MSNBC's New Boy Wonder: 25-Year-Old Obama Adviser Ronan Farrow

Just as MSNBC went Hollywood and hired Alec Baldwin as a talk-show host, now they’ve hired the 25-year-old son of actress Mia Farrow. Ronan Farrow, currently buzzed about as potentially the son of Frank Sinatra, has been dabbling as an Obama State Department adviser since he was 22. He's projected to be a weekday MSNBC host starting early in 2014, but there's no word on who's getting dumped. (Uh-oh: straight, white, male Chuck Todd is an ancient 41, for example.)

“We're always trying evolve the message here and how to get ideas across. And he was an original thinker. And that's the most important thing,” said MSNBC boss Phil Griffin. If you believe Al Sharpton represents “evolving the message,” then that might make sense. For his part, Farrow landed in the Lean Forward camp of heavy citizen “involvement” and “empowerment” (bias) in the cable-news product:

"I think what people crave is more involvement in the story," he said. "There has been a democratization of information. But what they still crave, and what I crave as a TV viewer, is a guide on how people can have agency in the story. And this show is all about empowering people to do that. People want a return to real democracy. They want to respond to these events [in Washington] that there is so much frustration about."

Farrow (born Satchel Ronan O'Sullivan Farrow) babbled to The Hollywood Reporter that "his desire to join a television network was born of conversations he has had with young people who are frustrated with the vituperative immobility in Washington." Because when you're anti-"vituperative," you join MSNBC?

Young Mr. Farrow also recently sold his first book to Penguin Press, titled “Pandora's Box: How American Military Aid Creates America’s Enemies.” In a press release announcing the acquisition for a projected 2015 publication date, Farrow argued: "People are tired of watching the same policies backfire time and time again while being told that this is just the way things are done. We need to understand how we got here -- and how to change it. That's why I'm writing this book. Also it got too long for a tweet."

Is MSNBC hiring its talk-show hosts young these days? Consider this: He's younger by a few weeks than the oldest Jonas Brother. He's younger than at least nine of the "Glee Kids" on Fox.