Video With Cheney Fighting For Breath Leaves Mika Laughing

April 4th, 2011 9:36 AM

Are you old enough to remember the polio-era line: "funny as an iron lung"?  After all, what kind of person would find funny the notion of someone fighting to breathe?

Answer: Mika Brzezinski.

Today's Morning Joe played a Letterman clip of a faux-promo for an imaginary TV show called "The Dick Cheney Story."  As the title song from the Mary Tyler Moore Show plays merrily in the background, we're treated to images of Cheney wielding a gun, in a wheelchair and undergoing open-heart surgery.  The clip closes with video of Cheney fighting to get a breath of air.

Cut to Mika, doubled-over, laughing hysterically, literally to the point of tears.

View video after the jump.



Joe Scarborough [facetiously?] admonishes her: "What's wrong with you? You think that's funny? I thought it was in bad taste, and you're thinking it's funny? If it was a liberal, you would be going through a whole --

Mika responds "I usually don't ," then relapses into uncontrollable laughter.

Note: the tip about this item came from reader Kathy S., who reported that Mika laughed "for a full minute."  The NB editor who passed the tip along to me understandably imagined that Kathy might have overestimated the length of Mika's laughing jag.  But putting the stopwatch on it, from Mika's first audible laugh, until she at last gets herself together with a final wipe of her tears of laughter . . . 63 seconds elapse!