Say Anything Blog

With Ed Schultz going about whining about his low ratings and demanding that the government step in to mandate more liberal talk radio, it’s worth taking a trip back in time with National Review Online’s Media Blog, which points out a New Republic story indicating that Schultz was launched nationally not by some private radio network choosing him because he’d draw lots of listeners but rather by a bunch of Democrats and left-wing partisans looking for a mouthpiece on the radio.

The title of the piece was, humorously given that liberal talk radio has done almost nothing in America besides fail miserably, “The Coming Rise of Liberal Talk Radio:”

...last November, Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu hosted a fund-raising lunch for Democracy Radio at her Capitol Hill home. Together with about 20 other Democratic senators—including Stabenow, Daschle, and Hillary Clinton—Landrieu fêted Rhodes and a North Dakota liberal talker named Ed Schultz, both of whom Democracy Radio hopes to syndicate nationally. Though the fund-raiser was closed to the press, Rhodes later recounted for me what transpired. After lunch, Florida Senator Bob Graham introduced Rhodes to those assembled. According to the talk-show host, Graham told the crowd about the many Democrats who had replaced Republicans in elected office in South Florida since Rhodes went on the air there; Graham went so far as to proclaim that no Republican could win wherever Rhodes was heard. It wasn’t long before the money was rolling in. “I heard people yelling out dollar amounts,” Rhodes remembered. “I thought it was two hundred and fifty dollars, but it wasn’t. ... They were pledging two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

How totally not surprising is it that Democrats don’t get that talk radio is a business?  You can’t just use the government to create demand for liberal talk radio.  Talk radio listeners have to want it.  And they don’t, for the most part, given the ratings of Air America and other liberal talkers.

But that won’t stop these Democrats from deciding that they know what’s best for us and trying to cram liberal radio down our throats anyway.

Another funny thing about this is, for North Dakotans who listened to Schultz for years before he went national, Schultz pretty clearly isn’t as “middle of the road independent” as he’d have us believe.  Dude’s a mouthpiece.  He was hired by Democrats to be a mouthpiece, so he’s not going to do anything other than toe the party line.

Unlike, say, Rush Limbaugh.  Who may be a rank partisan, but at least doesn’t take money directly from politicians.  “Big Eddie” may as well be doing the DNC podcast.