Shuster: NBC done apologizing?
The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz writes about the latest on the Shuster saga…
NBC executives say privately that they have acted appropriately to deal with a bad choice of words and are waiting to see whether the Clinton camp follows through on a threat to withdraw from an MSNBC debate in Cleveland on Feb. 26. A spokeswoman yesterday said only that the network stands by its previous comments.
Considering how she got whumped by Obama over the weekend and her campaign manager stepped down, gazing into my crystal ball I’d estimate the chances of Clinton pulling out of this debate at…oh…about zero!
She needs the publicity and there isn’t another debate scheduled this week that both Clinton and Obama have accepted. Ergo, she’s going to keep the NBC debate.
I think you’re right, Spud… however, this is all part of the shrewd planning.
If she doesn’t appear, she’s taking a stand. If she appears, she shows she’s strong in the face of adversity… that nobody, no “all boys club” specifically, is going to keep her down. Plus, it will give her an opportunity to talk about what happened, on their own network, increasing the number of people who know about it, and taking a chunk of the attention away from Obama.
It’s all strategy. Now I’m not saying it was 100% planned this way, but good strategy is 75% planning, and 24% reaction… and like 1% luck. Man, that’s good stuff… I should write fortune cookies.
Comment by ImNotBlue — February 11, 2008 @ 10:51 am
This is worth a read. It’s from the Atlantic and describes the piss-poor management and overall disaray of the Hillary campaign. The thing is, they’re pretty arrogant over there still, it’s like they can’t quite figure out what they’re doing wrong so I’m not convinced 100% they wouldn’t pull the debate if they thought they could move it to another, higher-rated network. Anyway, great and interesting read here:
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/learning_some_more_details_sin.php
Comment by Alison — February 11, 2008 @ 11:20 am
Wait a minute what if someone gave a debate and nobody came? Debating only helps Hillary Clinton not Obama…so I can see MSNBC not wanting to loose the debate. But what if Obama said, you know what I’m done. Hillary doesn’t get to debate Obama anywhere including MSNBC. I think if I was the Clinton’s I wouldn’t breathing fire on MSNBC right now, what if Obama took this posture “I can’t appear on MSNBC and debate” after what transpired it would look like as if I was Condoning their negative coverage towards the Clintons…oh the sword of damocles.
Comment by Ree — February 11, 2008 @ 11:23 am
Obama can’t pull out just for the hell of it after accepting. Then it makes him look scared to debate Hillary and she’ll lord it over him for days/weeks…
Comment by Spud — February 11, 2008 @ 11:36 am
He didn’t look very scared on CNN the other day.
Comment by Terance — February 11, 2008 @ 11:40 am
Hillary is yet again playing victim politics. This gets old after a while.
And Shuster is a helluva reporter! If Hillary would stop dumbing down her arguments to appeal to the uninformed masses, and get off of this culture of victimization that she has HUGELY overplayed as part of her campaign strategy to remember that Shuster was a big part of the Scooter Libby trial and the whole CIA leak case…
I’m so unimpressed by Hillary.
Comment by kevbo — February 11, 2008 @ 12:10 pm
If MSNBC had let Shuster go over his comments, after that letter from Hillary, it would have made Hillary and MSNBC look bad. He used the wrong words said sorry and so did MSNBC. It’s time to move on to the next story and get back to the election.
Comment by Richard W. — February 11, 2008 @ 12:35 pm
Anyone want to take wagers on how long it’ll be until Hillary breaks out the phone tears (again) while talking about Chelsea on the campaign trail?
Perhaps even today, since there’s an important primary tomorrow.
Comment by bigred — February 11, 2008 @ 2:28 pm