The clown princess of weekend cable news has outdone herself, announcing in an email to her staff, shared with the New York Times, that she refuses to appear on her eponymous MSNBC program this weekend.  She is – as is her custom – outraged that for the past two weekends, her show has been pre-empted for election coverage (along with most other MSNBC programming – but her case is different because racism!)  As she emailed to her staff:

I will not be used as a tool for their purposes. I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by [NBC News chairman Andrew] Lack, [MSNBC president Phil] Griffin, or MSNBC.

(MHP playing the femininst victim card)

This is what happens when a mind becomes poisoned by victimology.  MHP apparently calmed down slightly after firing off the email and told the New York Times:

I don’t know if there is a personal racial component[.] ... I don’t think anyone is doing something mean to me because I’m a black person.

Then why use the racially charged terminology, Melissa?

There may be more to this apparently impulsive move than meets the eye.  MSNBC is in the midst of changes, seeking to rebrand itself as less a progressive network, habitually in third place after Fox and CNN.  The heady days of Obama’s first election, when progs bought the seas-stop-rising millennial rhetoric and there may have been a substantial audience for extreme left news programming, are gone.  MHP’s own show is usually in fourth place, behind even Headline News in the key demographic.  So she may have gotten wind that there was no future for her and decided to go out in blaze of racial victimization.

Or, as I think more likely, she is emotionally unstable (check out her show’s mockery of the Romney family for having an adopted black grandchild and subsequent on-air tears of apology) and immediately went to racial insults when she was upset over ordinary pre-emption that affected many other on-air personalities.  Then, seeing the consequences of crying racism, she attempted to retreat without actually apologizing.

This is, after all, a woman who is so obsessed with race and the slavery of 150 years ago that she resents the use of the phrase “hard worker” for anyone but slaves.

Media analyst Joe Concha of Mediaite reckons that Harris-Perry has thrown away her television career:

... we witnessed a public meltdown of a television host who had a damn good thing going: Teaching, writing, and four hours of national cable news time per week to discuss the issues — racial, political — that matter most to her. The TV part likely goes away now. This is a bell that can’t be un-rung.

Mark it down: February 26, 2016…

The day Melissa Harris-Perry decided to permanently throw away her television career for no good reason.

It is true that few television executives would relish risking the possibility of being racially impugned by hiring her.  However, think of the ratings bonanza her return to MSNBC could garner.  Her show might even outdraw Headline News!  On the other hand, there is now a media universe that is exclusively black, including BET.  It would not surprise me to see this become the new home of MHP.  There is, after all, an appetite for explaining everything in terms of white racism.

I certainly hope so, because Melissa Harris-Perry has become the premier exemplar of the obsession with racial victimology that is poisoning our politics and society, and she regularly provides opportunities to explore its ridiculous fringes with humor and irony.

And then there is the matter of her delicate family finances.  Even with her two salaries, the big-government advocate was unable to pay the taxes she owed and suffered the indignity of the IRS placing a lien on her and her husband.

A mind is a terrible thing to lose, to paraphrase the slogan of the United Negro College Fund (lately rebranded as UNCF).  But it can also be amusing and instructive for the rest of us.