On Monday, NBC announced that it had hired Chelsea Clinton as a full-time correspondent. The former First Daughter will start immediately, and work on stories for NBC Nightly News' "Making a Difference" series, which focuses on volunteer efforts to improve communities. Clinton joins a host of other children-of-the-powerful whom NBC has recently hired, from Jenna Bush to Luke Russert to Meghan McCain. Is this bad business for NBC?
This is just another cushy deal for the 1 percent: Clinton's hire makes a mockery of the idea that "America is a meritocracy" whose media is "filled with insurgent outsiders who will be relentless watchdogs over those in power," says Glenn Greenwald at Salon. No wonder those supposedly "angry, lazy losers in the Occupy movement are so upset." Our country's founders fought a revolution "to free us from the shackles of monarchy." Now, NBC is trying to ensure air time for the "heirs and heiresses to political power and great fortune." The network should be ashamed of itself.
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