March 3, 2023 • 49 mins
EPISODE 146: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: As Rupert Murdoch prepares to scapegoat Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott for the Dominion Documents scandal, a reminder that no matter how hopeful we might be right now, Fox "News" isn't going to destroy itself! Here are ten steps to take to help kill the thing so that democracy may live. There are recommendations for actions by Democrats invited to appear as guests, for what the White House Correspondents Association and RTCA should do, what the Senate should do, what prosecutors should do, what media should do, what the network should do. Plus: there are three steps YOU can do at home to hasten the demise, including hurrying over to UnFoxMyCableBox-dot-com.
Plus I will answer the question: How does Sean Hannity sleep at night (on a bed made out of money) and tell you that the man most responsible for Fox "News" existing today is, of all people, Rudy Giuliani. It's almost forgotten now, but what he did as Mayor of New York in October 1996 saved this godforsaken poisoner of this nation from vanishing almost before it began.
B-Block (26:06) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Jim Jordan's "Weaponization" Committee is coming apart at the seams; DOJ says yes you can sue Trump over 1/6. But that doesn't mean you'll win, and Daniel Ellsberg says goodbye. (30:53) IN SPORTS: Did the New York Rangers' social media director abuse an LGBTQ fan because other LGBTQ fans complained when the Rangers screwed up Pride Night? And the ESPN offer of a true public service: a centralized place where you can find your game, no matter who's streaming it (35:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The NFL team where players say rats ran the practice facility; who would've guessed Marjorie Traitor Greene's press flak is an asshole; and the Florida legislator who wants to force bloggers who write about Ron DeSantis to REGISTER WITH THE STATE OR FACE HUGE FINES.
C-Block (40:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: The only Thurber character who owns his own pet...Thunderstorm: "The Black Magic Of Barney Haller."
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Fox
quote News unquote is reportedly set to fire at the
(00:26):
direct instructions of Rupert Murdoch it's CEO, Suzanne Scott. Suzanne
Scott has been there since launch in nineteen ninety six
and has been many things Greta van Sustrans, producer, vice president,
reported sexual harassment, cover up, enabler, and now designated scapegoat.
(00:47):
Suzanne Scott figures prominently in the dominion lawsuit depositions and texts,
and since Murdoch has always made sure that whatever scandals
due to his company, they will do nothing to him
and nothing to his stars, she is apparently going to
be the one who is thrown overboard. Still, Fox quote
News unquote is not going to destroy itself. May seem
(01:10):
that way this past week especially, but it has survived
everything for more than twenty six years now, and if
it is going to die, we are going to have
to kill it so that democracy may live. So I
have ten suggestions, ten life hacks. Some of them things
you can do personally at home. But let me preface this.
(01:33):
We are up against men and women, evil men and
women confident and skilled and from the day their propaganda
machines started firing up, willing to use any influence, use
any excuse, bend any arm, manipulate any government, and anybody
in any government to get them into a position to
spread their pollution and collect their profits. It is, in fact,
(01:58):
not much of a stretch to say, and you should
know this going into this war, that Fox's channel exists
today because of one man, Rudy Giuliani. This is a
story that over the years seems to have gotten forgotten
into the folds of New York City history and or
(02:21):
cable television history, and it is important to understand it,
to understand how we got here and to understand whether
or not we can get back. In the days before
that channel launched on October seventh, nineteen ninety six, a
date which will live in infamy, the major distributor of
cable television in New York City and in this country
(02:44):
was Time Warner. Time Warner Cable. There was next to
no home satellite distribution of anything. So if Time Warner
would not carry your channel in many places, it just
would not get carried. And Time Warner was not going
to carry Fox quote News unquote channel in New York
(03:06):
It carried CNN, which in fact it was about to
buy from Ted Turner. It carried another new outlet called MSNBC,
but it argued it was only doing that because it
already had a deal in place to carry an NBC
cable network called America's Talking, which NBC had closed down,
much to the dismay of its executive producer, fellow named Ales,
(03:29):
and put on MSNBC in its place on its cable systems.
Rubert Burnox New York Post had also slammed various executives
at Time Warner over the years, and the companies did
not like each other, and even if they had, Fox
had virtually no standing as a news organization. It had
launched Fox News Sunday again Fox News in quotes on
(03:52):
its local stations only five months previously. That was it.
There was no Fox Network News. As late as October third,
nineteen ninety six, four days to launch, it looked as
if the channel, the product of its brand new production
assistant Suzanne Scott, and its unknown radio announcer co host
(04:12):
of its new liberal versus Conservative debate show, Sean Hanitti,
and all the rest of them would not be seen
at all in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Bronx maybe. And that's
when New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said that if Time
Warner would not give Foxes supposed news station a channel
(04:35):
on its own on its cable system, he Giuliani would
direct that one of the five channels assigned to the
City of New York to use as the city saw
fit as part of the franchise that Time Warner had
been granted, one of those five public access channels would
carry Fox quote news unquote. Time Warner threatened to sue.
(05:00):
Fox threatened to sue, Giuliani threatened to sue, and all
the while, Giuliani claimed he was only doing this because
the new operation would add fourteen hundred and seventy five
new jobs in Manhattan, and maybe if they didn't carry
it in Manhattan, Rupert Murdoch would move it to someplace like,
I don't know, Secaucus, New Jersey. Giuliani never mentioned that
(05:22):
Rupert Murdoch was willing to pay Time Warner one hundred
and ten million dollars for a cable channel on its
system to stick Fox on just in Manhattan. And with
that kind of money flying around, it was one hundred
and ten million for access to one point one million
cable subscribers. With that much money going around, god knows
(05:44):
what the deal might have been worth to Rudy Giuliani.
In any event, overnight a deal was reached, You bet
it was, and Rudy Giuliani could happily call Rupert Murdoch
and tell him that Fox quote news unquote was on
the air here in fund City. That's how when and
(06:06):
where the oxy moron of Fox quote news unquote began.
So now ten life hacks as to how to bring
it to an end. Some of these I've mentioned before,
others are new. First mentioned previously Senate hearings into what
into Fox quote news unquote? What about Fox quote news unquote?
(06:30):
What's the difference? Call it whatever you want, ask whatever
you want. Just make sure Murdoch and Hannity and Carlson
and Ingram get roughed up. Just think of what Republicans
would do in the House if the dominion documents had
been about things said and written and done and lied
about by people at MSNBC on behalf of Joe Biden
(06:53):
or better yet, Barack Obama. Just imagine Obama had not
won in two thousand and eight and then it was documented,
indisputable in House proof that came to the surface that
I had altered facts in my MSNBC scripts to make
it seem like he had one, and that I was
telling people America needed to go burn down Washington because
(07:15):
Obama had been the victim of a rigged election. Just
think about that. What would House Republicans do to me
and MSNBC and NBC and NBC's parent corporation. That is
what we need to do now to Fox only in
the Senate point two also mentioned previously. The revelation in
(07:39):
the dominion documents that seems closest to open and shut
evidence of a crime is the assertion that Rupert Murdoch
showed Jared Kushner some of Joe Biden's twenty twenty campaign
television commercials before they had been publicly seen, or maybe
even before they had been privately seen. That could be
prosecuted as an illegal contribution in kind, the legal term
(08:02):
for a campaign donation that has not in money. It's
not like it carries the death penalty, but it alone
could be the centerpiece of the aforementioned Senate hearings into
Fox And if it really was Murdoch showed Kushner and
not Murdoch. Had somebody else show Kushner, a creative prosecutor
might be able to use it as a weapman to
(08:23):
threaten Murdoch's American citizenship, go nuts here. If you want
to destabilize things at Fox. Rupert Murdoch has already showed
us where we start. As I reported at great length
earlier this week, when he wanted to shut me up
about my criticism of Fox quote news unquote and Bill
(08:45):
O'Reilly and others, he went after not me, not my boss,
not my boss's boss, not my boss's boss's boss. He
went after the chairman of the parent corporation, General Electric,
and rather successfully. Rupert Murdoch turns ninety two years old
a week from tomorrow. He's got a new girlfriend. Nothing
(09:07):
would give him a more unhappy birthday than a challenge
to his liberty and a challenge to his citizenship, even
if neither goes the distance. Let's give him a new hobby.
Third on the list of ten ways to destroy Fox
quote news unquote, this is new. The White House Correspondents
(09:29):
Association has to evoke Fox's White House credentials. Period. It's
not a news organization. It's not legitimate. It's as phony
as NEWSMAX or oa N or Lindell TV. Maybe it's
worse because on the record, in all those documents, it's
clear they were perfectly aware of that they were doing
(09:50):
things that were not close to the truth. The WHCA,
the White House Correspondence Association, has always been loath to
do something like this and couched its reluctance in terms
of the First Amendment and the marketplace of ideas. But
the representative of network, not just perverting the news, not
just doing it deliberately, but leaving a trail of evidence
a mile wide that it did so deliberately with malice aforethought,
(10:16):
deserves no protection from a journalistic association. For you kids
out there, during the Bush administration, they admitted to the
White House press room a guy who called himself Jeff Gannon,
representing Talon News, who only asked questions like what does
(10:38):
the President think of Democrats helping the terrorists the way
they always do? It turned out Talon News was just
an offshot of a far right pack. There were only
three people working there. Gannon was one of them, and
Gannon was just a male nude model actually named Jeff Guckert.
