As someone whose scalp was collected mainly so Bill Donohue could hang it on his wall, I feel duty-bound to weigh in on this David Shuster thing. I know it’s very exciting to finally see some accountability for the rampant sexism against Hillary Clinton, but I’m just not on board with the idea that Shuster’s comment about “pimping” Chelsea Clinton was really the lowest of the low. Chris Matthews says 10 worse things than that an hour. The defense about how the word “pimp” has been overused to the point where it’s drained of much of its literal meaning has a lot of basis in truth. This isn’t making excuses, but a linguistic fact—the meaning of words change over time. “Suck” is a word that, if taken literally, is deeply sexist, but tends to be used non-literally so very often that it’s not offensive to use it anymore. The non-approval meaning has eclipsed the sexual meaning, for all intents and purposes.
Does that mean I don’t think Shuster was being sexist? Absolutely not. He was being so very, very sexist. Repeat: It was atrocious sexism. But not because the usage of “pimp” was strictly sexist. It’s because the larger point he was making about Chelsea Clinton only makes sense if you hold mothers and fathers to a different standard. All political children campaign for their fathers. But when it was a mother, it was suddenly unseemly in Shuster’s eyes, exposing a deep-seated belief that women’s ambition is fundamentally perverse whereas male ambition is fine. But that’s a complex point, and it’s easier to say that “pimp” is sexist, I know. But we should avoid that temptation, because other people will smell the bad faith, and the scalping of Shuster will seem really unfair. I’m uneasy with scalp-collecting, anyway. If it doesn’t result in real change—and there’s no reason to think it will—then it’s just an impotent bit of power-mongering exercised as a protest against genuine lack of power.
What’s even more frustrating is that this isn’t a clear-cut example of strict sexism, unlike a lot of other anti-Clinton comments. The pimping comment is also part of a larger Village narrative about how the Clintons and only the Clintons are treated as sleazy for standard issue politician behavior. There’s a double standard on women, but also on the Clintons, who are treated as interlopers. For lack of a better term, the Clintons have been bombarded from day one with the nouveau riche slam, the deeply held belief in The Village that certain behaviors (including all standard campaign behaviors) are only permissible to those deemed insiders, which the Clintons still aren’t in the eyes of the mainstream media.
In other words, what I got from the pimping comment was 50% “how dare a mother?” and 50% “how dare the Clintons act like they’re one of us?” Shuster is eating a lot of shit right now, and I’m sure it feels unfair, because in a sense it is. He’s eating shit for doing what basically everyone else does. It’s scapegoating of a sort. Someone had to fall for what is non-stop, relentless abuse of the Clintons on both the sexism tip and on the nouveau riche tip, and he mostly had bad timing. It worries me, though, because it’s not going to change a thing. He was thrown to us as appeasement. And what we need is not scalps, but an overhaul of the entire system, so that both these narratives, the elitism and the sexism, are tossed out. Not any individual person.
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Josh Marshall’s theory is that Shuster was the sacrifice because the biggest offender - Chris Matthews - is a more valuable property to the network. Matthews was made to issue a vapid weaselpology for one of his innumerable misogynist slams at Hillary Clinton, but no way is he getting suspended or made to behave professionally. So Shuster paid for it by proxy.
As I keep saying, funny how having Chelsea campaign is “pimping her out,” but having Romney’s five sons tour the country in an RV as a substitute for service in Iraq is so routine that it doesn’t even get mentioned.
Your comment is perfect, Mneomsyne.
Chelsea Clinton has done nothing to deserve the incredibly mean-spirited attacks that she’s had to endure since she was a kid in the White House. All she’s ever done is support her parents. When the Bush twins did the same for Dear Ole Dad, no one said anything like this about them, did they?
Republicans have evolved over the years into cowardly, sneaky, vicious creatures that cannot be trusted. They are just VILE.
Agreed. Matthews, in particular, has many reasons not to be on TV, sexism is just the most glaring.
Not to defend Shuster (he should not have used that term), but part of his problem was that Chelsea was working for the Clintons publicly but could not be interviewed.
As a journalist, I’d find that frustrating too. Tagg and the boys seemed to get camera time. Chelsea is calling superdelegates, going to caucuses, etc, and as a 27 year old with a 300K salary acting as a surrogate for HRC’s campaign, but is somehow off limits for the press?
GIve me a break.
So, Shuster shouldn’t have used the term, but he’s really just a scapegoat for MSNBC and a convenient (”I’m a victim.”) issue for Clinton to talk about instead of her abysmal performance in the primaries and caucuses.
I find it even more disturbing that Hillary gets slammed with both sides of the Clinton double standard. On the one hand, she is treated like an outsider such that standard political tactics are viewed as sleazy just like you say. On the other hand, she is often also tarred as a consummate insider — too far inside the beltway to really bring about change. I’ve heard it suggested many times that she will sacrifice her own principles on the altar of the back room deal.
I guess being a woman politician means that when others get the benefit of the doubt, you get the worst of both worlds.
It’s also somewhat problematic because Shuster, though far from perfect, has been know to actually practice journalism and call bullshit on occasion. I’m certainly not defending his comments but I’m sure that a right-winger who made similarly ridiculous statements would not have been thrown to us as appeasement.
Amanda, who or what is the Village? Are you talking about Washington, D.C.? (I’ve only heard “Greenwich Village” called the Village). And if so—damn—that just boggles my mind. The whole rest of the United States, outside the Beltway, sees the Clintons as insiders. Y’know, considering that Bill put his feet up on the Oval Office desk for eight years.
Matthews of course shouldn’t be allowed on TV, and misogyny is just the primary reason, not the sole one.
Shuster shouldn’t have used that term (despite changes in meaning, the original meaning clings very strongly to it, especially with older people.) I can’t complain that he’s being punished.
