Martin Bashir apologized to Sarah Palin and his MSNBC colleagues yesterday, responding to the firestorm following comments he made last week.
“I wanted to take this opportunity to say sorry to Mrs. Palin and to also offer an unreserved apology to her friends and family, her supporters, our viewers, and anyone who may have heard what I said,” Bashir said on his show Monday (video after the jump).
On Friday’s show, Bashir responded to comments Palin made linking America’s debt to slavery, calling her a “dunce” and suggesting Palin might be a prime candidate for the same treatment slaves received from a plantation owner named Thomas Thistewood: being urinated and defecated on.
“My words were wholly unacceptable,” Bashir continued. “They were neither accurate, nor fair. They were unworthy of anyone who would claim to have an interest in politics. And they have brought shame upon my friends and colleagues at this network, none of whom were responsible for the things that I said, and and at a place where we try every day to elevate political discourse and to focus on issues that matter to all of us.”
Fox News‘s Howard Kurtz as well as Inside Cable News are’t having it. They say MSNBC’s lack of a suspension for Bashir is inconsistent with the punishments handed out to other hosts, including Alec Baldwin just last week, Ed Schultz who was suspended for a week in 2011 for calling Laura Ingraham a “slut,” and David Shuster who, in Feb. 2008, was suspended for remarking that Chelsea Clinton had been “pimped out” during her mother’s campaign for president.