Webloggin » MSNBC Idiocy?

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Update: Finkelstein is on the case! Shuster apologizes in an uncharacteristic on air break in during Tucker. The tone of the apology is much different than an earlier Shuster response that was obtained by National Review in a Shuster e-mail to where he essentially said that it didn’t matter where the soldier lived; i.e. Shuster believes his point is more important than the facts and overlooks the shameless use of a killed soldier as a prop. Read the full story on Newsbusters.

the story was about blackburn’s hypocrisy… it wouldn’t matter whether the soldier’s name was David shuster or Crazy Water. she didn’t know the name, period.
Regards,
D

Representative Blackburn responded to the incident on John Gibson’s show as captured here.

Original Story Below:

Mark Finkelstein at Newsbusters detailed the sick and tasteless gotcha game that Tucker Carlson sit in host David Shuster tried to play on Rep. Marsha Blackburn, (R-Tenn.) when he tried to trip her up by asking her to name the latest person in her district to be killed in Iraq.

The segment, called of all things, “GOP Hypocrisy?“, was somehow supposed to show that Republican outrage against the MoveOn.org “Betrayus” ad was contrived and hypocritical by catching the representative unable to answer the question. Instead the segment proved that David Shuster is a shill for the Democratic party who is too hypocritical himself to do the first hand work necessary to verify his facts; which of course turn out to be false in another case of a blogger catching a mainstream media reporter with his facts where the sun doesn’t shine.

SHUSTER: Congressman, let‘s talk about the public trust. You represent, of course, a district in western Tennessee. What was the name of the last soldier from your district who was killed in Iraq?

BLACKBURN: The name of the last soldier killed in Iraq, from my district, I do not know.

SHUSTER: His name was Jeremy Bohannan (ph). He was killed August 9, 2007. How come you did not know that the name?

BLACKBURN: I do not know why I did not know the name. We made contact with the families in our district. When you have a major military post, you are very sensitive to this and sensitive to working with those families, and that is something that my staff and I do daily. Our district director is a gentleman who has served in the U.S. Army and currently serves in the National Guard. And we do everything that we possibly can do to assist those families. We are very appreciative of the sacrifice.

SHUSTER: But you were not appreciative enough to know the name of this young man. He was 18 years old and killed. Yet you can say chapter and verse about what‘s going on with the “New York Times” and MoveOn.org.

BLACKBURN: You‘re exactly right. I can say chapter and verse what was going on with MoveOn.org.

SHUSTER: Don‘t you understand the problems that a lot of people would have, that you‘re so focused on an ad. When was the last time a “New York Times” ad ever killed somebody? Yet here we have a war that took the life of an 18-year-old kid, Jeremy Bohannan, from your district and you didn’t know his name?

Pretty harsh words for a person who didn’t bother to check the facts himself. But what are we to expect from a reporter who appears daily on “Hardball with Chris Matthews”?

After doing some research however it turns out that Pvt. Jeremy Bohannon didn’t live in Blackburn’s district after all. Attentive blogger Conservative Belle did a follow up and found out that in fact the slain soldier is represented by Democrat Congressman John Tanner. A fact that has been confirmed by Newsbusters.

Worse however is that the media has no problem using the tragic death of a soldier for their own political games. Democrats want to bring the soldiers back home but I wonder how many of them would be able to play in Shuster’s cat and mouse game.

MSNBC still has the video up here. Shuster has yet to comment.

My wife thinks I shouldn’t do any name calling so I will defer to her better sensibilities and avoid terms like moronic and stupid when describing this latest stunt. Let’s just call it “typical” for the cagey guys over at MSNBC.