September 30, 2022 • 45 mins
EPISODE 44: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: This should've been a landmark day at the Supreme Court with Judge Jackson's Investiture (2:15) Instead it's again about the prejudice, the dishonesty, the proselytizing of Samuel Alito and the threat contained in his response to Justice Kagan: "Saying or implying that the court is becoming an illegitimate institution or questioning our integrity crosses an important line." (6:08) New Gallup poll shows trust in the Court has dropped from 67% to 47% in just two years (10:29) Alito thinks his job is to create laws that protect the "role" of Jesus in American life, and said so in Rome in July (12:12) And hidden within his reference to criticism that "crosses an important line" is a threat that Alito thinks the Court should ACT against those who dare to stand up against the theocracy he and the other political prostitutes of this course are building as we speak.
B-Block (17:18) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Gulf Coast Humane Society (18:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: John Harris of Politico believes Maggie Haberman and the other Suppress-The-News-Til-You-Get-A-Book-Deal hacks proved journalism is "more powerful than Trump." He competes with LIV Golf and Ben Shapiro for the honors (23:26) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Exactly 10 years ago today my then-girlfriend faced the heartbreak of a dying family dog by telling me "I need a puppy fix." What followed was probably the most important day of my life.
C-Block (36:51) Part Two of Things I Promised Not To Tell: Rudy Giuliani makes a cameo appearance in the middle of my meltdown and the ultimate triumph of love at first sight - and you'll hear from the girl herself.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
This should have been a landmark day, the investiture ceremony
(00:29):
for Justice Katangi Brown Jackson at the Supreme Court, but
it comes instead, just as the court she joins has
lost its last shred of authenticity and relevance and honesty
and credibility, and we are forced to look at it
and say, there are no other options. It must be
reconceived or at least enlarged, or if there is nothing
(00:52):
else to do, it must be ignored. Justice Samuel Alito
is a prejudiced, dishonest, lazy, proselytizing fraud with a missile,
a complex and an agenda to serve not the law,
not the democracy, not the nation, but to serve his
own religious beliefs. He is intent on turning the Supreme
(01:15):
Court into the Republican Supreme Religious Court, and intent on
turning this nation into a theocracy. And he has gotten
quite a headstart on both. And yet somehow, this week,
on the eve of the investiture of Justice Jackson, he
has reached a personal new high in law. It goes
(01:37):
without saying that everyone is free to express disagreement with
our decisions and to criticize our reasoning as they see fit,
Alito said in response to a stark but mild reality
check from Justice Elena Kagan. But saying or implying that
the Court is becoming an illegitimate institution, or questioning our
(01:59):
integrity crosses an important line, Mr Alito. You have no
integrity left to be questioned. Mr Alito, Your institution consists
of at least four justices who perjured themselves under oath
to the Senate in their confirmation hearings. One of your justices,
(02:22):
Mr Alito, is married to a woman who needed to
testify yesterday to the House committee investigating the attempt to
overthrow the government of the United States by coup, and
she had to reassure that committee that she never discussed
any of her involvement with her husband, the Justice. These justices,
(02:43):
Mr Alito, are illegitimate, and they alone would make the
Court illegitimate. Mr Alito, at least one of your justices
sits with you only because of the destruction of the
Senate of the United States by its lead Republican member.
The line, Sir, was crossed when Merrick Garland was pocket vetoed.
