I first learned of Ed Schultz back in the Air America days. I was such a huge fan of Air America. I tuned into AM 1090 - KPTK in Seattle daily. It's really what turned me on to progressive politics. But then, CBS turned AM 1090 into a sports station and Air America collapsed.
I was a fan of many of the progressive talkers, but I first became disillusioned with some of them during Bernie's campaign. I tuned into Stephanie Miller one morning and was shocked at the Bernie bashing that was going on that show. Then some of the others that I listened to joined in. I just couldn't believe it because I listened to "Brunch with Bernie" on the Thom Hartmann show every week. I just couldn't understand the sudden hatred.
I stopped listening to most of these shows.
I also remember the hatred for Ed Schultz. I never understood exactly why Ed Schultz and Mike Malloy never got along.
And then there was a time David Sirota began attacking Ed Schultz over something Ed supposedly said at some union event. I'm a big fan of David Sirota. In his book, "The Uprising", he included stories from the union that I volunteer for, which also includes an interview with me. So when Sirota's tweet came out of Ed's alleged bashing of a union, I retweeted it from our union twitter account. Oh boy, I was then stuck in the middle of it. Ed invited me on his show to talk about it and that is when I stepped back and dug into what exactly happened, because I certainly didn't want to sound like a dumb-ass on the radio. I ended up taking Ed's side on the issue and had to endure Sirota's expressed disappointment in me. It was tough because I admire these guys for what they do.
I was so glad to see Ed talk about MSNBC in your video. To say the least, it tells you just how bad the working environment is at MSNBC, and other networks, for today's journalists.
Keep it up Jimmy. You are one of my new media heroes and I am a Gold Subscriber.