This is what happens when you make poor hiring choices -- you force your employers to defend the mistakes, which only makes more people look bad. Yesterday, it was CNN's Ed Henry's turn.

Responding to the criticism that greeted the news that CNN had hired right-wing hate blogger Erick Erickson to be a regular contributor, a tweet on Henry's account read:

For those Tweeting CNN shouldn't have hired @ewerickson as a contributor, seriously do you think a network should NOT have diverse voices

Not to put to put too fine a point on it, but this is just painfully dumb. Henry actually claimed that liberals were upset because they don't want CNN to hire any conservatives; that CNN hired somebody who they will disagree with politically? This is pointless because basically nobody on the Left was making that argument. In fact, they were explicitly saying it was fine for CNN to hire conservatives.

But at least we know Ed Henry can build straw men.

But then it got worse with this tweet:

@buffalo_girl who is the equivalent to Eric Erickson on the left appearing on CNN? Have you seen Begala, Carville ...

Yep, Henry used the “e” word" (equivalent) when discussing Erickson alongside Paul Begala and James Carville. Apparently In Henry's eyes, Erickson and Begala/Carville are the same. And this is where CNN, by making a foolish hiring decision, begins to lose even more credibility; by having staffers like Henry run around and suggest a right-wing hate blogger is just like top-notch Democratic thinkers.

Keep in mind that Begala/Carville, by getting Bill Clinton elected, helped resurrect the Democratic Party, and then counseled a sitting president. Erickson, by comparison, is a city councilman who writes hate dispatches on his blog, like when he denounced a retiring Supreme Court Justice as a “goat fucking child molester.”

But in the eyes of Henry, or at least according to his corporate spin, Begala and Carville are just like Erickson. They're equals.