Politico has Sen. Hillary Clinton‘s response to the “pimped out” remark made by MSNBC’s David Shuster Thursday night. By Friday afternoon, that remark got Shuster suspended from the MSNBC airwaves.
“I found the remarks incredibly offensive,” Clinton told reporters in Maine this morning. In a letter to NBC News president Steve Capus, Clinton wrote: “Nothing justifies the kind of debasing language that David Shuster used and no temporary suspension or half-hearted apology is sufficient.”
The Clinton campaign is threatening to pull out of a Feb. 26 debate, which NBC News had secured just hours before Shuster’s remarks became a news story. “We’ve accepted a lot of debates from a lot of different sponsors, and we’re going to wait and see how this plays out,” Clinton told reporters last night.
As we have in two previous posts, more comments from TVNewser readers, after the jump…
> Suspension is lame…didn’t say anything untrue or out of the way. Much worse goes unscathed.
> David Shuster’s comments illustrate a trend I see in journalism. Correspondents have gone from straight reporters to fill in show hosts (Today) and other non-news shows and I believe are increasingly caught up in the entertainment part of cable news.
> At least David Shuster called out Chelsea Clinton for what she was really doing on behalf of her mother’s campaign — MSNBC has just gained one more viewer!
> David Shuster absolutely deserved to be suspended. My question is why he hadn’t been suspended in the past for numerous slurs against Republicans.
> David Shuster is one of the toughest, most relentless reporters on television. Broadcast journalism doesn’t have many more honest reporters out there. Watching him grill politicians and pundits is truly informative, edgy television. Our country needs more like him to get to the truth about government. All that said, he’s getting sloppy. Using a term like that to describe ANYONE’S actions is ridiculous. He needs to tighten it up, get a grip and play on a high level.
> The point is the word “pimp,” which should never, ever, under any
circumstances be used about a mother and her daughter, I don’t
care who they are…There’s a boys’ locker room atmosphere over at MSNBC that makes people like Matthews and Shuster feel comfortable using demeaning language towards women, even the ones they like.
> MSNBC/NBC News needs to get some balls…caving into the Clinton machine. I’m a dem and I still think it’s ridiculous.