Joe Trippi, Presidential hopeful Howard Dean’s only just now former campaign manager, has joined the ranks of politicians and political professionals finding the fast track on the road from political advisor to media commentator.

This week, MSNBC engaged Trippi as an election analyst along with the group of pundits moderated by MSNBC’s "Hardball" Host Chris Matthews. His new career started just a week after quitting Dean’s campaign amid talk that he would not play second fiddle to the new campaign chief, Roy Neel, a former aide to Al Gore.

MSNBC has not indicated whether Trippi’s career as a political analyst will continue beyond Tuesday’s coverage of the seven-state round of primaries and caucuses, but, if it does, Trippi needs to remember what hat he is wearing when he is in front of the camera. It is one thing to interview the Trippis of the country, for their expertise, knowledge and perspective, as outsiders. It is totally another to confer a network’s imprimatur on those whose candidates are still active.

Trippi’s objectivity and loyalties may be somewhat cloudy, but what is perfectly transparent is that, if he continues to spin through this entire election cycle (which will be longer than most of his previous Democratic opponents will last), his television commentaries should cause significant eye brow raising.

Dean has already indicated that he would happily take Trippi back on the campaign trail. Last week on NBC’s "Meet the Press," Dean commented that "Joe Trippi wasn’t fired. I wanted a strong organizer into the campaign. Joe was trying to do everything, and I wanted Joe to stay on, but Joe felt that he really didn’t want to do that under those circumstances. I’m still hoping that at some point he’ll come back. … Trippi and I saw eye to eye ideologically exactly."

In comments Trippi made during his MSNBC appearance this week, it was far from apparent whether he had indeed left the campaign trail or just pulled off another brilliant Dean stunt, as he is credited with doing through his use of the Internet to inspire grassroots fervor for his former boss. When prompted to comment on Dean’s thinking post-Tuesday’s primaries, Trippi responded like a dutiful soldier, saying: "I think that campaign — the governor is a guy who’s going to keep on fighting on. They recognized that they weren’t going to do well today, that they had to do well in later states, Michigan, Wisconsin, and possibly Washington State. And I think for them this is just buck up and feel the — you know, there’s real pain tonight in a lot of these campaigns. They’re all looking into the abyss. And those that decide to fall into that abyss and cave will be out. But they're — I think the Dean campaign, Howard Dean has the heart and he’ll stay in."

Most candidates can’t buy such commentary, and Dean certainly can’t, not with reports that his campaign is running so low on money that he asked staffers to forgo paychecks for the next two weeks.

A good case can be made that Dean already paid Trippi for those kind words. PoliticalMoneyLine.com, which tracks campaign contributions, spending and finances, reports that Dean paid $7.2 million to Trippi McMahon Squire Media since March 2004. Trippi, on hiatus as a partner in the media firm, defended the costs by noting that "[a]ll that is money paid to stations. That’s buy money." It has also been reported that Trippi received no salary as Dean’s campaign manager … in return for a 15 percent commission on the ad buys. That’s still a pocket full of change.

Clearly the line separating the news from the spin is becoming so blurred that it is difficult for most people to distinguish. As the 40 year anniversary of the seminal Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan approaches, we are reminded of the Court’s opinion that "debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open." Even so, gone are the days when the media merely reported the facts and remained unbiased. Nowadays, with media personalities becoming politicians and politicians becoming media personalities, while they are still part of the story, it’s hard to keep all of it straight.

That is, unless the media starts to redraw the lines. Take, for example, the First Lady of California, Maria Shriver, who this week left her on-air NBC reporting position, appearing most notably on "Dateline NBC," so that her journalistic integrity would not be questioned.

After Janet Jackson’s "Sex in the Super Bowl" show, calls for more government censorship and television regulation are surely on the way. News executives should join their entertainment division brethren in those lonely rooms of ethical thought, because their standards, too, are reaching the basement of public perception.

No doubt, the expectation of cashing in on a social or political controversy is not at all new or even unreasonable. Think of how empty the bookshelves would be without all those kiss-and-tell books written by politicos. What is, and should remain, unacceptable, are glaring conflicts of interest masquerading as expertise. MSNBC should reconsider the appearance of subsidizing the Dean campaign.