This past Sunday, prior to my interview with Up With Chris Hayes host Chris Hayes, I got to observe the last hour-and-a-half of MSNBC’s new, rapidly rising weekend political roundtable. In the last installment of Inside Up With Chris Hayes, we take you behind the scenes and show you what happens during the show’s much-talked-about, but never seen, commercial breaks with Hayes and panelists Reihan Salam, Rebecca Traister, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, and Elise Jordan.

In the wake of last week’s Wonkette/Trig Palin controversy, people keep sending me updates, related stories, and new slights against the special needs population, the latest of these being a Los Angeles Times editorial that calls Sarah Palin a “special-needs case.”

This is as good a time as any to clarify a few things about the issue of special needs-bashing.

who’s responsible for Palin’s meteoric rise to the top of the media, and arguably political food chain? Jezebel founding editor Anna Holmes and Salon’s Rebecca Traister, who just published a book on the 2008 election and what it meant to American women, have penned a provocative op-ed in the New York Times today arguing that progressive leaders are as much to blame (or thank, depending) for Palin’s dominance.