So what explains the transformation? I don’t like speculating about people’s motives in part because 99 percent of the time, I find those who try to guess mine are wrong (Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke recently attacked me on Twitter for being a Zionist stooge because I oppose Donald Trump). Still, one possibility is that Ed Schultz is simply sincere. A more obvious explanation is that he’s doing it for the paycheck. Both of those things are possible. But there’s a third possibility: Some people need to be on TV or in some other public arena. As with Trump himself, the money comes second to celebrity.

Russia Today was probably the only broadcaster offering to keep Schultz on TV — and perhaps that offer came with strings attached.

I don’t know Schultz personally, so maybe none or all of these explanations apply. But I do know that some people get addicted to being recognized at airports and speaking into a TV or microphone. I’ve seen it for more than 20 years.

Heck, poor Larry King is a bit like Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman: He’s got nowhere else to go. But King is different from Schultz and other pundits on the left and the right. King’s job is to ask questions, not opine on what is right and wrong, politically, analytically, or even morally. That’s the life Ed Schultz chose for himself, and in the era of Trump, it is interesting and dismaying to see who thinks the limelight — by which I mean ratings, popularity, celebrity, and relevance — is more important than long-held principles, or basic truth-telling.