Martin Bashir apologizes for dirty, disgusting slam at Sarah Palin

By Howard Kurtz,

When I first saw a headline about what Martin Bashir said, I figured it must be exaggerated.

No responsible cable news host would call for defecating on a public figure. That’s just beyond the pale, right?

But that’s exactly what Bashir did on his MSNBC show, while spewing venom at Sarah Palin.

He made an abject apology yesterday, and we’ll get to that in a moment.

I’ve long been amazed by Bashir’s brand of name-calling. He despises Republicans, we get it. But the highly personal nature of his assaults, while delivered in an erudite British accent, stands out even by the loose standards of cable news.

This guy was a co-anchor of “Nightline” when he was at ABC, but was apparently seething with liberal resentment that we now see displayed daily on his weekday show. MSNBC once suspended Ed Schultz for calling Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut”; why on earth does it tolerate Bashir’s brand of bile?

What happened last week is that Bashir used his hatred of Palin—calling her the country’s “resident dunce” and a “world-class idiot”—to descend deeper into the gutter than I ever thought he’d go.

Now the issue on which he went after the former Alaska governor and Fox News contributor is fair game. Palin had spoken in Iowa of borrowing from China to pay for the national debt, saying: “This isn’t racist. But it’s going to be like slavery when that note is due.”

Bashir’s disgusting denouement: “When Mrs. Palin invokes slavery, she doesn’t just prove her rank ignorance. She confirms if anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, “‘sh** in [her] mouth’ and ‘piss in [her] eyes and mouth.’” she would be the outstanding candidate.”

That’s right. Wrapped in the language of literary allegory, Bashir is saying he’d like to see someone assault and abuse Sarah Palin in this horrifying fashion.

And no one at MSNBC bats an eye? This is deemed acceptable discourse?

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