After the story was first reported here and at the St. Louis Activist Hub that CNN “political analyst” Dana Loesch said she wanted to give the marines who urinated on dead Afghani’s “one million cool points” and that she would “drop trou” and “do it herself,” CNN responded to the controversy by saying that they respect a wide range of “viewpoints:”

CNN contributors are commentators who express a wide range of viewpoints—on and off of CNN—that often provoke strong agreement or disagreement. Their viewpoints are their own.

However, despite this quote from CNN, as far as I can tell Loesch has not been on air since she made those disgraceful comments. In fact, she’s been absent from all of the following events:

• The CNN debate in South Carolina.
• The South Carolina primary.
• Post-debate analysis of Monday’s debate in Florida.
• The CNN debate in Florida.

It’s hard to know exactly what’s going on, but my guess is that CNN, as they stated, is not punishing her for the comments themselves. Rather, the controversy created by the comments caused CNN to finally start carefully considering what value Loesch actually brought to the network, and what damage to their reputation was done by paying a Breitbart editor to contribute. In fact, Media Matters found a number of CNN journalists who strongly objected to having Loesch on as a “political analyst:”

Another regular CNN journalist added: “I am of the school of thought, ‘Why aren’t we putting people who are knowledgeable on the air?’ I’ll just say ‘Ewww.’ I think it’s in poor taste.

As for Loesch, she’s just as disgraceful as ever, yesterday joking that we should shoot Muslims into space:

Update: Loesch says the comments were not about her usual Islamophobia, but rather were referring to comments President Obama made about NASA doing outreach to Muslims. I’m still not sure her quote really makes sense, but I’ll take her word on this one.