MSNBC's Baffling Decision to Suspend David Shuster

MSNBC on-air reporter and commentator, David Shuster, was suspended this week, and forced to apologize twice. For what? Well, he made a comment about Chelsea Clinton, asking if it looked like she'd been "pimped out" doing campaigning for her mother.

Now, the word "pimp" used to exclusively refer to a person who sheperded prostitutes. "Pimped," as far as I know, didn't wasn't even a word until a few years ago. But these days, both versions of the word have been utterly de-nastified. The word is ubiquitous, and used in many contexts. David Shuster surely did not mean that Chelsea was a hooker, or that she looked like one. It's a colloquialism, for goodness' sake.

And given the nastiness that has tripped from the tongues of SO many other MSNBC (and FOX, and CNN, and Headline News) on-air personalities, it was extrodinarily out of scale to suspend Shuster. It makes you wonder what really happend here. Here's the video. I think you'll agree, what Shuster said was hardly in a nasty context.