Ed Schultz to Speak at Hastily Arranged DC Rally He Claims Not in Response to Glenn Beck's Rally

September 8th, 2010 1:39 PM

Remember the Seinfeld episode where George Costanza pretended to be an architect? Seinfeld thought it was a bad idea, suggesting Constanza would do better as a fake marine biologist, leading Constanza to complain, "You know I've always wanted to pretend that I was an architect."

Ed Schultz, liberal radio host and MSNBC flamethrower, is done pretending to be an architect.

Schultz garnered plenty of attention last week with his huff-and-puff claim he could outdraw the estimated 300,000 people who attended Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally in Washington on Aug. 28.

What made Schultz's boast so insipid was his insistence that he not actually organize or take part in a rally to exceed Beck's draw, if only in spirit. Schultz's suggestion alone would suffice. No need to actually draft a blueprint or break a sweat.

Perhaps the Labor Day weekend knocked some reality into Schultz. According to Brian Maloney at The Radio Equalizer, Schultz has decided to appear at the "One Nation Working Together" rally on the mall in Washington on Oct. 2, exactly one month before the midterms.

Here's Schultz talking about this on his radio show yesterday (audio available at Radio Equalizer) --

The march is on, Oct. 2. Will you march with me?  And thousands upon thousands. Oh, we'll get three hundred grand. We'll get 300,000, absolutely. We'll show you conservatives out there when big Eddie starts cranking on something we don't back down until it gets done. It's happening on Oct. 2. I appreciate all of you going to our website at wegoted.com, there's a consortium of groups that are coming together. You see, the Republicans, they want you to quit. They want you to think that there's a tsunami coming. What tsunami? Ain't no tsunamis coming! Nothing's lost until you give up! If you give up, then they have a chance. I don't buy the polls, I don't believe it, I believe America is smarter than this, and I think Americans don't want to go back. ...

Many of you are out of work. Many of you can't make it to the rally but a lot of you will. We have been inundated with all kinds of communication from wonderful listeners and viewers and I will be a featured speaker. There will be other speakers and there will be some groups that are going to be obviously helping out with all of this, just like FreedomWorks and the billionaires and the six months of promotion helped out the Beckster. And I want to get something very clear right now. If Beck had not done his rally, this would have happened, OK? This is about the country. This is about making sure that information is where it has to be, with the American people. And now it's about passion, now it's about emotion. And by the way, there will be some old and there will be some white people at the Oct. 2 rally on the mall in Washington, D.C. They just won't be angry. And they won't be motivated by hate and they won't be race-baited.

Schultz asserts that "if Beck had not done his rally, this would have happened" anyway. Maybe so, and I'll temporarily set aside my well-deserved skepticism of anything claimed by Schultz.

But the whiff of desperation wafting from Schultz's reversal makes me wonder if Beck hasn't put the fear of God in him.