Erik Wemple says, Good Riddance to MSNBC’s Martin Bashir. As usual for a Washington Post columnist, he completely misses the issue. He didn’t like Bashir’s show. Fair enough. I only saw it a couple of times myself and it certainly wasn’t something that I went looking for. But he was competent and interesting. And he had a style that was distinct from pretty much all of the second-tier hosts: he seemed to actually give a shit.
That was his undoing, it seems. To me, what he said about Sarah Palin was typical rhetorical hyperbole. He didn’t actually say that someone should shit in Palin’s mouth. He was making a point that being in debt is nothing at all like being a slave and that when people like Palin link them, they are being offensive in the extreme. I thought it was highly effective rhetoric. And here’s the thing. I know that the conservatives thought it was highly effective rhetoric. And they responded the way they always do. They whined like children. They acted as though they engage in a high level of political discourse and the liberals just dump all over it.
If Wemple thinks that Martin Bashir’s show was bad, then it should have been canceled for that reason. But it wasn’t canceled for that reason. It was canceled because liberals can’t stand even the tiniest amount of controversy. Wemple even says, “Conservative America just lost one of its talking points about left-leaning network MSNBC.” Oh, really? Does he seriously think that this will make even an infinitesimal difference in how MSNBC will be portrayed in the conservative media echo chamber? If he does, I have news for him: according to conservatives, CNN is a lapdog of the DNC.
What really happened in this case is that conservative America had a major victory. They’ve been shown once again that all they have to do is whine about the smallest of insults and liberals will jump to attention and trash any member of their group. Even after Bashir’s firing, Sarah Palin was not satisfied. She belched out a logorrhea that, as best I can tell, means, “Martin Bashir has poisoned the whole world and now no one will go into public service (Or even be mothers, it seems!) because of the unthinkable harm done the always wounded Sarah Palin.”
Erik Wemple is missing the big picture here. This isn’t about Martin Bashir. There will always be people who say things that go too far. On the right, they are protected. On the left, they are sacrificed. Maybe the loss of Bashir is no big deal. But Palin’s statement makes a bit of sense here. How long will capable liberals move into the public sphere when they know that they are one misstep from being sacrificed to the whims of conservative outrage.
So fuck Sarah Palin! Fuck Erik Wemple! And fuck MSNBC! As I wrote before, I will no longer watch the network. What’s the point anyway? MSNBC represents liberalism like Josh Barro represents the Republican Party.
