David Shuster Blows Himself Up

Shuster: A Dose of His Own Medicine [Stephen Spruiell]

The intolerably smug David Shuster, hero of the liberal blogosphere, devised a little pop-quiz for Rep. Marsha Blackburn when she was on MSNBC a few days ago:

SHUSTER: Let's talk about the public trust. You represent of course a district in western Tennessee. What was the name of the last soldier from your district who was killed in Iraq?

BLACKBURN: The name of the last soldier killed in Iraq from my district? I do not know.

SHUSTER: OK, his name was Jeremy Bohannon. He was killed August the ninth, 2007. How come you didn't know the name?

The whole spectacle made for disgusting television. Shuster dragged this poor kid's body out on stage and shoved it in Blackburn's face, then sat back with a look on his face like he was enjoying a post-coital cigarette.

Turns out it wasn't even the right body:

As it turns out, Pvt. Jeremy Bohannon — the soldier whose name Shuster attacked Blackburn for not knowing — had not, contrary to the MSNBC reporter's claim, lived in her district.

A Media Blog reader who discovered this information on Newsbusters and e-mailed Shuster received this response and forwarded it to us:

the story was about blackburn's hypocrisy... it wouldn't matter whether the soldier's name was David shuster or Crazy Water. she didn't know the name, period.
Regards,
D

Who cares what the dead kid's name is, right? The story is about Blackburn's hypocrisy. She came on the show to denounce MoveOn.org's "Betray Us" ad, but she didn't know the name of the last soldier killed from her district! And that's hypocritical, because...
Why? Actually, that's not hypocritical at all. Hypocrisy is saying something when in reality you believe something different. Not knowing the name of the last soldier killed from your district is, at worst, laziness, and, at best, a deer-in-the-headlights moment on national television.

Hypocrisy is pretending to care about the death of an American soldier, when really he's just a prop in your gimmicky audition for your own show on MSNBC.

Here's John Gibson interviewing Marcia Blackburn

And from Newsbusters we get a broader picture. Shuster is apparently forced into an apology (a la Dan Rather?) and it isn't the first time he has embarrassed himself.

This was hardly the first time that Shuster has played fast and loose with the facts to suit his liberal viewpoint. Some of his biggest blunders:

Last month, he called the Larry Craig scandal a "moral insult" to Hurricane Katrina victims.
Shuster collaborated with left-wing fabulist Jason Leopold to spread false stories about the Bush admin.
Giving play to wild accusations of "voter intimidation" in the 2006 elections (in case GOP won them)
Relying on skewed, left-wing sources, Shuster falsely predicted that Bush aide Karl Rove would be indicted in the Valerie Plame investigation.