MSNBC is the gift that keeps on giving, serving up propaganda intended to benefit the far left, but which in its absurdity repels people grounded in reality. Now, one of its hosts, Melissa Harris-Perry, already familiar to AT readers for her theater of the absurd political performance art, has played a race card so bizarre that it self-discredits.  Real Clear Politics provides a transcript and video here, where you can read and view the entire  thing, but here are some highlights:

I want to talk today about a controversial word. It's a word that has been with us for years. And like it or not, it's indelibly printed in the pages of American history. A word that was originally intended as a derogatory term, meant to shame and divide and demean. The word was conceived of by a group of wealthy white men who needed a way to put themselves above and apart from a black man. To render him inferior and unequal and to diminish his accomplishments. 

This set-up reveals the theology of MSNBC, where "a group of wealthy white men" plays the same role for progressives that "Satan" plays in certain religious circles. The eternal source of all evil. Of course, the fact that President Obama himself embraced the term when he thought his scheme was going to work is a slight obstacle, but Harris-Perry gets to that a little later:

And so he decided, if you can't beat them, you've got to join them. And he embraced the word and made it his own, sending his opposition a message they weren't expecting -- 'if that's what you want me to be, I'll be that.' Y'all know the word that I'm talking about. Obamacare. That's right! I said it and I'm not ashamed and neither is President Obama. Because he knows that of all his victories over two terms in office his legacy is ultimately going to be remembered for this one single word.

Obama, you see, is like a rap singer, an Obamacare with Attitude. He will triumph by removing the sting of the word. This stupid analogy crumbles before the slightest factual examination. When Obama used the word "ObamaCare," the term had not taken a negative connotation. He embraced it because he thought it would work. But it failed, and his lies were revealed.

As the progressive dream of seizing control of healthcare with ObamaCare crumbles under the weight of reality, propagandists on the left are being gripped by a fever. Desperate to somehow reverse the tidal wave of disgust over the lies and incompetence of the Obama administration, they lash out with absurdities that only make them look ridiculous.

Harris-Perry has no fear of looking ridiculous, however.

Does MSNBC matter? It has become a parody of a propaganda outlet. At National Review Online, Charles C. Cooke ponders its "alternative universe." My own take is that as progressivism discredfits itself, MSNBC will become an uncomfortable embarrassment to its creators NBC News and Microsoft, a twenty-first century version of the minstrel show, somethign that seemed a good idea at the time, but which with the benefit of hindsight is an uncomfortable reminder of how seriously bigoted people were in an era we'd prefer to forget.