Ed Schultz

On Thursday night’s edition of The Ed Show on MSNBC, host Ed Schultz covered the Henry Louis Gates arrest controversy not by just insulting cops in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but police all across America: "I think we live in an age where we have a lot of overzealous law enforcement, I really do. Now if the law enforcement officials know the community, they should have known that this guy lived there."

Leftist professor Michael Eric Dyson was a Schultz guest. (He also appeared Thursday morning on Today "balanced" with radio host Michael Smerconish, who insisted on reminding the audience that he voted for Obama.) On MSNBC, Dyson called Gates "the Rosa Parks of racial profiling." Even if you believe racial profiling is a huge problem, isn’t Gates a little late in our history to be the Rosa Parks? Wouldn’t he nominate Rodney King or someone from a few decades back? Here’s what Dyson said:

It’s a consistent line from the left: conservative talk radio is a cauldron of hate. In the Clinton years, a CBS News promo set out to warn the public about the dangers of Gordon Liddy: "The words are shocking... What he says may not be illegal, but is it dangerous? Has free speech gone too far? Hate radio under fire, and firing back."

It is an unmistakable, unquestionable, resoundingly unequivocal exercise in liberal hypocrisy. The airwaves are now filled with the meanest, most insulting, most dishonest ad hominems in history. They are coming from left-wing talk show hosts.

And from CBS & Co.? Dead silence.

Take Ed Schultz, the closest thing the liberals have to a talk-radio star. He comes unglued when he talks of Rush. On July 15, he uncorked this rant: "Apparently the drug-ridden loser Rush Limbaugh, he thinks because he’s got a lot of money and a lot of stations that he's a success in life, the guy that can't hear because he did so many drugs and had no self-discipline and character has now taken his first shot at me on ‘The Ed Show’ on MSNBC. I love it!"

Looks like it might be time for summer school instruction in American history for left-wing radio and MSNBC host Ed Schultz.

Here's what a caller said on Schultz's radio show July 16 and Schultz's oblivious response (click here for audio) --

CALLER: This gentleman who called previously, asking where in the Constitution does it say that health care should be provided? And I know where it says. It says that you have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So, without health care, people can be deprived of life due to death from lack of medical care.

It is well known that Ed Schultz, host of MSNBC's The Ed Show, has become quite unhinged lately due in large part to the low ratings of both his TV and radio shows. The result has been quite a bit of Psycho Talk volcanic anger from Big Ed. However, last Wednesday he outdid even himself in the "Psycho Talk" department on his low rated radio show on the subject of Rush Limbaugh to the extent that he was even mocking Rush's deafness. Here is the transcript and audio of that show provided by The Radio Equalizer. Before reading or listening further I must warn the folks out there that you are about to enter a very disturbing level of dementia rarely heard from someone in the public eye so proceed at your own risk:

Apparently the drug-ridden loser Rush Limbaugh, he thinks because he's got a lot of money and a lot of stations that he's a success in life, the guy that can't hear because he did so many drugs and had no self-discipline and character has now taken his first shot at me on "The Ed Show" on MSNBC. I love it!

Among those most overwrought about alleged illegality by the Bush White House in not informing Congress of a covert CIA effort to kill al Qaeda operatives is liberal radio host and MSNBC pundit Ed Schultz.

The implications of such rank criminality are profound, Schultz told his radio listeners on Tuesday (click here for audio) --

SCHULTZ: I was absolutely astounded today listening to Liz Cheney on MSNBC. Let me, this is one of my favorites right here. She makes the declaration that there were no laws broken. Here we go --

Support nationalized health care!  Ain't gonna cost you nuthin.  We'll stick rich guys like Dick Cheney with the bill!

That was Ed Schultz's brazen appeal to something-for-nothing class warfare, made on his MSNBC show this evening. Schultz's make-Cheney-pay plea was the subject of his "Op Ed."

View video here.

This was inevitable.  When the Obama administration effectively took over General Motors, Obama-friendly media hacks were going to tout the company's products . . .

And so it was that on his MSNBC show this evening, Ed Schultz offered up an unpaid infomercial for GM's new Camaro.  Most grotesque was Schultz's boast that the Camaro was outselling the Ford Mustang. Take that, private-sector company that declined to take Obama's dime!

View video here.

Maybe the "Saturday Night Live" character immortalized by the late Chris Farley -- Matt Foley, motivational speaker -- is not the dominant influence to liberal bombthrower Ed Schultz.