But part of his frustration was that Chelsea, a 27-year old woman making hundreds of thousands working at a hedge fund, is off limits for interviews with journalists, despite calling superdelegates, workign caucuses, etc for her mother. Tagg and the Romney boys were interviewed quite a bit (though not asked often enough about why they weren’t in Iraq, imo.)
As someone who really does do some of the best journalism on MSNBC, I would say he was frustrated by that.
But the real reason this has blown up is that HRC doesn’t have anything positive to talk about considering her abysmal electoral performance recently.
Probably it’s similar to the reason that this has begun to happen right before primaries and caucuses recently.
“The Village” is a term coined to refer to the Mainstream Media, and all the DC hangers-on who primarily talk to each other, but under the guise of informing America…
Spot on again. The whole mass hatred of the Clintons has more to do with their class status than Bill’s sexual antics or even Hillary’s so-called ambition.
I do wish you were wrong and this incident would actually change the way that sexism and classism are bandied about in the media. But I don’t think you are wrong
Many people, including me, would never use the word “pimp” unless they were talking about an actual pimp. I realize I am showing my age (62), but many people found the actual term incredibly offensive.
Right, it’s DC. “The Village” comes from the setting for a 60’s scifi show called The Prisoner.
What I find fascinating is that if Shuster had said Obama was “pimping” his daughters, everyone would agree that it’s blatently racist. The fact that he applied the term to Hillary and Chelsea is only marginally more acceptable. He gets a suspension for being sexist; he certainly would have been fired for being racist.
But what would make the Clintons outsiders while the Obamas are insiders? I’ve mostly seen the narrative as MSNBC is pushing him by bashing the Clintons, not McCain.
Oh - and I’d guess “sucks” is more homophobic than sexist, but I think more importantly, it’s just evidence that the two are deeply related. But I didn’t understand for years why it upset my parents so much when I’d say it; I just though it was a harsher form of ’stinks.’
I thought it the bruhaha over the word “pimp” was incredibly unfair. I do think it was not professional of Shuster to use it and I do think there is an underlying sexism that permeates all of the mainstream news broadcasts, but it was not worth the outrage its gotten.
“Pimp” doesn’t exactly mean what it used to. I mean guys talk about “pimpin’ out” their “ride”- and no one makes a fuss. “Pimp” is also used in other contexts and when Shuster said “Pimp” the original meaning of the word has not come to mind.
I also think he was thrown under a bus as are other people. Like Amanda said, the same thing was not asked of Chris Matthews and has been the most flagrant in his behavior. So why is Shuster getting the treatment? And, like someone pointed out before, Shuster does actually engage in a bit of journalism, unlike Matthews and some others. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is appropriate that Shuster got reprimanded but not what is happening now. Unless they plan to do more to Matthews.
But I also feel as though Don Imus was thrown under a bus. Because there are radio personalities that say a whole lot worse than he does and nothing happens to them, and they aren’t ’shock jocks’. But Imus was a democrat and those others weren’t. This, again, is not to excuse Imus’ behavior. But I think it’s important to think about who, exactly, gets ‘disciplined’ and who doesn’t and why.
If punishments are going to be handed out, it needs to be done in a consistent manner. Otherwise, we run the risk of making things worse
“Pimp” doesn’t exactly mean what it used to. I mean guys talk about “pimpin’ out” their “ride”- and no one makes a fuss.
Genine, unless Hillary had a new chrome grill installed on Chelsea, Shuster wasn’t using the word in this sense.
Pimp and whore mean the exact same things they used to.
I don’t think that this was exaggerated at all. Quite the contrary: the fact that a mainstream talking head could so casually imply that Chelsea Clinton was a whore and her mother a pimp (and expect to get away with it) is a shocking comment on just how low these people have gone and continue to descend. No backlash can be too vigorous, both on the objective facts of this situation, and on the wider fact that this has been going on too damned long and a ferocious push-back is needed.
I don’t believe in the sweet, reasoned response advocated by Genine, which is akin to fighting Queensbury style at a UFC match with a crooked referee. Fight back, fight back hard, take a few goddamned smug prick scalps. That will do more to keep the Matthews of this world in line than applying some notional, balanced, airy-fairy, unachievable perfectly balanced, nuanced justice.
Here’s a 2004 MSNBC story of the Jenna and Barbara- gasp!- supporting their father’s campaign!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5865672/
Note the lack of “pimp” or similar distasteful phrases…
There are elements of class here, but there is also the element of convention. Chelsea Clinton is not a conventional beauty, she doesn’t have the golden hair and prep-school looks of the Bush kids or the production-line plastic looks of a female network anchor. So, like high school, she is perceived as being fair game for vicious comments. She is being punished for not looking like the established models of beauty. Why isn’t she hiding in a closet or mocking her own looks or something acceptable? Let’s put her in her place! is the thought swimming through the sewer minds of these nasty, exclusionary people. Stomp ‘em down; they deserve it, and we just might end up with a culture and a discourse more livable than before.
But what would make the Clintons outsiders while the Obamas are insiders? I’ve mostly seen the narrative as MSNBC is pushing him by bashing the Clintons, not McCain.
I don’t think the Obamas are insiders. But the Clintons have been considered outsiders by the DC social scene since 1992, and the DC media is a part of that scene. They’ve never let the Clintons forget that they’re interlopers either, that they weren’t supposed to be in the White House. Go back and read some of the reporting from that period, and the elitism jumps off the page at you.
It’s why Amanda used the phrase “nouveau riche” in the title, I’d imagine–there is a sense of old money versus new money and social stratification imbedded in the DC elite hatred of the Clintons because of the notion that they got where they were via merit as opposed to by connections.
vxzcvzxcvMatthews of course shouldn’t be allowed on TV, and misogyny is just the primary reason, not the sole one.
