MSNBC host Ed Schultz has been suspended without pay for a week for calling right-wing pundit Laura Ingraham a "right-wing slut" on his radio show. Schultz apologized on MSNBC last night, calling his words "terribly vile."

This is not a new thing at MSNBC.  In 2006, Keith Olbermann did a bit about Paris Hilton being assaulted--joking that she has "had worse things happen to her face."  The on-screen graphic was "A Slut and Battery." In 2009 he called right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin a "big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it."

U.S. airstrikes in Libya have brought renewed focus on the 1988 explosion of  Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Some are making the argument that the U.S. could--and should--be getting revenge for this act a mere 22 years later.

Last night (3/21/11), one cable news host said this:

Given the fact Americans died on that 747 over Lockerbie, I'm all for this mission.... I'm an American. You're an American. We all have opinions. I have always believed that Qaddafi was a terrorist. Let's look at the tape again of flight Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Do you need any more evidence? Has Qaddafi ever proven his innocence?

Another one said this:

President Reagan bombed Libya in 1986 over a terrorist incident in Berlin where two American soldiers were killed. Two years later the Pan Am plane was blown up. So the USA owes Qaddafi payback. And you don't kill Americans and get away with it, as President Reagan said.

The first quote came from liberal MSNBC host Ed Schultz, the second from Fox's Bill O'Reilly.

It is a little odd for Schultz to say he supports the Libya airstrikes "as an American" because Qaddafi hasn't "proven his innocence." Our justice system tends to see things a little differently.

As for Libya and Lockerbie, the U.S. position has long been that Qaddafi was responsible. And former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbasset Al-Megrahi was found guilty in a Scottish trial in 2001. Questions have long lingered over the fairness of the trial and the evidence against Megrahi.

And as Ed Herman noted in Extra! (10/09), initial reporting and speculation centered on Iran as the most likely culprit, acting in response to a U.S. attack on an Iranian airliner:

The Lockerbie case arguably begins on July 3, 1988, with the shooting down over the Persian Gulf of Iranian Air Flight 655 by the U.S.S. Vincennes, a missile cruiser that was in that neighborhood helping Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran.

Although 290 civilians were killed in that shootdown, the United States suffered no international sanctions or even reprimands, and Vincennes Captain Will Rogers was greeted as a hero on his return to the U.S. some months later ("Crew of Cruiser That Downed Iranian Airliner Gets a Warm Homecoming" was the New York Times headline--10/25/88). Rogers was even awarded a Legion of Merit, one of the highest military honors, for "exceptionally meritorious conduct." The shootdown was treated very benignly by the U.S. corporate media (Extra!, 7–8/88).

The bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie followed the destruction of the Iranian plane by only five and a half months, and officials and experts quickly saw Iranian vengeance as a possible motive.

Iran, of course, hasn't "proven its innocence" in the Pan Am 103 case. Would Schultz have the U.S. bomb Iran in retaliation for Lockerbie as well?

Appearing on CNN's Reliable Sources (1/10/11), Time's Joe  Klein denounced the "crap"  on the Fox News Channel. And as many pundits are prone to do, he found the need to balance that by citing a comparable example from the "other" side:

Well, that brings me to point number two.... Cable news chooses not to really deal with complicated issues with the level of complexity that they deserve. I was on Ed Schultz's show to discuss Afghanistan. I was just back from there. It is the most complicated issue imaginable.

And the guy writes on a piece of paper, "Get out now," and holds it up on the screen. That's so stupid and it's so unworthy.

That's right--a TV host expressing the viewpoint held by approximately half the public is "stupid and unworthy"--and comparable to the murder fantasies peddled by Fox.

Rethink Afghanistan has a video response to Klein's remarks that is worth checking out.

It is quite telling that, even considering how in Ed Schultz's May 7 MSNBC interview of Physician for a National Health Program Margaret Flowers and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, he "slaps a gratuitous insult on the heroines of Code Pink" and "says he's against protesting and "getting arrested" as a rule but thinks it's OK if doctors in suits and 'educated professional people' do it" and even "pretends to believe (or actually believes) that President Obama favors considering the possibility of creating single-payer healthcare," activist and author David Swanson (OpEd News, 5/7/09) "can't recall a better corporate news video segment in at least the past decade":

The heart of this story is the gaping chasm between majority opinion and the corporate agenda of the United States Senate....

Ed goes after the health insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies and the HMOs. He plays video of activist Kevin Zeese speaking up at the recent Senate Finance Committee hearing and being arrested. He explains perfectly what single-payer healthcare is. (I recommend this flyer.) And he denounces the anti-democratic exclusion of single-payer advocates by committee chairman Max Baucus.

And then Ed brings on Margaret Flowers, who absolutely nails every question he asks, and he asks the right questions. Flowers lists the polls showing that over 60 percent of Americans and 60 percent of physicians want single-payer.

Schultz's choice to air Flowers telling viewers "that the next Senate hearing is on March 12 and that advocates are asking for at least one supporter of single-payer to be included," has Swanson exclaiming that "that sort of mention of an upcoming event and very nearly inclusion of exactly what people can do to improve their country is rare indeed on our televisions."