An anchor on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show, Mika Brzezinski, said she would not cover Paris Hilton as the lead story on Tuesday and that the story that the Senate and House are calling for downsizing in the war in Iraq should be the lead. Her opposition to covering the story seemed believable until she whipped out a lighter and tried to burn the script, which no news reporter at that level would ever do if they wanted to keep their job. Of course her co-anchor stopped her before she could burn it, and she overacted by ripping it up.

Maybe the MSNBC people got wind of the fact that US Weekly isn’t covering Paris this week, and figured if a gossip rag put a moratorium on Paris stories they better make it seem like a least one of their reporters disagrees with giving her so much airtime.

Rawstory reports that anchor Brzezinski pulled this same stunt an hour later, and took the next script to the shredder.

A lot of commentors here have noted Paris overload, and we’re a gossip blog. US Weekly says that if Paris gets pregnant she could possibly get a cover story. Maybe she’ll follow her frenemy Nicole Richie’s lead and get knocked up soon. After all, it’s a good PR strategy.

Thanks to Raw Story for this story.