MSNBC's Ratigan Decries Budget for 'Clinton-Lewinsky Blowjob Investigation'

On his Wednesday 4PM ET show on MSNBC, host Dylan Ratigan denounced the fact that the recent Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), convened to detail the causes of the 2008 economic collapse, only had a budget of $8 million, while back in 1998, the "Clinton-Lewinsky blowjob investigation" had a $40 million budget. He was apparently referring to special prosecutor Ken Starr investigating perjury charges against the former president.

The report from the FCIC was highly partisan, with the six Democrats on the commission claiming that primary reason for the financial crisis was the lack of government regulation in the private sector. As a result, the four Republican commissioner refused to sign on to the findings and released their own dissenting report.

As Alex Weprin pointed out on MediaBistro.com's TVNewser blog, Ratigan's comment on Wednesday was not the first time the term "blowjob" was featured in MSNBC news coverage: "Way back in 2009, a guest on David Shuster‘s MSNBC program referred to the investigation of former President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky thusly: 'And your idea is that after investigating Bill Clinton for a blowjob for like five years, we shouldn’t investigate the huge, grossly illegal things that were done under the past administration.'" Shuster later apologized for the guest's use of the word.

— Kyle Drennen is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here.