(10:59):
Time has proven that he had more business being in
the White House press room than Peter Doocey. And not
only should the White House Correspondence Association revoke all credentials
from Fox, so too should the RCTA, which is the
group supervising reporters covering Congress. Now, if you fear this
could someday lead to a Republican administration banning a legitimate reporter,
(11:24):
well yeah, that could happen four years ago. It was
twenty eighteen when the White House banned Jim Acosta of CNN.
Besides which, the only reason you have a reporter in
the White House is network vanity, so you can show
how cool you are and run the video of your
guy talking. A banned network will still get its video
(11:46):
and its soundbites. The actual substance of covering the White
House requires just making sure you are recording the pool
feed from the briefing room or from wherever the president is.
Step four. Democrats should flatly boycott not just Fox quote
news unquote, never go on the channel, but boycott all
(12:09):
News corp Properties, local Fox TV stations, the Wall Street Journal,
the New York Post, the whole thing a lot of
Democrats have gone on Fox to prove their metal or something,
or in the mistaken belief that they can say something
that will cut through to the conservative audience. Well, they can't.
And as much as I respect and defer to the
(12:30):
work of Greg Sargeant of the Washington Post, who wrote
yesterday that Democrats should not boycott, but should go on Fox,
but with a plan to confront the hosts and stir
up angry and create exactly the kind of viral moments
you see Republicans try to manufacture on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC,
anywhere there's a camera. The problem with that is how
(12:52):
many Democrats are any damn good at creating viral moments?
And if one actually created one at Fox's expense, that
would be the last time they'd ever be invited to
go on Fox. I'm asking out of the Democrats this
week now. We want them to be good at creating
viral moments. Step five to sink Fox. It's not a
(13:13):
huge issue, but non news media types, sportspeople, retired journalists
hawking your memoirs. I don't want to see you on
Fox quote news unquote. They are not your friends. Stephen A. Smith.
This means you Sean Hannity, maybe your real life friend.
I suppose I actually thought this one about Hannity in
(13:36):
fact as recently as two thousand and nine, and there
are photographs, and I am embarrassed by them. He is
not your friend. He was not my friend. Moreover, if
something arose and by selling you out, he could divert
attention from the Dominion scandal for one day, before you
knew it, Stephen, you would be on sale at Sean
(13:57):
Hannity's house for four dollars and ninety nine cents a pound.
Step six. This is also not a huge issue. There
aren't that many media reporters anymore, and certainly very few
TV critics. There used to be dozens and dozens, and
every newspaper in every website had one and sometimes two.
The New York Times had like five TV reporters. But
(14:19):
they the ones that remain anyway, and the political reporters
who cover Fox quote news unquote and give a damn
about this country need to stop viewing them and presenting
them in their work as a news organization. They are
not That's the point. If you must cover them. Things
happen on there that have some news value, you must
(14:41):
cover them as you do News Max and Oan and
Lindell tb and Steve Bennett, even if it's just symbolic,
even Oliver Darcy of CNN, even if you just convince
your bosses that it would be good gamesmanship just to
put quotes around news as I have in this piece,
So the headline actually reads Fox quotation, mark News quotation,
(15:04):
and mark step seven. Concombinant with that, there is a
more meta version. I started suggesting this to my masters
at MSNBC in nineteen ninety eight. I said that Fox
was not news, and that in boasting about their own ratings,
they should not compare themselves to Fox. I said, you
(15:24):
don't compare our ratings to the cartoon channel, Why do
you compare them to Fox? CNN should be who we
compare ourselves to. CNN should be in competition with MSNBC
and CNN and MSNBC should, I guess, be in competition
with whatever's left of Headline News and I don't know
News Nation. Just make it up, it's TV. Put those
(15:46):
ratings out, declare yourselves number one or two. You had
ratings fourteen times the size of News Nation, and you
continued your seventy eighth consecutive month in first place, MSNBC,
just do it leave Fox out of it. Eight. Now
to the three things you can do as you play
the home version of the Lets Destroy Fox game. From
(16:08):
my own days doing this at NBC, it is clear
that the performative hosts on the network cannot be shamed.
That's how they got their jobs. Do you think Tucker
Carlson is capable of feeling shame? How you ask as
you wring your hands, does Sean Handy sleep at night
(16:31):
on a bed made out of money? That's how? However,
there are people at Fox who genuinely think they are journalists.
Somehow they think themselves walled off from the poisoning of
America done by everybody else over there. In that sort
of direction, Brett Bear once approached me at a White
(16:54):
House Correspondence dinner, affably and respectfully, seemed like a really
nice guy, and explain to me, as if he were
talking to a third grader, that they're really were are
two networks at Fox, as if I did not understand
the delusion under which he and the likes of Shepherd
Smith and Chris Wallace and even brit Hume in those
days actually had to operate or go insane. So they
(17:20):
are the people to humiliate in social media. Brit Hume
and that Harris Faulkner, And I guess there are other
people who still think they are journalists, the reporters, for instance.
These people believe they still have reputations to uphold. Make
that impossible. Shame a Fox non opinion journalist today, and
(17:45):
you boycott all the Fox stations and their advertisers, your
local Fox station, the network, the sports operation, the Wall
Street Journal. Laura Ingram does not give a damn whether
you like her or not. And Lord knows that ship
sailed decades ago. But many of the others really do
care if you don't like them. Step nine. Angelo Carosone,
(18:10):
who is the president of Media Matters for America, notes
that there are still about ninety million cable subscribers in
this country. They okay, we all pay money to Fox
via our cable outlet for Fox quote news unquote. Fox
gets paid not by its viewers, but by all cable
(18:34):
subscribers in this country. Ninety million cable subscribers, three million
of them actually watch the swill on Fox. The other
eighty seven million still pay about a dollar seventy two
a month a little over twenty dollars a year that
goes to keeping Fox alive. That's one point seven billion
(18:56):
dollars a year we pay to not watch the crap
on Fox. Now, you can pick up the phone and
try to protest to your cable carrier about this, but
I do not know which number button to press, and
I don't have a spare forty eight hours to try
to do it telephonically. But more practically, there is a
(19:17):
website called unfoxm cable box dot com Unfox my cable
box one word, which will show you how to let
your cable provider that you know that you don't want
to underwrite the channel that cannot survive without those fees
of one point seven billion dollars from the people who
(19:40):
are paying to not watch it. Conveniently, something like half
of the Fox subscriber contracts with the cable carriers are
up for renegotiation in about the next twelve months. Of course,
there's a far simpler solution even than going to unfoxmbox
dot com. Join the cord cutters, go to streaming services,
(20:03):
leave cable carr altogether, keep your twenty dollars, and keep
it out of Rupert's pocket and keep all the other
money you've been giving the cable carriers. And step ten
is again simultaneously symbolic yet deeply meaningful. Whatever they call
their channel, you do not have to call it that
(20:26):
Fox nudes, Fox noise phone news, ft news, fake news,
fox news, whatever works. Call it that to your friends,
your family, online, on the street, talking to others, talking
to yourself. They can work in a million different ways.
(20:48):
In all of American history, virtually all of the bullies
of media, from Father Coglin to Walter Winchell to Bill O'Reilly,
lost their microphones, their pulpits, and their jobs. When one day,
years and years and years of mocker, he finally reached
a tipping point. Each of these people went to bed
(21:09):
one night as feared monarchs of their realms. The next
morning they woke up has beens, which brings us back
to Rudy Giuliani and one of his first evident bits
of public corruption nineteen ninety six, the one by which
Fox quote news unquote was born. When people still took
(21:33):
Rudy Giuliani seriously, and stuff was not fitzing down his
face at press conferences, and he hadn't gone to four
seasons landscaping yet and he hadn't been banned by Fox
quote news unquote, But no, this channel, this blight on mankind,
(21:55):
this threat to all of our freedoms, is not going
to destroy itself, but we can help. Still ahead of
(22:19):
us in this initiative countdown. What the Justice Department decision
sure you can sue Trump for damages on January sixth,
What that means and what it doesn't A true American
hero is saying goodbye. Daniel Ellsberg announces he is in
hospice care. Just when the New York Rangers Pride Night
fiasco story was beginning to calm down, it has reignited.