Shuster shouldn’t have used that term (despite changes in meaning, the original meaning clings very strongly to it, especially with older people.) I can’t complain that he’s being punished.
But part of his frustration was that Chelsea, a 27-year old woman making hundreds of thousands working at a hedge fund, is off limits for interviews with journalists, despite calling superdelegates, workign caucuses, etc for her mother. Tagg and the Romney boys were interviewed quite a bit (though not asked often enough about why they weren’t in Iraq, imo.)
As someone who really does do some of the best journalism on MSNBC, I would say he was frustrated by that.
But the real reason this has blown up is that HRC doesn’t have anything positive to talk about considering her abysmal electoral performance recently. Still, he shouldn’t have used the term and a suspension is fine by me.
Probably it’s similar to the reason that this has begun to happen right before primaries and caucuses recently.
I agree with everything you said, Amanda. What Shuster said was deeply distasteful and it reveals the deep-seated hatred of the Clintons and of Hillary Clinton in particular.
I also think it is deeply unfair and counter-productive to single out Shuster’s one comment over the many, many other comments routinely made by Matthews and other talking heads on the air. I think the “scalp taking” actually makes things worse, because it makes the offender into some kind of “PC” victim instead of facing their own beliefs.
I think punishing Shuster with a suspension is fine, but they should also suspend Matthews. Since that won’t happen I fear this will just turn into another round of feminist-bashing.
I’m not confident of the media’s ability to see what is really going on here. The major media narrative about Clinton’s win in NH was her “show of emotion” rather than the Tweety Effect (backlash against the blatant misogynistic coverage of it).
I think you nailed it here.
While I’m sure that the Clintons do not appreciate hearing their daughter spoken of that way, what bothered me in this instance was the complete double standard. This whole incident has prompted me to consider the fact that the voters get their picture of Sen Clinton from a media that has hated her and beaten up on her (and her husband) for 15 years.
The race is down to 2 candidates with very similar platforms, so much of the race is based on considerations like “likeability” and “electibility.” The Obama supporters I’ve heard from (whose opinions on Obama I often respect and agree with), their arguments for Obama often come down to their belief that he’s a superior human being. Clinton’s been in the public eye for 3-4 times as long as Obama, and has been getting ripped apart the whole time. Obama’s been getting a comparatively easy ride (which will get harder once he’s the nominee). I’m not surprised people find him more appealing.
It seems like identifying politicians as “insiders” (accepted members of the group) vs. “outsiders” is itself a larger problem in its own right. Not to minimize what Amanda is saying, because I think she’s completely correct, but this is why I am completely exhausted by politics.
I don’t know enough about the people involved to know if “nouveau riche” is supposed to be taken literally (in a monetary sense) but there is definitely the issue of “Well, Hillary/Obama/whomever is just not our type of people.”
In the past this was a really gentle way of expressing racism, sexism, or any other kind of bigotry, and it still is.
La Lubu—what MikeEss said. And agreed. One of the weird ironies of all this is that most of us see the Clintons as first rate insiders, but they’re still treated like straw-chewing hicks by the outraged mainstream media types. The Village litmus test is all the people who were genuinely outraged by Clinton’s infidelity while not giving two shits about the routine and much more substantial infidelities of everyone else. The interlopers are expected to be 500 times better to be treated half as good. See: Everything Mo Dowd writes.
I think it will be a given that these guys will hate Obama even more. So not looking forward to the crap.
But what would make the Clintons outsiders while the Obamas are insiders?
What is this rising belief that if Clinton is one thing, then Obama must be the opposite? Don’t lose perspective, please. It’s important to remember that both are considered utterly unacceptable compared to McCain in the eyes of The Villagers.
Yeah. I wonder if he’ll continue to be considered so “electable” after he’s officially got the Dem nomination, and the MSM starts crucifying him. Hillary’s shown she can tough it out. I guess we’ll have to see if Obama can.
I think punishing Shuster with a suspension is fine, but they should also suspend Matthews. Since that won’t happen I fear this will just turn into another round of feminist-bashing.
Yeah, that’s a real concern. The scapegoat was killed for what is the most ambiguous and arguable sin, which makes it much easier for this all to be spun as scalp-collecting by irrational feminists. If it had been Matthews for the blow job comment or the castrati comment or one of his many, many blatantly misogynist comments, then it would have been a moment where people really said, “You know, we have this serious sexism problem.” It’s just too arguable for me to celebrate. I feel like people are being thrown a bone to distract them from the real meat. I don’t feel like partaking.
blatherskite, why should Chelsea Clinton have to do interviews just because the Romney boys did? Given the media’s treatment of her when Bill Clinton was in office, it’s hardly surprising that she’d want to avoid extensive contact with the press. Plus, if we’re going to call having the kids help with campaigns exploitative, interviewing would still fall under that umbrella.
And if Clinton is honestly being attacked for her gender (See: Facebook groups like “Hillary Clinton: Stop running for President and make me a sandwich”), then why can’t she point out that she’s a victim of sexism? And why can’t she fight back in a manner that’s politically advantageous for her? It’s not as if her opponents couldn’t take the teeth out of her actions by agreeing with her and making it evident that they don’t support sexism either.
But I also feel as though Don Imus was thrown under a bus. Because there are radio personalities that say a whole lot worse than he does and nothing happens to them, and they aren’t ’shock jocks’. But Imus was a democrat and those others weren’t.
No, Imus is more than a shock jock — he deserved the thumping he received because all the A-list pols and MSM ponitificators went on his show to promote their latest book, or spin the latest political story. They know who the go-to on air guy was, and it was Imus, and the clubby defense of him by those folks was an additional outrage.
