There's clearly no love lost between conservative media mogul Andrew Breitbart and MSNBC's David Shuster. Breitbart appeared on MSNBC to demand a retraction from Shuster over Shuster's Tweet that Breitbart protege and independent filmmaker James O'Keefe "intended to tap phones" at Sen. Mary Landrieu's office. In fact, a federal indictment against O'Keefe accuses him only of phone "tampering," and MSNBC chided Shuster for his "inappropriate" tweet. The interview devolved into a shouting match over journalistic ethics and O'Keefe's controversial expose about ACORN. (Watch video below) Did the on-air fight help either side?
Shuster shows his true colors: It's pure "comedy gold" to watch a man "reprimanded by his own network" mere hours earlier try to grill Breitbart on journalistic ethics, says Allahpundit in Hot Air. As Breitbart points out, he has a stated political point of view. Shuster, meanwhile, dishonestly tries to pretend that he has "no horse in the race." Exposing hypocrisy on live TV "is the stuff cable news dreams are made of."
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Breibart jumped the shark: It's Breitbart's delightfully "unhinged performance" that "was definitely in shark-jumping territory," says Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo. His "new angle" seems to be "that he's the only truly objective and disinterested commentator on his own employee's criminal conduct." As for his insistence on turning every topic into an attack on ACORN? "At some level I admire Breitbart's insistence."
So what's the truth? Breitbart and the rest of the right-wing "noise machine is now in nonstop whining mode" over the initial reports that O'Keefe tried to wiretap the office, says Steve M in No More Mister Nice Blog. It's amusing to watch them pretend that that that — not O'Keefe's alleged felony — is the real issue here.
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