Full House
By Mitch Berg
So about 600 or so of my closest friends joined us at the Northland Inn in Brooklyn Park last night for the first ever debate, anywhere in the world, between nationally-syndicated conservative and liberal talk show hosts. Michael Medved took on Ed Schultz in the two-hour “Donnybrook in Brooklyn Park”. The event was jointly sponsored – this may be a national first – by AM950 Air America Minnesota and AM1280 The Patriot.
I co-MCed the event with former Minnesota state representative Matt Entenza. We did a point-counterpoint format, switching off between me questioning Schultz and Entenza querying Medved. Each response got two minutes; the other party got a minute’s rebuttal; if needed the original respondant got a minute worth of redirect.
Well, officially, anyway. There were a few times it was hard to control the flow of things – but we did our best.
A few random observations, in no particular order:
- Advance ticket sales as of the day before the event were roughly 4-1 in favor of AM1280 fans. The lefties hit the doors late, however, so I estimate the crowd ended up about 2.5 or 3 to 1 conservative.
- The lefties, however, made up for the numerical disadvantage with…er, enthusiasm. Not that that was a bad thing; it was a fun evening.
- While I’ll admit my bias, I think it’s fair to say that Medved won on knowledge of facts and their coherent, articulate presentation.
- What Schultz lacked in knowledge and ability to answer a question, however, he more than made up for with sheer volume. He attacked the podium for every question, no matter how innocuous, at top volume, barely needing a microphone most of the night. Face red, veins bulging, fingers poking the air in front of him for emphasis, he looked a bit like a banana-republic dictator on the dais. But in a good way.
- Schultz had a very politician-like tendency to dodge the questions that were asked, and swerved handily into Carville/Begala-caliber snarking points as a substitute for actual command of the issues.
- The audience was…let’s just say “animated”. In the interest of fairness, the heckling was bipartisan (although there were a group of people down to stage-left that were, I’ll be polite, bellowing like baying dogs at Medved).
- The first half of the debate involved questions from Entenza and I. For the second half, we took questions from the audience, on written index cards. We found a lot of good ones – Entenza and I probably had 100 questions to sort through. But there were some others and…well, let’s just say that I gotta shout out to America’s talk show phone screeners on the left and the right. Whoooie. It’s a tough job.
Leftyblogger Gavin Sullivan was there with a camera and his own review.
If you were there, feel free to drop a comment.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
OMG, check out the photo of the guy in the “Investigate 911” T-shirt!
http://flickr.com/photos/67654706@N00/2474691927/in/set-72157604945319279/
The jokes just write themselves.
Sorry I missed the event but I’m down to 9 more days until graduation and much as I’d wish it, my seminar paper won’t write itself.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Mitch,
On his show Today, Ed Schulz referred to you as “Mitch Craig”. Ed also called you an a–hole so it sounds like last night’s event must have been a lot of fun.
May 8th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Gavin Sullivan is an ass that has been stalking Erik Paulsen. He’s even posted Paulsen’s home address and Zillow pictures of his house on his blog.
This guy makes Eva Young look normal.
May 8th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
“OMG, check out the photo of the guy in the “Investigate 911” T-shirt!”
Shit. Jeff Spicoli didn’t age well.
May 8th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Ed Schulz referred to you as “Mitch Craig”. Ed also called you an a–hole so it sounds like last night’s event must have been a lot of fun.
Really?
Did he give any reason why I was an “A-hole?”
If he did in fact say that – well, Ed’s always been a class act!
I’ll look forward to your response.
May 8th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Medved represented us very well. Ed represented Lefties well if they want to show everyone they can stump speak. Not much content at all and some blatant ignorance surrounding energy, farm auctions, and trade agreements which seem to have solidified in Ed’s mind.
Education: Same old rhetoric, but slightly more volume on that subject than others for Ed.
Healthcare: Medved discussed pooling and the wisdom of not forcing everyone to pay for pysch and other services with one size insurance, and how soon we’ll be paying 30% of our tax for just Medicare.
Then Ed came back with out-and-out age-ism saying some passionate thing about how it is a generational thing, youth will be screwed etc – all the feeling but no solution. He was booed by everyone for that.
Ed confessed he has a restaurant in Fargo, a construction firm and one other enterprise. – He says he is the 2% that would be affected by Bush tax cuts being repealed.
Ed argued Obama has no mandates (compulsory health insurance) while Hillary and as Medved pointed out Romney do.
Did Ed say he is not for single payer (government run) healthcare?
Ed’s tort reform speil was ridiculous – Medved noted the inappropriate reference to Terri Shaivo.
Talked with Matt Entenza who didn’t go to the bar afterwards like Medved did.
Matt says he doesn’t know who supplied Brodkorb with his wife’s suspicious Democrat checks. Did I?
Diplomatically says he’s acqainted with MDE.
Stayed a bit at the AM950 Meshbesher/Luther MN Assoc for Justice gathering afterwards. Spotted Medved with some people.
Had some free time so stayed late with one lefty, one conservative lefty and some moderate righties – Linda, Eric, Justin, Justin’s wife, Gary, talking about MN trial lawyers, how Republicans must address either civil rights or labor but not neither, and whether the Sunni or secular quality of Saddam’s Iraq was more important.
May 9th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Ed Schulz referred to you as “Mitch Craig”. Ed also called you an a–hole so it sounds like last night’s event must have been a lot of fun.
Mitch,
Big Eddie made it clear on his Thursday show that he thought you were an a—–e because he wasn’t happy with the tone of the questions you asked him. I didn’t get to the debate between Medved and Schultz but from what I’ve been able to read about the debate, I think Schultz was feeling outnumbered and outclassed/debated so once he got back to the friendly confines of his radio program, he let lose with a bit of his trademark bombast. Btw, Mitch, did you once have a gig a while back at KSTP during afternoon drive time with Bruce Gordon and Geoff Charles?
May 9th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
K,
Thanks. I may have a word or two about this tomorrow.
And yes, I worked at KSTP-AM from 1985 to 1987; I was a producer for Don Vogel, Geoff Charles, and the short-lived Bruce Gordon in-between. I also did a graveyard-shift show of my own.
January 6th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
[…] MCed a “Debate” between him and Michael Medved almost two years ago. In it, he showed that if he weren’t allowed to bellow, bluster and […]
February 22nd, 2016 at 6:01 am
[…] Who could have foreseen such a thing? […]