There's a certain amount of self-interest involved, but I'm going to go out on a limb and defend nutty Bush-hater Chez Pazienza to a limited extent. Pazienza is a blogger in his spare time. His paying gig was as a senior producer for CNN's "American Morning." I say "was" because Panzienza was fired earlier this week by CNN, allegedly for blogging while employed by the MSM.

The details are fuzzy, it may be that Pazienza wasn't fired for blogging per se, but instead fired because he took a likely unpaid gig with what CNN would consider a competing media outlet -- The Huffington Post.

Regardless, let me state this disclaimer up front: Panzienza is a nutjob and suffers from a severe case of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Some on the right are taking delight in Pazienza's firing. I think that is a mistake.

I've been arguing for years that if the mainstream media wants to remain relevant -- and it does -- that it should abandon the phony pretext that all journalists are so highly trained that their biases somehow disappear into the ether when they appear in front of a camera or sit down at a computer to write.

By firing Pazienza, CNN has demonstrated that it would like to continue this fiction. Pazienza claims that he had repeatedly received positive work evaluations -- so he either was able to keep his political biases completely out of his work (unlikely), or he isn't out of the norm in the CNN offices.

The CNN newsroom would produce far better journalism if someone like Pazienza could work next to someone on the right to create a fair and balanced news product through both collaboration and confrontation. Instead CNN merely rid itself of the most obvious source of bias and continued to operate as usual.

CNN hasn't solved any of its bias problems -- it merely closed the curtain once again on the great and powerful Oz.

It does CNN no good. It does journalism no good.

Ratings will continue to sink. Viewers will continue to flee.

CNN still can't admit it has a problem.