“Because her father is Janet Reno.”
- Senator John McCain, 1998

David Shuster’s comment was bad, and he deserved to get suspended.  But keep in mind that it was on live television, where strange things tend to fall out of people’s mouths.  Also keep in mind that the phrase “being pimped out” is a fairly common non-gender-specific euphemism.  As in, “Doesn’t it seem like 9/11 is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?”  It’s similar to another generic phrase of unfortunate origins uttered live on air by Golf Channel announcer Kelly Tilghman, who chuckled that the only way young golfers could hope to stop Tiger Woods would be to “lynch him in a back alley.”  Tilghman was also suspended despite a public show of support from Woods himself.  But the reason Shuster and Tilghman were suspended had less to do with the comments they made and more to do with the slippery slope the comments created.  It’s a slope that starts out with a careless phrase like “pimped out” and ends in an ugly place somewhere around the joke John McCain prepared and delivered at a Republican fundraiser ten years ago.

BTW the article linked above (and right here) about McCain’s joke is well worth the read.  I don’t know exactly how it’ll play in a general election between Clinton and McCain, but it will play.