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Ronna Romney McDaniel was with MSNBC for just four days. Sharing airwaves with the former Republican National Chairwoman was more than her colleagues could bear. They curled their lips, as if she had the cooties.
"It goes without saying that she will not be a guest on ‘Morning Joe' in her capacity as a paid contributor," Mika Brzezinski huffed.
Rachel Maddow snarled, "I find the decision to put her on the payroll inexplicable."
After McDaniel's only appearance as a contributor, Chuck Todd growled at Meet the Press host Kristen Welker: "I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation."
MSNBC's anchors gave their brass the bird, turned them into plucked peacocks, and tossed them into the Potomac. Emasculated executives soon took on water.
"No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned," gasped NBCUniversal's Cesar Conde, extolling group think rather than intellectual diversity. "I want to personally apologize to our team members who felt we let them down," Conde gurgled, just before he sank into the river.
Glug!
MSNBC's mutiny was the newsroom equivalent of what too often befalls conservative speakers on college campuses.
"Cancel him!"
"Boot her!"
"SHUT UP!"
The only thing missing at MSNBC was a mob of black-clad bookers breaking cameras and setting makeup rooms ablaze.
As a news organization, MSNBC botched a perfect opportunity. Several times each week, in an election year, its hosts could have put cameras in McDaniel's face and asked her tough questions on live TV: •
• "Trump's black support stood at 23% in a March 3 CBS News/YouGov poll. That nearly doubles his 12% in 2020. Why won't he campaign in black neighborhoods?"
• "How will Trump narrow Biden's widening fundraising advantage?"
Why focus solely on Trump? MSNBC could have grilled McDaniel like a salmon across GOP-related topics:
• "Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R - Georgia) wants House Speaker Mike Johnson (R - Louisiana) to stand down. Do you agree?"
• "Why did Republicans reverse their 13-year-long ban on earmarks and recently approve a 1,102-page, $1.2 trillion spending bill stuffed with some 1,400 pork-barrel projects?"
• "The House Republicans' five-vote majority will dwindle to just one, thanks to their expelling New York's George Santos before his corruption trial even began. Also, California's Kevin McCarthy, Colorado's Ken Buck, Ohio's Bill Johnson, and (soon) Wisconsin's Mike Gallagher fled the ballfield and drove home in the sixth inning. Do Republicans relish defeat or has their gender-affirming care backfired?"
MSNBC staffers could have interrogated McDaniel, and she would have had to take it. Unlike her old job, she could not say, "No comment" and then hide in her office (which was not her style). McDaniel could have fulfilled her contract and faced on-air questions or clammed up and surrendered her reported $300,000 annual salary.
Turn the tables: Imagine that Fox News Channel hired Biden's former Climate Czar John Kerry. Rather than implode on camera, my Fox News colleagues eagerly would ask Kerry such questions as:
• "Why did Joe Biden ignore his military advisors and close Bagram Airport before fleeing Afghanistan?"
• "When you repeatedly huddled with Iran's ayatollahs in the Trump years, weren't you violating the Logan Act?"
• "When the recently departed Henry Kissinger negotiated the Paris Peace Accords in 1972, you advised the North Vietnamese delegation in person on how to out-bargain America's secretary of state. Why, sir, should you not be arrested for treason the moment you exit this studio?"
Nothing analogous will face the ex-chief of the RNC because NBC = DNC.
John Chancellor and David Brinkley must be revolving in their graves.
Rather than crumple like aluminum foil, NBC's brass should have sacked their insolent, insubordinate "talent." Ambitious journalists from newsrooms across America would have leapt to fill their shoes.
Mika Brzezinski, Rachel Maddow, and Chuck Todd are all replaceable.
Especially Chuck Todd.