Newsbusters catches this moment of clarity on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, which took thirteen minutes of a segment to ridicule the Republican candidates for President on everything from their policies to their attire.  Mark Finkelstein compresses  most of the thirteen minutes of the 6 am ET segment of the show, which is a blessing, as it’s repetitive ridicule gets more than a little tiresome in real time. What happens when host Mika Brzezinski brings up actual news, rather than Herman Cain’s hat, like … Solyndra and the Department of Energy’s pressure to delay a layoff announcement until after the midterm election? Oddly, the laughter stops, along with the commentary:

Ever been watching Morning Joe, and wished you could stop the steady stream of liberal blather? Simple. Say the magic word—Solyndra—and watch the gabby guests fall suddenly silent.

Today’s show offered a prime example of the phenomenon. For the first ten minutes, the panel had a great old time cackling and crowing on the theme that the Republican presidential field is a mass of morons. They laughed at the mere mention of Herman Cain, likened the GOP field to a vaudeville show, dragged out the shopworn “bar in Star Wars” simile, and called the Republican candidates “jokes,” “clowns” and “stupid.” But then, 13 minutes in, Mika Brzezinski mentioned a story reporting that the Obama admin had suppressed the announcement of layoffs at Solyndra until after the 2010 elections. Despite Mika looking around the table at her guests as she wondered out loud “why this story hasn’t picked up more,” there wasn’t a peep out of the quickly clammed-up crew and Brezinski breezed on to another topic.

Just in case one is tempted to think that Newsbusters may have unfairly compressed that segment, here it is in its entirety. Well, almost in its entirety. MSNBC drops a small portion of the segment in its video library. Care to guess which portion ended up on the virtual cutting-room floor? The Solyndra mention, of course:

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Give Mika some credit for mentioning it, even if the panel of MSNBC talking heads suddenly turned into Marcel Marceau clones when she did. In a segment an hour later, Brzezinski mentioned Solyndra again as an upcoming topic while introducing Chris Matthews as a guest. Did Solyndra come up for discussion with Matthews and the group? Er, no. Instead, MSNBC viewers got treated to another segment dedicated to ridiculing the Republican candidates. I’m not sure if Mika ever did get around to discussing Solyndra, but I’m pretty sure that anyone waiting for MSNBC to cover the scandal had given up by that time.