I just witnessed something on TV that made me realize how stupid, crazy and Faustian right wing talk show hosts are.

A few years ago I was on John Zeigler’s radio show on KFI out of LA. He had a few listeners come in to watch the second Presidential debate, this was in 2004. At the time he was kind of a moderate conservative, but he was definitely a shy guy. Very quiet until he was on the air, but you could have a conversation with him. I observed some thing which I’m not going to get into right now, but all in all it was a good time.

As time went on and the political winds of talk radio became more Limbaugh, hosts like Zeigler became more hardcore conservative radio hosts. Let’s be real, it’s where the money is and they want to keep their jobs.

There have been varying reports on what happened but Zeigler left KFI. Months after he left he placed an article on his website which was scathing to the management and talent on KFI. He basically took down his pants, dumped on the ground, pissed on the crap and lit the whole mess on fire.

He turned up again just after the recent election, peddling an interview he did with Sarah Palin. He got national attention for this which probably led to his new radio hosting job.

So this morning he was on MSNBC by satellite. He was on the show because Sarah Palin made some comments about David Letterman, because of putting her in his top ten list and to be fair it was some very biting comments. She wasn’t happy about it and she called up his radio show to complain.

Now, I mentioned about his behavior a few months after leaving / being fired from KFI. It was the act of a spoiled child. When he was on MSNBC this morning, he was that exact spoiled child. It’s like he had a list of red meat talking points for the knuckle dragging, react and think later crowd and spouted what he wanted to say and not what he was questioned about. He had the Eddie Haskell smirk, like he was the smartest person in the world and was going to call MSNBC on being the Network of Obama. (That’s something many conservative hosts have been mentioning the past months)

Of course to prove he was the smartest person in the room, while being interviewed by Contessa Brewer, he said something that if he were a journalist, or had access to a computer and some sense, he wouldn’t have made. He said that as a woman, wouldn’t Contessa Brewer been offended by the comments David Letterman said if they were made against her? I did an article on Contessa Brewer a year or so ago because of a comments made by a few right wing talk show hosts about her. The comments were lower than the level of comments Letterman made against Palin and Letterman, like it or not, had humor on his side. In the Brewer case, these guys were out for blood.

So Zeigler, without any research, makes a comment to try to put one over on her and she rightly says she has been in the same position. Does he back down or offer some mea culpa? No, because it wasn’t EXACTLY the same, with her being attacked by Letterman, it wasn’t the same.

After she asked him, and I believe it was the 3rd or 4th time to keep on subject, he shilled for his video. Thankfully she had enough and not only ended the conversation gracefully but asked that his mike be cut off!

I don’t know who the real Zeigler is and honestly I don’t care anymore. It doesn’t make any sense that a person with his history, something that can be easily looked up, would continually commit career suicide by picking a fight every time he’s in the national spotlight. I’m sure he would give some justification for this, but the guy I met years ago isn’t the same guy I saw today. Exactly what he complained about with his stint at KFI, as far as personality conflicts he had, seems to be following him, which begs the question was the issue with KFI or with him, despite what his long dumping would suggest.

Here’s another problem I have with John Zeigler, which I just noticed on his website. There is a link on his site to an event where he was blocked from covering the event. The copy on the site has the usual thing you would expect from someone who is the smartest person in the world, but only if you want to believe they are the smartest person in the world. He wants to cover some media awards event for Katie Couric. He states on his site he went there to ask her a question about Sarah Palin. So, let’s be real and read between the lines and say he wanted to ambush Couric by asking a possibly embarrassing question. Hey, I’ve got nothing bad to say about that, just be up front about what your really there for. In any case, he talks about how he was removed from the event.

When you watch the video, you get a slightly different picture. Again, there’s no need to get into all of it because the initial impression from the video makes everything else make sense as far as falling apart. As Zeigler walks up to the sign up desk, he’s filming and has a hot mike, meaning he’s ready for an interview. This is at a sign up table. He’s nowhere near the building or the room where the ceremony is talking place. You don’t have cameras rolling at a sign up station unless you expect to have something good to film. Just that on fact means one of two things. Either Zeigler really didn’t know he should have real press credentials (saying you’re a documentary film maker isn’t a press credential) and so he didn’t call ahead of time to make sure of date, time and requirements for the press, or he did call up for that information and knowing what the rules were was going to try and see if he could use his name (uh sure, that’s going to work) as a calling card to get inside.

Oh and the abuse he had by security? He talked on the page about how terrible it was, and it’s laughable since before he went on MSNBC there was a story about a 72 year old woman who was tasered. The story sounded awful like a case of police brutality gone wrong, until you saw the video taken by the sheriff’s dash camera. Set up and preconceptions can play on a story for one angle when pictures show another. Like Zeigler, you might figure a 72 year old woman could have been dealt with better, but the video showed how this woman was feisty, not listening to the officer, and after four times of warning her not to get into the car, not to go into the street and she pushing past the officer again and again, he pulled out the taser and warned he was going to shoot. SHE DARED him to shoot her! He warned her two more times to comply with his orders, which she didn’t and he shot the taser at her. When the video wasn’t out, the 72 year old woman, playing on the fact she is 72, said she never did anything to provoke the incident. Once the video came out, what a surprise she’s not available for interviews.

Zeigler makes himself to be the victim in the ‘assault’ but the video evidence he shot is quite different than his description.