David Shuster

Februrary 22, David Shuster will return to MSNBC following his suspension, which we now find was two weeks. It will be interesting to see how Hillary responds to this.

Hillary tries to spin an answer on her letter about David Shuster. I still find it ironic that she was mum during Matthews much worse comments. I guess she would rather see the little people pay for the big dogs mistakes.

We all agreed that Shuster needed to be suspended for his comment, but that doesn't appear to be enough for Hillary - she wants more:

"Nothing justifies the kind of debasing language that David Shuster used and no temporary suspension or half-hearted apology is sufficient," Clinton wrote to NBC News President Steve Capus, who apparently had already called Clinton to personally apologize.

Like I said, Shuster's comments were inappropriate and he deserved to be suspended, but damn it sure sounds like Hillary wants him fired now. This will give the Republicans some good ammo to use if Hillary becomes the nominee. I can hear it now; "wow I am glad a world leader didn't say that, we would be in world war 3".

Also - why hasn't Clinton demanded such action when O'Reilly insults our homeless veterans? Don't they deserve as much attention as Chelsea?

This is all now becoming an attention game. Hillary is preparing for a bad month, so she wants to get as much traction from this as possible.

As an undecided Democratic voter, this hasn't pushed me to vote for Obama. What it has done is push me further from punching the ballot for Clinton.

The Politico has a rather long article about the David Shuster uproar from yesterday, which takes a much deeper look into what happened. After reading it, I find myself more backing Shuster. He may have chosen his words poorly, but it does appear more like the Clintons are "pimpin" out their daughter. It also reminded me of 2004 when Mary Cheney was allowed to go out there and campaign, yet no one was allowed to talk about her sexual preference.

On top of all that, you also realize quickly that Shuster is paying the price for Matthews comments, which were actually much worse in my view.

Earlier this week Clinton was calling on Obama to debate on FOX, despite FOX's past efforts to paint Obama as some sort of Muslim extremist. Now we have the Clinton campaign saying that they won't debate on MSNBC because of Shuster's comments.

So this kind of throws a monkey wrench into Clinton saying Obama should debate on FOX. How can she say he should go on there, after their past comments, when she can choose to not go on MSNBC due to their comments? Seems like a double standard coming out of the Clinton campaign to me - and I am one not backing either candidate (my guy is out, Edwards, so I am not picking between these two).

It started when Shuster said the Clinton's were "pimpin" out Chelsea to help with the election, which Shuster apologized for this morning. Then a conference call this afternoon with the Clinton campaign resulted in the campaign saying they would not appear on anymore MSNBC debates. Now MSNBC has suspended Shuster from any broadcasts, except to air his apology.

Yes it was wrong for Shuster to say that, but he apologized twelve hours later. When Matthews made his comment it took over a week before he apologized, and then he was heavily defended by Shuster and others, including Joe Scarborough, and the blogs were the ones blamed. It sounds like MSNBC has some serious problems going on there.

I want to clarify that I am in no way supporting Shuster for his comments. I have never heard anyone say "Bush is pimpin out Jenna" or "Cheney is pimpin out Mary" in the past, so there is a serious problem here and MSNBC did a good thing addressing it so quickly. Having said that, the same level of conduct and discipline need to be carried out throughout the entire organization - including Matthews.