And about Shuster, he’s a good reporter with a case of BAD foot-in-mouth, whereas Chris Matthews is a veritable geyser of sexist filth with a long history of worse comments and you didn’t see any haughty letters to MSNBC calling for his head from the Clinton campaign. No, this is, as other said, about timing — an attempt to distract the MSM and bloggers from the anticipated drubbing Hillary received on Saturday. Smart strategy, btw, but it was pretty hard not to see the Obama tidal wave yesterday, no matter how much folks were talking about the pimp comment.
Part of the confusion over the insider-outsider status of the candidates is the Village doesn’t actually report on (maybe even understand?) politics. They report on horse races. Politics is how you get, maintain, and use power. Without a doubt, HRC uses insider politics. She might appeal to a wide swath of the population and stand for some important progressive ideals, but her politics are pure establishment. She wins by going right on her weak points and staying left only on rewarding topics, like childcare and universal pre-K. (She her comment about McCain that Amanda showed us earlier). Her vote on the Iraq war shows she is either totally deluded about Bush, totally crazy about foreign policy, or decided she needed to look strong, war be damned. She gets big donors primarily and she uses high-power corporate PR jerks like Mark Penn to run her campaign.
Obama on the other hand is mostly an outsider: he doesn’t rely on such insider tactics. Even though he has gotten a lot of insider endorsements, look at all the Red-State Dems that have endorsed him because they know he won’t cut their populations out of the political process. The preponderance of his donors are small and he has many more volunteers. He rejects the 50+1, divide and conquer strategies that have been bread and butter of the Dem insiders and their Village friends.
The “pimping Chelsea” comment also smacked of the stage mother, desperate in career and at motherhood but a failure at both. The irrational nature of the criticism is mind-boggling — eg, her “ambition”, as if that’s bad, and absent from men also competing for same office.
I still don’t have a dog in this fight, but I’m getting really annoyed with the way Team Obama has inflated and exploited this irrationality — HRC is “divisive” — as their own kind of fear mongering. I just don’t see the same bigots and flying monkeys that have gone after her for nearly two decades suddenly eager to do the bidding of that nice black man striding across the divide.
Obama keeps primly pointing out that HRC is a “divisive” figure and he’s not. It’s another BS criticism,. (He still hasn’t explained how he’s going to get the Republicult to work with him.) I just read this:
(Re the roaring hypocrisy of the anti-Clinton mobs, not only were some of the loudest critics from the 90ies engaged in same or worse sexually, but the double standard persists. Earlier George Will went to the accepted RW formula that if a political opponent has lied about an affair — which no one else has ever done — it’s a perpetual stain and he can be accused, without reaspm pr evidence, of lying about everything always. No mention of BushCo’s 900+ lies on Iraq alone though.)
Being thrown a bone is the worst thing in the world, I honestly think. The source of all evil…or at least what allows it to happen? Maybe.
By the way. My dislike of Clinton is strictly due to her joining in on moral panics. It’s such a huge character flaw that I can’t overlook it. It’s throwing bones to people. And thus the circle continues.
Can’t agree with you this time.
Maybe it is scapegoating, but I see this as “finally! big media is starting to recognize some of the sexist bullshit the talking heads have been spouting!”
This is a foot in the door - my hope is other talking heads will start to monitor what they’re saying, even if it’s just to stop the angry letters and sliding ratings.
It has to start somewhere, and if it’s finally recognized that this sort of bullshit is inappropriate, then I’ll be glad it started here. We take what we can get; we fight our battles with the tools at hand, not with what we wish we had.
Two different versions of sexim, one dumbass comment.
Hillary, being female, or being a Clinton, isn’t allowed to have her family supporting her, while everybody else can. This, to me, is the more dangerous of the two because is sets up a situation where no matter what she does it is wrong. If Schuster had just stuck with that form of critisim he would have recieved a pass.
However, calling Chelsea Clinton a whore, and that is what he was saying if only inadvertently, is pretty goddamn dispicable. That anyone could argue his slimy ass comment wasn’t MEANT to insult Chelsea, and he shouldn’t be suspended for it says alot about how much shit women are expected to take, so men can prove a point.
Yes, Matthew’s has said alot worse and was let off with a lame apology, but that doesn’t mean Schuster’s a fucking victim. He was selling the same tired ass meme that Hillary is some kind of evil shell of a human being because her daughter thinks she should be President. I am upset only in that now he probably considers himself a martyr, and others will take this view as well, refusing to own up to the outright bullshit they spew daily.
By the by, as an Gore-Edwards-(sigh) Obama supporter, it is getting fucking infuriating having to listen to the constant haranging Clinton recieves. I want Obama to step up and call them on this bullshit, cause I think that is what a LEADER that wanted CHANGE would fucking do. While waiting I will enjoy the soothing chirping of the crickets.
Everyone else has yet to put it so honestly and well. I think this is definitely how I feel about the whole thing.
Dude might be a pig, but he’s Wilbur compared to the hog in the pen next to him.
I also wonder why there isn’t the same kind of firestorm when plainly partisan right wingers say similar and/or much more offensive things. This liberal bashing of someone who is, in many ways, one of our own is rather perplexing and is similar in certain ways to liberals lining up to denounce MoveOn’s Petraeus ad. Please don’t construe this as defending Shuster’s comments or the general mindset behind the Village-led Clinton bashing. I think the appropriate response would have been to let Shuster know he fucked up, suspended him and moved on. I think in some ways the MSM’s harsh and defensive response to liberals pointing out their flaws is simple defensiveness and being unwilling to admit you were wrong (see John King’s recent response to Greenwald for instance). Why they don’t react similarly to right-wing criticism is another matter. While I was younger I appreciated when someone pointed out that something I said or did was offensive and if that wasn’t my intention, I tried to modify my behavior (sometimes what we say and do isn’t a refection of what we actually believe but rather a result of not seriously interrogating societal conventions). Unfortunately, many elite talking heads have the mindset of junior high kids and react defensively to being told they were wrong, rather than admitting it and attempting to change their behavior.