(22:44):
At It's Friday with Thurber and how the great writer
turned a handyman with a German accent into a terrifying
character who quote traffics with the devil the black magic
of Barney Holler ahead. That's next. This is countdown. This
(23:06):
is Countdown with Keith Olberman, my crazy friend. Both trips
to the news Tony. Some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions. Dateline the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government.
First came the news that Jim Jordan's little dog and
Pony Show had no staff and had been unable to
(23:29):
schedule any further hearings. Now CNN is reporting that the
quote dozens of FBI whistleblowers the subcommittee claims you've lined
up are actually a couple of guys who were suspended
by the FBI for being at the Capitol on January sixth,
and three others whose claims have not been validated by
the government entities which grant federal whistleblower protection. One of them,
(23:52):
in fact, had his claim of whistleblower protection rejected. Another
is retired, and it's unclear if he has firsthand knowledge
or it's just repeating stuff he heard somewhere. And a
third is named George Hill, a retired FBI agent who
last December tweeted, insurrection My ass it was a set up,
and sadly there's no shortage of idiots willing to take
(24:16):
de bait. He retweeted a comment that quote patriots were
the only ones trying to stop the fake insurrection violence
being committed by implanted Antifa Pelosi's buddies, So that would
be why there's no second hearing scheduled. Good work, Jim,
(24:52):
Thank you, Nancy Faust Dateline, the Department of Justice, to
US Capitol Police, and eleven Democratic members of the House
sued Trump for damages for injuries and trauma on January
six because he incited the violence. Trump claimed a president
has absolute immunity for anything he says while in office.
(25:13):
The court asked the Department of Justice for an opinion
on whether or not the suit could continue. DJ now
says yes, it can. Quote. Speaking to the public on
matters of public concern is a traditional function of the presidency,
but the traditional function is one of public communication. It
does not include incitement of imminent private violence. So while
(25:33):
it's important and encouraging that the Justice Department believes a
president can be sued for and can be guilty of incitement,
it does not mean the Department thinks this one is
guilty of and day Line Berkeley. Things change faster than
you'll ever realize, And while once every culturally aware person
(25:56):
in this country knew of the Pentagon papers and Daniel Ellsberg,
it's less true today. Ellsberg, though, was a true hero
who copied thousands of pages of Pentagon documents over spans
of years and gave them to The New York Times,
Washington Post, and other newspapers at a time when the
government was still insisting the Vietnam War was being won,
(26:17):
or it could be the Pentagon paper is spelled out
that not only was that not true, but that the
Pentagon had known it was not true for years and
had been lying about that. Reminiscent in fact of Fox
quote News unquote and the Big Lie. Yesterday, Daniel Ellsberg,
whose ninety second birthday is April seventh, tweeted that last
(26:38):
month he was unexpectedly diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer and
that he had been given three to six months to live.
Mister Ellsberg said he had decided against chemotherapy and was
preparing for hospice care. And the good news, he said,
was his cardiologist said, there's obviously no reason he has
to stick to his salt free diet now, and so
(26:59):
he is eating his favorite foods for the first time
in six years. I met an viewed Daniel Ellsberg once
and I told him to his face he was one
of my heroes and a true American patriot, and he
told me he watched Nightly typical of him. Daniel Ellsberg
was upbeat with this sad news. He wrote that when
he copied the Pentagon papers in nineteen sixty nine. He
(27:21):
expected he might spend the rest of his life in prison,
so he had no complaints. And he thanked those working
in anti war and anti nuclear movements, and he told
them to please keep going. Godspeed, Daniel Ellsberg. This is
(27:52):
Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This is Countdown
with Keith Alberman in sports. You may recall but WIS
National Hockey League teams have screwed up their Pride Night
events this season, most notoriously at Madison Square Garden, where
(28:12):
the New York Rangers at the last moment decided against
wearing the warm up uniforms with numbering and lettering in
rainbow colors that they've worn at every other Pride Night
because an as yet unidentified Rangers player had objected. Now
the Rangers may have a bigger problem. Twitter account at
Rangers Trash identifies as a lesbian and the hockey watcher,
(28:35):
and is clearly from the tweets devoted to the New
York Rangers. Now, she writes, quote feels like the perfect
time to reveal that after the Pride Jersey fiasco, nyr
New York Rangers admin messaged me asking me to control
my quote contemporaries aka rightfully upset queer people. And then
(28:57):
she told me that actually homophobes are nicer than the
queer people who were upset unte This person then posted
screenshots of direct messages she attributes to Jill Eisnear the
Rangers social media person, which read quote, there are many
ways to express feelings without telling a social media manager
to f themselves. Would appreciate you clarifying that matter with
(29:20):
some of your contemporaries. To be totally honest, we get
a lot more disrespect from people who think they're on
the right or fair side of this argument than the homophobes.
Just something to think about, no contest either. Unquote. Now
it's just me here, but I would translate that as quote,
(29:41):
you're gay and I need you to get the other
gay people to behave Oh my god. The Rangers, and
as the world of sports on television continues to teeter
on bankruptcy, the AT and T regional networks the Bally
Sports networks could go out of business four weeks from today,
and yet the fan will still then have to struggle
to find the game he wants to watch somewhere across
(30:04):
an end a spectrum of cable networks and channels, and
broadcast networks and channels, and streams and websites. CNBC reports
that my alma mater has a plan. In a sourced story,
CNBC says ESPN has quote held conversations with major sports
leagues and media partners about launching a feature on ESPN
(30:27):
dot com. That it's ESPN app that will link users
directly to where a live sporting event is streaming. Unquote.
That's even if it's not a game being carried on
an ESPN network. Can't figure out where that Canucks Sharks
game is being televised or streamed, Well, you'd go to
ESPN and clicked on the game, and you'd be forwarded
(30:49):
to whichever site was carrying it. So it would become
a kind of TV guide or I could probably try
to find a reference newer than nineteen ninety kind of
drudge report of sports. Plus we could get an ESPN
promo for it, voiced by my high school classmate. Hi,
I'm Chris Boomer Berman. Watt can't find your game? Did
(31:14):
you have to go backpack, back, back back to six
different web sites? You know, dud or did your team's
regional network go bankrupt? Did it do the old Burt
be home by chapter bly Levin. We'll use our new
feature on ESPN plus plus plus and you could go,
(31:36):
oh the way to where the game is being streamed.
Soon will add current temperature and atmospheric conditions as well,
so you can say you're with me, whether you're with
(32:04):
me weather. Come on, I've known the guy fifty one years.
I can do an impression of them not having get
all honked off about it, and if he does, I'll
just show all the pictures from when we were in
high school together. You're with me? Whether I like to
think of this as an intellectual podcast Ahead Fridays with
(32:28):
Thurber and the Thurber character who had his own pet
thunder storm first time for the daily round of the Misgrants,
morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst
persons in word the Bronze. The Jacksonville Jaguars of the
National Football League They've Got Rats. The NFL Players Association
(32:49):
released a survey of thirteen hundred players, rating their working
conditions in eight different categories. Most of the categories dealt
with training and practice facilities, and the headline of this
story was to quote the survey. When asked what the
number one thing they want changed at their facility was,
the Jaguars player's answer was unanimous, get rid of the rats.
The Jags have a rat problem in their stadium and
(33:12):
at their practice facility, and for three or four weeks
during last season, the rats basically owned the locker room
and the laundry hampers. Speaking of which, the runner up,
Nick Dyer, press person for Barney Rubbell's body double, Congresswoman
Marjorie Trader Greene. CNN fact checking Maven Daniel Dale asked
this dire for a comment about Green's latest faux paw,
(33:36):
in which she blamed the fentanyl deaths of two people
in twenty twenty on Joe Biden, who was not president
in twenty twenty one. Don't even in a government anywhere,
Dale writes that quote. DIYer responded by saying, lots of
people have died from drugs under Biden end quote. Do
you think they give an f about your bullshit? Fact checking?
(33:58):
Nick Dyer's Facebook page incidentally has a colorful illustration of
the phrase Jesus saves must be a different Jesus, but
our winner. Florida Governor ron de fascist. This is how
it all starts. Throughout history. De Santis has run the
state the way Huey Long used to run Louisiana, and
(34:21):
the even literal politicians in Florida now are trying to
emulate him. One proposed a bill that would make illegal
any political party that ever included support for slavery in
its platform, as the Antebellum Democratic Party did in the
eighteen fifties. Democratic Party would be illegal in Florida. Now,
(34:42):
State Senator Jason Brodure has introduced Bill one three one
six on information Dissemination. It would order bloggers who write
about DeSantis or other key state politicians to register with
the state government and meticulously report to the state government
how much they got paid and by whom or They
(35:05):
would face fines of up to twenty five hundred dollars
for each blog post they did not report to the government. Okay,
so this is by definition fascism, and not to put
to fine a point on it, but I think by
now it's fair to declare Florida a failed rogue state
and send in troops and bus loads of bureaucrats to
(35:27):
remove to Santis and storm stormtroopers and just run the
place until democracy can be restored in Florida, run the
proverbial small man in search of a balcony, to Santis
Today's worst person in the World, to the number one
(35:57):
story on the Countdown, and it's Fridays with Thurber. And
only occasionally did the great American humorist bend towards the supernatural.
