MSNBC's Davd Shuster raises a firestorm

Last Thursday MSNBC's regular news comentator David Shuster started a mini-firestorm when as subtitute host on Tucker he asked

"Doesn't it seem like Chelsea's sort of being pimped out [by the Clinton campaign] in some weird sort of way?"

I think it's clear that, the New York Post and the Clinton campaign notwithstanding, this wasn't "nappy-headed hos" redux. But it was obviously an incredibly stupid comment. It's hard to understand why anyone would question an adult daughter campaigning for her mother, especially in terms as insulting to everyone concerned. (The women on The View also found humor in phone calls Chelsea made to them.) It's important to note that Shuster apologized for his stupid language and he was almost immediately indefinitly suspended by MSNBC, but for how long.

This was an opportunity for Hillary Clinton and her campaign to take the high road, to show everyone how diplomatic she could be and say something like "He apologized, he's been suspended, let's get back to the real issues." But not surprisingly she played the sympathy and angry mother card. Her spokesperson Howard Wolfson said:

I, at this point, can't envision a scenario where we could continue to engage in debates on that network, given the comments that were made.

Come on Howard I'll bet you could envision such a scenario.

It's also not surprising that the New York Post would be stoking the fires of this controversy. They are, after all, intimately related to MSNBC's primary competitor the Fox News Channel, a fact the Post failed to mention in its front-page headlined story: "Chelsea 'pimp' Fury; Hill rips MSNBC on campaign slur." It's clearly in Fox's interest to screw up the MSNBC debate, since they are trying to schedule one of their own, to which Clinton has agreed despite a Democratic candidates agreement not to do so.

A pro-choice Clinton supporter, according to the Post, wrote to MSNBC to say:

Your tolerance for [Shuster's] behavior speaks volumes about the corporate culture of MSNBC.

As someone who watches MSNBC with some regularity this question has bothered me as well. MSNBC's staffing decisions should raise red flags. After Morning Joe, with Joe Scarborough, about 11AM, the news anchors are all attractive young mostly white women. Unless something important happens (like Romney ending his campaign) then the MSNBC male contingent takes over. But daily at 5PM promptly Chris Matthews comes on and then it's wall-to-wall men (mostly white) until 10PM, when some sleazy "documentaries" come on. Not only the anchors but also most of the pundits on MSNBC are white men (except for Air America's Rachel Maddow, the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, a scattering of NBC female correspondents and Allison Stewart who sometimes substitutes for Keith
Olbermann). This, it seems to me, "speaks volumes about the corporate culture at MSNBC."

Shuster's unquestionably stupid and sexist comment may well end up being a tempest in a teapot, but it raises some important questions about how MSNBC, the Murdoch media, and the Clinton campaign operate. And they all leave something to be desired.