They told me that if I voted for John McCain reporters on Morning Joe would be calling the POTUS a dick on national TV…

…and they were right:

with apologies to Glenn Reynolds who invented the meme

Update: Added the link to the entire “if I voted for John McCain” collection

Update 2: Take a look at the video and make note of this. He didn’t say it off the air and didn’t mean to say it off the air. He meant to say it on the air and be seen saying it! That speaks volumes

Update 3: They told me if I used the “If I voted for John McCain” meme concerning this Morning Joe business I would be able to snarf an instalanche and they were right!

Update 4: They told me if I voted for John McCain reporters who dared insult the president would be suspended and they were right

“Mark Halperin’s comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable. We apologize to the President, The White House and all of our viewers. We strive for a high level of discourse and comments like these have no place on our air. Therefore, Mark will be suspended indefinitely from his role as an analyst,” said the network in a statement.

Ed Morrissey comments before the news of the suspension news came out

the fuss seems a little overblown. “Dick” isn’t a word that needs to be censored; for one thing, it’s a proper name used by a number of politicians, including Dick Durbin, who’s second in Democratic leadership in the Senate. It’s also a playground word for “jerk” or “penis,” but hardly an obscenity. Either way, the producer shouldn’t be blamed for missing the delay button.

Halperin should be apologizing for a lack of imagination. He’s right in that the President acted like a pouting, sullen adolescent during the press conference

Hey insulting the president on MSNBC is VERBOTEN even if almost nobody watches it.

Update 5: Just saw the Halperin suspension reported on CNN (11:54 a.m. EST), they said it was a “word beginning with D”. Can somebody tell me how many people at CNN or MSNBC were suspended for calling Tea Party members “Teabaggers”?

Update 6: Stacy McCain notices that the left has decided it’s proof of conservative media bias:

Benen expects Democrats to employ class-warfare rhetoric, and expects liberal journalists to praise Democrats who do so. And while Halperin is a liberal in good standing, his accurate assessment of Obama’s press-conference performance — which was off-putting, in that the president seemed peevish and petulant — permits the Left to renew their bizarre claim that the media has a right-wing bias.

Of course why didn’t we think of that before!

Update 7: How crazy is this punishment? So crazy that even Greg Sargent gets it

Of course what Halperin said is inappropriate. Of course it’s inevitable that MSNBC had to mete out some kind of punishment. But it could have been a three-day suspension or on-air rebuke or something. To be clear, I don’t really care about Halperin’s fate. The point is that an indefinite suspension obscures the fact that crass and dumb and “uncivil” statements aren’t the real problem here.

Most of his piece if nonsense but he is right that the punishment of Halperin is excessive.