Working For the Weekend

Progressive talk show host Ed Schultz announced the impending end of his Monday-Friday MSNBC one-hour television show this past week, and he's getting ready to start a two-hour show on Saturdays and Sundays. It's part of MSNBC's effort to expand its weekend news and commentary programming and not have to rely on those silly prison documentaries that have long been a staple of its weekend programming.

On the surface, this looks like a smart move. Schultz - derided as "Sergeant Schultz" by Rush Limbaugh after the inept German soldier on "Hogan's Heroes" - says he asked for this assignment, and he believes that this new show will allow him to get out of the TV studio more often and report in greater depth from out in the country about the issues he believes are having an impact (negative, mostly) on the American worker. But I wonder if Schultz really did volunteer for weekend duty, or if maybe he was drafted. Because, although he covered the same issues that other MSNBC hosts such as Martin Bashir and Chris Matthews talk about earlier in the day, Ed Schultz was the only MSNBC host talking about them from a populist, workingman's perspective. And, and he covered a lot of labor issues other hosts have either glossed over or ignored altogether.

When it comes to explaining the budget, taxes, or women's issues, most of the other talk show hosts approach stories with a bourgeois liberal mentality and a cynical sense of humor toward the Republican right. But whether he talked about these issues or spoke about labor-related stories, Ed Schultz always approached subjects with a great passion, speaking plainly and in simple terms to his viewers and reacting to reactionaries with a sense of righteous indignation. He was the only MSNBC host you could talk back to; he had a cell phone poll on his show. Big Eddie always told his viewers (and tells listeners of his satellite radio show) how policy in Washington would affect their lives, and without a lot of wonkiness. Except for Al Sharpton, MSNBC's resident chaplain, other MSNBC hosts are all about wonkiness. And no MSNBC host is more of a wonk than weekend host Chris Hayes, who is taking over Big Eddie's MSNBC 8 PM Eastern Monday-Friday time slot.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like Chris Hayes, and I like his stand on urban and environmental issues. And he has indicated that he plans to cover labor issues as intensely as Schultz has done. But trying to get excited about Chris Hayes is like trying to get excited about unpainted drywall. Take it from one who heard him give a lecture in person. This guy got his start as a print journalist, and he's still very much the erudite wordsmith who can't parlay his writing talent into charismatic television. In other words, he belongs on PBS.

Okay, that was a cheap shot, but even if you value wonkiness, it's hard to imagine how a guy like Hayes is going to connect with the meat-and-potatoes crowd. Bill O'Reilly, unfortunately, does that easily on Fox News in the slot Schultz is handing over to Hayes at MSNBC, which is why Billo the Clown is ahead in the ratings in that slot . . . entertaining the working class with right-wing diatribes that encourage far too many people to vote against their own economic interests. By giving Hayes the same slot and moving Schultz to the 5-7 PM Eastern time slot on Saturdays and Sundays - a time during which people watch cable news only when they're snowed in and there's nothing interesting to watch on the History Channel - MSNBC president Phil Griffin is saying that liberal populism doesn't sell and that the progressive movement has to be gentrified to succeed in These States.

We'll see how Big Eddie's new job turns out. But I have my doubts. He's pretty much being internally exiled like Sakharov.  I don't even know if he's going to continue his cell phone polls. At least he's going out with a bang, having interviewed Scott Prouty, the bartender who taped Mitt Romney's "47 percent" fundraiser remark and sank his presidential campaign.