Lots of Thurber's characters, like his fictionalized version of his
own mother, claimed to get messages from beyond the grave
and stuff like that, but rarely did Thurber ever go
a cult in the first person. This is not true
(36:21):
in one of my all time favorites of his stories,
The Black Magic of Barney Holler, in which a slight
accent turns into something that is just right up against
the line of being actually a little scary, but still hilarious.
The Black Magic of Barney Haller by James Thurber. It
(36:44):
was one of those hot days on which the earth
is uninhabitable, even as early as ten o'clock in the morning,
even on the hill where I live, under the dark maples.
The long porch was hot, and the wicker chair I
sat in complained hotly. My coffee was beginning to wear off.
And with it the momentary illusion it gives that things
are right and life is good. There were sultry mutterings
(37:08):
of thunder. I had a quick feeling that if I
looked up from my book, I would see Barney Holler.
I looked up, and then there he was, coming along
the road, lightning playing about his shoulders, thunder following him
like a dog. Barney is, or was my hired man.
(37:31):
He is strong and amiable, sweaty and dependable, slowly and
heavily confident, but he is also eerie. He traffics with
the devil. His ears twitch when he talks, but it
isn't so much that as the things he says. Once
(37:51):
in late June, when all of a moment, sabers began
to flash brightly in the heavens and bowling balls rumbled,
I took refuge in the barn. I always have a
feeling that I am going to be struck by lightning,
and either riven like an old apple tree, or left
with a foot that aches in rainy weather and a
habit of fainting. These things happen. Barney came in not
(38:13):
to escape the storm to which he is or pretends
to be indifferent but to put the sigh the way. Suddenly,
he said the first of those things that made me,
when I was with him faintly creepy. He pointed at
the house. Once I say this boat come down to rock,
he said, it is phenomena like that of which I
(38:35):
stand in constant dread. Boats coming down rocks, people being teleported,
statues dripping blood, old regrets, and dreams in the form
of Luna moths fluttering against the windows at midnight. Of course,
I finally figured out what Barney meant, or what I
comforted myself with believing he meant something about a bolt
(38:56):
coming down, the lightning rod on the house, a commonplace,
an utterly natural thing. I should have dismissed it, but
it had its effect on me. Here was a stolid man,
smelling of hay and leather, who talked like somebody out
of Charles Fort's books, or like a traveler back from
(39:16):
oz and all the time the lightning was zigging and
zagging around him. On this hot morning. When I saw
Barney coming along with his faithful storm trudging behind him,
I went back frowningly to my copy of Swan's Way.
I hope that Barney, seeing me absorbed in a book,
would pass by without saying anything I read. I myself
(39:40):
seemed actually to have become the subject of my book
A church a quartet, the rivalry between Francis the First
and Charles the Fifth. I could feel Barney standing looking
at me, but I didn't look at him this morning.
Bye and bye, said Barney. I go hunt grachu's indivudes.
(40:00):
That's fine, I said, and turned to pay age and
pretended to be engrossed in what I was reading. Barney
walked on. He had wanted to talk some more, but
he walked on. After a paragraph or two his words
began to come between me and the words in the
book by m By. I go hunt grotches into woods.
(40:25):
If you are susceptible such things, it is not difficult
to visualize grotches. They fluttered into my mind, ugly little
creatures about the size of whipper wheels, only covered with
blood and honey, and the scrapings of church bells. Grotches.
Who and what? I wondered, really was this thing in
(40:47):
the form of a hired man that kept anointing me
ominously In passing with abra cadabra. Barney didn't go toward
the woods at once. He weeded the corn, He picked
apple boughs off the lawn. He knocked a yellowjacket's nest
down out of a plum tree. It was raining now,
but he didn't seem to notice it. He kept looking
(41:09):
at me out of the corner of his eye, and
I kept looking at him out of the corner of
my eye. Vod dimes it bleaze, he called to me. Finally,
I put down my book and sauntered out to him,
when you go for those gratches, I said firmly. I'll
go with you. I was sure he wouldn't want me
to go. I was right. He protested that he could
(41:30):
get the gratches himself. I'll go with you, I said, stubbornly.
We stood looking at each other, and then, abruptly, just
to give him something to ponder over, I quoted, I'm
going out to clean the pasture spring. I'll only stop
to take the leaves away and wait to watch the
water clear. I may I shan't be gone long. You
(41:54):
come too. It wasn't, I realized, very good aberca dabra,
but it served. Barney looked at me in a puzzled way. Yes,
he said, vaguely, it's five minutes of twelve, I said,
remembering he had asked, Then we go, he said, And
we trudged through the rain over to the orchard fence
(42:16):
and climbed that and opened a gate and went out
into the meadow that slopes up to the woods. I
had a prefiguring of Barney at some proper spot deep
in the woods, prancing around like a goat, casting off
his false nature, shedding his hired man's garments, dropping his
teutonic accent, repeating diabolical phrases, conjuring up grotches. It was
(42:41):
a great slash of lightning and a long bumping of thunder.
As we reached the edge of the woods, I turned
and fled, glancing over my shoulder, I saw Barney standing
and staring after me. It turned out, on the face
of it, to be as simple as the boat that
came down the rock. Grotches were crotches, crotch saplings, which
(43:06):
he cut down to use as supports under the peach bows,
because in bearing time they become so heavy with fruit
that there was danger of the branches snapping off. I
saw Barney later putting the crotches in place. We didn't
have much to say to each other. I can see
now that he was beginning to suspect me too. About
(43:28):
six o'clock next evening, I was alone in the house
and sleeping upstairs. Barney rapped on the door of the
front porch. I knew it was Barney because he called
to me. I woke up slowly. It was dark for
six o'clock. I heard rumblings and soft flickerings. Barney was
standing at the front door with his storm at heel.
(43:51):
I had the conviction that it wasn't storming anywhere except
around my house. There couldn't without the intervention of the
Devil or one of his agents, be so many lightning
storms in one neighborhood. I had been dreaming of Prost
and the church at Combre, and Madelans dipped in tea,
and the rivalry between Francis the First and Charles the fifth.
(44:13):
My head whirled and I didn't get up. Barney kept
on wrapping. He called out again. There was a flash
followed by a sharp splitting sound. Now I leaped up.
This time, I thought he is here to get me.
I had a notion that he was standing at the door, barefooted,
with a wreath of grape leaves around his head and
(44:34):
a wild animal's skin slung over his shoulder. I didn't
want to go down, but I did. He was as usual, solid, amiable,
dressed like a hired man. I went out onto the
porch and looked at the improbable storm now on in
all of its fury. This is getting pretty bad, I said, meaningly.
Barney looked at the rain placidly well. I said, irritably,
(44:58):
what's up? Barney turned his little squinty blue eyes on me.
We go to the addict now and become warbes? He said,
the hell we do? I thought to myself quickly. I
was uneasy. I was you might even say terrified, but
I determined not to show it. If he began to
(45:20):
chant incantations or to make obscene signs, or if he
attempted to sling me over his shoulder. I resolved to plunge,
ride out into that storm, lightning it all, and run
to the nearest house. I didn't know what they would
think at the nearest house when I burst in upon them,
or what I would tell them, but I didn't intend
to accompany this amiable looking fiend to any garrick and
(45:42):
become a warb I tried to persuade myself that there
was some simple explanation that warbes would turn out to
be as the innocuous as boats on rocks and gratches indiviudes.
But the conviction gripped me in the growling of the
thunder that here, at last was the moment when Barney
(46:02):
Holler or whoever he was, had chosen to get me.
I walked toward the steps that led to the lawn
and turned and faced him grimly. Listen, I barked. Suddenly.
Did you know that even when it isn't brillig I
can produce slythy tobes? Did you happen to know that
the mome Wrath never lived that could out grade me? Yeah?
(46:25):
And furthermore, I can become anything I want to. Even
if I were a warb, I wouldn't have to keep
on being one if I didn't want to. I can
become a playing card at will too. Once I was
the jack of clubs, only I forgot to say my
glasses off, and some guy recognized me. I. Barney was
backing slowly away toward the petunia box at one end
(46:46):
of the porch. His little blue eyes were wide. He
saw that I had him. I think I go now,
he said, and he walked out into the rain. The
rain followed him down the road. I have a new
hired man now. Barney never came back to work for
me after that day. Of course, I figured out finally
(47:08):
what he meant about the garrick and the wharves. He
had simply got horribly mixed up in trying to tell
me that he was going up to the garret and
clear out the wasps, of which I have thousands. The
new hired man is afraid of them. Barney could have
scooped them up in his hands and thrown them out
a window without getting stung. I am sure he trafficked
(47:32):
with the devil, but I am sorry I let him go.
