David Shuster Blasts MRC In WaPo: You're Partisan, I'm 'Hard Hitting on Both Parties'

Scott Whitlock's study showing a dramatic partisan tilt to David Shuster's evening "Hypocrisy Watch" segments drew amusing bluster from Shuster when Howard Kurtz reported the study's results briefly in Monday's Washington Post:

MSNBC's David Shuster is an aggressive career reporter who has never been positioned as one of the channel's left-leaning commentators. But in his "Hypocrisy Watch" segments t his year, the conservative Media Research Center points out, 34 of the targets have been Republicans or conservatives -- including Rush Limbaugh twice and Karl Rove five times -- and only four have been Democrats or liberals.

Shuster says the group is "funded and run by die-hard conservatives with a clear partisan agenda" and that his work on the now-defunct program 1600 Pennsylvania Avene "was hard hitting on both parties."

The first argument is largely true -- we are die-hard conservatives, although we're hardly party-line Republicans -- but the second argument is undeniably hilarious. Shuster clearly didn't have an evidence-based argument against the 34-to-4 tilt of this segment. He ends up complaining that it's clearly partisan to insist he refrain from being partisan.

I'd also quibble with Kurtz's notion that Shuster has "never been positioned" as a left-wing commentator on MSNBC. When you substitute regularly for Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, you're a substitute bomb-thrower. David Gregory wasn't trying hard to match the flagrant partisan style of Chris and Keith when he started on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but Shuster clearly tried to fit into that partisan Play-Doh mold once he took over.