The powers that be at cable “news” network MSNBC apparently believe Ed Schultz wasn’t leaning forward enough — or more likely enough to the left. Whatever the case, they announced today that they are dumping him in favor of Chris Hayes, who, The New York Times reports, will take over the 8 p.m. weekday time slot next month.
The portly Schultz, whom the Times describes as “a champion of the working class whose bluster didn’t always pair well” with the rest of the channel’s primetime lineup, isn’t being put out to pasture altogether. Rather he is being moved to weekends, better known in the world of broadcast journalism as Siberia.
So what is it about Hayes that makes him a better lead-in to Rachel Maddow, who holds down the 9 o’clock slot, and to Lawrence O’Donnell at 10? As the Times tells it, he is “a liberal intellectual” and “just as wonky” as they are.
The Times’s Brian Stelter doesn’t provide examples of Hayes’s intellectualism, which places the onus on the reader to find them. Perhaps his bout with inner demons last Memorial Day will suffice. In the video below (transcript follows), Hayes hems and haws as he grapples to refine his difficulties with applying the term “heroes” to members of the military who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
CHRIS HAYES: Thinking today and observing Memorial Day, that’ll be happening tomorrow. Just talked with Lt. Col. Steve Burke, who was a casualty officer with the Marines and had to tell people [inaudible]. Um, I, I, ah, [Steve] Beck, sorry, um, I think it’s interesting because I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words ‘heroes.’ Um, and, ah, ah, why do I feel so comfortable [sic] about the word ‘hero’? I feel comfortable, ah, uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.
Maybe.
The biggest challenge Hayes faces in his new time slot is going up against Bill O’Reilly whose show on the FOX News Channel has historically earned double Schultz’s ratings among viewers 25 to 54 years old. The Times notes that this reality was “much to the chagrin of Mr. Schultz, who parodied his rival on a regular basis.”
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I think that old Ed Schultz probably had too much testosterone and bluster going for him to suit the androgynous mainstream at MSNBC. Ed’s obviously heartfelt left-wing dogma nevertheless seemed somehow incongruous to me spouting from his usually apoplectic-purple Teutonic face. And even his German surname, far from reminding us of that affable bumbler I loved on “Hogan’s Heroes,” actually accented his hostile persona with a familiar chord of fear and loathing. His intimidating gestalt often conjured a mental image of a Hermann Goering type in full, black-leather SS uniform standing over a steaming pile of naked corpses, but other times of a rural sheriff in Alabama in the 1950′s threatening cowed Negroes with beatings and lynchings to keep them from getting too uppity. Now that Ed is history, there will be (while surfing past commercials) inevitable brief snatches of the more understated manliness of Chris Hayes. But let’s give Ed credit for one positive thing during his raging times at MSNBC. He never admitted to a “tinkling sensation” running down his leg while listening to Obama project hope and change.
“Apoplectic-purple Teutonic face” is A-plus material.
who is Ed Schultz? all I can find is that he had a show on some obscure cable network channel that is in a race to beat CNN to a better time slot on the Nostalgia Channel. I think the channel also shows some woman that really needs to trim her eyebrows and some guy that has a bladder control issue (we have a dachshund that has that problem whenever we get home…can’t control it).