APPROPRIATE FOR TV…. Marcy Wheeler (“emptywheel” ), an award-winning blogger at FireDogLake, appeared on MSNBC yesterday, making the case for investigating Bush-era wrongdoing. Marcy, not surprisingly, presented a very strong argument, but that’s not what became noteworthy about her appearance.
In response to remarks from Townhall’s Matt Lewis, Marcy argued, “[Y]our idea is that after investigating Bill Clinton for a blow job for like five years, we shouldn’t investigate the huge, grossly illegal things that were done under the past administration, only because Alberto Gonzales was too much in the back pocket of Dick Cheney to do it while he was still in office. That’s ridiculous.”
The problem, apparently, wasn’t with the argument, but rather, her choice of words. David Shuster told viewers, “We all say things sometimes when we’re passionate that we don’t intend, and especially on a dayside family-oriented cable television news network.” Anchor Tamron Hall added, “I’m sure she apologizes for that choice of words, she’s very passionate about it. I’m sure she apologizes, and we do, too.”
Well, I haven’t spoken to Marcy about this directly, but I’m not at all “sure she apologizes.” I’m not sure she should.
In fact, Marcy elaborated on her own site about MSNBC’s discomfort: “[T]he DC press corps, I think, is apparently still horrified by the possibility that you can just say it, like that, blow job, and in doing so, expose it for all its tawdry but ultimately minor import. Perhaps just saying it like that would break the spell they were under for two years, break the magic of the Presidential blow job. I don’t know. At some point, though, we as a country have to be willing and able to weigh what the Village did in the late 90s against the massive illegality of the Bush White House and, finally, realize there are more important things than a blow job, and we need to take those more important things at least as seriously as that magic blow job that captivated the press for so long under Clinton.”
As long as the network is going issue on-air apologies for comments some viewers might find offensive, perhaps we can also hear some regret for the daily comments of Joe Scarborough? Or more to the point, DougJ noted, “MSNBC apologized for Wheeler’s choice of words. They didn’t apologize for Pat Buchanan’s comments about killing Levi Johnston.”
