I applaud Senator Al Franken for keeping this conversation civil. I could not have done it.

On MSNBC last night, the Senator sat down with Andrea Mitchell and several of the convention floor warriors to talk about Donald Trump. Franken noted that Trump got his political "career" started with birtherism and moved on to fake "investigations in Hawaii" along with lying about Muslims celebrating in New Jersey after 9/11.

Then Andrea Mitchell says this:

But facts don't seem to matter in this campaign, .

I would have answered, &%$%*&*^))!!, Andrea! Who decides that facts don't matter? YOU and your stupid bosses, that's who!

But what Al Franken said was,

FRANKEN: "I think they still matter. I think, at the end of the day, facts still matter. And you know? I would challenge you (pointing to the reporters), all of you, to repeat them, when they are lies. I would say that the media, you know, I used to write quaint books, called Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them, and I think people think, 'wow, there used to be books about when people lied, and now no one cares' -- You guys have kind of a job to do."

MITCHELL: "It's a fair challenge."

Yeah it's kind of a job, but it's not the job anyone sitting on those stools had been hired for, Al.

And it's not just the embarrassed constipated looks on their faces that tell me that. Notice that Joe Scarborough, for one very important instance, isn't sitting there hearing your lecture on 'calling out lies is your job.' Driftglass noticed (title not work safe):

Conspicuously absent from this little colloquy were most of MSNBC's most egregious serial offenders against journalism.

But I'm sure once they get word that Senator Al would like them to quit sh*tting all over the basic principles of their profession, they'll give up their profitable sinecures --

In the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed,
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty

—and get back to the business of bravely afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted.

I'll be over here, waiting.

And then guess who Andrea Mitchell had on set for analysis less than 12 hours later.

Bill Kristol and Michael Steele.

And no mention of making lies matter, Andrea? Really? Maybe that Al Franken moment was just a dream....