I’m with redstocking, and I’m not even 40 yet. The meaning must have shifted for the young people some time in the 90’s.
Goat, it’s a matter of audiences, I think. One can wander into a metaphorical room full of ordinary folks and call out one of them when they are this sexist, and the others might back up a bit and rethink what they were taking for granted just a moment before. Fill that same metaphorical room with the likes of the fools who listen to and believe Limbaugh et al. and you are wasting their effort: they like being pigs who believe themselves to be eagles, they welcome the sound of filth being slapped on their back and being called superiority. You aren’t going to change them. Don’t forget what Shaw said: “[N]ever to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”
I am bothered by a number of things. I do believe that Shuster has not done anything worse than the other jerks at MSMBC but I don’t think letting him off the hook because he is not as bad as he could have been is a logical standard. Not that I believe that is what anyone here is saying but that has been the the tone of many comments I have been reading at other sites.
In the correspondence between Shuster and Clinton’s press secretary which took place after the comment about Chelsea Clinton, Shuster sounded like a typical Nice Guy.
He was mad because he felt she wouldn’t talk to him or other reporters after he had said nice things about her and everything! Imagine the nerve of that bitch! Shuster sounded like some jerk at a bar pissed that a woman he wants to talk to doesn’t want to talk to him.
Honestly, the complaint about Hillary not having any substantive issues to talk about is pretty weak. That is one of the intentions of this kind of harassment, if the campaign complains they are whiny and get thrown off their message. The haters win. If they ignore it Clinton looks weak and passive. The haters win. Think of John Kerry and the swiftboating fiasco.
Not even. I grew up in the 90s, and my primary definition of “pimping” is someone selling the opportunity to have sex with other people.
oh Lordy. Ben Bradley and Sally Quinn are planning the Obamas’ Village Coming Out Party as I type this.
The reason the Clinton campaign went after him for this remark was because it involved Chelsea. If Hillary complains about their treatment of her, the public sees her as a whiner; if she is outraged at the treatment of Chelsea, then they see her as a mother standing up for her child — much more positive. She’s trying to do the same thing Lynne Cheney did when she called out John Kerry for mentioning that her daughter is gay, and while I agree that Lynne’s outrage was ridiculous, it worked. The media adored that story and played it like John Kerry had outed Mary on national TV.
Does the end justify the means here? Maybe Hillary thinks so, if the MSNBC boys’ club gets the message to tone it down or heads will roll.
If Shuster was upset because Chelsea wouldn’t give press interviews, that just makes it worse for him, IMO. Paying her back for not behaving the way he wants her to by labeling her with a wink, wink, nudge, nudge sexist insult (and it was clear from his manner that he knew exactly what he was doing) is just gross.
I grew up in the 90s, and I’ve used pimp in a non-literal sense. But it’s still has been in a way somewhat analogous to it’s literal meaning - mostly when someone is selling or offering something (usually an idea or a storyline) that they know to be false or of little value. (A campaign operative might pimp the idea that Barack Obama is an al Qaeda sleeper agent.) But it’s still kind of shocking to hear it in a formal environment. I was at a panel discussion recently in which a professional woman a few years older than I am (I’m 30) used it in exactly that context three or four times, and it really jarred me - the same way it would jar me to hear “sucks” or “blow job” in a formal context, even though I use both those words - especially sucks - in informal conversation. In any context, it’s wrong to use it about a person. On the air, very unprofessional. He should have been suspended. Any non-celebrity journalist would be suspended or even fired for less. But I agree with Amanda - there are far worse offenders. I found Chris Matthews’ non-apology apology more offensive than this.
The crowd my kids ran with in the 90s thought “pimp” meant a good-looking, sharp-dressing young man. I don’t know what they called a good-looking, sharp-dressing young woman, but probably it was not “ho.” My kid’s email name was “pimpdaddy.” I tried to explain to him how terrible that was. I said “A pimp is a man who beats women up and takes their money. Why would you want to be a pimp?” But he didn’t agree at all, just thought I was oooold. Which I am.
Mrs Nice Guy
I have to call bullshit on the supposed change in the meaning of the word “pimp.” Yes, people talk about things “looking pimp” or “pimping my ride,” but all that means is that the person has adopted what the image to be the fashion sense of an actual pimp. Not a generic stylish man, but a man who supports himself by selling women’s bodies. (Listen to the song. The reason why it’s hard out there for a pimp? ‘Cause his bitches are talkin’ shit.) The underlying meaning - and the unbreakable connection to the companion word, ho, is still there.
(For the record, I’m in my 20s)
The origin of “The Village”, at least as we use it, seems to be here:
Via Digby.
Loneoak: There was an interview last Tuesday on NPR with several DC media types. A caller (rightly) castigated them for their horse-race coverage, and the one’s response was that, sure, they could cover policy, but that’s sooooo boooring!
To reiterate: the DC media covers gossip and horse-races because they themselves are bored by policy and therefore refuse to cover it.
Amanda, my comment didn’t appear within 30 seconds of my hitting the “blaspheme” button. Should I a) resubmit it several dozen times, or b) whine that I’m a good feminist and that you must hate me for no good reason at all?
Wait, this is a both/and blog, right? Got it.
If the meaning of “pimp” has changed, it hasn’t changed for the kind of people who make up the majority of MSNBC’s audience. Or the electorate.
Romney, party of 5? Romney?