Thank you for listening. Count That has come to you
from the studios of the Old Woman Broadcasting Empire High Top,
(47:55):
it's headquarters in the Sports Capsule Building here in New York.
Here are our credits. Most of the music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel,
who are the Countdown musical directors. Produced by t Ko Brothers.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel. Guitars, bass,
and drums by Brian Ray. Another Beethoven selections have been
(48:18):
arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music
is the Ulderman theme from ESPN two. It was written
by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments
by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer today was Tony Kornheiser. Everything else is pretty much
my fault. So let's countdown for this the seven hundred
(48:39):
and eighty seventh day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. I
arrest him now while we still can. The next schedule
countdown is Monday, and until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning,
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman
(49:15):
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Fox
quote News unquote is reportedly set to fire at the
(00:26):
direct instructions of Rupert Murdoch it's CEO, Suzanne Scott. Suzanne
Scott has been there since launch in nineteen ninety six
and has been many things Greta van Sustrans, producer, vice president,
reported sexual harassment, cover up, enabler, and now designated scapegoat.
(00:47):
Suzanne Scott figures prominently in the dominion lawsuit depositions and texts,
and since Murdoch has always made sure that whatever scandals
due to his company, they will do nothing to him
and nothing to his stars, she is apparently going to
be the one who is thrown overboard. Still, Fox quote
News unquote is not going to destroy itself. May seem
(01:10):
that way this past week especially, but it has survived
everything for more than twenty six years now, and if
it is going to die, we are going to have
to kill it so that democracy may live. So I
have ten suggestions, ten life hacks. Some of them things
you can do personally at home. But let me preface this.
(01:33):
We are up against men and women, evil men and
women confident and skilled and from the day their propaganda
machines started firing up, willing to use any influence, use
any excuse, bend any arm, manipulate any government, and anybody
in any government to get them into a position to
spread their pollution and collect their profits. It is, in fact,
(01:58):
not much of a stretch to say, and you should
know this going into this war, that Fox's channel exists
today because of one man, Rudy Giuliani. This is a
story that over the years seems to have gotten forgotten
into the folds of New York City history and or
(02:21):
cable television history, and it is important to understand it,
to understand how we got here and to understand whether
or not we can get back. In the days before
that channel launched on October seventh, nineteen ninety six, a
date which will live in infamy, the major distributor of
cable television in New York City and in this country
(02:44):
was Time Warner. Time Warner Cable. There was next to
no home satellite distribution of anything. So if Time Warner
would not carry your channel in many places, it just
would not get carried. And Time Warner was not going
to carry Fox quote News unquote channel in New York
(03:06):
It carried CNN, which in fact it was about to
buy from Ted Turner. It carried another new outlet called MSNBC,
but it argued it was only doing that because it
already had a deal in place to carry an NBC
cable network called America's Talking, which NBC had closed down,
much to the dismay of its executive producer, fellow named Ales,
(03:29):
and put on MSNBC in its place on its cable systems.
Rubert Burnox New York Post had also slammed various executives
at Time Warner over the years, and the companies did
not like each other, and even if they had, Fox
had virtually no standing as a news organization. It had
launched Fox News Sunday again Fox News in quotes on
(03:52):
its local stations only five months previously. That was it.
There was no Fox Network News. As late as October third,
nineteen ninety six, four days to launch, it looked as
if the channel, the product of its brand new production
assistant Suzanne Scott, and its unknown radio announcer co host
(04:12):
of its new liberal versus Conservative debate show, Sean Hanitti,
and all the rest of them would not be seen
at all in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Bronx maybe. And that's
when New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said that if Time
Warner would not give Foxes supposed news station a channel
(04:35):
on its own on its cable system, he Giuliani would
direct that one of the five channels assigned to the
City of New York to use as the city saw
fit as part of the franchise that Time Warner had
been granted, one of those five public access channels would
carry Fox quote news unquote. Time Warner threatened to sue.
(05:00):
Fox threatened to sue, Giuliani threatened to sue, and all
the while, Giuliani claimed he was only doing this because
the new operation would add fourteen hundred and seventy five
new jobs in Manhattan, and maybe if they didn't carry
it in Manhattan, Rupert Murdoch would move it to someplace like,
I don't know, Secaucus, New Jersey. Giuliani never mentioned that
(05:22):
Rupert Murdoch was willing to pay Time Warner one hundred
and ten million dollars for a cable channel on its
system to stick Fox on just in Manhattan. And with
that kind of money flying around, it was one hundred
and ten million for access to one point one million
cable subscribers. With that much money going around, god knows
(05:44):
what the deal might have been worth to Rudy Giuliani.
In any event, overnight a deal was reached, You bet
it was, and Rudy Giuliani could happily call Rupert Murdoch
and tell him that Fox quote news unquote was on
the air here in fund City. That's how when and
(06:06):
where the oxy moron of Fox quote news unquote began.
So now ten life hacks as to how to bring
it to an end. Some of these I've mentioned before,
others are new. First mentioned previously Senate hearings into what
into Fox quote news unquote? What about Fox quote news unquote?
(06:30):
What's the difference? Call it whatever you want, ask whatever
you want. Just make sure Murdoch and Hannity and Carlson
and Ingram get roughed up. Just think of what Republicans
would do in the House if the dominion documents had
been about things said and written and done and lied
about by people at MSNBC on behalf of Joe Biden
(06:53):
or better yet, Barack Obama. Just imagine Obama had not
won in two thousand and eight and then it was documented,
indisputable in House proof that came to the surface that
I had altered facts in my MSNBC scripts to make
it seem like he had one, and that I was
telling people America needed to go burn down Washington because
(07:15):
Obama had been the victim of a rigged election. Just
think about that. What would House Republicans do to me
and MSNBC and NBC and NBC's parent corporation. That is
what we need to do now to Fox only in
the Senate point two also mentioned previously. The revelation in
(07:39):
the dominion documents that seems closest to open and shut
evidence of a crime is the assertion that Rupert Murdoch
showed Jared Kushner some of Joe Biden's twenty twenty campaign
television commercials before they had been publicly seen, or maybe
even before they had been privately seen. That could be
prosecuted as an illegal contribution in kind, the legal term
(08:02):
for a campaign donation that has not in money. It's
not like it carries the death penalty, but it alone
could be the centerpiece of the aforementioned Senate hearings into
Fox And if it really was Murdoch showed Kushner and
not Murdoch. Had somebody else show Kushner, a creative prosecutor
might be able to use it as a weapman to
(08:23):
threaten Murdoch's American citizenship, go nuts here. If you want
to destabilize things at Fox. Rupert Murdoch has already showed
us where we start. As I reported at great length
earlier this week, when he wanted to shut me up
about my criticism of Fox quote news unquote and Bill
(08:45):
O'Reilly and others, he went after not me, not my boss,
not my boss's boss, not my boss's boss's boss. He
went after the chairman of the parent corporation, General Electric,
and rather successfully. Rupert Murdoch turns ninety two years old
a week from tomorrow. He's got a new girlfriend. Nothing
(09:07):
would give him a more unhappy birthday than a challenge
to his liberty and a challenge to his citizenship, even
if neither goes the distance. Let's give him a new hobby.
Third on the list of ten ways to destroy Fox
quote news unquote, this is new. The White House Correspondents
(09:29):
Association has to evoke Fox's White House credentials. Period. It's
not a news organization. It's not legitimate. It's as phony
as NEWSMAX or oa N or Lindell TV. Maybe it's
worse because on the record, in all those documents, it's
clear they were perfectly aware of that they were doing
(09:50):
things that were not close to the truth. The WHCA,
the White House Correspondence Association, has always been loath to
do something like this and couched its reluctance in terms
of the First Amendment and the marketplace of ideas. But
the representative of network, not just perverting the news, not
just doing it deliberately, but leaving a trail of evidence
a mile wide that it did so deliberately with malice aforethought,
(10:16):
deserves no protection from a journalistic association. For you kids
out there, during the Bush administration, they admitted to the
White House press room a guy who called himself Jeff Gannon,
representing Talon News, who only asked questions like what does
(10:38):
the President think of Democrats helping the terrorists the way
they always do? It turned out Talon News was just
an offshot of a far right pack. There were only
three people working there. Gannon was one of them, and
Gannon was just a male nude model actually named Jeff Guckert.
(10:59):
Time has proven that he had more business being in
the White House press room than Peter Doocey. And not
only should the White House Correspondence Association revoke all credentials
from Fox, so too should the RCTA, which is the
group supervising reporters covering Congress. Now, if you fear this
could someday lead to a Republican administration banning a legitimate reporter,
(11:24):
well yeah, that could happen four years ago. It was
twenty eighteen when the White House banned Jim Acosta of CNN.
