I am very glad to see that MSNBC reversed its decision to fire Sam Seder.

 2 days ago, I wrote about the Sam Seder firing, in "At MSNBC, in the time of The Reckoning, there's zero tolerance for sarcasm aimed at the rich and powerful" ("I'd never even heard of Sam Seder, but apparently he had a show on MSNBC and now he's lost it, all because of a joke he made in a.. tweet back in 2009... retaliating against him for that tweet is... willfully stupid").

And I was going to blog about him again this morning, as I was reading something that Vox put up yesterday, "How the alt-right duped MSNBC into firing one of its contributors/An online community weaponized the political commentator Sam Seder’s satirical 2009 tweet."

But now I'm seeing (at The Intercept): "MSNBC REVERSES DECISION TO FIRE CONTRIBUTOR SAM SEDER."

Seder and MSNBC were set to part ways when his contributor contract expired next year, with reports indicating the departure had to do with a 2009 tweet from Seder surfaced by the far-right provocateur Mike Cernovich. After initially caving in to right-wing internet outrage over the tweet, MSNBC reversed its decision to not renew Seder’s contract....

“Sometimes you just get one wrong,” said MSNBC president Phil Griffin in a statement to The Intercept, “and that’s what happened here. We made our initial decision for the right reasons — because we don’t consider rape to be a funny topic to be joked about. But we’ve heard the feedback, and we understand the point Sam was trying to make in that tweet was actually in line with our values, even though the language was not. Sam will be welcome on our air going forward.”

Good. Maybe this is a sign that people are going to use their brains as they proceed through The Reckoning. Maybe a sense of humor and a commitment to treating people fairly will survive.

Here's Seder defending himself (before MSNBC reversed its decision):

At MSNBC, in the time of The Reckoning, there's zero tolerance for sarcasm aimed at the rich and powerful.

I'd never even heard of Sam Seder, but apparently he had a show on MSNBC and now he's lost it, all because of a joke he made in a (now-deleted) tweet back in 2009:

Don’t care re Polanski, but I hope if my daughter is ever raped it is by an older truly talented man w/a great sense of mise en scene.

I understand why the risk-averse, uncreative management at MSNBC doesn't want any of that anywhere near them. But I understand that joke as a criticism of everyone who cut Roman Polanski some slack because he's a great artist.

Seder was being sarcastic. We may cringe to see him put his own daughter in the middle of that joke, but I think that was the way to give it edge. He was speaking in the voice of a character he disapproves of, someone who wants to restore Roman Polanski to a place of honor in the elite world of film.

Let's remember what was going on in 2009 when Seder indulged in that sarcasm. The French Philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy was collecting the signatures of "writers and artists" to spare Roman Polanski from the consequences of the rape he committed. He wrote:

We ask the Swiss courts to free him immediately and not to turn this ingenious filmmaker into a martyr of a politico-legal imbroglio that is unworthy of two democracies like Switzerland and the United States. Good sense, as well as honor, require it.

I don't know if Seder is an ingenious news-show host, but retaliating against him for that tweet is the opposite of ingenious. It's willfully stupid.

Air America crashes to the ground.

Suddenly, today.

“The fact of the matter was, it was always a very challenging business proposition, and it never had the right management,” said Sam Seder, who hosted programs on Air America until last year.

The headwinds were enormous, he said, adding, “Radio is a dying industry.”

Well, that's got to find its way into Rush Limbaugh's "stack of stuff" for tomorrow.