A little humor can go a long way toward dispelling a tense situation, or can get your point across better than a long recitation of detail. But a "joke" intended as a back-planted dagger designed to wound, spoken live on the air by a news anchor? Apparently, that's a-okay on a cable news network!

Git out yer hip waders, kids, the excuse pile is getting deep. Via WaPo:

Matthews says his job "is to be provocative and say things -- you know, 'That's crazy!' -- the way you might at a party."

In a Christmas video for the NBC staff, Brian Williams jokingly called him "Rain Man." Tom Brokaw cracked on "The Daily Show" that "when it comes to politics, Chris has a form of Tourette's syndrome." Matthews is the childlike genius with an uncanny command of political arcana who is sometimes oblivious to his own erratic behavior. In a world of scripted anchors, he fuses passionate punditry with a self-absorption so intense he likes being mocked on "Saturday Night Live." Love him or hate him, it's hard to avert your eyes.

"I aim for the chalk line," Matthews says, reaching for a tennis analogy. "You try to keep it in. If it hits the chalk line, that's perfect. People have that little gasp and say, ' I can't believe he said that.' "...

He enjoys the towel-snapping banter of the locker room, praising women's looks on camera and off. For that matter, he also jokes about people's ethnicity, saying that the Irish hold grudges and teasing pals about being Jewish....

In 2005, when Clinton criticized the administration on homeland security the day after terrorist bombings in London, Matthews said: "It's a fact: You look more witchy when you're doing it like this."

In recent weeks, he has asked whether Clinton's criticism of Obama makes her "look like Nurse Ratched." He has said that "Hillary's loyal lieutenants are ready to scratch the eyes out of the opposition" and likened her to Evita Peron, "the one who gives gifts to the little people, and then they come and bring me flowers and they worship at me because I am the great Evita."

It was against that backdrop that Matthews sparked a furor last month when he said: "I'll be brutal: The reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner, is her husband messed around." The counterattack was fierce.

Counterattack? Oh, Howie, that false equivalence "nothing to see here" downplay of the drivel that spewed from Matthews' mouth live and on the air is unbecoming. MSNBC and Matthews would never -- never -- have seen a problem with the "towel-snapping locker room banter" had women all over the country not called them on it. Publicly. Which, in essence, is the problem in a nutshell, isn't it?

But hey, it's all in good fun to be insulting so long as you didn't intend to be...repeatedly through the years. Right, Howie? Nothing like penning a five-page mash note of a media crit column to a pal in hot water, and not bothering to mention that the entire network has a tendency to slip into "towel-snapping locker room banter" all too frequently. Media critic, my ass...it's a news network not a sassy sports talk radio show.

Try contemplating raising the bar, Howie, instead of grabbing another cocktail at it with your pals and then limbo-ing under it yet again.

(YouTube of Alfalfa from the original Little Rascals singing Let Me Call You Sweetheart.)