Remember when Quitt Romney strapped his five strapping sons to the Winnebago and paraded them around Iowa? Boy, the five brothers are tasty like some homemade pasta sauce!
Yeah, where was the “Mitt’s pimping” there? I think Shuster is sexist not only because it’s Hillary Clinton at the top of the ticket, but because it’s Chelsea. She was too young to campaign for Bill, besides working the adorable presidential whiz kid circuit. But now, she’s grown, pretty much in the same position as Romney’s kids. She used to hang out with Madonna, you know. I think her mother’s name at the top of the ticket is half the problem, and the other half is that she’s a daughter rather than a son, because i guess it takes *six* sons stumping for you to equal the immorality of putting one daughter to work as a passionate advocate for her country.
Re: pimping.
Okay, I’m always pimping the awesome Monterrey band Plastilina Mosh for a million reasons, but not the least of them is that they are sending not-so-secret signals they belong to the One True Church.
Just a for-example. No one thinks I was calling this band a prostitute.
My concern is that we’re so eager for this bone, that we don’t realize it’s shit that’s been thrown to us to make us look stupid, like we don’t even know about slang terms that have been around for eons. Or that we’re hitting the fainting couch to score cheap political points, and that our complaints can therefore all be written off. I don’t want critiques of sexism in the media to be put in the same boat as Bill Donohue’s claims of anti-Catholic bigotry.
soph, if there was a snowball’s chance in hell that people held Clinton to the same standard that the Cheneys were held, then I’d agree that it’s a savvy move. And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it is.
Even if, as Shuster’s defenders have pointed out, it can be frustrating to be told that Chelsea Clinton is off-limits to reporters but has some kind of role in the campaign, it makes no sense for him to describe that frustration in pimps-n-hos lingo —
Unless he thinks that Chelsea Clinton’s involvement is to serve as a kind of bait, dispensing metaphorical come-ons to the people she calls.
I haven’t figured out any sense in which the alleged shifts in the meaning of “pimp” as noun or verb would help understand Shuster’s usage.
I think it’s appropriate to say, “This is the last straw, MSNBC,” especially when Shuster _isn’t_ one of the network’s chief sexist offenders. It’s the disappointment of realizing that someone whom you thought was a professional was actually part of the problem. Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough are irredeemable. Calling out the guy who still might have a soul seems entirely legit.
But, Amanda, your example would help explain it if Shuster had said that Chelsea was out there pimping her mom, i.e., talking her up. (I’ve never liked that usage, but it’s there, even right down to ‘blogpimping.’)
Instead, he said that she was _being_ pimped out. Agency going in the other direction.
And who won that exchange? (Hint: it wasn’t Edwards, it wasn’t McEwan and it wasn’t you.)It seems to me that we should be taking notes, not the high ground. I’ve always been a believer in this line from the Merchant of Venice:
…the villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
I see nothing wrong with making an honest and accurate fact made part of the general discourse even if it occasionally involves making mountains out of molehills. (And, for the record, I do not consider gutter-sliming a young woman as a whore and her mother as a pimp a molehill; it is a very big deal.)
Unofficial from Maine: Record high turnouts- Obama leading by 57%, with 49% of precincts reporting in so far. Portland (largest city) and York County (largest population) haven’t reported in yet. This, despite a powerful squall line dividing the state currently with 50+ mph winds, white-out conditions, and thundersnow and lightning!
Our little town went the other way: 55% Clinton, 36% Obama, 2% Edwards.
Yes, that is true. But someone had to “pay” for Matthews’ behavior, and the best way for MSNBC to send a message to the Clinton campaign that they were going to put a stop to it was to toss someone under the bus. Matthews was considered untouchable, so MSNBC found another instance of unacceptable behavior in the form of Shuster and offered to make an example of him. Clinton wanted MSNBC to change its tune and demanded a scalp. MSNBC looked around to see who was expendable and chose Shuster.My 2 cents regarding the use of the word “pimp” and whether its usage was offensive is this: maybe it DOES means something less offensive for the “younger crowd”. Okay, I can buy that.
But David Shuster is FORTY years old himself! (Good ole Wiki; he was born in 1967)
How in the world is “suck” sexist? Did giving (or receiving) oral become degrading to women or something?
“Suck” has sexist origins. It implies that those humans (straight women and gay men) who suck on cocks, well, suck, that they are lesser beings. But like I said in the post, it’s become such a common word that it’s separated itself from its origins.
Flip, I think it’s a stretch to say it’s definitively used as literally as people are making it out. The exact subject/object stuff isn’t really the point. My concern is that we’re being played here.
The “suck” example is good, it has become fairly benign
but after all suck went from innocuous verb to sexualized insulting verb and now seems to be an innocuous sexualized verb mainly because society in general is quite blase’ about oral sex, however the sexualized meaning never entirely subsumed the original meaning-it was value added.
I am wary about the attempts to launder pimp, a word whether used as a noun or verb, that for most of my years(i am 40)has not been woman friendly. Who benefits? In any case, it ain’t squeaky clean yet. The dirty old insult with a bright and hip new layer of meaning= contextual value added and plausible deniability rolled into one.
The civil liberties issue is: does firing someone for speech narrow the margin of what can be said? Unfortunately, that margin was narrowed long ago, by the one two punch of eviscerating the fairness doctrine and handing the media over to the monopolistic control of global corporations. Which is why I am less worked up about some jerk like Shuster doing the routine of degrading the Clintons, a routine that has been going on now for fifteen years, being bounced on his ass. It will make the ass all the more valuable, actually - Fox will surely come to the rescue.
