This brings Eddie Schultz to mind. An import to Moorhead State University for his football skills honed in Virginia, he became a media personality in the Fargo Moorhead community. Graduating from football play-by-play, he established himself as a talking head. For a long time he was the espouser of right-wing views. Whatever the conservative line was, Fast Eddie was there, in full support. And then suddenly he had an epiphany. He was a full-bore, knock 'em down liberal. It all happened so quickly. Soon he was on MSNBC agressively kickin' ass and takin' names, and occasionally speaking with seeming fondness at his attachments to the Fargo area. At times I thought he was a true beliver, an honest-to-God conversion. Truth be told, I truly appreciated, and am indebted to, the manner in which he took on Wisconsin's union-bustin' governor Scott Walker.
But then, all of a sudden, MSNBC decides to ditch Fast Eddie from the prime-time hour of 7-8 PM Central. Replaced him in a heart beat with Chris Hayes. Ed of course, insisted that HE had instigated the change. And in a few New York minutes, Ed was working on weekends. Do you know who watches MSNBC on weekends? Put simply, folks who like to watch shows about men and women in prison, and how they spend their time either lifting weights or tatooing each other with sharpened spoons. (All right, I took a peek one time.)
Well, it seems the time-slot switch for Eddie was more than he could bear. He began to crack up. A couple of weeks ago he proclaimed on his nation-wide radio show that the school children of Fargo were being used as slaves, filling sandbags that were soon to be used in what is now an almost annual flood fight to keep the entire city from going under. Eddie said that the reason the eighth grade students were enslaved was that the process was designed to keep rich people from having to pay for sandbags.
Well here is a simple truth. If the rich people in Fargo get their feet wet, so does every middle class and whatever class you can imagine family in the Fargo Moorhead area. The terrain is a pool table top; drop a quart of water in the middle of it and it will flow into all six pockets. The students serve the entire community, however you define it.
The story does have a relatively positive outcome. Ed's loss is our gain. If you have never watched Chris Hayes in a live TV situation, you owe the experience to yourself. He is by far one of the brightest lights working in the media today. He is the intellectual equivalent of Rachel Maddow, George Will, or William F. Buckley, you choose your political bent. Watch him early on and then you can say several years down the pike, when he is one of the leading news analysts in the country, "Well, I used to watch Chris religiously when he was on MSNBC."