The Dicks at MSNBC

Poor MSNBC. Like a reform school in the toughest part of town, they are constantly having to expell or suspend their commentators. Today, it was Mark Halperin, a liberal guy who called President Obama a "dick" on live TV on the Morning Joe show with Joe Scarborough and Mika Bryzxkxzahwski.



The reaction was swift. Well not so swift. Poor Joe was calling for the 7 second delay. The guy with the monitor couldn't find the delay button. Mika Brzfywjksky, as usual, was at a loss for words. MSNBC suspended Halperin swiftly, however.



"I am not a dick."


But just how bad was it, actually? A little semantics lesson may be in order for all you UC Santa Cruz Community Studies majors.

What is a dick?

A dick is a somewhat vulgar term for a male penis. It is similar to the term "wiener", which also has different meanings and can even be capitalized and spelled different ways as the country recently learned.

Strike that.

It can also be a man's name. We once had a president whose name actually was Dick.

But how much of an insult is it to call someone a "dick"? There is another word used (prick) which is stronger in that it suggests the person is not a nice guy. A "dick" would be similar to a jerk in my view.

Setting semantics aside, the question (s) remaining are whether MSNBC would have suspended Keith Olbermann (before they fired him) for calling President Bush a "dick"? After all, Keith, in his "Special Comments" often lectured Mr Bush in the second person for being the biggest and most shamneful disgrace of a human being in the history of the world.

"Have you no shame, Sir?"


In the same vein, would the Huffington Post be calling Halperin "arrogant" if he had called Bush a dick?

In the end, it all comes down to the issue of professionalism. We don't expect to hear news commentators calling people or presidents "dicks" on air. Yet, that is what we have come to expect from MSNBC. The only difference today is that they were calling one of their own liberals a dick instead of some Republican. Final question: Was the President actually being a ........d... jerk yesterday in his press conference?

"I was a Dick."