MSNBC is really failing the test of media during these impeachment proceedings. After the 14+ hour clown show masquerading as a markup in the Judiciary Committee and a 15-minute vote this morning, the Articles of Impeachment are on their way to the full House of Representatives.

Anyone who watched yesterday's markup (yes, I watched all 14+ hours) understands exactly what Republicans are trying to do. They are taking a very serious Constitutional duty and making a joke out of it, just like they did 21 years ago when they impeached President Bill Clinton for lying in a deposition about receiving a blowjob.

But leave it to Peggy Noonan to cheapen it even further with her banal thoughts and ridiculous refusal to lay the responsibility for all unseriousness at the feet of Trump's Republican cult.

After Chuck Todd allowed that Nancy Pelosi was walking a fine line between doing the work of legislating while also dealing with this impeachment proceeding, Peggy had thoughts of a sort. Strange thoughts. Fussy thoughts.

"One of the things that strikes me most about this moment, as we journey now at a quicker pace towards impeachment which i suspect will be next Wednesday, is that in past impeachments, Chuck, there was a sense of gravity, a sense of big things are happening here. an epochal event," she said. "Watergate with Richard Nixon. I remember it. I was a college kid."

I was in middle school at the time. And the thing I remember most was Republicans acting like adults, not a bunch of buffoons yelling and waving their arms around.

She continued, "In the Bill Clinton era even during his impeachment, there was a sense of gravity that I don't quite sense in the country now."

Excuse me while I burst into hysterical laughter at the memory of our president being impeached for not wanting to admit he got a blowjob in the White House being the subject of a grave moment. The entire proceeding was absolutely intended as nothing more than revenge for Nixon, unserious and driven by power-hungry jerks like Newt Gingrich. Yet she is comparing the solicitation of foreign interference in our 2020 election to that? Eff you too, Peggy.

Now there's a clown in the White House to whom Republican lawmakers bow and scrape, doing his bidding even when it requires lies that go beyond Orwell, but Peggy can't bring herself to actually say why it is that she feels as though the gravitas is missing from this event.

She went on to try and unpack that further. No, she said, it's not cynicism. Not that, nay. No, it's that there's no suspense. I mean, why watch the movie if you know the ending, she surmises.

"We know what the House is going to do. We know what the Senate is going to do," she explained. "So there's no sense of mystery."

Gosh, there's a reason for that, Peggy. Really, why can't you say so? Instead sure, blame some vague lack of trust in institutions. "As a country, we have lost faith in institutions and in our leaders to be necessarily doing the right thing" she mused.

AND AGAIN, WHY IS THAT??? WE ALL KNOW THE ANSWER, PEGGY.

This kind of banal, vague, bothsideism is toxic. It needs to stop. Get people who will actually identify the problem instead of serving up verbal Pablum intended to let Republicans off the hook.