If you ever watch MSNBC — which you probably don’t unless you’re getting paid to do so — you may have noticed that The Dylan Ratigan Show had a rather unusual guest-host last week: Eliot Spitzer! The girl-renting ex-governor has been a frequent guest, apparently, so MSNBC thought it would be a good idea for him to lend his, um, star power to Ratigan’s show.
In other news, MSNBC’s David Shuster has been suspended indefinitely because he taped a pilot for CNN and forgot to tell his bosses. Mediaite spoke to MSNBC President Phil Griffin about Shuster’s punishment:
“I said all along that this was about loyalty and looking out for this network and not our competition,” Griffin told Mediaite, who said in an email Thursday afternoon (obtained by Mediaite today), “We don’t pay David to help CNN figure out how to beat us.”
So there are two messages here: 1) You can cheat on your wife, just don’t cheat on MSNBC; and 2) Phil Griffin thinks David Shuster and Eliot Spitzer are ratings boosters.
The first one I can understand, I guess. Ethics have no place in journalism, obviously. As for the second one: Why??? What better way to beat CNN than to push David Shuster on them? Throw in Olbermann and Maddow and some of the other dead weight, and MSNBC could soar all the way to a somewhat-less-distant second place.
In other news, one of Spitzer’s old business associates is not at all happy about his guest-hosting gig.