Well, well, well. What a difference a near-death experience can make. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell is back on the air, after almost dying in a car crash with his brother in the British Virgin Islands. His injuries kept him away from his “Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell” program for nearly 3 months, and he returned to the airwaves this week with a 16 minute thank you to a whole host of people. That included this:

“The first words I saw when I rolled into the hospital was the name David H. Koch. Yes, that David Koch. Now brace yourselves please for the first positive words said about David Koch on this program. I agree with Harry Reid’s critique of the Koch brothers’ contributions to American politics, but that is not the only thing they contribute to.”

You heard it right, Surgers. Sometimes God works in mysterious and funny ways, and I think Mr. O’Donnell may have just experienced as much. He went on to praise the Kochs for donating a whopping $25 million dollars in 2009 to the hospital that later saved his life. Of course, you can’t expect Lawrence to do a complete about-face on these major Republican donors, which is why he couched his remarks like this:

“You can be outraged by what the Koch brothers do with their money in politics and you can appreciate what they contribute to hospitals and medical research, and you can do that at the same time and still retain an ability to function. And so, yes, I feel some gratitude to David Koch.”

There’s no way O’Donnell would have gotten away with a no-frills thank you to the Kochs on MSNBC without separating out their politics, so even though he had to walk a bit of a tightrope there, we’ll take it. At least he’s admitting that he has learned his lesson about drawing conclusions based on how billionaires spend only one portion of their wealth. I guess we CAN teach an old MSNBC host new tricks!