What a Day!

Already we've got Mark Halperin going for the gold and calling the President "kind of a dick" on MSNBC's air. But then, as if the universe itself were trying to do bloggers and ironists a HUGE favor, I read this:

Chris Hansen, the host of NBC’s To Catch a Predator, was himself caught on camera with an apparent mistress in Florida. The sting was arranged by National Enquirer, and it shows Hansen, who is married with children, with Kristyn Caddell, a blonde television anchor 20 years his junior. He took her to a dinner at the Ritz-Carlton in Manalapan before spending the night at her apartment. The couple apparently met four months ago.

Oh, man.  So many directions to go with this one.  The irony is just...wow.  I suppose the only thing that could have made it better would have been if a disapproving, moralizing, middle-aged news anchor could have come up to the table and asked Mr. Hansen what he has to say for himself.  Or if his wife had been in another room watching the video and had come out to confront him.

And all of this the day after the President slapped down the Boehner/Cantor/McConnell cabal.  Shorter version: "I killed bin Laden, now let's make a freaking deal."  Shorter Boehner/Cantor/McConnell: "Take your deal and shove it."  And yet Mark Halperin thinks Obama's the one acting like a dick.  Oy.

Now, I fully appreciate that both of these stories aren't so much news as meta-news.  That is, they're stories about the people who make stories that matter.  But in this case, Halperin and Hansen have something in common, specifically, and I don't think this is just my opinion, they're both jerks.  Hansen was just begging for a fall after years of that disgusting television show that only got put out to pasture when it caused a guy to kill himself while the cameras rolled outside.*  Halperin, on the other hand, has always been an incredibly glib reporter (remember that he once said John Edwards thinks Obama is "kind of a pussy" so he has a history of just this sort of thing) and not a terribly good one to boot.

The way this day is going, maybe we'll get some karmic justice for Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity as well!  Who can tell?

*For more on that subject, I highly recommend this article by Esquire's Luke Dittrich.