(03:06):
Ever since that moment, your Institution has been nothing more
than a tool of the Republican Party, designed to use
the trappings of the law to legitimize the illegitimate, and
to assert integrity when there is nothing but corruption. Mr Alito,
you are a political prostitute. And Justice Clarence Thomas is
(03:28):
a political prostitute. Justice Neil Gorsuch is a political prostitute.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh is a political prostitute. Justice Amy Coney
Barrett is a political prostitute. Chief Justice John Roberts is
a political prostitute. Whatever you once aspired to, Mr Alito,
(03:51):
whatever you believed you had become when you were given
your seat, whatever dignity or respect you thought you were
now owed, you have long since forfeited, and forfeited beyond
the most remote possibility of reclamation. You and that room
full of partisan hacks have destroyed the Supreme Court of
the United States, And had you either intelligence or dignity,
(04:14):
you would resign and devote the rest of your life
to seeking forgiveness for the damage you have personally inflicted
up on this nation in the name of a corrupt
and morally bankrupt political party, and in the name of religion,
not just your religion, but all religions, which, whatever else
it is or is not, is just a belief, just
(04:38):
a hope, just a wish, perhaps more reliable than a horoscope,
but perhaps not. Two years ago, sixty seven percent of
this country said it had a great deal or fair
amount of trust in the Supreme Court. Last year that
(04:59):
number was still fifty four percent. As of a gallop
pole least yesterday, it is now forty seven percent. The
Court's job approval in was percent it is now. The
political majority has not changed on the Court since, indeed
(05:20):
it has not changed since. The citizens of this country
have not politicized their view of you and the Court,
Mr Alito. It is you and the frauds with whom
you sit who have politicized the Court beyond this nation's
ability to withstand it anymore. And it is you and
the frauds with whom you sit who have now substituted
(05:42):
the Bible for the law book. Saying or implying that
the Court is becoming an illegitimate institution, or questioning our
integrity crosses an important line. No one has said this,
Mr Alito, but you and the charlatan in robes around
(06:05):
you have accomplished this. You are the assassins of your
own institution, and you are the murderers of your own integrity,
and you are the erasers of the most important line
between legal impartiality and political fagg ury. The very worst moments,
said Justice Kagan, of the Court's history, have been times
(06:28):
when judges have even essentially reflected one parties or one
ideology set of views in their legal decisions. The thing
that builds up reservoirs of public confidence is the court
acting like a court and not acting like an extension
of the political process. If over time the court loses
(06:50):
all connection with the public and with public sentiment, that
is a dangerous thing for democracy. To that judicious, polite,
almost milk toast recitation of facts from Justice Kagan, You,
Mr Alito, decided you needed to try to metaphorically martyr
yourself and to threaten this country for having had the
(07:11):
nerve to recognize your illegitimacy and the audacity to question
what had been your integrity. The Alito Court, and make
no mistake, it is his court, John Roberts is sinking
into utter irrelevance. The Alito Court is to hear cases
starting next month that could roll back affirmative action in
(07:35):
the admissions offices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina,
and thus at every American college and university. The Court
may circumscribe the Voting Rights Act as it pertains to
draw in congressional districts and African American voters. It may
rule to permit rogue state legislatures to eliminate election results
(07:57):
at will. It may repeal laws that protect lgbt Q
customers from discriminate by businesses. Do we expect the Alito
Court will examine legal precedents or the opinions of televangelists.
You probably already know of Alito's speech in Rome in
(08:20):
July at the Notre Dame Religious Freedom Summit, which, as
with most religious conferences, is misnamed and was actually the
Notre Dame Religious You have no freedom but to obey
us summit. You probably heard him mock the world leaders
who were appalled by the courts dishonest overturning of Roe v. Wade,
with its reliance on the legal wisdom of a judge
(08:43):
who used to oversee the hanging of witches. You may
have heard him bash secular values and the quote new
Moral Code, but you probably did not hear him tell
this meaningless anecdote, which he told with the gravity of
someone who has just watched the burning of an original
(09:05):
copy of the Constitution. I'm reminded of an experience I
had a number of years ago in a museum in
um in Berlin. One of the exhibits was a rustic
wooden cross. A young uh, an effluent woman, a well
(09:26):
dressed woman, and a young boy who were looking at
this exhibit. And the young boy turned to the woman,
presumably his mother, and said, who is that man? That
memory has stuck in my mind as a harbinger of
what may lie ahead for our culture. Samuel Alito believes
(09:47):
it is his job. It is the job of an
American judge. It is the job of the Supreme Court.
It is the job of the United States of America
government to force its citizens to be able to identify
a man on a cross who may or may not
have ever existed, To force them to honor the businesses
(10:09):
that have built themselves into world influencing powers by attributing
quotes to this potentially fictional character, and to defer to
the interpretations of what this man, who may or may
not have ever lived, had to say about what the
laws of the United States of America should be and
who the President of the United States of America should be.
