Ed Schultz, Irritated by Cold Shoulder From Al Franken, Labels Him 'Most Inept Senator'

How sad when left-wingers turn on one another.

Twice on his radio show this week, Ed Schultz's kneejerk bellicosity surfaced as he vented about Sen. Al Franken, fellow liberal and former Air America Radio host, opposing AT&T's attempt to buy T-Mobile. (audio clips after page break)

Schultz first condemned Franken on Tuesday, ostensibly over the merger, though Franken keeping his distance from Schultz's radio and MSNBC shows comes across as the underlying basis for Schultz's anger.

Schultz criticized Franken while talking with his producer James Holm about President Obama making another campaign trip to Minnesota (audio) --

SCHULTZ: Well, he's got to make up for Al Franken, that's what he's got to do, because Al Franken is at odds with the Communication (sic) Workers of America and Al Franken voted to extend the Bush tax cuts. So I guess he's going to mop up for Al!

HOLM: Maybe ...

SCHULTZ: Al who doesn't do media. This guy is the most inept senator I have ever seen in my life. I don't care if you liked him as a talk show host or not. I'm in the tell it like it is business. What is with this guy?! What's this strategy he has?

HOLM: I don't know.

Turns out Franken isn't the only Democrat keeping his distance from Schultz. So is New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, another target of Schultz's scorn on Tuesday.

Here's Schultz describing a free public health clinic in New Orleans he attended on Monday, organized by the National Association of Free Clinics, and from which "The Ed Show" on MSNBC was broadcast (audio) --

Where else are we going to go and find a thousand people that don't have health care that all have a story? Where are we going to go? You get 'em all collected under one roof, you tell the story and you know what? Yesterday, Mitch Landrieu, who is the mayor of New Orleans, we asked him twice to come on 'The Ed Show' last night and he wouldn't do it. Because he thought it was putting the city, I guess, in some kind of a negative light. Dude!  We can go to any city in America and tell this story!

Uh, wasn't Schultz asking all of seconds earlier -- "where else are we going to go" to tell this story ....?

More of Schultz's rant against Landrieu --

Your constituents were being helped by dollars that were donated from around the country and he can't say something nice about it?! He can't say something about the rebound of New Orleans? He was afraid to come on national television. Maybe, you know, he's more arrogant than his sister! Which (sic) is the senator from Louisiana. (said with sneering drawl) They're all the same! The Democrats, Republicans, they're all the same. I mean, when it's time to cut wood, their chainsaw don't work.

Schultz went after Franken again on his radio show yesterday, after criticizing Republicans as committed to defeating Obama "at all costs" (audio) --

That's where we are! That's why I said the other day (pause), the country's sick. Our political system is sick. And the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans. And I'll tell you why. I'll give you proof positive! I don't care how many friends I have and I think you have to get into this business realizing that you only have a very few people that you can really count on. I will never count on Al Franken from Minnesota! He voted for the Bush tax cuts! And now he has motivated the Justice Department to block a sale of T-Mobile by AT&T which would mean thousands of jobs, jobs back to America. But, of course, he's against mergers. And there's a few other Democrats who are against mergers. The union wants this deal to go through! So I would like to know, I realize that Stuart Smalley's office doesn't do national interviews, but maybe they can provide us with the pro forma that they used to come to the conclusion that this was a bad deal and it was going to hurt jobs when the union says it will create jobs!

But when a Democrat agrees to go on the air with him, Schultz swoons in response (audio) --

Ran into him yesterday, we asked him to come over and do an interview with me at the New Orleans clinic yesterday, and so he got over there. I had never met this gentleman before. I was totally enamored with him. Congressman Cedric Richmond, Democrat, Louisiana, from New Orleans. This is our new tell it like it is representative that I think is (pause for emphasis) all American. He's got it right. We're going to play a little bit more of the excert (Schultz remains incapable of pronouncing "excerpt")  of his interview last night. We're going to play stuff that we didn't play. I couldn't stop talking to this guy walking through the clinic yesterday.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, to borrow a line from "Seinfeld."