Obsession ain’t just the name of a perfume from Calvin Klein. Obsessive compulsive disorder on a mass scale is afflicting the mainstream media. Despite the continuing absence of any evidence that Donald Trump “colluded” with Russia to steal the election from its rightful winner, MSNBC’s Joy Reid did her own version of Lady Macbeth’s obsession, in effect muttering, “Out, out, damn defeat,” by invoking the Russia excuse 56 times in the first hour of her program yesterday.

I am grateful to Mark Finkelstein of Legal Insurrection, who not only endured an hour of MSNBC, but was focused enough to keep count of the Russia ritual invocations, and then produced a compilation video that requires less than two minutes of your life.

Note that of a typical broadcast hour on cable news, about 22 minutes will be taken up with commercials, promos, and other material, leaving a 38 minute hole to fill with content. If my calculations are correct, that means one mention of Russia every 37.25 seconds of the broadcast.

So long as Trump Derangement Syndrome remains a mass phenomenon, MSNBC and others will indulge their collective obsession. The object of the compulsive behavior may change over time, with Russia being replaced by another shiny object. The possibilities are limitless, since facts do not really matter to this crowd, only suspicions.