See the bizarre direct Twitter messages Ed Schultz sent me at 1:33 a.m. … and then deleted

It all started with a harmless little tweet poking some fun at Ed Schultz. I don’t have that many followers on Twitter, so he could’ve just ignored it and the tweet would’ve been swallowed up, lost in the vast expanse of the twittersphere.

Instead, this lone tweet from lil’ old moi caught Ed’s attention and apparently consumed his mind for the better part of the next 12 hours, culminating in a series of bizarre direct messages sent at 1:33 a.m. and 1:35 a.m. respectively.

Here’s a quick timeline of how things unfolded Tuesday and Wednesday.

Tuesday, 10:40 a.m. CT: Ed Schultz tweets a tease for his TV show:

(Source: Twitter)

10:45 a.m. CT: I reply to his tweet:

(Source: Twitter)

The link in my tweet is to a story told by liberal radio host Randi Rhodes, who explained how the Democratic party paid to launch the Ed Schultz show nationally. Her first hand account was further confirmation of what the L.A. Times reported back in 2006:

“The show, in fact, was born three years ago with $800,000 in seed money raised by Senate Democrats looking for someone to push back against the relentless attacks from Limbaugh and other conservative talkers on then-minority leader Tom Daschle.”

Rhodes was disgusted by the offer and turned down the money. Ed? He took it.

That’s how he gained a national audience. But I digress.

Just before I closed Twitter I received a notification alert. To my surprise, in just two minutes Ed had replied to my tweet. He was clearly sifting through my profile, because his comment was in reference to my employer:

(Source: Twitter)

A few thoughts ran through my mind when I read his reply.

Why is he responding?

Why did he begin a sentence with an exclamation point and then abandon it?

Why is he mocking gainful employment at a rapidly growing, exciting & dynamic company such as TheBlaze?

I spent about 30 seconds contemplating the mind of Ed before tweeting back:

(Source: Twitter)

After that, I moved on with my day. Apparently, Ed did not move on with his.

At some point during the day he went back and deleted his reply to me. Perhaps it was an effort to hide the embarrassment of such an inaccurate point, or to hide the fact that he was so rabidly angry he couldn’t resist interacting with a lowly no-name staffer like me. Whatever his motivation, he clearly expressed some remorse for the tweet because he deleted it

The only reason I was aware that he deleted the reply was because of another notification alert I received later in the day:  Ed Schultz followed me:

(Source: Twitter)

The fact that he followed me several hours after our initial exchange indicated he was still thinking about it. That’s when I clicked on his profile and noticed the reply to me had disappeared. I let out a little chuckle and went to bed.

Judging by what I found in my email Wednesday morning, Ed’s night went quite differently.

When I arrived at the office that morning, a co-worker joked with me about my exchange with Ed. We both found it amusing that Ed had deleted his reply, so I asked if they knew how to retrieve deleted tweets.

“Do you get email notifications?”

“Yeah, I have a filtered folder but I never check it. Let me take a look and see if it’s there.”

I could not believe what I found in that folder. Two direct messages from Ed himself:

(Source: Twitter)

(Source: Twitter)

These messages, which I presume are written in English, were also deleted from Twitter. The only reason I even knew they existed was because a copy of the alert was sent to my Gmail account.

Whatever the reason, Ed felt remorse for sending these messages. Perhaps it was the creepy, passive aggressive way he direct messaged them instead of just tweeting them, revealing his day long obsession over one little tweet. Perhaps it was guilt over mocking Glenn’s history with drugs and alcohol – a clearly invalid point because Glenn has been sober for more than 15 years and displays no signs of relapse. You know, signs like angry outbursts, inability to function at work, extremely poor decision making – like emotion tweeting people in the wee hours of the morning and then scrambling to try and cover your tracks.

Perhaps Ed is still upset with me over a blog I wrote back in 2010, where I merely posted the abysmal ratings of his television show. Maybe he’s fuming over a recurring character on TheBlaze, Garth Bunk, who many claim displays Ed-like characteristics.

We’ll probably never know – but I’ll be sure to check twitter at 1:33 a.m. early tomorrow morning just in case I receive any more updates.

UPDATE:

Watch me discuss the story on radio today with Glenn Beck:

[mlbvideo content_id=34586435]

UPDATE II:

It appears @wegoted no longer follows me on Twitter. He dumped me today. Was it something I said. ? !