Colby Hall at Mediaite is aghast but I’m not sure why. Remember, we’re talking here about a guy who’s capable of wringing anti-Republican talking points from segments about muppets. The whole point of having him on the network, I thought, is to lend a patina of British erudition to MSNBC’s usual demagogic dreck. (As the man himself has been known to observe, the British are simply more civilized.) Here we find him arranging a tasteful rhetorical bouquet for Jobs and then flinging it at Palin’s head; that’s what they pay him for, so that’s what he did. Hall’s surprised, I take it, because he thought even the hacks at MSNBC might suspend their partisanship for 90 seconds to pay honest tribute to the greatest technological innovator of the age after his untimely death. Instead we’ve got the equivalent of Bashir shooting spitballs at Palin while crouching behind Jobs’s coffin. I’m surprised that you’re surprised, Colby.

Be sure to watch to the end for a cameo by Occupy Wall Street fan Dylan Ratigan, who’s clearly moved by such a thoughtful, heartfelt use of Steve Jobs as a political bludgeon.