One Working Class Hero Rises and Another Falls
Worlds intersected this week on MSNBC as one working-class hero took his bows while another got the shaft. On Wednesday, the videographer responsible for the "47%" video that exposed Mitt Romney once and for all as the monster that he is last fall finally went public. The guy's name is Scott Prouty and, as expected, he was a member of the staff at the hotel where Romney made his plutocratic comments at a $50,000-per-plate fund-raiser full of high rollers who have dedicated their lives to undermining American workers.
You never know what to expect when a guy like this reveals himself, but Prouty came across as deeply impressive, intelligent, and courageous. He knew that revealing the contents of this video to the world would put a giant target on his back by the right-wing machine, but after a couple of weeks of soul-searching, he decided he couldn't live with himself if he didn't come forward. And even the way he anonymously took to You Tube to drop snippets of the video, slightly altered to protect his identity, before thoroughly researching some of what Romney said in the video and leading him to lefty journalist David Corn, who helped distribute the video nationally, was extremely tactful and helped time its release at the perfect moment in the campaign.
One of the most interesting parts of Wednesday's interview with Prouty was that the 47% comments were not his primary motivation for releasing the video....it was Romney's comments about how fantastic the caged-in conditions were in the Chinese factory went to buy, where young women we stacked 12-to-a-room in on-site dormatories. I was taken aback by those comments as well and felt they were unfairly overshadowed by the 47% comments, so I was glad Prouty found Romney's worldview in which such working conditions were jubilantly celebrated to be as offensive and as I did...and as motivational as it was for him to release the video. In a way, the lack of scrutiny that portion of the video received during the campaign was pretty depressing, as it underscored the environment that Romney and his corporate donor base was eager to bring to America....and will succeed in if they ever con Democrats into allowing a "guest worker program" to any immigration reform bill that is put forth.
Now for the bad news....Prouty gave this interview to MSNBC's Ed Schultz, the working-class champion who Prouty so respected that he came to him first for a revelatory interview. And in the cruelest of ironies, Schultz scored this giant interview....the night before he was benched by his network who wants to replace him with someone younger. It's a huge mistake by MSNBC as Schultz had a specific niche audience and brought to light specific stories that nobody else in the media--even on MSNBC will touch--and his ratings were good as well. His numbers were even better than what Keith Olbermann got in his final two years in that time slot, but apparently Schultz's numbers didn't skew as young as what other MSNBC hosts numbers did.
Schultz is not going away entirely as he'll now be sidelined to a two-hour slot on weekend afternoons, at least for now, and he's claiming he volunteered to take the demotion even though nobody believes him. This feels a lot like Dan Rather's departure from CBS News in 2005, where he was officially going to be a continued "60 Minutes" correspondent but was quietly bounced completely off the air within a few months. Schultz's replacement will be Chris Hayes, who is quite impressive himself and more of an intellectual heavyweight than Schultz. I like Hayes, who has his own show currently on MSNBC weekends, and the message of his show won't be entirely out of sync with Schultz's, but the metaphor couldn't possibly be uglier for those concerned with labor issues. The movement's highest-profile ally is taking it on the chin in favor of a younger voice peddling academic liberalism. Every minor step forward always seems to be accompanied with a step back.
You never know what to expect when a guy like this reveals himself, but Prouty came across as deeply impressive, intelligent, and courageous. He knew that revealing the contents of this video to the world would put a giant target on his back by the right-wing machine, but after a couple of weeks of soul-searching, he decided he couldn't live with himself if he didn't come forward. And even the way he anonymously took to You Tube to drop snippets of the video, slightly altered to protect his identity, before thoroughly researching some of what Romney said in the video and leading him to lefty journalist David Corn, who helped distribute the video nationally, was extremely tactful and helped time its release at the perfect moment in the campaign.
One of the most interesting parts of Wednesday's interview with Prouty was that the 47% comments were not his primary motivation for releasing the video....it was Romney's comments about how fantastic the caged-in conditions were in the Chinese factory went to buy, where young women we stacked 12-to-a-room in on-site dormatories. I was taken aback by those comments as well and felt they were unfairly overshadowed by the 47% comments, so I was glad Prouty found Romney's worldview in which such working conditions were jubilantly celebrated to be as offensive and as I did...and as motivational as it was for him to release the video. In a way, the lack of scrutiny that portion of the video received during the campaign was pretty depressing, as it underscored the environment that Romney and his corporate donor base was eager to bring to America....and will succeed in if they ever con Democrats into allowing a "guest worker program" to any immigration reform bill that is put forth.
Now for the bad news....Prouty gave this interview to MSNBC's Ed Schultz, the working-class champion who Prouty so respected that he came to him first for a revelatory interview. And in the cruelest of ironies, Schultz scored this giant interview....the night before he was benched by his network who wants to replace him with someone younger. It's a huge mistake by MSNBC as Schultz had a specific niche audience and brought to light specific stories that nobody else in the media--even on MSNBC will touch--and his ratings were good as well. His numbers were even better than what Keith Olbermann got in his final two years in that time slot, but apparently Schultz's numbers didn't skew as young as what other MSNBC hosts numbers did.
Schultz is not going away entirely as he'll now be sidelined to a two-hour slot on weekend afternoons, at least for now, and he's claiming he volunteered to take the demotion even though nobody believes him. This feels a lot like Dan Rather's departure from CBS News in 2005, where he was officially going to be a continued "60 Minutes" correspondent but was quietly bounced completely off the air within a few months. Schultz's replacement will be Chris Hayes, who is quite impressive himself and more of an intellectual heavyweight than Schultz. I like Hayes, who has his own show currently on MSNBC weekends, and the message of his show won't be entirely out of sync with Schultz's, but the metaphor couldn't possibly be uglier for those concerned with labor issues. The movement's highest-profile ally is taking it on the chin in favor of a younger voice peddling academic liberalism. Every minor step forward always seems to be accompanied with a step back.
posted by Mark at 6:05 PM
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