OK, not so much the subject itself, but the semantics of the phrase.

Last Thursday, MNSBC anchor David Shuster said on the air, “Doesn’t it seem as if Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?” after she was recruited to make calls for her mother's campaign. Now the Clinton camp is throwing a huge fit and may pull out of an MSNBC debate scheduled for later this month.

On one hand, if we ("we" being everyone under the age of 30) didn't use "pimped out" to describe many things (cars, apartments, internships), then maybe it would be a bigger deal. It's not like Shuster was implying that the Clintons were sending Chelsea out to have sex in exchange for votes. In fact, we don't think we would have given it a second thought had we been watching the broadcast.

But on the other hand, as Tina Fey (Ms. Norbury) so famously said in Mean Girls, "You all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores."

We're not in any way saying Chelsea brought this upon herself; it's highly possible she's never uttered that phrase in her life. But we (women, including Scanner Emily who has used "pimped out" to describe something as benign as Rice Krispies Treats) throw it around like it's no big deal. Like many words and phrases, it's lost its meaning. "Whoring" would have been much more offensive, we think.

Scanner verdict: While Shuster shouldn't have said what he did, the Clinton campaign is making way too big a deal out of it (identity politics, anyone?). And maybe that makes us bad feminists.

[Previously on Scanner: MSNBC: Chelsea Clinton Being "Pimped Out"]