Ride the MSNBC Mobius Strip

Puritanism: The haunting fear that MSNBC hosts have that someone, somewhere, might be having fun, to paraphrase Mencken:

Todd said that the National Rifle Association is more likely to agree on gun control measures if entertainment producers are also at the table. Todd then pivoted to video game playing and chastised parents who are letting their children play video games excessively.

“If your kid, for three hours, is disappearing in the basement doing nothing but playing Halo, you may want to make sure your kid doesn’t have a problem,” Todd concluded.

“Well said,” Matthews added.

Huh. Almost two years ago, this was the argument that was being advanced on Matthews’ Hardball:

National Journal’s Michael Hirsh wants to raise the bar on decorum to an entirely new level. On Thursday’s MSNBC airing of “Hardball,” Hirsh told host Chris Matthews certain “gun” terms should be stricken from political discourse and referred to instances where Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Republican Nevada senatorial candidate Sharon Angle used such off-limits language.

“Well we don’t want any more duels and thankfully that was the last one,” Hirsh said. “[B]ut the point I was trying to make is you can draw a line particularly in the use of certain kinds of metaphors. The use of gun metaphors – killing, murdering, taking out, which was another metaphor for a – Michele Bachmann used in one of her statements, Sharon Angle – the Nevada Senate candidate’s now infamous comment about quote, unquote, ‘second amendment remedies’ to deal with the problem Harry Reid, her opponent.”

His proposal? Make such language inappropriate in the same [way that] racial slurs are inappropriate.

So to put the two arguments together, If your kid is disappearing into the basement for three to six hours a week passively being exposed to a TV where the following language is being uttered, you may want to make sure your kid doesn’t have a problem: