I’ve been a big fan of not being a big fan of Soledad O’Brien ever since I saw how she treated Joel Pollak last year:

If you couldn’t watch the whole thing, you’re not alone. That’s pretty much everybody’s reaction to Soledad. She’s been mired in third place as long as I’ve been watching the ratings.

There’s some good news and bad news on that. The good news is that her ratings have gone up recently, sometimes actually approaching Morning Joe numbers. A modest achievement, but an achievement nonetheless.

The bad news is that this ratings uptick is probably because people are curious about why she’s being fired. Page Six:

High-profile morning anchor Soledad O’Brien is on her way out at CNN as new boss Jeff Zucker moves Erin Burnett into her morning slot, Page Six has exclusively learned…

A source tells us: “The deal to move Erin to the morning alongside Chris Cuomo is basically done. Soledad had been told she’d get a prime-time slot, but that hasn’t yet happened, and now she is telling friends she is likely to leave.”

I’m not sure why they’d give her a prime-time show if she can’t get anybody to watch her in the morning, but at least this allows her to save some face. “You can’t fire me, I quit!”

Or maybe it’s the other way around? As Ace points out:

First they took her show away — due to its having a “too ethnic” viewership — but claimed they weren’t really firing her, because they were readying a primetime show for her…

So essentially they fired her without saying so, and engineered a situation in which she’d have to “decide herself to leave,” so that’s what she’s telling friends she plans to do…

So maybe it’s CNN that’s saving face. “We didn’t fire her, she quit!”

Either way, she’ll land on her feet. There’s no shortage of demand in our society for a race-baiting demagogue who can read copy from a teleprompter. Hey, maybe she could run for president…