David Shuster–Hack “Journalist” and Obama Propagandist

**UPDATE** both Christopher (in comments here) and Cedeno (on her blog) acknowledge being Shuster’s sources.  Time to ask MSNBC what kind of sources they’re using.  Christopher acknowledges that the Clinton campaign quote was “on the record”, so who was it???  And did Shuster check it?  We’re waiting….

David Shuster is not a journalist.  He is a propaganda agent who is working

Dumb and Dumber

directly from Obama campaign talking points. Worse yet, he uses the most dubious of sources to play “gotcha” with his guests.  His tactics make the likes of Bill O’Reilly look like Edward R. Murrow.  In his interview with Darragh Murphy and Will Bower he claimed that Hillary Clinton had been quoted disavowing the PUMA movement.  From the transcript:

SHUSTER:  All right.  But she‘s not standing up for your organization.  I mean, Derragh, she said to a reporter, We oppose any effort that doesn‘t support a Democratic victory in the fall, including PUMA.  You‘re with PUMA, right?

I thought that was a pretty damning quote, if true, from Senator Clinton.  It was something that I had not heard before, so I thought I would track it down.  What I found out was shocking.  Apparently Hardball had been tipped by a “reporter” named Tommy Christopher who outsources to a notorious propaganda site called Yes to Democracy.  This site is run by an unstable Obama supporter named Christina Cedeno, who has a history of stalking, intimidation, and even anti-Semitism.  (more on that in a bit)

First let’s take a walk down memory lane.  Shuster has a history of sticking his foot in his mouth.  He especially likes to go after women (I’ll leave it up to BB to sort that out), as we saw in the interview with Darragh.  Shuster was infamously suspended from his job after saying some nasty things about Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, and then lying about it:

On the February 8 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, correspondent David Shuster addressed a remark he made about Chelsea Clinton on the February 7 edition of MSNBC’s Tucker that “doesn’t it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way” by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-NY) presidential campaign. On Morning Joe, Shuster said of his comment: “Well, last night, I used a phrase — some slang about her efforts. I didn’t think that people would take it literally, but some people have. … [T]o the extent that people feel I was being pejorative, I apologize for that. I should have seen that people might view it that way, and for that, then I’m sorry.” However, despite saying he “apologize[d]” for the remark, Shuster never mentioned the specific “slang” he used in reference to Chelsea Clinton’s campaign work that he claimed had been taken “literally.” Moreover, Shuster falsely claimed that, on Tucker, he also said that “Americans should be proud of [Chelsea]” and that “everybody, all of us, love” her.

Just prior to issuing his “apolog[y],” Shuster stated: “Well, last night, on Tucker’s show … I said a lot of wonderful things about Chelsea. I praised her; I said Americans should be proud of her; I talked about how [Republican presidential candidate] Mike Huckabee has praised the Clintons for how they’ve raised her, and the fact of the matter is, as I said last night, everybody, all of us, love Chelsea Clinton.” But, while Shuster did note on Tucker that “[p]olitical opponents like Mike Huckabee have credited the Clintons for raising such a poised and self-possessed young woman,” he did not say “Americans should be proud of [Chelsea]” or that “everybody, all of us, love Chelsea Clinton.”  (video of Shuster’s non-apology at the Media Matters link)

Lucky for Shuster he works at MSNBC, the national frat-boy network, and was given a slap on the wrist, and of course the rest of our corrupt, lying media leapt to his defense.  They painted Hillary as an opportunist by using Shuster’s remarks to galvanize female voters.  In other words, she really WAS pimping out Chelsea…From Jake Tapper:

Hillary: Bring Me the Head of David Martin Shuster

February 09, 2008 8:17 PM

I don’t think President Bush reacted this strongly — at least publicly, and personally — to Dan Rather’s “Memo-Gate” scandal.

But apparently, MSNBC correspondent David Martin Shuster’s apology and suspension aren’t enough for Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. She refers to them, in a letter to the president of NBC News, as insufficient…

I don’t doubt that Clinton was offended, deeply. But how much of this public war against MSNBC and David Shuster is because of that outrage, and how much of it — if any — is politics, to galvanize female voters and get them to the polls?

Yeah, but we’re just making up all that stuff about sexism in the primaries, right?  But…Hillary really is a monster, so even though all of this stuff SEEMS sexist, it’s not because it’s true… How many times did we hear that kind of disgusting rationalization in the campaign?