Given Schultz's tendency to open wide and insert feet, perhaps comedian Norm Crosby and his signature shtich of inventive malapropisms is Schultz's actual guiding spirit.

One of my favorite Schultz gaffes came on April 16, back when liberals were atwitter about Texas Gov. Rick Perry's alleged secessionist tendencies (click here for audio) --

Fans of the late great comedian Chris Farley, take comfort -- liberal radio host and MSNBC talking head Ed Schultz often bears an uncanny resemblance to one of Farley's best-known characters on "Saturday Night Live," that of Matt Foley, motivational speaker.

Schultz has been on a Foleyesque tear of late, raging at Democrats as "spineless weenies" for not standing up to Republicans, despite holding the White House and sizable majorities in Congress.

Here's Schultz on his radio show June 17, spewing his warped theory that Dick Cheney wants thousands of Americans murdered in another terrorist attack to help Republicans regain political power (click here for audio) --

Should be interesting next time Joe Scarborough runs into the likes of Ed Schultz . . .

The Morning Joe host today slammed the hypocrisy of cable news hosts, specifically including some at MSNBC, for taking "unbridled glee" in Mark Sanford's disgrace.

Scarborough didn't name names, but he almost surely had Schultz, among others, in mind.  As I reported here, on his show last evening Schultz absolutely revelled in Sanford's distress, boasting "I have no mercy here" and using the most mocking of tones to describe the circumstances.  Was Joe also alluding to Keith Olbermann, who had considerable fun at Sanford's expense last night?

Here was Joe's statement of this morning . . .

A giddy, gleeful Ed Schultz delights in Mark Sanford's shame . . .

Boasting "I have no mercy here," the MSNBC host opened his show this evening with a five-minute dance on what he presumes to be Sanford's political grave.

View video here.

Excerpts from Schultz's unseemly display:

Twenty dollars here, twenty dollars there. After coming from thousands of people, it starts adding up.

Anyone who listens to Ed Schultz's radio show or has seen him on MSNBC has almost surely heard Schultz refer to "town hall meetings" he moderates across the country.

Schultz began organizing the gatherings during the '08 campaign and revived the practice earlier this year, holding more than a half dozen that collectively have drawn thousands of people. The most recent was in Buffalo, N.Y., on June 13, with at least three more to go.

Here's Schultz's "Morning Joe" appearance June 16 touting them (as shown in embedded video) --

You could see this one coming.

"Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough was due to appear on MSNBC colleague Ed Schultz's "The Ed Show" on Tuesday, in apparent reciprocity after Schultz was on "Morning Joe" that day.

But Scarborough canceled his appearance, Schultz told a caller to his radio show Tuesday, with Schultz saying he wasn't sure why.

Here's how Schultz described it after initially speaking with the caller about Liz Cheney (click here for audio) --

(Update: Brian Maloney at The Radio Equalizer describes how "the backstabbing has officially backfired" for Scarborough as his badmouthing of conservatives has apparently translated into sluggish sales for new book)

David Letterman "jokes" about Sarah Palin's teenage daughter having sex with A-Rod during a baseball game.  For good measure he suggests the daughter would be of interest to Eliot Spitzer, infamous for soliciting a prostitute.

If Ed Schultz condemned Letterman, I missed it.

But let Sarah Palin's acceptance of Letterman's belated apology include thanks to the US military for making freedom of speech possible for all Americans, and Schultz condems Palin as "nothing but political slime."

Yes, that's precisely what the MSNBC host called Palin on his show tonight . . .

There was a tell-tale moment during Ed Schultz's repugnant rant on today's Morning Joe. In the course of alleging that Dick Cheney wants Americans to die in a terrorist attack, Schultz boasted: "I got a lot of support when I said that on the Ed program, I got a lot of support overnight when I said it again." [H/t reader Melody and Mitchell Blatt.]

Translation: the ratings-starved Schultz will say pretty much anything if it garners him a few more eyeballs on the paranoid-lefty fringe.

Here's Schultz spewing his bile . . .

Leave it to a liberal with a microphone to condemn a practice he relishes when not pontificating.

A recent example -- Ed Schultz from one day to the next on his radio show last week.

