Robert Novak gets into tete-a-tete with James Carville, says "bullshit," walks off set, is suspended indefinitely by CNN.

I watched the clip and the "bullshit" looked spontaneous, but the walking off seemed odd, almost premeditated. Or maybe I'm just reading that in.

I have to wonder why a guy who's done so many years of shouting-head shows would ever lose it this way. Is it crazy to think that a guy might decide to get himself suspended for a lapse in professionalism because it seems less embarrassing than the alternative -- namely, getting fired for pretending to be a journalist while actually acting as an operative of a political party's dirty-tricks wing?

I'll be curious to see if he ever returns to CNN. I'm suspicious, just as I was suspicious about the anti-gay slur that got Michael Savage fired from MSNBC -- a slur that let him go out a hero in the eyes of his all-hater audience, rather than as the ratings chump he was.