More Bob Novak Soiled Undies

Jay Rosen at Huffington Post provides more information on Novak's (increasingly) bizarre behavior (and please, go read it all):

Novak, in order to counter the suggestion that he had been properly warned but went ahead anyway -- which he said would be "inexcusable for any journalist and particularly a veteran of 48 years in Washington" -- decided to take up his pen. Ladies and gentlemen, he said, people have got to know whether their columnist is a crook. Or a jerk. Or a tool. Did I go ahead with the name of a
CIA covert operative despite being warned? No, I did not.

Old Novak rules: sorry fellas, can't talk. New rules: Novak chooses when. When to take the Fifth on advice of counsel, when to ignore counsel and respond to the news with his own explanations of what happened to reveal Plame's name.

This, I believe, is the real cause of Thursday's break down of professional discipline on air. The legitimacy of Novak's exemption from questioning had collapsed earlier in the week. Ed Henry knew it and was ready with that news. Novak was not ready to receive it. So he invented an out.
Brian Montopoli at CJR Daily was properly acidic: "A man who has spent years getting paid to spout his side's rhetoric on television storms off the set when someone implies he's pandering to his ideological base?"

It is beyond imagination that Ed Henry and his producers would notify Novak of their intentions without huddling with the CNN brass first. Thus there's a corporate ballet embedded in the show itself, even before it became comic opera with the cry of "bullshit!" and the big walkout. Novak was about to be faced with a gigantic contradiction in his public stance, and the Network wanted it.

Let me say however that as aghast as I am that so many, including Pat Buchanan and Tucker Carlson have rushed to Novak's defense ("He should have smashed Carville in the jaw instead!"), I want to see CNN suspended as a so-called "news" channel.

When did CNN get sanctimonious (not to be confused with Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum)? Certainly not when Novak outed a CIA operative. And not during his many different versions of the story Novak told conflicting with all the other versions he told on the same station.

Nah, they wait until he utters a small epithet and walks off a show. Big fucking deal.

Anyone who employs Novak deserves what they get.