(10:33):
Mr Alito, that rustic wouldn't cross I have a suggestion
where you can put it. There is one last vital
point about what Samuel Alito said and the danger it
represents and the necessity for action that it causes. When
Alito says, questioning the court's integrity, quote crosses an important line.
(10:59):
What line does he mean? What also does he believes
should be done after whatever that line is is crossed?
I believe the answer is far more ominous than is
currently being recognized. On June this year, I tweeted, forgive
(11:21):
the self quote, it has become necessary to dissolve the
Supreme Court of the United States. The first step is
for a state the court has now forced guns upon
to ignore this ruling. Great your court, Why and how
do you think you can enforce your rulings? Hashtag ignore
(11:42):
the Court? It's a tweet. Three days later, on June,
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida retweeted my remarks and added quote,
it is a federal offense to incite rebellion or insurrection
against the authority of the United States or the laws
(12:03):
there are of what Rubio all but said there. What
Alito has opaquely danced around when asserting the questioning the
Court's integrity crosses an important line is that they intend
not just to suppress criticism of a corrupt, prostituted Supreme Court,
(12:23):
but to criminalize it. If Marco Rubio can look at
a tweet calling for states to ignore court rulings, which
is one of the court values of his Republican party,
if he can do that and apply that I am
guilty of inciting rebellion and insurrection by tweeting, then unfortunately,
(12:47):
we have to take Alito's reference to saying or implying
that the Court is becoming an illegitimate institution, or questioning
our integrity crosses an important line, not as a defensive
Holier than Thou spasm, but as a threat to every
(13:08):
one of us still ahead on countdown. The self owned
by Ben Shapiro in Worst Persons and frankly, a lot
of the anniversaries I bring you in things I promised
(13:30):
not to tell her kind of lame. They're off by
a day or a week or a month, or it's
a clunky anniversary year like the or the third, not today,
September two thousand and twelve, ten years ago to the day,
very probably the most important day of my life, all
(13:51):
because the girlfriend needed what she called a puppy fix.
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith open.
(14:14):
Still ahead on Countdown, I need a puppy fix. This
will be explained coming up first. In each edition of Countdown,
we feature a dog in need whom you can help.
Every dog has its day. This is a bigger picture.
Every dog has its day than usual. This is an
entire dog rescue that needs your help. The Gulf Coast
Humane Society in Fort Myers, Florida. I don't have to
(14:38):
tell you what they are facing right now. It is
still unclear whether they're dogs and cats got through it,
or their building got through it, or if they got
through it. But already Giving Grid is running a fundraiser
trying to get them ten dollars with which to restart.
If you can help, go to Giving Grid, search for
Gulf Coast Humane or just look for my tweet on
my feed for dogs in need at tom Jumbo Grumbo
(15:02):
and thank you very much. Still ahead, coming up, things
(15:28):
I promised not to tell I didn't promise not to
tell you about her. I just haven't. Please meet Stevie First,
the daily roundup of the miscreants, morons, and dunning Krueger
effect specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world.
The bronze right wing troll Ben Shapiro, the little boy
who once explained that climate change was no problem because
(15:50):
long before the ocean's actually rose, people with waterfront homes
would simply sell them. He's back with another snippet of genius.
To quote a tweet. This Lizzo Flute controversy is a
perfect example of what I have termed face to phenomenon,
the phenomenon whereby someone does something deliberately controversial in an
attempt to draw attention, and then acts offended when you
(16:14):
notice unquote in other words, Ben your entire career the
runner up everybody mentioned in this next story. This is
like a collision of worse persons. The Saudi Blood Money
golf tour with the ironic name Live Golf, is reportedly
close to a deal to show its tournaments on the
cable outlet Fox Sports one. So what, Well, Unlike every
(16:38):
other sports rights deal in television. In this one, the
sports league will be paying the TV network, not the
other way around. Nobody wanted to touch the Saudi Blood
Money Golf Tour, so CEO Greg Norman had to resort
to buying time on Fox like an infomercial for electorate
(16:58):
heating hangers or something. Golf Digest reports that Live employed
an unusual will intermediary back when it thought it still
would get paid rather than having to pay Jared Kushner.
