I have barely watched or listened to Big Ed since he left talk radio in June 2014.  Fortuitously, Ed, Randi Rhodes, and I all dropped off terrestrial radio within a two-week span.  I continued doing internet radio for two years and stopped my show last month.  Randi took a two-year hiatus but is now doing a two-hour show on Progressive Voices.

Although nobody's ever said it, I think Ed quit because he dropped an f-bomb, which his producer failed to stop from being broadcast, on an irritating caller the previous March.  At that time, the FCC was cracking down hard on stations that broadcast anything arguably obscene.  My suspicion is that Ed's distributor - Dial-Global - and maybe Ed himself cut a deal with the FCC that if Ed stepped down, the Commission wouldn't pursue obscenity complaints against Ed, Dial-Global, and all the stations that aired the obscenity.

I was very disappointed because Ed has always been my favorite radio host - besides myself.  Not coincidentally, he was the host least likely to toe the Democratic party line.  Ed was the only one of the five big radio libs during Obama's first term - Bill Press, Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartmann, Schultz, and Rhodes - to take on the President when he failed to stand up for working people.  He also spoke with more progressive critics of Obama than any of the other hosts who tended - then and now - to make excuses and apologies for drone warfare, proposed cuts to social security, and the firing of Shirley Sherrod.

My sense was he never got on well with the MSNBC suits because of his penchant for fighting for the guys and gals who in his words "shower after they get home from work" even when doing so led to conflict with the Democratic establishment.

So Ed's history shows that he has fearlessly taken on Democratic powerbrokers despite the preference of his bosses that he train all of his fire on Republicans and defend, or at a minimum ignore, the Debbie Wasserman Schultzes, Rahm Emanuels, and Evan Bayhs.  Accordingly, I am suspicious of a Politico article that, without links to audio or transcripts, slams him for allegedly carrying Putin's water.

THE 'THINGY' DOES NOT WORK.

The proper link should be linked as such

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2016/07/ed-schultz-populist-birthday-clown-for.html

I will come back of course.

I googled Ed over the weekend out of curiousity.

BUT THIS IS A GREAT LINK!

Thank you.