Brent Bozell writes to MSNBC president Phil Griffin:
Dear Mr. Griffin,
[…]
Your network, working on marching orders from Media Matters, is on a mission to take Rush Limbaugh off the air. Far from being an independent journalistic enterprise, MSNBC is the very essence of a political lapdog of the far left.
Just last night on MSNBC, Ed Schultz, Al Sharpton, and Lawrence O’Donnell all devoted time on their programs attacking Rush. In each case, they grabbed at thin air looking, looking, looking for the opportunity shamelessly to keep the story alive.
These assaults by MSNBC have nothing to do with what he said about Sandra Fluke, and everything to do with censoring prominent voices on the right. Gas prices are nearing $4 a gallon, the unemployment rate hovers over 8%, the US debt is soaring to astronomical highs, but MSNBC is too busy to cover these legitimate news stories. Instead you go after Rush.
And you’re doing it in the most hypocritical manner imaginable.
While your network continues to attack Rush, you personally continue to employ Ed Schultz. Ed Schultz, the man who called Laura Ingraham a “right wing slut.”If what Rush said is so offensive that it deserves your network’s obsession with having him removed, then what are you going to do about a host who has a history of insults a hundred-fold worse than anything Limbaugh has ever said? Unless you fire Ed Schultz, you are a complete hypocrite.
It’s time you take responsibility for hiring and promoting this hate-filled misogynist, and resign.
Hoo-boy. Where to begin?
We have the utterly shameless hypocrisy of a man who has offered nothing but the most tepid, milquetoast criticism of Rush Limbaugh’s misogyny lecturing somebody else on hypocrisy about offensive remarks.
We have a man who has a regular weekly slot on Fox News, the political lapdog of the far right, lecturing somebody else about purported “marching orders from Media Matters” (which he offers no evidence of) and media bias.
We have someone who is paying his employees handsomely to steer the topic of discussion to anything except Rush lecturing someone about covering Rush.
We have a man who gave his organization’s “William F. Buckley, Jr. Award for Media Excellence” to someone who calls women sluts and femi-Nazis.
And how, exactly, did Bozell calculate that Limbaugh calling Fluke a slut and a prostitute, that she’s “having so much sex she can’t afford her own birth control pills,” that she’s “round-heeled,” that she “wants to be paid to have sex,” and that she should “post the videos online so we can all watch” — a torrent of sleaze inspired by one of Bozell’s own employees, Craig Bannister — is one-hundreth the insult of any single thing Ed Schultz said? Does the fact that Limbaugh is a conservative and, thus, is granted immunity by Bozell for these sleazy insults play a major role in that calculation?
If MSNBC must fire Schultz, Bozell must demand that Limbaugh not only be fired from his radio show but also that he return his Buckley award to the MRC. Unless that happens, he’s an even more complete hypocrite than he already was.