Kushner finally begged Lochlan Murdoch to help him out, So
the Blood Money Golf Tour is using Mr. Blood Money's
son in law to pay Blood Money to the Blood
(17:20):
Money TV Network. But our winner politicos John Harris. He
has written a ponderous piece called The Reporters Who Proved
that Journalism is More Powerful than Trump, in which he
defends what he mistakenly calls CNN CEO Chris Lickts plans
to steer the network back towards journalistic traditionalism, never once
(17:41):
mentioning that licks boss doesn't want that he wants a
network full of Brett Bears. Harris also never mentions paste
for some reason. Harris also never mentions that Politico is
now owned by a German right winger, who wrote, do
we all want to get together for an hour and
the morning of November three and pray that Donald Trump
will again become president? But Harris did go to the
(18:03):
online equivalent of a massage parlor about the others in
journalism that he's referring to, summing up the rest of
his piece by writing, quote, no, journalism doesn't need to
reinvent itself in the face of the Trump challenge. It
just needs more reporting of the kind offered by Maggie Haberman,
Susan Glasser, Peter Baker, who's her husband, Alexander Burns, and
(18:28):
his co author Jonathan Martin, Josh Gerstein, and alex Ward Haberman, Glasser, Baker,
Burns and Martin all wrote Trump Books this year, featuring
galling and sometimes important revelations about Trump's threat to American democracy.
That we're all eighteen months old or older. Because Haberman, Glasser, Baker, Burns,
and Martin had been sitting on, hiding, suppressing, secreting, and
(18:52):
embargoing breaking news that should have been reported in their
own breaking news outlets, because that's kind of the point
of breaking news. They hit all this stuff until they
could monetize it with book deal. What Harris does not
understand is that American quote journalism unquote did reinvent itself.
The overriding principle used to be get a scoop, get
(19:15):
it in the paper or on the air as soon
as possible, because that's your job, and that's your only
actual value to society as well. It is also, and
I speak as somebody who broke a lot of sports news,
including the Wayne Gretzky trade and Michael Jordan's first dalliance
with a comeback, It is the joy of doing a journalism.
You have the story and nobody else does. But now Haberman,
(19:40):
glassar Baker, Burns, Martin and John Harris think the point
of American journalism is how much money you can make
by withholding vital public information. The reporters who proved the
journalism is more powerful than Trump is Harris's title. Yeah,
proved journalism is more powerful than Trump in moving merchandise, John,
I've completely lost the journalistic Fred Harris today a's worst
(20:06):
person in the world. Now to the top of the
countdown and my favorite topic, me and things I promised
(20:28):
not to tell. I never promised not to tell this
I just haven't told it to you yet. This is
exactly the right day to tell you. Olivia looked at
me and said, I need a puppy fix. Ten years
ago today, my girlfriend's family dog was dying. My girlfriend
would not say it, her folks would not say it.
The dog, a Jack Russell Terrier named Casey, did her
(20:52):
best to be the only truthful one in the bunch,
moving purposefully and unsteadily with every step and looking out
at her world with a seeming mixture of acceptance and sadness,
and especially regret that the one time she really needed
her bipeds to speak for her, they would not. I
just need for dogs, not to mean sadness, Olivia said,
(21:12):
just for a while, can we go to that pet
shop on lex? I mumbled that we could go, but
that I had resisted the dog entreaties of eleven girlfriends
before her, and I would successfully resist hers. I had
always loved dogs, but I was really allergic to them,
and my doctors had all said that even hypo allergenic
(21:33):
dogs were a crap shoot. She said, I do not
want a dog. I am not trying to convince you
to get us a dog. I just want to hold
a puppy for a little while. She paused, as she
always did when she felt both hopeless and angry at
being at the mercy of feelings, and she lapsed into
the shrug emoji. As sappy as that sounds, Olivia the girlfriend,
(21:58):
the former girlfriend, let me make this easier, and both
of us will call her t f g F the
former girlfriend e f GF and I left for the
pet shop in mid afternoon, and I told her my
true fear here that my native but dormant shared affinity
with dogs would all of a moment spring fully grown
from my soul, and I would blurt, just give me
(22:18):
all of them. I mean, what kind of life could
I offer a dog? I was on television, and thus
always in a television studio, and thus never home for
play or walks or just the prevention of canine loneliness.