On Wednesday, Schultz had this to say about conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt urging Americans not to buy GM or Chrysler vehicles since they are now manufactured by largely government-owned "socialist" companies (click here for audio)

What do you do when your TV show is flopping in the ratings department? If you're Ed Schultz, you desperately attempt to draw attention to yourself by engaging in "Psycho Talk" which, ironically is a segment of MSNBC's The Ed Show that Schultz uses to supposedly demonstrate "Psycho Talk" from conservatives. However, take a look at the crazed Schultz in this video slamming Hugh Hewitt for stating that he would refuse to buy cars from companies taken over by the government. It far exceeds in looniness any "Psycho Talk" that Schultz features in his segment. Here is how TV Squad, no friend of conservatives, describe's Schultz's Psycho Talk:

Whether you agree or disagree with Schultz, is too much to ask that he not succumb to clownish apoplexy to make his point? He even throws in an Elvis karate kick at the midway point of this rant.

The odd thing is Schultz was never quite this militant on his radio program. Opinionated? Sure. Ready to confront? He was paid to do that. But he wasn't wont to physically abuse bits of surrounding furniture.

I don't take Ed Schultz too seriously. So when he says again tonight, as he did in the inaugural episode of his MSNBC show, that he wants national health care and doesn't care how much it costs, it's just so much noise.

But, at least in theory, E.J. Dionne, Jr. is a serious player, a card-carrying member of the liberal establishment. So when the WaPo columnist declares that he doesn't want nationalized health care stopped by the mere issue of figuring out how to pay for it, that gets my attention.

Incredibly, that's precisely what Dionne did on this evening's Ed Show.

Attacking Rush Limbaugh for extreme comments is one thing, but calling him an ally of Osama bin Laden? Well, that kind of defeats the purpose of claiming Limbaugh is an extremist, doesn’t it?

During a “Psycho Talk” segment of “The Ed Show” on June 4, Schultz said that Limbaugh is allied with bin Laden because of his criticism of Obama.

“Psycho Talk,” I believe, is supposed to refer to what conservatives are saying, but nonetheless it seems an appropriate name for the segment.

Schulz said:

It seems that the incredibly low ratings of the Ed Show on MSNBC are getting to Ed Schultz to such an extent that he is now taking his frustration and anger out on callers to his radio show. You can listen to Big Ed go absolutely berserk in a bizarre, yet entertaining, overreaction to some relatively mild criticism from a caller. The transcript is below but be sure you also listen to the June 3 audio in response to caller Drew from Monterrey because it provides the full flavor of Schultz's volcanic fury:

SCHULTZ: Let's go to Drew in Monterey, Calif. You're on the Ed Schultz show. How you doing, Drew?

CALLER: Hey, thanks for taking my call, Ed. I'm deeply disturbed right now. You know, I just turned on your program and I hear you laughing about the fact that we just sold Hummer to China and that we're going to be buying, you know, Hummers from China to get more efficient gas mileage. I mean, I gotta admit, it's good to keep a sense of humor about things, but I do not find anything funny about the United States selling off pieces of its, you know, largest company. Not only are we selling that company, we're selling jobs to China and you're laughing about it?

SCHULTZ: Drew, stick it up yours, will ya? There isn't anybody that's fought for American jobs on the radio or on television more than I have. Shove it, buddy! Just shove it!

Rush Limbaugh has begun humorously describing MSNBC as "government-controlled television." Trying to watch coverage of President Obama’s Cairo speech on MSNBC last night would certainly give you that impression. Obama’s speech was so impressive that not only were mouths agape in amazement in Afghanistan, Rachel Maddow’s official critical reaction was exactly these words: "Dude, no way. He said what? Huh-uh. Dude, come again. Dude? Did he really just say that?"

The American audience was rocked because Obama "hit them with hard truths and you want to make them fall over." She also compared the speech to an incredible fireworks display. First, Maddow ran footage of NBC’s Richard Engel from the evening newscast:

MADDOW: Our friend, Richard Engel, NBC‘s chief foreign correspondent, watched the speech in Afghanistan and described to "Nightly News" tonight the way he saw Afghans reacting to the speech.

Language always gives us away, George Carlin once observed. And it's blowing the cover from liberals unhinged by former vice president Dick Cheney getting the better of an off-balance President Obama.

Two recent examples -- the first, Rachel Maddow's MSNBC cable show on May 20 with Newsweek investigative reporter Michael Isikoff as one of her guests. Isikoff described an "off the record" meeting that day between Obama and his senior officials and representatives of civil liberties and human rights groups --

Are the Fox News Channel and MSNBC bad for America?

Such was implied on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday when host Howard Kurtz invited the Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik, "USA Today Live's" Lauren Ashburn, and the BBC's Matt Frei on his program to discuss the "increasingly partisan nature of cable news."

By the end of the conversation, Ashburn said "[T]he bottom line is this is not good for society," and Zurawik agreed: "That's absolutely right...The effect on society and on this democracy of this angry, polarizing, bitter kind of putdown conversation is dangerous."

