Ed Schultz should stick with his shtick as perpetually irritated working-class hero rather than ridicule others for their alleged ignorance of American history while at the same time displaying his flimsy grasp of it.
Since ending his radio show last year and getting shown the door at MSNBC in July, Schultz has taken to venting in a daily podcast he calls "Ed Schultz News and Commentary" that is accessible through YouTube and his website.
This past Tuesday Schultz mocked GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson for his remarks on Thomas Jefferson's role in creation of the US Constitution, with Schultz quickly running into trouble --
SCHULTZ: In an interview that was done on Sunday, Mr. Carson said that he really appreciated and really looked up to Thomas Jefferson and the way he wrote the Constitution. Excuse me --
CARSON: I'm particularly impressed with Thomas Jefferson who seemed to have very deep insight into the way that people would react and tried to craft our Constitution in a way that it would control people's natural tendencies and control the natural growth of the government. But he said that a time would come when the people would become, you know, less vigilant, and as a result of that the government would grow, would infiltrate and would begin to dominate ...
SCHULTZ (clearly angered at mere mention of a belief in limiting the size and power of government): Oh shut up! Just, just shut up! Just shut up. Ben Carson is an absolute idiot again. Thomas Jefferson was the ambassador to France when the Convention was taking place. Thomas Jefferson did not write the United States Constitution. It was a document that was put together by some of the other founding fathers, mainly by James Madison, who wrote the US Constitution in 1781.
Schultz's assertion begins to wobble with his claim that Carson said Jefferson "wrote" the Constitution -- a claim quickly refuted by the audio Schultz plays of Carson's remarks, in which Carson said Jefferson "tried to craft" the Constitution. Which he did, albeit from a distance.
It didn't take long for Schultz's vilification of Carson to jump the tracks altogether with Schultz claiming Madison wrote the Constitution -- which he didn't -- in 1781, six years before the Constitutional Convention. Facts are stubborn things, Ed, to borrow from John Adams.
Madison played a key role in keeping the minutes of the Convention and providing us with the most detailed account of what transpired, and he was among the delegates who spoke most frequently. Along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, Madison also wrote a series of newspaper articles, known today as the Federalist Papers, that played a pivotal role in getting the Constitution ratified.
Even though Jefferson was serving as Minister to France during the Convention, he intently followed its deliberations through lengthy correspondence with Madison, his protege who later succeeded him as president, and George Washington, its presiding officer.
Jefferson's main contribution to the Constitution came in his insistence that it include a bill of rights, which were later added to the document in its first ten amendments.
In a letter to Madison from Paris dated Dec. 20, 1787, Jefferson wrote --
Let me add that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, & what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences. ... I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.
The broad composition of the Constitution took place in two stages -- a five-member Committee of Detail was appointed in July 1787, two months into the Convention, and within two weeks produced a draft with 23 articles. After further debate, another five-member committee, this one dubbed the Committee on Style, was formed to further refine the document. Among its members was a peg-legged raconteur named Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, who was assigned the task of writing the final draft.
As described by historian Catherine Drinker Bowen in her widely-read 1966 book, "Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention, May to September 1787" --
All that Gouverneur Morris could do was to take twenty-three articles and condense them into seven, with their proper sections. He was proud of his work, and many years later told Timothy Pickering the Constitution "was written by the fingers which write this letter," adding that "having rejected redundant and equivocal terms, I believed it to be as clear as our language would permit."
Madison is the best witness of the part Morris played. "The finish given to the style and arrangement," Madison wrote, " ... fairly belongs to the pen of Mr. Morris." Though the articles, said Madison, had been presented to the committee in logical arrangement, still, "there was sufficient room for the talents and taste stamped by the author on the face of it."
Carson's most recent best-selling book -- "A More Perfect Union: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties" -- demonstrates that he possesses more than a passing acquaintance with the basis for these liberties.
Don't hold your breath waiting for Schultz's former MSNBC colleague Rachel Maddow to slam Carson's remarks, given her odd insistence a few years back that the Constitution has no preamble. And yes, Morris wrote that too.
