Thank you, MSNBC. Yes, I said it.

Some of the time---a lot of the time---I don't quite know why MSNBC exists.  Do we need a place for the likes of Michael Steele, George Will and Charlie Sykes to hang out when they are deemed too liberal for the big white couch at Fox?  Do we have to watch Brian Williams serve his penance for whatever grave offense he committed while he waits for Lester Holt to do something even more unforgivable?  Does there have to be a forum for Chuck Todd to commit random offenses against journalism on a daily basis, so he'll be all wound up for Sunday?  No, no and no.

And then there's a magical evening like last night, really a one-two punch to the belly of the Received Official Version.  First Rachel Maddow brushed aside the emotional response to the story of Sgt. LaDavid Johnson and his family, refusing to be distracted.  She delved at length into the recent history of Niger and why US troops are there as part of a coalition opposing the forces of Islamic State.  She explained that the most battle-hardened of these coalition troops come from Chad, which has mysteriously appeared on the latest version of the travel ban list -- maybe because of some nonsense about sample passports and paper shortages, maybe because the government has demanded substantial tax payments owed by Exxon/Mobil, whose CEO used to be our own Rex Tillerson.  Anyway, Chad withdrew its troops from Niger, leaving the Americans unprotected and, as we now know, under attack.  This, it seems, is the reason Trump ignored a reporter's question about what we're doing in Niger and instead praised himself (and smeared Obama) for calling the sergeant's widow.  I believe it's called "pivoting."  And nobody but Maddow saw through it.

Then came Lawrence O'Donnell to shut down all the teary applause rendered John Kelly's lecture of Thursday afternoon.  He gave the general full props as a Gold Star father who movingly described the military protocol for returning the dead to their families.  And he gave no quarter to the abuse of Rep. Frederica Wilson for daring to criticize Kelly's boss.  Kelly never used her name but repeatedly called her "an empty barrel" -- much as Trump "didn't even know [the] name" of Sgt. Johnson, calling him  "your guy," according to his widow.  He tried to call her an opportunist who "politicized" the sergeant's death, when in reality she had known him for years; he was in a mentoring program Wilson established while serving on the Miami school board.  Kelly went off on a maundering tangent about the good old days, when "women were respected" (General, have you met Donald Trump?), and without a trace of irony, trashed another Gold Star father, Khizr Khan, for addressing the Democratic National Convention.  O'Donnell was having none of it.  He, too, grew up in Irish Boston; he remembers well the racism and misogyny of Southie, which Kelly seems to have absorbed.   It is possible, evidently, to live every day with the grief of losing a son in war, and at the same time serve a racist louse with your own unexamined racism.  General Kelly lost a lot of his dignity when he agreed to work for this draft-evading imbecile, and he doesn't appear to be getting it back soon.

So thank you, MSNBC.  Give us more nights like October 19 and maybe I can overlook the endless commercials and the daily servings of Weinstein.  I know you have to keep the lights on.