It’s a sorry state of affairs on cable news, indeed. Chris Matthews…David Shuster…Liz Trotta…
…And on MSNBC just now, an uncomfortable-looking Andrea Mitchell became the latest cable news campaign reporter/commentator to apologize on-air for “something stupid” she said (her use on Friday of the word “redneck” to describe Bristol, Virginia and environs). Mitchell said today that she wasn’t offering “excuses,” though she did note that she was using a term “without attribution” that political strategists use all the time. “As they say,” Mitchell said, “when I make a mistake, it’s a beaut.”
J. Todd Foster, the managing editor of the Bristol Herald Courier thanks Mitchell for “the ready-made column” and then blasts Mitchell both personally and for “making fun of Southerners” which he calls “the last bastion of acceptable, politically incorrect stereotyping.”
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.