Mark Halperin calls Obama a 'Durbin' on MSNBC (Update: Halperin suspended 'indefinitely')

My bad, Halperin didn’t use the Turbin’s last name, he used his first name to describe Obama’s performance in Wednesday’s press conference.

Mark Halperin offered a very candid, and bleep-worthy, assessment of the president’s Wednesday press conference performance Thursday on “Morning Joe.”

“I think he was kind of a dick yesterday,” Halperin said, after first checking if the broadcast was on a 7-second delay to allow for correcting four-letter FCC violations.

“Morning Joe” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski encouraged Halperin to “go for it,”and go for it he did. The offending word was not bleeped.

Halperin later apologized, but I’m not sure why he needed to. The president’s behavior ranged from petulant to piggish during that press conference. He replaced the misguided assault on ATM’s with a misguided assault on corporate jets. He chided Congress for its work schedule, when everyone knows he’s the most golfingest president evah. And he tried lecturing and hectoring, but never seems to have thought that it might be a good idea to try leading.

So the president was a Durbin in that press conference. Halperin got this one right.

Update: MSNBC has suspended Halperin “indefinitely” over this remark. Just a guess here, but it’s not so much the remark that has him in hot water, but the target. This is MSNBC we’re talking about.

“Mark Halperin’s comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable. We apologize to the President, The White House and all of our viewers,” in a statement by MSNBC spokesperson Jeremy Gaines. “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.”

Right. This is the same network that had Keith Olbermann ranting about President Bush’s “fascism” in Special Comments for years on end. Calling Obama a “dick” was a bit off-color, but wasn’t far off from the channel’s typical fare — other than the fact that this remark was aimed at Obama.