Just when you think you’ve seen everything, MSNBC indefinitely suspends one of its political analysts for being overtly juvenile on air.
And here I thought smirkiness was the No. 2 reason to have cable TV news. (No. 1, of course, would be to provide material for the wonderfully smirkful Jon Stewart.)
Mark Halperin is the suspendee. The surprising thing is that Halperin is one of those you-see-him-everywhere guys. He has the kind of job where showing up seems to be the most basic requirement. As they say, it’s a living.
And since Halperin — who’s also a Time magazine editor-at-large — certainly wants to continue making that good living, I’d never have expected him to say anything particularly memorable, much less something that would get him kicked off the air.
But apparently he has gone smutty before and has had to apologize for going smutty before. Maybe that’s how you do make a living these days.
Halperin is one of MSNBC’s rare house conservatives who usually appears, I’m told, on “Morning Joe,” not that I ever watch.
I have seen the clip, though. Halperin was on the set talking about Barack Obama’s news conference, in which the president apparently crossed some line by bringing himself to say true things about Republicans. Among other sins, he accused Republican leaders of not being “on the level” about their negotiations with the White House on the upcoming debt ceiling vote.
You’d think the issue would be whether the Republicans are serious about taking the country to default and how they’d been warned by the markets and nearly every available economist that this is not simply gamesmanship, but that there are real consequences involved in defaulting.
But, hey, it’s not my show. They can take any angle they like, and this one was whether Obama, who’s usually accused of being too cool, hadn’t gotten unnecessarily hot. I wonder what just right looks like.
Anyway, in response to the question, Halperin asked if there was a delay button. Co-host Joe Scarborough told him there was, and then told him to go for it.
And, with everyone in full-smirk mode, Halperin called Obama the D-word.
As far as I know, no one has ever been suspended for using the D-word, unless you want to count kids during middle-school recess.
It’s not like it’s one of George Carlin’s seven words. If you missed the clip, you might not even know which D-word I’m talking about.
Here are a few hints: It can be a first name, as in D-word Cheney.
Or it can be something you hear from the mouths of 13-year-olds.
Or it could be something that Jon Stewart says repeatedly, although always with the bleeper working, because without the bleeper, Stewart would have to go to HBO with Bill Maher.
If everything had gone right on “Morning Joe,” Halperin would have been bleeped. That was the plan. Everyone watching would have known exactly what he said, but no one would have cared.
With the bleeper working, it would have been just a bit of naughtiness, and a bit of naughtiness is fine in Washington, so long as you’re not, say, Tweeting photos of your previously unmentionables.
Halperin apologized for saying anything “disrespectful” about the president, when, of course, there’s nothing wrong with saying something disrespectful about the president — at least not since we got rid of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
On the other hand, if I’d written what Halperin said, I probably would be fired, or at least suspended. I’m sure not going to test the waters to find out which.
MSNBC, meanwhile, has made a habit of firing or suspending the talent. You can find a handy chart on Atlantic Online, in case you’ve forgotten some of the Ed Schultz or Don Imus highlights.
This is supposed to show that MSNBC has standards, I guess. Of course, if it had real standards, it wouldn’t keep hiring people it later has to suspend or fire.
On the other hand, you could go the Fox News route and hire someone who will call Obama a “racist,” and then pretend there’s absolutely nothing wrong with saying it.
In any case, this is just the latest battle in the so-called civility wars, a war we’re clearly losing.
Maybe that’s because we’ve got it in our heads that the civility issue is about being polite. No one turns on the TV set looking for polite discussion. I’d settle for honest discussion. Just don’t ask me why we can’t find more of it, because it beats the bleep out of me.
E-mail Mike Littwin at mlittwin@.
