On today's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski quoted Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg saying of Sonia Sotomayor, “think of how many times you've said something that you didn't get out quite right.” Brzezinski then said as an aside, “I can think of something I said recently.”

That was apparently a reference to Brzezinski's comment last week about “real Americans.” Well, if Brzezinski didn't mean what she said, there's a simple solution: She could make that clear during the three-hour television show she hosts each day. Instead of defending her comment, she could have said “I misspoke. I don't think Sarah Palin's fans are any more or less American than any other Americans. I regret echoing the common smear of progressives and urbanites as less American than their conservative and rural counterparts.” That would have taken about twenty seconds.

Instead, Brzezinski defended her comments, digging herself a deeper hole in the process, as I explain in my latest column.