Besides which, the only reason you have a reporter in
the White House is network vanity, so you can show
how cool you are and run the video of your
guy talking. A banned network will still get its video
(11:46):
and its soundbites. The actual substance of covering the White
House requires just making sure you are recording the pool
feed from the briefing room or from wherever the president is.
Step four. Democrats should flatly boycott not just Fox quote
news unquote, never go on the channel, but boycott all
(12:09):
News corp Properties, local Fox TV stations, the Wall Street Journal,
the New York Post, the whole thing a lot of
Democrats have gone on Fox to prove their metal or something,
or in the mistaken belief that they can say something
that will cut through to the conservative audience. Well, they can't.
And as much as I respect and defer to the
(12:30):
work of Greg Sargeant of the Washington Post, who wrote
yesterday that Democrats should not boycott, but should go on Fox,
but with a plan to confront the hosts and stir
up angry and create exactly the kind of viral moments
you see Republicans try to manufacture on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC,
anywhere there's a camera. The problem with that is how
(12:52):
many Democrats are any damn good at creating viral moments?
And if one actually created one at Fox's expense, that
would be the last time they'd ever be invited to
go on Fox. I'm asking out of the Democrats this
week now. We want them to be good at creating
viral moments. Step five to sink Fox. It's not a
(13:13):
huge issue, but non news media types, sportspeople, retired journalists
hawking your memoirs. I don't want to see you on
Fox quote news unquote. They are not your friends. Stephen A. Smith.
This means you Sean Hannity, maybe your real life friend.
I suppose I actually thought this one about Hannity in
(13:36):
fact as recently as two thousand and nine, and there
are photographs, and I am embarrassed by them. He is
not your friend. He was not my friend. Moreover, if
something arose and by selling you out, he could divert
attention from the Dominion scandal for one day, before you
knew it, Stephen, you would be on sale at Sean
(13:57):
Hannity's house for four dollars and ninety nine cents a pound.
Step six. This is also not a huge issue. There
aren't that many media reporters anymore, and certainly very few
TV critics. There used to be dozens and dozens, and
every newspaper in every website had one and sometimes two.
The New York Times had like five TV reporters. But
(14:19):
they the ones that remain anyway, and the political reporters
who cover Fox quote news unquote and give a damn
about this country need to stop viewing them and presenting
them in their work as a news organization. They are
not That's the point. If you must cover them. Things
happen on there that have some news value, you must
(14:41):
cover them as you do News Max and Oan and
Lindell tb and Steve Bennett, even if it's just symbolic,
even Oliver Darcy of CNN, even if you just convince
your bosses that it would be good gamesmanship just to
put quotes around news as I have in this piece,
So the headline actually reads Fox quotation, mark News quotation,
(15:04):
and mark step seven. Concombinant with that, there is a
more meta version. I started suggesting this to my masters
at MSNBC in nineteen ninety eight. I said that Fox
was not news, and that in boasting about their own ratings,
they should not compare themselves to Fox. I said, you
(15:24):
don't compare our ratings to the cartoon channel, Why do
you compare them to Fox? CNN should be who we
compare ourselves to. CNN should be in competition with MSNBC
and CNN and MSNBC should, I guess, be in competition
with whatever's left of Headline News and I don't know
News Nation. Just make it up, it's TV. Put those
(15:46):
ratings out, declare yourselves number one or two. You had
ratings fourteen times the size of News Nation, and you
continued your seventy eighth consecutive month in first place, MSNBC,
just do it leave Fox out of it. Eight. Now
to the three things you can do as you play
the home version of the Lets Destroy Fox game. From
(16:08):
my own days doing this at NBC, it is clear
that the performative hosts on the network cannot be shamed.
That's how they got their jobs. Do you think Tucker
Carlson is capable of feeling shame? How you ask as
you wring your hands, does Sean Handy sleep at night
(16:31):
on a bed made out of money? That's how? However,
there are people at Fox who genuinely think they are journalists.
Somehow they think themselves walled off from the poisoning of
America done by everybody else over there. In that sort
of direction, Brett Bear once approached me at a White
(16:54):
House Correspondence dinner, affably and respectfully, seemed like a really
nice guy, and explain to me, as if he were
talking to a third grader, that they're really were are
two networks at Fox, as if I did not understand
the delusion under which he and the likes of Shepherd
Smith and Chris Wallace and even brit Hume in those
days actually had to operate or go insane. So they
(17:20):
are the people to humiliate in social media. Brit Hume
and that Harris Faulkner, And I guess there are other
people who still think they are journalists, the reporters, for instance.
These people believe they still have reputations to uphold. Make
that impossible. Shame a Fox non opinion journalist today, and
(17:45):
you boycott all the Fox stations and their advertisers, your
local Fox station, the network, the sports operation, the Wall
Street Journal. Laura Ingram does not give a damn whether
you like her or not. And Lord knows that ship
sailed decades ago. But many of the others really do
care if you don't like them. Step nine. Angelo Carosone,
(18:10):
who is the president of Media Matters for America, notes
that there are still about ninety million cable subscribers in
this country. They okay, we all pay money to Fox
via our cable outlet for Fox quote news unquote. Fox
gets paid not by its viewers, but by all cable
(18:34):
subscribers in this country. Ninety million cable subscribers, three million
of them actually watch the swill on Fox. The other
eighty seven million still pay about a dollar seventy two
a month a little over twenty dollars a year that
goes to keeping Fox alive. That's one point seven billion
(18:56):
dollars a year we pay to not watch the crap
on Fox. Now, you can pick up the phone and
try to protest to your cable carrier about this, but
I do not know which number button to press, and
I don't have a spare forty eight hours to try
to do it telephonically. But more practically, there is a
(19:17):
website called unfoxm cable box dot com Unfox my cable
box one word, which will show you how to let
your cable provider that you know that you don't want
to underwrite the channel that cannot survive without those fees
of one point seven billion dollars from the people who
(19:40):
are paying to not watch it. Conveniently, something like half
of the Fox subscriber contracts with the cable carriers are
up for renegotiation in about the next twelve months. Of course,
there's a far simpler solution even than going to unfoxmbox
dot com. Join the cord cutters, go to streaming services,
(20:03):
leave cable carr altogether, keep your twenty dollars, and keep
it out of Rupert's pocket and keep all the other
money you've been giving the cable carriers. And step ten
is again simultaneously symbolic yet deeply meaningful. Whatever they call
their channel, you do not have to call it that
(20:26):
Fox nudes, Fox noise phone news, ft news, fake news,
fox news, whatever works. Call it that to your friends,
your family, online, on the street, talking to others, talking
to yourself. They can work in a million different ways.
(20:48):
In all of American history, virtually all of the bullies
of media, from Father Coglin to Walter Winchell to Bill O'Reilly,
lost their microphones, their pulpits, and their jobs. When one day,
years and years and years of mocker, he finally reached
a tipping point. Each of these people went to bed
(21:09):
one night as feared monarchs of their realms. The next
morning they woke up has beens, which brings us back
to Rudy Giuliani and one of his first evident bits
of public corruption nineteen ninety six, the one by which
Fox quote news unquote was born. When people still took
(21:33):
Rudy Giuliani seriously, and stuff was not fitzing down his
face at press conferences, and he hadn't gone to four
seasons landscaping yet and he hadn't been banned by Fox
quote news unquote, But no, this channel, this blight on mankind,
(21:55):
this threat to all of our freedoms, is not going
to destroy itself, but we can help. Still ahead of
(22:19):
us in this initiative countdown. What the Justice Department decision
sure you can sue Trump for damages on January sixth,
What that means and what it doesn't A true American
hero is saying goodbye. Daniel Ellsberg announces he is in
hospice care. Just when the New York Rangers Pride Night
fiasco story was beginning to calm down, it has reignited.
(22:44):
At It's Friday with Thurber and how the great writer
turned a handyman with a German accent into a terrifying
character who quote traffics with the devil the black magic
of Barney Holler ahead. That's next. This is countdown. This
(23:06):
is Countdown with Keith Olberman, my crazy friend. Both trips
to the news Tony. Some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions. Dateline the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government.
First came the news that Jim Jordan's little dog and
Pony Show had no staff and had been unable to
(23:29):
schedule any further hearings. Now CNN is reporting that the
quote dozens of FBI whistleblowers the subcommittee claims you've lined
up are actually a couple of guys who were suspended
by the FBI for being at the Capitol on January sixth,
and three others whose claims have not been validated by
the government entities which grant federal whistleblower protection. One of them,
(23:52):
in fact, had his claim of whistleblower protection rejected. Another
is retired, and it's unclear if he has firsthand knowledge
or it's just repeating stuff he heard somewhere. And a
third is named George Hill, a retired FBI agent who
last December tweeted, insurrection My ass it was a set up,
and sadly there's no shortage of idiots willing to take
(24:16):
de bait. He retweeted a comment that quote patriots were
the only ones trying to stop the fake insurrection violence
being committed by implanted Antifa Pelosi's buddies, So that would
be why there's no second hearing scheduled. Good work, Jim,
(24:52):
Thank you, Nancy Faust Dateline, the Department of Justice, to
US Capitol Police, and eleven Democratic members of the House
sued Trump for damages for injuries and trauma on January
six because he incited the violence. Trump claimed a president
has absolute immunity for anything he says while in office.
