The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball" Monday afternoon, and unsurprisingly the primary subject he was called upon to discuss was his magazine's controversial cover depiction of Barack and Michelle Obama. And, of course, he was there defending his employer.

"This cover... was trying to show the absurd view of this guy and to point out how far from the truth this is. And sometimes you need to hold up a mirror to these absurdities to drive the point home and just sort of poke fun of them, and that's what was going on here."

Other than that, unfortunately, we didn't learn much from the segment. (We did learn that when Chris Matthews refers to "many people," he really means "Chris Matthews," but then, we already knew that.) This goes back to what I said in my previous post about the cover -- because of the outraged discussion over it, Lizza's article inside the magazine, which was interesting and informative, has gone all but un-discussed. That was certainly true on "Hardball," when Lizza's article was discussed for just a few seconds out of more the more than 10 minutes he was onscreen. Video is below.