The Spectacle Blog
As Jeffrey Lord noted, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz was suspended from his TV show Wednesday after his vulgar radio attack against Laura Ingraham on Tuesday.
There are multiple layers of irony here. Ed Schultz has routinely accused conservatives of employing irresponsible rhetoric. For two years, his low-rated MSNBC show featured a segment called “Psycho Talk” devoted to examples of what Schultz deemed to be a right-wing tendency. MSNBC executives forced Schultz to discontinue “Psycho Talk” after the January shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. In the wake of the Tucson massacre, Schultz literally pointed the finger at Fox News for inciting violence — although, as it turned out, the demented gunman’s motive had nothing to do with Fox.
The partisan finger-pointing seems to be a psychological projection of Schultz’s own vitriolic rage. Examples of Schultz’s unhinged venom could be cited ad infinitum, but suffice it to say he recently won the Media Research Center’s “Quote of the Year” award for this gem: “The Republicans lie! They want to see you dead! They’d rather make money off your dead corpse! They kind of like it when that woman has cancer and they don’t have anything for her.”
One could trace the development of Schultz’s particular ouevre back to the early days of cable TV news, when CNN’s “Crossfire” made confrontation a staple of the medium. The success of Fox News, concurrent with Republican ascendancy during the Bush years, convinced the Left that they needed to develop an antidote to the perceived rightward slant of Fox. MSNBC was the chosen vehicle for this misguided experiment — misguided, I say, for two reasons:
- Fox News was itself conceived as an alternative to the llberal bias of the major network news operation. The success of Fox proved that there was a large audience of people who disliked the biased reporting of CBS, ABC, NBC and CNN. But MSNBC’s attempt to re-invent itself as an anti-Fox involved the dubious supposition that there was some large audience of viewers who felt that other major networks weren’t liberal enough.
- Fox’s success was not entirely due to politics. The network’s programming was innovative in several ways, with brighter colors, snazzier graphics, and news anchors who were younger and more attractive than those on rival CNN.
That MSNBC has attracted only a fraction of the Fox News audience is therefore not really surprising, because MSNBC’s programming is based on a fundamental misconception of why Fox succeeds.
MSNBC’s irrational anti-Fox mentality — its self-conscious partisanship — accounts for Schultz’s tenure as one of the network’s designated bully-boys who specialize in denouncing Republicans and conservatives. The original MSNBC bully-boy was Keith Olbermann, who recently left the network in a contract dispute. Olbermann has been replaced by Lawrence O’Donnell, who hates Republicans like God hates sin. Yet practically all of MSNBC’s hosts (including Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Dylan Ratigan and Cenk Uygur) share the same disposition, so that the network’s programming nowadays is hour after hour of GOP-bashing.
What results, then, is a sort of tournament in which the various MSNBC hosts compete to display the most thoroughgoing contempt for all things Republican. O’Donnell’s style is sanctimonious indignation, while Maddow tends toward snarky irreverence. As obnoxious as they are, however, neither O’Donnell nor Maddow can match Schultz for the raw brutality of his anti-GOP rhetoric. It is hard to imagine that even the most partisan Democrat can much enjoy watching this large, angry man unleash his partisan rage. Schultz’s sadistic bombast makes for an unpleasant viewing experience.
Wednesday, Schultz made an abject apology for his remarks about Ingraham, and will reportedly take a week’s unpaid leave from MSNBC. His absence is unlikely to be mourned, except perhaps by a handful of twisted souls with an appetite for televised sadism.
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beebop| 5.26.11 @ 5:49AM
I find the one week without pay not quite up to the standards of what the behavior requires. Ed should have to make a donation as large as the unpaid salary to an organization that battles the issue of violence against women. His rhetoric is vile, dehumanizing and rallies those just like him who perhaps don't have the self control not to act on their vicious thinking. But. Laura handled it well and Ed looks like a putz.
jppc| 5.26.11 @ 6:38AM
Laura is first rate...MSNBC is a joke. Only hard-left kiddies take MSNBC seriously.