(25:13):
The court asked the Department of Justice for an opinion
on whether or not the suit could continue. DJ now
says yes, it can. Quote. Speaking to the public on
matters of public concern is a traditional function of the presidency,
but the traditional function is one of public communication. It
does not include incitement of imminent private violence. So while
(25:33):
it's important and encouraging that the Justice Department believes a
president can be sued for and can be guilty of incitement,
it does not mean the Department thinks this one is
guilty of and day Line Berkeley. Things change faster than
you'll ever realize, And while once every culturally aware person
(25:56):
in this country knew of the Pentagon papers and Daniel Ellsberg,
it's less true today. Ellsberg, though, was a true hero
who copied thousands of pages of Pentagon documents over spans
of years and gave them to The New York Times,
Washington Post, and other newspapers at a time when the
government was still insisting the Vietnam War was being won,
(26:17):
or it could be the Pentagon paper is spelled out
that not only was that not true, but that the
Pentagon had known it was not true for years and
had been lying about that. Reminiscent in fact of Fox
quote News unquote and the Big Lie. Yesterday, Daniel Ellsberg,
whose ninety second birthday is April seventh, tweeted that last
(26:38):
month he was unexpectedly diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer and
that he had been given three to six months to live.
Mister Ellsberg said he had decided against chemotherapy and was
preparing for hospice care. And the good news, he said,
was his cardiologist said, there's obviously no reason he has
to stick to his salt free diet now, and so
(26:59):
he is eating his favorite foods for the first time
in six years. I met an viewed Daniel Ellsberg once
and I told him to his face he was one
of my heroes and a true American patriot, and he
told me he watched Nightly typical of him. Daniel Ellsberg
was upbeat with this sad news. He wrote that when
he copied the Pentagon papers in nineteen sixty nine. He
(27:21):
expected he might spend the rest of his life in prison,
so he had no complaints. And he thanked those working
in anti war and anti nuclear movements, and he told
them to please keep going. Godspeed, Daniel Ellsberg. This is
(27:52):
Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This is Countdown
with Keith Alberman in sports. You may recall but WIS
National Hockey League teams have screwed up their Pride Night
events this season, most notoriously at Madison Square Garden, where
(28:12):
the New York Rangers at the last moment decided against
wearing the warm up uniforms with numbering and lettering in
rainbow colors that they've worn at every other Pride Night
because an as yet unidentified Rangers player had objected. Now
the Rangers may have a bigger problem. Twitter account at
Rangers Trash identifies as a lesbian and the hockey watcher,
(28:35):
and is clearly from the tweets devoted to the New
York Rangers. Now, she writes, quote feels like the perfect
time to reveal that after the Pride Jersey fiasco, nyr
New York Rangers admin messaged me asking me to control
my quote contemporaries aka rightfully upset queer people. And then
(28:57):
she told me that actually homophobes are nicer than the
queer people who were upset unte This person then posted
screenshots of direct messages she attributes to Jill Eisnear the
Rangers social media person, which read quote, there are many
ways to express feelings without telling a social media manager
to f themselves. Would appreciate you clarifying that matter with
(29:20):
some of your contemporaries. To be totally honest, we get
a lot more disrespect from people who think they're on
the right or fair side of this argument than the homophobes.
Just something to think about, no contest either. Unquote. Now
it's just me here, but I would translate that as quote,
(29:41):
you're gay and I need you to get the other
gay people to behave Oh my god. The Rangers, and
as the world of sports on television continues to teeter
on bankruptcy, the AT and T regional networks the Bally
Sports networks could go out of business four weeks from today,
and yet the fan will still then have to struggle
to find the game he wants to watch somewhere across
(30:04):
an end a spectrum of cable networks and channels, and
broadcast networks and channels, and streams and websites. CNBC reports
that my alma mater has a plan. In a sourced story,
CNBC says ESPN has quote held conversations with major sports
leagues and media partners about launching a feature on ESPN
(30:27):
dot com. That it's ESPN app that will link users
directly to where a live sporting event is streaming. Unquote.
That's even if it's not a game being carried on
an ESPN network. Can't figure out where that Canucks Sharks
game is being televised or streamed, Well, you'd go to
ESPN and clicked on the game, and you'd be forwarded
(30:49):
to whichever site was carrying it. So it would become
a kind of TV guide or I could probably try
to find a reference newer than nineteen ninety kind of
drudge report of sports. Plus we could get an ESPN
promo for it, voiced by my high school classmate. Hi,
I'm Chris Boomer Berman. Watt can't find your game? Did
(31:14):
you have to go backpack, back, back back to six
different web sites? You know, dud or did your team's
regional network go bankrupt? Did it do the old Burt
be home by chapter bly Levin. We'll use our new
feature on ESPN plus plus plus and you could go,
(31:36):
oh the way to where the game is being streamed.
Soon will add current temperature and atmospheric conditions as well,
so you can say you're with me, whether you're with
(32:04):
me weather. Come on, I've known the guy fifty one years.
I can do an impression of them not having get
all honked off about it, and if he does, I'll
just show all the pictures from when we were in
high school together. You're with me? Whether I like to
think of this as an intellectual podcast Ahead Fridays with
(32:28):
Thurber and the Thurber character who had his own pet
thunder storm first time for the daily round of the Misgrants,
morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst
persons in word the Bronze. The Jacksonville Jaguars of the
National Football League They've Got Rats. The NFL Players Association
(32:49):
released a survey of thirteen hundred players, rating their working
conditions in eight different categories. Most of the categories dealt
with training and practice facilities, and the headline of this
story was to quote the survey. When asked what the
number one thing they want changed at their facility was,
the Jaguars player's answer was unanimous, get rid of the rats.
The Jags have a rat problem in their stadium and
(33:12):
at their practice facility, and for three or four weeks
during last season, the rats basically owned the locker room
and the laundry hampers. Speaking of which, the runner up,
Nick Dyer, press person for Barney Rubbell's body double, Congresswoman
Marjorie Trader Greene. CNN fact checking Maven Daniel Dale asked
this dire for a comment about Green's latest faux paw,
(33:36):
in which she blamed the fentanyl deaths of two people
in twenty twenty on Joe Biden, who was not president
in twenty twenty one. Don't even in a government anywhere,
Dale writes that quote. DIYer responded by saying, lots of
people have died from drugs under Biden end quote. Do
you think they give an f about your bullshit? Fact checking?
(33:58):
Nick Dyer's Facebook page incidentally has a colorful illustration of
the phrase Jesus saves must be a different Jesus, but
our winner. Florida Governor ron de fascist. This is how
it all starts. Throughout history. De Santis has run the
state the way Huey Long used to run Louisiana, and
(34:21):
the even literal politicians in Florida now are trying to
emulate him. One proposed a bill that would make illegal
any political party that ever included support for slavery in
its platform, as the Antebellum Democratic Party did in the
eighteen fifties. Democratic Party would be illegal in Florida. Now,
(34:42):
State Senator Jason Brodure has introduced Bill one three one
six on information Dissemination. It would order bloggers who write
about DeSantis or other key state politicians to register with
the state government and meticulously report to the state government
how much they got paid and by whom or They
(35:05):
would face fines of up to twenty five hundred dollars
for each blog post they did not report to the government. Okay,
so this is by definition fascism, and not to put
to fine a point on it, but I think by
now it's fair to declare Florida a failed rogue state
and send in troops and bus loads of bureaucrats to
(35:27):
remove to Santis and storm stormtroopers and just run the
place until democracy can be restored in Florida, run the
proverbial small man in search of a balcony, to Santis
Today's worst person in the World, to the number one
(35:57):
story on the Countdown, and it's Fridays with Thurber. And
only occasionally did the great American humorist bend towards the supernatural.
Lots of Thurber's characters, like his fictionalized version of his
own mother, claimed to get messages from beyond the grave
and stuff like that, but rarely did Thurber ever go
a cult in the first person. This is not true
(36:21):
in one of my all time favorites of his stories,
The Black Magic of Barney Holler, in which a slight
accent turns into something that is just right up against
the line of being actually a little scary, but still hilarious.
The Black Magic of Barney Haller by James Thurber. It
(36:44):
was one of those hot days on which the earth
is uninhabitable, even as early as ten o'clock in the morning,
even on the hill where I live, under the dark maples.
