January 9, 2004


BOB GARFIELD: What's wrong with this sound picture?

ANNOUNCER: Democracy has a new voice. It's the Ed Schultz Show. Coast to coast, border to border, powerful - passionate - persistent. Now -- Ed Schultz.

ED SCHULTZ: That's especially at the dinner table. [LAUGHS] Mad cow? Never heard of it. Pass the meat plate.

BOB GARFIELD:Hmmm. Sure sounds like right-wing talk radio. But it isn't. It's liberal talk radio. The Ed Schultz Show. Syndicated by the Jones Radio Networks each week day from 3 to 6 p.m., Eastern Standard Time. Like the Tim Robbins character in the 1992 film "Bob Roberts," Schultz has expropriated the styles and techniques of his political opposites to make his message palatable to the heartland and beyond. And Schultz should know these techniques, because before he was a liberal talk show host, Schultz himself was a conservative talk show host. But he's defected, and two of his very first guests this week were none other than Democratic Senators Tom Daschle and Hillary Clinton. Ed Schultz joins me now from Fargo, North Dakota. Ed, welcome to our show.

ED SCHULTZ: Good to be here with you.

BOB GARFIELD:So when the idea of a liberal radio talk show came up, much of the discussion centered on how difficult it would be to pull off, because by the very nature of liberal thought, a show couldn't be sufficiently caustic or bombastic enough to grab hold of middle American listeners. I guess one thing we've learned is that it can be caustic and bombastic. That's your style, isn't it?

ED SCHULTZ:I would say that's accurate. I think it's one of the biggest fallacies in broadcast that a different school of thought other than hard right conservative radio can't work. Those who have tried it have failed, but they weren't radio people -- they didn't have the experience, they didn't have the credentials, they didn't have the ratings, and if you don't have ratings and revenue, you're not going to be around very long in this business.

BOB GARFIELD:Well one thing I've noticed from the early broadcasts is that your show isn't filled with all sorts of lofty philosophical meanderings or very sophisticated policy discussions. It's much more of a, a meat and potatoes kind of broadcast. Let's listen to a bit of it. [CLIP FROM SCHULTZ SHOW PLAYS]

ED SCHULTZ:Now here's what we need to do. I got an e-mail over the weekend that said, look - you've got to ask Hillary about these calls that are going out around the Midwest by the NRA saying that Hillary's out to take your gun. So I figured that you should get me that picture of you duck-hunting so we can put that on our web page, so we can answer that one once and for all, huh?

HILLARY CLINTON: Well, Ed, I think that's a heck of a good idea, [LAUGHTER] you know and I, I hope you'll tell everybody. I really don't want anybody's gun. I just don't want, you know, criminals and, you know, stalkers and children and gang members, you know, to have guns. I, I don't have any problem, as you point out, in, you know, using a gun. I've done it. I've got that [LAUGHS]-- [LAUGHTER] picture of me with my poor old duck - that banded duck I shot one cold morning in Arkansas.

BOB GARFIELD: Tell me about the audience that you're speaking to.

ED SCHULTZ:Well, I think I'm speaking to Middle America. I think I'm speaking to those families that are watching their health care insurance go up that 14 percent a year. And they're wondering what next year is going to bring. I think I'm talking to those people who take a shower after work that aren't represented any more by the media elites. I find it ironic that the right wing conservative talk show hosts in this country love to point the finger at the media elites, yet they're not representing the real people out there. These people are flying in Lear jets, drinking the best whiskey and smoking the best cigars - they're not down with America -- they're talking down to America. And so I, I see a real void in the media. And yes, I am bombastic. I am aggressive. I, I just love to tell the conservatives that Democrats died on Omaha Beach. I love to tell 'em that Democrats died in Vietnam. And I love to tell 'em that Democrats are dying in Iraq and that we have a stake in this country too. But if you listen to conservative talk radio in this country, and you're a Democrat, or you think differently from the way they do, it almost makes you feel like you don't belong in the country. And I say that there's more of us out there than them. And I say that half the country, more than half the country voted for Al Gore, and I think that there's a huge market for this.

BOB GARFIELD: Are you in fact a liberal talk show host or are you just playing one on the radio?

ED SCHULTZ:Look, I'm, I'm for the working man. I'm for funding of education. I'm for the, the, the funding of all the things that have to be done. You want a great country -- you need to defend it, you need to educate it, and you need to feed it. And if that makes me a liberal, I want to be the first one in line.

BOB GARFIELD:Well, that's a good answer, but let me ask you more directly -- in your professional past, among the many, many other things that you've done for a living in the media and outside the media, you have been a conservative talk show host, where you were using all of the same professional techniques and tricks of the trade to sell a conservative point of view, and now all of a sudden you're on the other side of the political spectrum. Did you have a "come to Jesus" moment about your personal politics, or are you an opportunist who's just taken what looks like a pretty good gig?

ED SCHULTZ:First of all, I don't need a second job. Secondly, I don't need the money. And beyond that, I went through some real grassroots experiences to bring me to where I am today with the Democratic Party. I took a, a, a motor home, starting back in the year 2001, and I went into these small towns, and I listened -- the open mike is what turned my heart and turned my thinking. I went into Smalltown, America where farmers were being told that they weren't going to get disaster relief. I saw farmers lose their farms. I went into classrooms with that open microphone, and I talked to teachers about them not having the resources and not getting the proper federal funding. And then I went into rural hospitals, and I saw that there were over 40 million people in this country without health care insurance. Those grassroots experiences is what brought me to where I am today.

BOB GARFIELD:The scales have fallen from your eyes, but tell me about your listeners. Can they believe their ears? When they hear you on the radio now, are they writing to you or calling to you and say -- "Are you the Ed Schultz that I know of?"

ED SCHULTZ:Well, in this part of the country, there have been those questions in the Upper Midwest. But you know, I can't be all things to all people. But I stick to the issues; I'm - I do it with the same style. I think I'm fair. I don't think conservative talk show hosts in this country are fair. And I don't think they think they're journalists. And I think they try to pass themselves off as that. I'm not a journalist. I'm a talk show host. I can tell a story that maybe other media can't do. I can go out of bounds a little bit. I can be edgy. So -- as far as the change goes, look -- I can look anybody in the eye and defend how I feel.

BOB GARFIELD:As you look back on your career as a right wing radio host, is there a moment that you had on the air that, looking back on it now, makes you just cringe? Makes you just wish you could expunge it from recorded history?

ED SCHULTZ:Yes, and it refers right to our State of North Dakota where I would say in the mid-90s I was at odds with our congressional delegation, our two senators and congressmen, and I referred to 'em as "the Three Stooges" on the air. If there was one thing that I could take back in, in my broadcast career, it would be that, because I've learned a lot from them; I didn't understand their mission; I do now. It was an ignorant statement. It wasn't based on any knowledge. It was based on how I was supposed to feel, because at the time I was a, I was a conservative.

BOB GARFIELD: Ed, many thanks and good luck to you.

ED SCHULTZ: Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity.

BOB GARFIELD: Ed Schultz is host of the Ed Schultz Show airing weekdays on a small but growing number of commercial stations. [ED SCHULTZ SHOW MUSIC]

ED SCHULTZ: We're gonna be in Iowa, we're gonna be in New Hampshire. It's Big Eddie to the rescue -- gun-toting, meat-eating Progressive.

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