David Chalian has a new job. The former Yahoo! news editor fired for joking that Mitt and Ann Romney were happy to party at the RNC in Tampa while black people were drowning in a hurricane then bearing down on the gulf coast (though no actual black people were drowning at that moment), has been hired by Politico.
Nice standards ya got there, Politico:
POLITICO Editor-in-Chief John Harris said management took Chalian’s remark into consideration prior to hiring him.
“David screwed up, admitted he screwed up and paid the price of losing his job for screwing up. He certainly would have been held accountable for the lapse in judgment had he been on the POLITICO staff at the time,” Harris told POLITICO. “He’s made clear that remark did not reflect his personal views or professional standards.”
Let me stop you right there. Chalian said what came into his own mind, in a professional setting. If Chalian’s remark did not reflect his personal views or professional standards, what, exactly, did they represent?
Here is Chalian’s alleged joke, caught on a hot mic back on August 30.
Now, I don’t know David Chalian and have never met him personally. But the fact that he thought that joke was funny and would be laughed at by his media colleagues says quite a bit about him and what he thinks about his colleagues. The fact that he aimed his joke at Romney while, at the very same moment, Barack Obama was out campaigning while the same black people were not drowning, says quite a bit as well.
Ultimately it all says he will fit right in at Politico. We should keep Chalian’s hiring in mind whenever the subject of Politico’s reliability comes up in the future.
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