The Last Post on the Bugle

David Shuster is a hollow character, who went with the irreverent flow at MSNBC and got carried away. What he said about Chelsea Clinton was tasteless, but, in the context of pigheaded American punditry, forgiveable. Unfortunately, artificial controversy is easy to whip up and hard to control in America. Something is said, someone gets offended, and before you know it everyone is dismayed, alleging, suggesting, decrying, until another empty face disappears from the screen.

At the same time, I am not shedding a tear for Mr. Shuster. He should have lost his job a long time ago, more specifically, after the release of the documentary “Control Room”. In the brilliant film about media coverage of the Iraq War, Shuster is shown being just another patriotic hyena, conditioned by the governments drumbeat to war, cheeringleading for our boys. In those days, he was just another Junior reporter at MSNBC. Despite his failure to do anything but toe the government line, he somehow rose through the ranks of the channel in the years that followed.

In Control Room, Shuster is shown jublilantly celebrating as “our boys” entered Bagdhad. The talking head gets to open his mouth as well. Joking about Iraqis looting in the streets after the regime fell, he quips happily “looks kind of like wheel of fortune.” His other big moment in the film, is when he speaks with great condescension about his Al Jazeera colleagues and their “rebelliousness”. Shuster attributes the superiority of American coverage of the war to “200 years of free speech.” How unfortunate, that he was on the wrong side of history.

Whoever still has any pleasent feelings for this man, shouldn’t be too worried. His face is sure to reappear sometime soon on a screen near you, once the public has forgotten his infractions. It shouldn’t take more than a news cycle or two. Until then, his body will be frozen to preserve it’s natural nothingness, and he will await ideological injection in some secret lab in Burbank, California.