Eat The Press’ Rachel Sklar writes about the David Shuster situation…

But though he took the fall, it wasn’t entirely Shuster’s fault. Yes, he said something stupid (and offensive, and inappropriate). But let’s put it in context — the context of a network where conversation is free and easy and where spicy rhetoric has been robustly encouraged, because it’s been working in the ratings but also because frank, no-holds-barred commentary is fascinating and fun to watch. The risk, though, of skating close to the edge is sometimes you go over it. Probably no one means any harm. Probably they’re just being kidding around - but it creates a norm, and not always a great one. It’s within that kind of norm that talk becomes more casual, edgier. Shuster would never have made that comment were he to appear, say, on “NBC Nightly News” — it would have seemed wildly inappropriate and out of place for that no-nonsense, straight-up news environment. But elsewhere on the network, that line has become blurred — as Cenk Ugyur points out, more and more the news has been shot through with strong, spicy opinions, and that affects the atmosphere and that affects the discourse and that affects the norm.

That’s similar to what I said Friday…