NBC Gals Gaga for Gunga Dan Rather

Dan Rather might have left CBS under a cloud, but his star still shines brightly -- at least among some on the distaff side of the NBC networks.

Rather was a scheduled guest on today's "Morning Joe," and neither Erin Burnett, reporting in from CNBC, nor MSNBC newsreader Mika Brzezinski, could curb her enthusiasm.

Burnett was first to confess.

CNBC'S ERIN BURNETT: You know who I had a crush on? . . . Don't you have Dan Rather coming on in a couple of minutes? Alright, so, when I was little, I thought I was going to marry Dan Rather. I watched the news every night, I blew him a kiss every night.

View video here.

Burnett claimed to be over it, but host Joe Scarborough wasn't buying. Joe later told Rather "Erin Burnett, when she found out we were going to be talking with you today, I thought she was going to jump through the screen." Mika agreed: "Yeah."

Mika also let be known her feelings for Dan the Man.

MORNING JOE HOST JOE SCARBOROUGH: We're going to be talking to Erin Burnett's crush, and also somebody I think Mika Brzezinski's long had a crush on. The ladies apparently love Dan Rather.

MSNBC's MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Joe, I'd like to clarify: I have great admiration for Mr. Rather.

SCARBOROUGH: What is it about Dan Rather that all the beautiful young women love? Why is it that Mika has a crush on Dan Rather?

BRZEZINSKI: I do not, I have admiration for him.

SCARBOROUGH: Erin Burnett, she . . .

BRZEZINSKI: She has a crush on him.

SCARBOROUGH: She has a big-time crush on him.

Disappointingly, even the normally level-headed-if-generally-liberal John Ridley got into the Dan Fan-Club act.

MORNING JOE PANELIST JOHN RIDLEY: Dan Rather: he's smart, trustworthy, fatherly. These are the things women look for.

Rather, "trustworthy"? He who foisted the blatantly forged Memogate documents on the public?

When Rather later appeared, he reacted to the "crush" news with what Scarborough rightly called false modesty.

DAN RATHER: All this business about quote, crush, unquote. You've got to be smoking something pretty expensive to believe that. [As expensive as what it took to believe the Memogate documents were bona fide, perhaps.] . . . When you reach my age, women know you're no threat.

Other than a threat to getting the facts, that is.

Contact Mark at mark@gunhill.net