If there's one danger to the snark economy today, it's the possibility that you might offend one of those stalwart believers in free speech and give them an opening to put their hypocrisy on parade. After Melissa Harris-Perry's panel snarked about Mitt Romney's African-American adopted grandson in a family photo, the right wing lit their hair on fire and ran out in the streets.

Asked Sunday to come up with captions for the photo as part of a game they were playing, one of panelists, actress Pia Glenn, started singing lines from the song popularized by Sesame Street: "One of These Things Is Not Like the Others."

Another panelist, comedian Dean Obeidallah, said the picture "really sums up the diversity of the Republican Party." (Obeidallah appears frequently on CNN and writes a regular opinion column for CNN.com.)

Harris-Perry described the baby as "gorgeous," before predicting Kieran would one day marry North West, the daughter of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.

"Can you imagine Mitt Romney and Kanye West as in-laws?" Harris-Perry said, drawing laughs.

Should they have snarked about him? No, probably not, and Harris-Perry has apologized sincerely for it. But the right wing is never going to let go of something that has race, Romney, and a black host of a weekend show on MSNBC in the crosshairs.

Never mind that we've all been buried in fauxtrage over Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson's nonsense. Never mind all that, folks, because Sarah Palin has declared that Melissa Harris-Perry is now 'despicable'. She's let the sharks out of the cage and told them there's blood in the water.

“Leftist media hounds are not expressing an opinion with this attack; they are expressing a prejudice that would never be accepted if it came from anyone else but the lib[eral] media,” Palin wrote on her Facebook page in a post accompanying the photo of the Romney family. “This latest attack from the Left is despicable.”
[...]
Palin said the “leftist media” has reached a “new low” and praised the Romneys for adopting the child.

“You really need a conscience, yellow journalists. May your 2014 New Year’s Resolution be to find one,” she added.

Oh, the irony. It burns.

Update: Because it seems wingnuts can't comprehend reality, Alan Colmes wrote up an explanation for them. Yes, it's true. They were mocking Republicans, not Mittens' grandchild.