The long porch was hot, and the wicker chair I
sat in complained hotly. My coffee was beginning to wear off.
And with it the momentary illusion it gives that things
are right and life is good. There were sultry mutterings
(37:08):
of thunder. I had a quick feeling that if I
looked up from my book, I would see Barney Holler.
I looked up, and then there he was, coming along
the road, lightning playing about his shoulders, thunder following him
like a dog. Barney is, or was my hired man.
(37:31):
He is strong and amiable, sweaty and dependable, slowly and
heavily confident, but he is also eerie. He traffics with
the devil. His ears twitch when he talks, but it
isn't so much that as the things he says. Once
(37:51):
in late June, when all of a moment, sabers began
to flash brightly in the heavens and bowling balls rumbled,
I took refuge in the barn. I always have a
feeling that I am going to be struck by lightning,
and either riven like an old apple tree, or left
with a foot that aches in rainy weather and a
habit of fainting. These things happen. Barney came in not
(38:13):
to escape the storm to which he is or pretends
to be indifferent but to put the sigh the way. Suddenly,
he said the first of those things that made me,
when I was with him faintly creepy. He pointed at
the house. Once I say this boat come down to rock,
he said, it is phenomena like that of which I
(38:35):
stand in constant dread. Boats coming down rocks, people being teleported,
statues dripping blood, old regrets, and dreams in the form
of Luna moths fluttering against the windows at midnight. Of course,
I finally figured out what Barney meant, or what I
comforted myself with believing he meant something about a bolt
(38:56):
coming down, the lightning rod on the house, a commonplace,
an utterly natural thing. I should have dismissed it, but
it had its effect on me. Here was a stolid man,
smelling of hay and leather, who talked like somebody out
of Charles Fort's books, or like a traveler back from
(39:16):
oz and all the time the lightning was zigging and
zagging around him. On this hot morning. When I saw
Barney coming along with his faithful storm trudging behind him,
I went back frowningly to my copy of Swan's Way.
I hope that Barney, seeing me absorbed in a book,
would pass by without saying anything I read. I myself
(39:40):
seemed actually to have become the subject of my book
A church a quartet, the rivalry between Francis the First
and Charles the Fifth. I could feel Barney standing looking
at me, but I didn't look at him this morning.
Bye and bye, said Barney. I go hunt grachu's indivudes.
(40:00):
That's fine, I said, and turned to pay age and
pretended to be engrossed in what I was reading. Barney
walked on. He had wanted to talk some more, but
he walked on. After a paragraph or two his words
began to come between me and the words in the
book by m By. I go hunt grotches into woods.
(40:25):
If you are susceptible such things, it is not difficult
to visualize grotches. They fluttered into my mind, ugly little
creatures about the size of whipper wheels, only covered with
blood and honey, and the scrapings of church bells. Grotches.
Who and what? I wondered, really was this thing in
(40:47):
the form of a hired man that kept anointing me
ominously In passing with abra cadabra. Barney didn't go toward
the woods at once. He weeded the corn, He picked
apple boughs off the lawn. He knocked a yellowjacket's nest
down out of a plum tree. It was raining now,
but he didn't seem to notice it. He kept looking
(41:09):
at me out of the corner of his eye, and
I kept looking at him out of the corner of
my eye. Vod dimes it bleaze, he called to me. Finally,
I put down my book and sauntered out to him,
when you go for those gratches, I said firmly. I'll
go with you. I was sure he wouldn't want me
to go. I was right. He protested that he could
(41:30):
get the gratches himself. I'll go with you, I said, stubbornly.
We stood looking at each other, and then, abruptly, just
to give him something to ponder over, I quoted, I'm
going out to clean the pasture spring. I'll only stop
to take the leaves away and wait to watch the
water clear. I may I shan't be gone long. You
(41:54):
come too. It wasn't, I realized, very good aberca dabra,
but it served. Barney looked at me in a puzzled way. Yes,
he said, vaguely, it's five minutes of twelve, I said,
remembering he had asked, Then we go, he said, And
we trudged through the rain over to the orchard fence
(42:16):
and climbed that and opened a gate and went out
into the meadow that slopes up to the woods. I
had a prefiguring of Barney at some proper spot deep
in the woods, prancing around like a goat, casting off
his false nature, shedding his hired man's garments, dropping his
teutonic accent, repeating diabolical phrases, conjuring up grotches. It was
(42:41):
a great slash of lightning and a long bumping of thunder.
As we reached the edge of the woods, I turned
and fled, glancing over my shoulder, I saw Barney standing
and staring after me. It turned out, on the face
of it, to be as simple as the boat that
came down the rock. Grotches were crotches, crotch saplings, which
(43:06):
he cut down to use as supports under the peach bows,
because in bearing time they become so heavy with fruit
that there was danger of the branches snapping off. I
saw Barney later putting the crotches in place. We didn't
have much to say to each other. I can see
now that he was beginning to suspect me too. About
(43:28):
six o'clock next evening, I was alone in the house
and sleeping upstairs. Barney rapped on the door of the
front porch. I knew it was Barney because he called
to me. I woke up slowly. It was dark for
six o'clock. I heard rumblings and soft flickerings. Barney was
standing at the front door with his storm at heel.
(43:51):
I had the conviction that it wasn't storming anywhere except
around my house. There couldn't without the intervention of the
Devil or one of his agents, be so many lightning
storms in one neighborhood. I had been dreaming of Prost
and the church at Combre, and Madelans dipped in tea,
and the rivalry between Francis the First and Charles the fifth.
(44:13):
My head whirled and I didn't get up. Barney kept
on wrapping. He called out again. There was a flash
followed by a sharp splitting sound. Now I leaped up.
This time, I thought he is here to get me.
I had a notion that he was standing at the door, barefooted,
with a wreath of grape leaves around his head and
(44:34):
a wild animal's skin slung over his shoulder. I didn't
want to go down, but I did. He was as usual, solid, amiable,
dressed like a hired man. I went out onto the
porch and looked at the improbable storm now on in
all of its fury. This is getting pretty bad, I said, meaningly.
Barney looked at the rain placidly well. I said, irritably,
(44:58):
what's up? Barney turned his little squinty blue eyes on me.
We go to the addict now and become warbes? He said,
the hell we do? I thought to myself quickly. I
was uneasy. I was you might even say terrified, but
I determined not to show it. If he began to
(45:20):
chant incantations or to make obscene signs, or if he
attempted to sling me over his shoulder. I resolved to plunge,
ride out into that storm, lightning it all, and run
to the nearest house. I didn't know what they would
think at the nearest house when I burst in upon them,
or what I would tell them, but I didn't intend
to accompany this amiable looking fiend to any garrick and
(45:42):
become a warb I tried to persuade myself that there
was some simple explanation that warbes would turn out to
be as the innocuous as boats on rocks and gratches indiviudes.
But the conviction gripped me in the growling of the
thunder that here, at last was the moment when Barney
(46:02):
Holler or whoever he was, had chosen to get me.
I walked toward the steps that led to the lawn
and turned and faced him grimly. Listen, I barked. Suddenly.
Did you know that even when it isn't brillig I
can produce slythy tobes? Did you happen to know that
the mome Wrath never lived that could out grade me? Yeah?
(46:25):
And furthermore, I can become anything I want to. Even
if I were a warb, I wouldn't have to keep
on being one if I didn't want to. I can
become a playing card at will too. Once I was
the jack of clubs, only I forgot to say my
glasses off, and some guy recognized me. I. Barney was
backing slowly away toward the petunia box at one end
(46:46):
of the porch. His little blue eyes were wide. He
saw that I had him. I think I go now,
he said, and he walked out into the rain. The
rain followed him down the road. I have a new
hired man now. Barney never came back to work for
me after that day. Of course, I figured out finally
(47:08):
what he meant about the garrick and the wharves. He
had simply got horribly mixed up in trying to tell
me that he was going up to the garret and
clear out the wasps, of which I have thousands. The
new hired man is afraid of them. Barney could have
scooped them up in his hands and thrown them out
a window without getting stung. I am sure he trafficked
(47:32):
with the devil, but I am sorry I let him go.
Thank you for listening. Count That has come to you
from the studios of the Old Woman Broadcasting Empire High Top,
(47:55):
it's headquarters in the Sports Capsule Building here in New York.
Here are our credits. Most of the music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel,
who are the Countdown musical directors. Produced by t Ko Brothers.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel. Guitars, bass,
and drums by Brian Ray. Another Beethoven selections have been
(48:18):
arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music
is the Ulderman theme from ESPN two. It was written
by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments
by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer today was Tony Kornheiser. Everything else is pretty much
my fault. So let's countdown for this the seven hundred
(48:39):
and eighty seventh day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. I
arrest him now while we still can. The next schedule
countdown is Monday, and until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning,
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman
(49:15):
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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