What is dysfunctional about the Clintons is that they so easily mix with the people who degrade them. It conveys the mafioso message - it’s just business - which, I sorta think, is how Hillary and Bill think. This provokes that strange Clinton experience - you get outraged because somebody flings shit at them, and the Clintons themselves then pull the rug out from under you. The week after Edwards concedes, Hillary Clinton is already talking to Fox about them hosting a debate. Here we have a network that it is the very embodiment of the ‘right wing conspiracy’, and its all just hunky dory. Being jerked around like that is, to say the least, exhausting. And it makes one suspicious - is this real indignation about MSNBC - which would be totally understandable - or a smokescreen to go onto Fox - which would be totally outrageous?
I’m going to hope for the best - that this is true human outrage, that Clinton supporters aren’t going out there to protest and complain only to have the rug pulled out from under them by the very person they sincerely believe to be a feminist, a liberal, etc., etc., who has been insulted unfairly and subject to a whole campaign of insults.
Sure, it’s not literal, but it’s still offensive when it’s used figuratively, no?
I think the context of making phone calls, not doing interviews, etc. is Shuster’s way of saying that the Clinton campaign is trying to _entice_ the superdelegates by pushing Chelsea Clinton out there. What could an attractive woman be doing on the phone with these people that she’d want to be so secretive about it, nudge nudge wink wink? He’s not _actually_ accusing them of _literally_ doing anything like that, but he thinks what they’re doing is, in fact, somewhat like that.
So to me it’s not the word itself, it’s the way that Shuster wants to sex up the otherwise rather conventional practice of having supporters make calls… when it comes to Chelsea Clinton.
Janet Napolitano has been making calls to the superdelegates on behalf of Obama. Do you think Shuster would say that Obama was pimping her out? That would be wrong in all kinds of ways, and he’d never say it.
I see your point about Clinton defenders being set up to look overly sensitive, but sometimes you cry wolf when there _is_ a wolf.
I’m with Deanna. Just because Matthews is too major a player, apparently, to face public consequences greater than a wimpy apology doesn’t mean Shuster should skate away easy. It’s a start.
And Shuster didn’t get “thrown under the bus”. He got suspended. This is hardly a career-ending event. Shuster committed a glaring personal foul and he got ejected and sent to the locker room, not banned for life.
And any of us might use an offensive term in casual conversation that we wouldn’t use in a news broadcast or televised discussion or dissertation or a thank-you note to our grandma, for pity’s sake. They are wholly different venues. You
fuck upperpetrate a blunder, you sometimes pay a penalty.And PS: don’t forget, folks: if you register at pandagon, and you log-in before you comment, you don’t have to type in the wicked little anti-spam characters, and I believe this reduces the possibility of posting something a jillion times.
Having gone back to re-read your original post, Amanda, I think we’re saying almost the same thing. I just don’t mind seizing upon “pimp” as a shorthand for “characterizing women’s political involvement, no matter how routine, as somehow sexual or sleazy.”
Here’s a whole column on the etymology of the word suck, for those who are really interested:
http://www.slate.com/id/2146866
“Besides, it’s not even clear that sucks has naughty origins. We might trace its roots to the phrase sucks hind teat, meaning inferior. Or there’s sucks to you, a nonsexual taunt apparently favored by British schoolchildren of yore.”
larkspur, I am SO HAPPY you reminded me about registering and logging in. This is SO MUCH BETTER! Cat be praised.
Walk, I think it’s a mistake to characterize it as an active attempt to defang “pimp”. Language shifts can’t be understood like that most of the time. And I’m certainly not trying to place a value on the word in a proactive way, just observing something that’s already happened. I can probably agree that it’s not a great thing by any stretch that the concept of pimping has been normalized and defanged, but it is a fact that it has.
Amanda, I am a real admirer of your ongoing willingness to enter the fray and take the risk that you might be accused of being inappropriately vociferous about things that everyone “knows” are no big deal.
Mainly I am thinking about being played. We are being played but I wonder if it is possible to ever entirely avoid that. Thats the beauty of the system. If it wasn’t so effective at silencing us, making us question the legitimacy or timing of both the push back and the person or persons complaining, in this case the Clinton campaign, we wouldn’t be still struggling under it today.
I think sophronia’s right. If Hillary complains about her own treatment, she’s a whiner who just doesn’t have what it takes to run with the big boys. If she complains about Chelsea’s treatment, she’s defending her daughter from an unprovoked attack.
I have to disagree in that the use of the word “pimp” was quite bad in itself.
As others points out, he wasn’t talking about “pimping her” as in giving her a hot new hairdo, he meant whoring her out. In some contexts “pimp” may have lost its original meaning but not in this one. There is only one way to take his comments: Chelsea is a whore beign pressed into work by her mother.
I’m normally the last person to play word-police. I think what Imus and Michael Richards said were both fine. But for a “serious” news person in a non-comedy segment to say that is not appropriate at all.
I didn’t mean that I thought you were trying to defang pimp but that as you say, it is happening and while it is happening, the slipperiness of the meaning allows it to be used very consciously while affording the user plausible deniability.
Flip, it’s just suspicious to me that we get a scalp over something that is arguable. Why not get our scalp over a clear-cut example that no reasonable people could disqualify as sexism? This is a case where a reasonable person could say that it wasn’t sexist. That’s not true of 8 million Matthews comments. Why is the bone we’re getting thrown so meager?
I suspect it’s to make us look stupid, oversensitive, and whiny.
Walk, I get you. It’s probably best to keep the word loaded. But at this moment in time, it’s arguably unloaded of all that baggage. If you wanted to defend Shuster, you’d have an argument. Which is why I’m suspicious.
What Imus said was just as arguable (if not much more so) and nobody had any problem scalping him.
You logic here seems be to be a pretty transparent “it didn’t offend me personally” rather than anything more principled. Giving people the benefit of a doubt is something you don’t do consistently, and a number of commenters have called you out on that from time to time.
