MSNBC Host Ed Schultz Refers to Fox Host as 'Steve Douchey'

During The Ed Show on Monday, MSNBC host Ed Schultz said referred to Fox News Channel’s host Steve Doocy as “Steve Douchey,” continuing his and the network’s culture of coarse rhetoric that has been ratcheted up in recent weeks.

While criticizing those who suggested that President Barack Obama was “wagging the dog” and distracting from Obamacare’s failures by announcing a deal with Iran on the nation’s nuclear program over the weekend, Schultz said that “Fox News Channel’s Steve Douchey jumped on the Obamacare distraction band wagon. He wasted no time spreading the absurd idea.”

He then played a clip Doocy’s remarks from earlier in the day. 

Schultz, who was suspended from MSNBC for calling conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut” on his radio program in 2009, simply continued what has been described as an MSNBC culture that often enables and perhaps even encourages such rhetoric. 

“It’s a systemic problem,” said Jeff Cohen, an Ithaca College journalism professor and liberal commentator who was a producer for Phil Donahue’s prime-time MSNBC show a decade ago, to the Associated Press. “It’s a problem at MSNBC. It’s a problem in cable news. It’s a certain coarseness where everything goes. I guess they can keep sanctioning and suspending people, but there’s something wrong when name-calling is considered OK.”

Cohen was referring to Bashir’s comments about Palin, but the network has had a history of hosts making offensive and overt-the-top remarks on and off the air. 

Keith Olbermann, while he was at the network, tweeted that S.E. Cupp was the “perfect demonstration of the necessity of the work Planned Parenthood does” and infamously called conservative writer Michelle Malkin a “big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.” 

MSNBC contributor Mark Halperin was suspended after he called President Barack Obama a “dick,” and Don Imus was fired for referring to the Rutgers basketball team as “nappy headed hos.” David Shuster was suspended indefinitely for saying in 2008 that Hillary Clinton “pimped out” her daughter Chelsea at campaign events. And Alec Baldwin was given a two-week suspension for going on an anti-gay tirade against a photographer on the streets of New York two weeks ago. 

And most recently, Bashir suggested that someone should defecate and urinate in Palin’s mouth. Bashir has apologized, saying his remarks were “wholly offensive” and “offensive,” but the network has not taken any disciplinary action against him, even though it has suspended or fired others for making offensive remarks on and even off of the network’s airwaves. 

Palin’s PAC, SarahPAC, wrote a letter to MSNBC President Phil Griffin and NBC News President Deborah Turness, which Breitbart News exclusively obtained, asking what discipline Bashir will receive given the precedent the network has set with other hosts.

“You fired Don Imus for offensive language in describing the Rutgers University Women’s Basketball team, you suspended Alec Baldwin, and yet nothing has happened to Mr. Bashir,” the letter reads. “Are we to assume then, that disciplinary procedures at your network take place based on the target of the remarks rather than the remarks themselves?”

The letter concludes by saying, “Americans deserve to know that your network doesn’t condone violent and hateful rhetoric directed at anyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or political persuasion.”