Deborah D | 5.26.11 @ 6:50AM
Misogyny from the left -- what a surprise. I was reading something from a former female leftist who said that during the 60's "revolution" women served as the men's maids and mattresses. This is only an extension of the same. Wake up, women. This is what the left really thinks of you (sluts and nuts).
beebop| 5.26.11 @ 7:01AM
I concur. But. We need to stop name calling the resident's wife and ask questions as to why she lost her law license, or how important was her job at the hospital considering that no one replaced her after she left. I mean. I would have thought the white dress was a disaster on her if GERALD Ford had designed it .....
Timothy L. Pennell| 5.26.11 @ 8:56AM
He calls her a SLUT, not once, but TWICE, on his witless, viewerless Show, and He's not FIRED? How does he keep his job? How does that SLUT - Maddow - keep her job? What about that SLUT - Pelosi - and all of her Obamacare Waivers? What about that SLUT - Feinstein - and her assertions that: "Enhanced Interrogation, to my knowledge, had nothing to do with getting information on Bin Laden"? And, let's not forget the other SLUTS: Lousie Slaughter, Wasserman Shultz. Boxer, McCaskill, and the Wife of the Rapist - Hillary SLUT Clinton. Actually, it would be simpler to name the Democrat Broads, who AREN'T Sluts.
How does Mathews keep his job. How does Cink, Cenk, Stink, whatever his name is, keep his job? How can MSNBC still be on the air? They have NO VIEWERS. NO RATINGS. And, yet, there they are. That's because GE, which owns NBC, which owns MSNBC, paid NO TAXES this year, on $50 BILLION in Profits, in this Country, alone. And, WHY, pray tell, do they get away with that? Why is GE good, and BIG OIL, bad? Because GE owns NBC, which owns MSNBC, which will stay on the air, no matter what, so it can run Cover, make Excuses, repeat the Talking Points, Project, and SLANDER anyone who would dare to go up against their MESSIAH. And THAT, is why this piece of SOCIALIST garbage, has still got his job. Goebbels would be proud. SIEG HEIL!
Controse| 5.26.11 @ 12:15PM
There is no doubt plenty of SLUTS to go around. The big mystery to me is why anyone cares or comments on what is said on MSNBC. It is kind of like yelling at the neighbors dog to SHUT UP; pointless. Since they have zero influence on undecided voters the bloggers should save their energy for something important.
Chuckie| 5.26.11 @ 3:03PM
I disagree. The left is constantly shreiking about "civility" and it's refreshing to see them for once hoist with their own petard. LOL
Stan Redmond| 5.26.11 @ 10:09AM
Ed Who?
Joe Aiello| 5.26.11 @ 11:54AM
I'm a broadcast producer in NYC for 30 years. I have friends who work for FOX News on Sixth Avenue here in town. Because they see the raw news footage coming in and then see what FOX does to it, they call the Fox News Channel they work for the "Fake News Channel".
Warrior | 5.26.11 @ 12:10PM
I have friends that work on Sixth Avenue who insist you don't have any friends and that you have not had a rational thought in 20 years.
Chuckie| 5.26.11 @ 2:06PM
Got any examples to back up your baseless rant?
Liberals are furious because Fox cleans their clocks!
ConradCA| 5.26.11 @ 6:52PM
Baseless charges are staples of the progressive fascists. They claim all sorts of wrong doing by their enemies but never provide real examples of the misbehavior. The real problem is that they don't want anyone to challenge the orthodoxy of their progressive fascist religion.
Oldefarte| 5.26.11 @ 1:22PM
This MORON [along with their network's entire lineup of equally mentally incapable idiots] obviously wouldn't know a SLUT if one was preceding him on their network, especially a homosexual one at that!!!!!!!!
gman| 5.26.11 @ 3:15PM
To see Ed groveling into total submission probably seals his fate. He surrendered and probably won't be back. If he is back, expect ratings of point 3 at the most.
Johnny| 5.26.11 @ 3:25PM
LOL, libtards imploding!!! Who's next???
gman| 5.26.11 @ 3:41PM
Johnny,
LOL, libtards imploding!!! Who's next???
Probably MSNBC's whole format philosophy will unravel and morph into something else.
Will Cummings| 5.26.11 @ 5:33PM
If any working class American male called a co-worker, colleague, customer, vendor, or competitor a slut when on the job, he would be fired instantly. Why should members of the media aristocracy get to play by different rules?