I’m all for being charitable and assuming the best but it seems a bit disingenuous to do it so selectively.
I can’t see any principle that differentiates what Schuster said from what Imus said, and Imus is an entertainer/comedian.
I guess I’m an incrementalist. Has any media figure ever gotten in hot water over a sexist remark? I can’t think of one, except for Chris Matthews earlier this cycle, and he’s already given an apology, and where did that get us, apart from more of the same?
I rather liked Clinton’s statement on Shuster, to the effect that MSNBC needs to take a good long look at the environment it’s been fostering. It’s a great teachable moment about the pervasiveness and casualness of sexism at MSNBC. Matthews was step 1, Shuster was step 2. I don’t want to let it slide in the hope that a worse remark will come along later, for which we can really unload with both barrels. It’s like my thesis advisor said: don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I just finished watching Shuster’s second, supposedly more fulsome apology.
Sorry, but the way he uses the word “inappropriate” makes only one thing clear: that he’s a scummy little weasel who isn’t really apologizing at all.
“Inappropriate”?? He called a young woman a whore and her mother her pimp. That’s not inappropriate at all. It is many things: wrong, disgusting, ungentlemanly, unmanly, loathsome, repellent, near-unforgivable … but “inappropriate”?
In this case, it wasn’t an apology, it was a slimy attempt to get people off his back. We can talk about whether or not his sorry ass should be fired after he really apologizes.
I’m against “defanging” pimp; unlike words that reflect bigotry against the innocent, it is a word for a profession that is predatory.
However, I am well aware that as a verb it is usually a somewhat ironic synonym for promote. When people offer to pimp me on their websites, I know they want to direct people to my art, not offer me for sex.
But as was said above, if it was meant in the modern, promotional way, it would be Chelsea pimping her mom.
But I agree this is the tip of a very ugly iceberg and I would like to see the more offensive commentators pay before this.
I’m with those who think that it doesn’t matter if Schuster’s slam was ‘not as bad as’ xxx.
He called Chelsea a whore being sold by her mother. A suspension seems mild really. Just because Matthews should be fired doesn’t make what Schuster did no big deal. In another era, no one would have blinked if Bill “Big Dog” Clinton had beaten Schuster to death in the street with a cane for the insult. There are all kinds of reasons why it is a good thing that is no longer an acceptable response, but the insult itself hasn’t changed.
And for all those arguing that ‘pimp’ has lost it’s old meaning, I have a question - is there some other word we are using now to refer to those men who make their living selling sex with women?
Pimp can only ‘loose’ that meaning when we have some other word that means ‘man who rents out women’s bodies to other men.’
Until we do, no matter how much hippster’s embrace an ironic version of the verb form, the core meaning of ‘pimp’ the noun won’t change, and the verb form will continue to be shaded with that.
Which is, of course, what gives the ironic usage it’s illicit thrill.
I think it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
My old law partner used to argue that proper conduct between prominent people could only be sustained in a society that permitted dueling. The notion being that in a society where the ruling and elite classes have disproportionate power they must hold each others conduct in check by disproportionate responses; people have to know that being a complete and utter shit might be literally fatal, and those who cannot face that risk suffer a social fatality through being Cast Out of the charmed circles.It’s an interesting argument. I don’t buy it: first because it means that good killers can be as rude as they want; second because there are people so powerful that they can’t, in reality, be challenged; third, what defining what constitutes ungentlemanly behaviour - and proper response - can be every bit as screwed up and unacceptable as the purported wrong. One only has to look at the thuggish, criminal attack of Rep. Brooks on Senator Sumner as a superb example of this problem: an armed attack by young man on a startled, unarmed older man with all of the sophistication of a gang beating in an alley was written up by the Southern papers as the epitome of gentlemanly conduct.
It’s an interesting argument, though. Maybe we should buy Bubba some dueling pistols.
Although I appreciated Shuster’s reporting on the Libby trial, I also believe the “pimp” comment was far beyond the arena of appropriate comment.
There is no way the word was intended to mean anything like “pimp my ride.” In its context, Shuster was trying to criticize the Clintons for their daughter’s participation in the campaign, and he, like a lot of other nerdy-types, went too far trying to establish some sort of dumb-ass, tough-guy street cred.
If he was upset that she made herself unavailable for interviews, the simple, and better, thing would have been to report the truth — she’s made herself unavailable for interviews, why? The stupider route — bash her with the next thing to foul language.
Will he or the other talking heads learn anything from this? doubtful
My take is that the environment at MSNBC that stems from the ability of Matthews and others to make one outrageous statement after another about Hilary Clinton without consequence led Shuster — who otherwise seems decent — to say something incredibly stupid.
It’s like a teen-age boy hanging out with a bunch of boys who make gay jokes. Eventually he’s going to call someone “queer” and think it is a joke. It’s what all the other cool kids are doing.
It’s not necessarily fair, but I don’t have a problem with Shuster being fired — maybe that will stop others from going too far.
The bigger problem is Matthews and Tucker who need to feel more consequences for being as blatantly idiotic as they are.
In the late ’30s Woody Guthrie had a radio show. From time to time he told racist jokes and used the n-word until he got a letter from a Black man who objected to Guthrie’s use of the word and his jokes. He apologized and refrained from using such language saying he hadn’t realized the effect his words could have on people. I don’t think Guthrie disliked Black folks, he just needed someone to tell him his behavior was objectionable. Take from this what you will.
What fishboots said @36.
Schuster is being punished for the sexist comment he made — as he should. That folks would try to imply a sliding scale for such comments; in that they feel this comment or that comment isn’t as bad as comments uttered by Matthews or someone else, shows just how fucked up this all is and just how much crap we accept as women. None of it is OK or less hurtful; it’s all bullshit and it needs to stop.