Chuck Todd and Kasie Hunt break out in giggles, minutes after showing dead migrants picture

[Codeine]

5. They're feeding you what you crave.

Alternating doses of outrage and satisfaction, pumping you up with the same tired, regurgitated platitudes that reinforce your positions then hitting you with something to piss you off.

Cable news isn’t about actual news or analysis, it’s staged conflict to keep the punters engaged. Honestly, it’s professional wrestling for the self-declared intellectual set, with body slams and chokeholds and heel turns and endless preening and shouting.

Read a paper. It’ll take you twenty minutes to learn more than MSNBC will teach you in a week, and you won’t miss anything without the faux-outrage and histrionics of the 24-hour news cycle.