Erin Burnett Apologizes and Howard Kurtz Defends Her

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In a follow-up report, Erin Burnett made a half-hearted apology for her failed joke about President Bush being a monkey on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Monday, November 26. The video is posted below:

Do you believe her? Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post does.

In his Media Backtalk chat for Dec. 3rd, media critic Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post stuck up for Burnett. A question from Vienna, Virginia was posed about Brunett's scandalous jokefest on MSNBC's Morning Joe.

Vienna, Va.: You said on Reliable Sources yesterday that you agreed with Erin Burnett's self-assessment that when she called the president a monkey on MSNBC it was stupid. Wasn't it more than that? Seems to me it played right into the belief held by many conservatives that the media viscerally and irrationally will attack the president in the most juvenile way. Yes, the comment was stupid -- so was Trent Lott's joke about Strom Thurmond. But in the senator's case, the media weren't so quick to dismiss it.

Howard Kurtz: It was a stupid, ill-conceived attempt at a joke (Bush was the monkey in the middle because he was flanked by Sarkozy and Merkel). It was not a serious attack on the president.

Now, can we ask a question here? All these lefty reporters and pundits are so willing to take Erin Burnett at her word that she was "just joking," it seems. But, can we recall how they treated Don Imus who made what was considered outrageous comments and who was also just joking?

 

It seems to me that they are awfully selective on who's I-was-just-joking claim they want to accept on face value, doesn't it?

(I would have merely added the Burnett apology video to my pervious post on this issue, but due to a glitch in our NB software, I got locked out of the thread and could not make any edits.)