OPINION:
According to the T-shirts, Benjamin Franklin once said that beer proves that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Historians quibble, but you get the point.
In all things, give thanks.
Further proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy is that he invented television so we can watch the lying left-wing media meltdown in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s triumphant reelection. And God sent Al Gore to invent the internet so we can watch it over and over and over again.
Who says God does not use the most curious men to carry out his divine wishes?
The ongoing mental breakdown over at MSNBC has been particularly enjoyable to watch. One of their hosts with the shaved head came unglued on camera last week talking about how she would refuse to serve Thanksgiving dinner to any family member who voted for Mr. Trump.
Former President Bill Clinton said he could not sleep. Can you blame him? But that’s not our fault. He married her.
Meanwhile, MSNBC morning starlets Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough have gone full Vichy MAGA. After the election, they groveled their way down to Mar-a-Lago to try nuzzling up to Mr. Trump after years of calling him Hitler.
Who says MSNBC doesn’t celebrate diversity of opinion!
As delightful as all the public drama and humiliation is, apparently it is not enough to salvage the crumbling cable channel. Viewers are fleeing, and its parent company, Comcast, is looking to dump MSNBC in hopes of salvaging what’s left of NBC News. The new cable company would be called SpinCo, which would at least be an accurate description of MSNBC.
Speaking of Joe and Mika, they are desperately concerned about the state of the news business in America today, especially since they could be looking at a serious pay cut if MSNBC gets spun off into SpinCo. One morning last week, they brought on Axios CEO Jim VandeHei, who had just given a rousing defense of the news industry after the National Press Club gave him an award.
“Everything we do is under fire!” Mr. VandeHei raged. “Elon Musk sits on Twitter every day — or X today — saying, like, ‘We are the media. You are the media.’”
“My message to Elon Musk is: ‘B———-!’”
“You’re NOT the media! You having a blue checkmark, a Twitter handle and 300 words of cleverness doesn’t make you a reporter anymore than me looking at your head and seeing that you have a brain and telling you I have an awesome set of tools makes me a damned neurosurgeon!”
Mr. VandeHei was not done.
“You have to care. You have to do the hard work. You have to get up every single day and say, ‘I want to get to the closest approximation of the truth without any fear, without any favoritism.’”
Mr. Scarborough, who had just gotten up from Mar-a-Lago a few days before, was so enthralled by the tirade that he asked his assembled panel of guests on MSNBC to offer a “slow clap” for the veteran journalist. He then went on a little rant of his own as if his ovulation schedule had suddenly synched up with that of Mr. VandeHei.
“This is what gets me,” he raged. “If someone pops off on Twitter or some other social media and the lie — they make mistakes — you know what the cost is? Nothing! They do it again!”
Mr. Scarborough became so emotional that, at one point, his co-host and wife, Ms. Brzezinski, had to look away.
One of the assembled panelists, the Rev. Al Sharpton, offered Mr. VandeHei his highest praise, comparing his fiery sermon to that of a gifted street preacher.
“And he preached it!” Mr. Sharpton marveled at the skinny, White Mr. VandeHei. “The cadence! I mean, I might have to get him ordained!”
Left unmentioned during this vaunted discussion of the state of journalism in America today was perhaps the biggest journalism scandal to break all week. It was going on right there in the halls of MSNBC and featured Mr. Sharpton himself.
Earlier that day, it was revealed that Mr. Sharpton had been exposed for shaking down the Kamala Harris campaign for $500,000 before conducting a warm, fuzzy and laudatory interview with the then-candidate for president in October before the election.
“How does this happen?” one MSNBC “insider” complained. “How does half a million dollars change hands?”
It was a question left unanswered by the knights of the journalism roundtable on MSNBC.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at The Washington Times.
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