Not surprisingly, Kurtz and his guests didn't include CNN amongst the partisans, with the host making sure to regularly inform his audience that "CNN, by and large, tries to play things down the middle, with liberal and conservative guests taking each other on." 

Despite the obvious bashing of competitors while falsely holding his employer up as the model of impartial journalism on cable, the discussion was actually quite interesting (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, relevant section begins at 11:44 with commentary to follow):

How about that, alleged comedian Wanda Sykes wasn't entirely off the mark in deriding a person from the media as the proverbial 20th hijacker. She just cited the wrong person.

During one of his daily fulminations about former vice president Dick Cheney this week, radio and MSNBC host Ed Schultz appropriated the language of jihad.

Here's what Schultz said on his radio show Monday, expressing a view apparently shared by his listeners, not a single one of whom has called his show to complain about it (or gotten past the screener if anyone did).

First, Schultz talked about attending last weekend's White House correspondents' dinner and his loathing for Glenn Beck of Fox News (click here for audio) --

On the face of it, the idea of the government being able to regulate how much carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted into the atmosphere seems absurd. After all, it's a gas emitted by, among other things, human breathing.

That's the point Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, was making when he criticized the new policy that requires the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate CO2 - much to the chagrin of MSNBC "The ED Show" anchor Ed Schultz.

"The Republican from Texas, Barton has already made it clear he's one of Congress' biggest deniers on man-made climate change," Schultz said during his "Psycho Talk" segment on his May 13 broadcast. "Now he's got a new one. The Congressman spoke with Newsmax - there's a news source - on Monday. Now, based on his interview, if you were a runner, I'd be a little bit of nervous about your favorite sport."

Radio and MSNBC host Ed Schultz, he of hefty chip on shoulder when it comes to Rush Limbaugh, could hardly contain his glee over alleged comedian Wanda Sykes' criticism of Limbaugh at the White House correspondents' dinner.

Sykes likened Limbaugh to "the 20th hijacker" on 9/11 for possessing the audacity to hope that Obama fails in bankrupting the nation or leaving America vulnerable to attack.

Schultz told his radio listeners on Monday that he was in the audience at the dinner and got a huge kick out of Sykes' remarks (click here for audio) --

It's official -- Bush and Cheney are as evil as al Qaeda. Or so Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Michigan Democrat, wants you to believe.

Chrysler just declared bankruptcy and GM may follow suit, Michigan's jobless rate remains worst in the nation, and its residents flee their state in droves.

What better time to create what Stabenow calls a "9/12 commission," modeled after the 9/11 commission that investigated the worst terrorist attack in American history.

Stabenow described this to Ed Schultz on his radio show April 27 after first professing concern for the malaise gripping her state (click here for audio) --

Back on April 9, radio host Ed Schultz boasted of his high regard for accuracy while telling listeners about his new television show on MSNBC --

Where I work, they don't put stuff on the air unless it's accurate and they differentiate between opinion and fact. And in my world I think that's kind of important. On The Ed Show (Schultz's program on MSNBC), I'm not going to tell you something that I know isn't the truth.

Operative words here -- "kind of." And apparently Schultz's "world" doesn't extend to his nationally syndicated radio show, the top rated among so-called progressive talkers.

It was just a question of time. While it was hard to know where it would come from (although MSNBC is always a safe bet), someone was going to make the entire swine flu pandemic a partisan political issue. 

MSNBC's Ed Schultz on the April 27 "The ED Show" blamed Republicans on two levels for the swine flu pandemic that some think has been a bit overblown.

"Well, here we go again - Republicans are playing politics with our health," Schultz said. "This kind of stuff just makes my temperature go up. I'm boiling over this - as many as 150 have been killed by this flu in Mexico. Cases are popping up allover the United States."

Updated with addendum, 2:30 p.m. Sunday --

All men lead lives of quiet desperation, according to Thoreau. Suffice it to say the observation would not remain among Thoreau's best known unless there was truth attached.

Then there are men like Ed Schultz, exuding blustery angst from every pore and hardly aware of it.

With news last month that he would host a cable television show on MSNBC, Schultz reacted like he was walking on air, and deservedly so. MSNBC's dorm-room politics aside, not everybody gets a platform like this to express his or her views. Anyone given such an opportunity can be justifiably proud and Schultz came across that way.

But as ratings have plunged for Schultz's television show -- described by Brian Maloney at The Radio Equalizer -- Schultz has become toxic.