It seems that when it comes to rampant sexism, David Shuster is at least bipartisan.  His offensive remarks about the Clintons was not the first time he went after a woman.  And also not the first time he was forced to apologize. 

Last September, Shuster had Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn on while he was substituting for Tucker.  He blindsided her by asking her a question about a soldier from her district who had died.  When she couldn’t answer he really laid into her, practically jumping out of his chair to admonish her for supporting the war, but not knowing anything about the soldiers.  Of course the “progressive blogosphere” cheered Shuster’s bullying tactics because it was sympathetic to their agenda (we should have seen their treachery coming guys…).  Even the supposedly fair, cool minded Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake couldn’t help but revel in the schedenfraude. 

Last night David Shuster produced a brilliant 78 seconds of tape that underscores the truly loathsome, soulless hypocrisy of the modern GOP. Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee was on to do the honors castigating MoveOn with scripted Rovian talking points, and Shuster threw her off her program with such a cold, hard smack in the face of reality that it cut right through her netherworld of spin and dragged her straight down to earth — where she had absolutely no ability to cope.

Blackburn didn’t know the name of the last soldier from her district who had died, but could proudly cite what was happening with MoveOn “chapter and verse.” She gets increasingly testy as she prattles on with “some of my best friends are…” defensiveness about soldiers from her district, but the bottom line is she really just fobs off dealing with them to some flunky in her office while she gets to do the really important stuff, like the Blonde Wingnut Harpy shtick on cable news. (Shuster video available at link)

Jane, did you just call a US congresswoman a “blonde wingnut harpy”??? Now you want to lecture me on women’s issues?  I don’t think so.  And to think I actually used to respect her.   See the problem is, turns out that Shuster was 100% wrong about the soldier.  He in fact WAS NOT from Blackburn’s district.   He was forced to apologize to Blackburn the next day.

 

I don’t recall any of the progressospheres backtracking on their hatred of  Blackburn, in fact they tried to argue that technically, Shuster was right.  I guess it’s ok to go after women as long as they’re Republican.  What a bunch of hypocrites.

Which brings us back to Shuster’s interview yesterday with Darragh and Will.  That quote about Clinton disavowing PUMA just didn’t seem right.  So I tracked down the source.  It comes from a blogger on AOL’s political machine named Tommy Christopher.  Here’s Shuster’s source, from Mr. Christopher’s blog:

I contacted the Clinton campaign to examine some of the group’s fundraising claims, and to ask if Senator Clinton was aware of, and supported their efforts. …

Well, surely, Senator Clinton appreciates these groups’ efforts on her behalf, right?

We oppose any effort that doesn’t support a Democratic victory in the fall, including PUMA.

Ouch! In my talks with various PUMA leaders, many of them have said, “Well, Hillary hasn’t told me to stop.” Well, she has now.

So this is the source.  Some blogger who “contacted the Clinton campaign”.  Not too reliable in my opinion.  And it might have been a good idea for Shuster to go back to the campaign to confirm.  But like I said, Shuster is not a journalist, so I wouldn’t expect him to act like one.  It should be noted that this blog post was written on July 21st.  This was before Simofish and PUMA-SF’s video came out.  It certainly didn’t sound like Clinton was disavowing PUMA then, in fact much of the media frenzy regarding having her name put into nomination comes from the airing of that video.  If Clinton felt that we were damaging the party, wouldn’t she be repeating this claim every chance she got?  Especially when she was there, talking to them personally?  It just doesn’t pass the smell test.  To my knowledge Christopher’s allegation of this quote is the only one out there.

So who is Tommy Christopher, who also presents himself on his blog as a journalist?  Well from what I can tell, he’s probably not someone that the Clinton campaign would be very interested in talking to. In fact he’s got quite the raging case of Clinton Derangement Syndrome.  If you have a haz-mat suit, you might want to wade through his archives at the Political Machine and see for yourself.  Interestingly enough, Mr. Christopher also happens to have his very own blog on the Obama campaign website.  It seems to be some sort of training manual for the trolls that come to our PUMA sites, with posts like this one, “Want to do Battle with Some PUMAS?”:

 What I found was a hydra-headed “movement” comprised of a group of justly frustrated voters, fed up with a sexist culture and a confusing nominating process, being led by a disparate array of people with other agendas.

