calculated part of the Clinton campaign strategy.  I don’t think Shuster is in cahoots with the Clintons, but the Clintons are undoubtedly behind his public flogging.

How better to distract from Barack Obama’s rising star than to focus the nation’s attention on poor, helpless Chelsea being called a hooker by some reporter?

Update: Will MSNBC now being suspending Keith Olbermann for this comment made back in September of last year?

And in pimping General David Petraeus and in the violation of everything this country has been assiduously and vigilantly against for 220 years, you have tried to blur the gleaming radioactive demarcation between the military and the political, and to portray your party as the one associated with the military, and your opponents as the ones somehow antithetical to it.

If the suggestion of Bill and Hillary “pimping” their daughter is worthy of a suspension, what about the suggestion of our President “pimping” a four-star General?

Aren’t double standards fun?