Give Shuster a Shot at MSNBC's 1600 Pennsylvania Ave

Politico.com reports that David Gregory, who will be taking the helm on Meet the Press, will be moving on from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, formerly Race to the White House, on MSNBC. David Shuster will be filling in for this week, or until a successor is announced.

First, I'll miss David Gregory on Pennsylvania Ave/Race - his show was one of the most crisp, informative on all of television, low in histrionics, high on the exposition and debate of useful opinions. In many ways, it's been my favorite on all of TV.

But David Gregory therefore certainly merits his promotion to Meet the Press, where his talent for cool, intelligent interview will well serve the classic show and the American people.

And what's to become of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? I'm watching David Shuster on the show right now, and he's doing a fine job. Indeed, though he had at least one misspeak in the two years we have just concluded of election coverage - regarding Chelsea Clinton's campaigning for Hillary - that wasn't the end of the world, and Shuster came back to do consistently excellent, top-notch reporting and hosting (of regular afternoon programs, and subbing for evening programs, like 1600). Shuster has shown himself tough, able to ask big politicians incisive questions, and do this with style and humor.

I don't know who else MSNBC is considering, but I say, give Shuster a shot at 1600 Pennsylvania MSNBC job.

MSNBC Needs to Stop Sniping at Hillary Clinton

I'm a devoted Obama supporter. I voted for him in the super-primary in New York last Tuesday, and am convinced he would make the best next President. But I am also a student - and a professor - of the media, as well as someone who wants to see the Democratic party strong, and it is for those reasons that I think it's time to say enough is enough already about the shoddy way MSNBC is treating Hillary Clinton's campaign for the Presidency.

It's not just David Shuster's astonishingly tasteless and unacceptable remark about the Clinton campaign "pimping out" Cheslea to campaign for her mother. MSNBC has apologized for that remark and suspended Shuster. Cheslea's campaigning for her mother has been nothing but laudable and classy. One wonders if Shuster or anyone would have used that term had a son been campaigning for his mother or father.

But any news operation could be subject to the loose tongue of a reporter or commentator, and the problem at MSNBC regarding Hillary Clinton goes much deeper.

You can hear and see it just about every night on Chris Matthews' Hardball. For some reason, he refers to a lot of things that Hillary Clinton has been doing in this campaign as being done not by Hillary Clinton but by "the Clintons".

What's that? If Matthews wants to claim that Bill Clinton as well as Hillary had something to do with a specific action or strategy of Hillary's, let him say so. But the constant reference to Hillary Clinton as "the Clintons" undermines Hillary Clinton as an individual and is demeaning.

Keith Olbermann is no angel in his attitude towards Hillary Clinton, either. When Olbermann attacks Rush Limbaugh by constantly calling him a "comedian," we all laugh. Olbermann's tick-like verbal attacks and facial expressions are usually welcome when they are directed at Fox News. But they have no place in supposedly even-handed coverage of a Presidential campaign. And although Olbermann is not as out there against Hillary Clinton as is Matthews, his comments about her are all too often studded with sarcasm and derision.

Indeed, of the MSNBC nighttime regulars, only Dan Abrams has been consistently even-handed and non-ad-hominem.

It may well be that, by the time this election is over, MSNBC will have become the liberal equivalent of what Fox News has been for conservatives. That would be good news for CNN, but bad news for the American people, who could certainly benefit from three unbiased cable news networks - or, at least two.


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