everyone looks like a pimp.

By now anyone following the primary process is most likely aware of the comment David Shuster of MSNBC made about Chelsea Clinton.  I like Tucker (althougn now it should be called, Where's Tucker?) so I was watching at the time.  I rarely watch MSNBC anymore though precisely because of this kind of commentary/reporting.  If you have read any of my other posts (and I strongly urge that you do as they are remarkably intelligent with just a dash of humor and overwhelmingly correct in all regards) then you know that I am a Hillary Clinton supporter and I'm having a hard time with my party at the moment. 

Having made that disclosure, I will say that I would have been equally incensed had this comment been made about any member of any candidate's family.  Yes, Chelsea is certainly no longer a teenager or college student - which I believe made her fairly off limits - and she has chosen to enter the political contest by making calls and campaign publicly for her mother.  Unless you're a child of Rudy Guiliani these are things most adult children do (I don't mean that as a hit at Rudy or his kids; I, for one, loved that he was open about the discord in his family, the same is true of many families, not all kids get along with their parents and I'm not going to judge that as long as it doesn't have anything to do with abuse.)  Bill Press who was there and part of the discussion and who knows Mr. Shuster personally says that the comment, though out of place, was not intended as it may have seemed although Mr. Press did write that the suspension was the right thng to do.

Now I know with just my little blog that there is always a need to get eyeballs (witness my media whore title) but to me this comment is just one more in an endless stream of indicators that journalism and commentary have become far too intertwined.  When you're on the air hours and hours a week, sometimes as a reporter, sometimes as the host of a commentary show, sometimes as a host or guest of a show largely geared toward opinion, it's hard to remember which hat you're wearing and when it comes to entertainment/opinion shows, quite often that hat is a jester's cap. 

For my money, I think that there should be a journalistic chinese wall between reporting and commentary.  I don't want to see a news reader decide on air what stories are going to be read and then sit at the same table as the show's host and comment on the news.  I don't want to see Keith Olbermann on Countdown and then as a debate host or anchor on election coverage.  The same can be said of Chris Matthews and Lou Dobbs.  I can't get enough of funny intelligent commentary from all spectrums (who knew Pat Buchanan was both so smart and so funny?) but I want it labelled as just that - informed commentary.

Now I know that there newscasts have always carried commentary.  Walter Cronkite's opinion piece about Viet Nam is credited with changing middle America's view of that war; however, one of the reasons his opinion was so powerful was because it was so carefully invoked.