Trying to untangle the mess is an exercise in futility that I will leave to crusading pre-school teacher Christina Cedeno. For me, it is enough to strip away the disingenuous mission statements, hidden agendas, and PR posturing, and focus on what they do, their raisons d’etre: to smear Barack Obama.

Hmmm..ok, now a pattern is starting to develop.  It is Christopher’s job to run the PR side of the propaganda, but who is this who will actually be fabricating the lies about PUMA?  Who will be the Igor to Christopher’s Frankenstein, if you will?  Why it’s none other than Christina Cedeno, founder of the propaganda laden anti-PUMA hatesite, yestodemocracy. 

Seems Christina is Christopher’s tool who provides the lies which he then passes on to “journalists” like Shuster.  My evidence is circumstantial, so this is all my opinion and my opinion only.  But take a look at the evidence and judge for yourselves.

First we have the cozy relationship between Christopher and Cedeno, which aside from the above quote, is also documented in a bio that Christopher did of Cedeno on his blog:  

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and her name that sat on him was Christina, and Hell followed with her.

… I was contacted by Christina Cedeno, also known as The Anti-PUMAShe has put together a website that aims to act as smelling salts to those in a PUMA trance. The 22 year-old preschool teacher says she can’t wait to get mic’ed up and throw down with a real live PUMA. She says there aren’t that many of them.

So we’ve established the relationship between Cedeno and Christopher.  We’ve established the relationship between Christopher and Shuster, because that is the source of the “Clinton hates PUMAs” quote.  Then Christina herself couldn’t help bragging on her site after the interview that she had sent the oppo research to Hardball herself through a “friend” who knows a producer on the show. That “research” ended up being the talking points Shuster used on the show. 

A friend of mine knew the producer of the hardball segment. He sent me their email. I emailed them the following:

I’m Christina from http://yestodemocracy.com and I have a myriad of information that is relevant to your segment tonight (and any puma segment you may be interested in doing in the future).

You think that “friend” might be Mr. Christopher?  That’s what I’m thinking.  So supposing you agree with me that this is the source of Shuster’s hit job on Darragh and Will.  Just who is this person running her very own little propaganda arm of the Obama campaign?

Christina Cedeno seems like a very angry young person.  This is quite noticeable in her frequent use of all caps and red letters.  I thought I’d google and find out if she’s been blogging anywhere else before she drank the kool-aid.   Turns out she was, and it’s not very pretty.  She tried her best to scrub all evidence of it (and if you look, it looks like she took it down about a week ago), but  I guess she didn’t think about the google cache of her site.  It looks like for all of her accusations of racism against PUMAs, Christina has a little bigotry problem herself.  And just so everyone knows, I’m sure it’s her blog because it has the same email that she used to comment here.  I also took screen shots (one of her own favorite tactics) in case she tries to scrub a little harder.  This is what she had to say after being banned from a (Jewish–I checked) author’s blog.

Why am I posting ONCE more about SK? Well, because it seems her little vagina squad doesn’t know when enough is enough. NO, I am not welcome at the SK blog any longer and NO I don’t want to be.

But I do have to say, I tend not to read things that I don’t like or relate to. Jappy narcissists I don’t relate to, so I don’t relate to SK. So, I don’t read her. It really is that simple. (emphasis mine)

Cedeno’s own personal philosophy should tell you all you need to know about her:

You know you’re reaching success when people start to hate you has always been a personal mantra of mine.

So there you go.  THAT is David Shuster’s source.  Judge for yourself if he represents what I’m sure MSNBC regards as world class journalism.  To me it seems like he’s part of the slime machine Obama has created to squash and malign any and all dissent.  If you’d like to contact MSNBC and ask them about their sourcing practices you can do so here:

MSNBC
Mr. Phil Griffin,
Senior Vice President, News
NBC Television Network
30 Rockefeller Plz
New York, NY 10112
phil.griffin@nbc.com

Steve Capus,
President, NBC News
steve.capus@nbc.com

MSNBC
letters@msnbc.com
MSNBC/Microsoft-NBC
30 Rockefeller Plz
3rd Fl
New York, NY 10112
(212) 664-4444

Now brace yourself for the troll storm…