I had a girlfriend who lived out of town. Half
the time, I was clueless as to every practical aspect
(22:38):
of the dog thing. I had littered the continent with
dead house plants, and I no longer thought myself capable
of pulling my ego out of my backside sufficiently to
take care of fish. I had literally not had a
pet of any kind, since I had come to terms
with living in a wistful, hazy world in which I
(23:01):
might inadvertently have a dog pal for a few moments,
but almost never indoors, and never without the pang of
knowing that the hello itself contained the start of the goodbye.
And I was allergic. I was allergic to the obvious big, furry,
friendly dogs, and I might be allergic to the ones
that were billed as non allergic. And if I disobeyed
(23:23):
this immutable cannon, the buried tears of permanent exclusion might
be replaced by far worse ones of separation and loss.
Me I would get over it, probably, but without overvaluing
myself too much to betray the love of a dog
to send a dog back because of allergies. As t F,
(23:46):
g F and I approached the shop, there was, as
they're almost always is, there a small crowd undulating around it.
Lexington avenues narrow sidewalks make these human clots easier to form,
even late on the first Sunday of autumn. There's also
an obstacle course of greats and cellar doors and bikes,
chained poles and parking meters and canopies for diners and
(24:09):
restaurants and mattress show rooms and other places. They're not
quite seedy, but also aren't quite your first choice. The
uptown edges of the grime and noise that constitute the
maze of fifty nine Street bridge approaches lend the place
a congested feeling even when it's otherwise quiet. We are
three blocks up from the trying just a little too
(24:31):
hard merchandizing of Bloomingdale's. There are unwashed delivery trucks, double
parked five days a year, and then totally out of
place amid the prosaic trappings of a big city at
its most men there they are bouncing off each other,
tearing impotitely at other, tiny heads and tails and paws
(24:51):
doing a seeming pantomime of dismemberment. Their yips and the
crunch of the shredded cavorting paper are just audible through
the glass and over the din of the street. They
create an oasis of cute and us. In case you
can't tell what they are, there's this big Neon sign
above their street front window that reads, puppies don't make
(25:16):
me go in, I pleaded. She reassured me. We'd go
in she'd hold the dog. All I had to do
was take a picture. You don't understand, I reached for
her hand. What I'm trying to say is I always
wanted a dog, but I could never have a dog.
Just as the door to the shop opened, she grabbed
my arm. She yanked hard, She swore, and she muttered,
(25:37):
you'll survive. Man up. Don't make eye contact. Don't make
eye contact. Don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact.
We were going towards puppies and past puppies, and the
appearance of a small staircase to a training laft confirmed
we're now going under puppies. And in the deepest recesses
of the shop there was a wall of puppies two
our right, three cages high, six across, all a yellowish
(26:00):
beige behind a reddish brown for mica countertop, then a
structural be and then three cages high, two across, then
a corner with a small visiting pen built into the countertop.
Then right in front of me, the Hollywood squares of
puppies three high, three across, and all of their inmates,
all nine of them, staring at me and screaming at
(26:21):
me and making eye contact and saying, by EESP, take
me home. A salesman now introduced himself as Jeffrey, and
Jeffrey asked if t F GF had any particular dog
she wanted him to bring to her. Let me see
the Maltese the girl. In that moment, two things struck me. Firstly,
(26:42):
this was my cue to get the phone out and
prepared to take the photo of her with the puppy. Secondly,
the dog, whom the salesman was now temporarily liberating from
the surprisingly spare cage, was the only living soul inside
that pet shop besides me, who was not making any
damn noise. Every other puppy was perfecting its adolescent bark.
(27:03):
The cats were making a bewildered variety of noises. And
and was that a Norwegian blue parrots squawk? Remarkable bird,
the Norwegian blue? Isn't it beautiful plumage? This Maltese said nothing.
She looked like her torso would easily fit in one
of my hands if she was three pounds. A quarter
of it was hair, and half of that was curled.
(27:23):
And presumably somebody came by every day to turn what
sat atop her head into a mohawk up top and
a mullet in the back. Her cage mate brothers seemed
a little bigger, but his eyes were clearly smaller, and
their ocular contrast was immediately visible, even if you still
had forlorn hopes of avoiding eye contact. His shown hers.
(27:45):
We're illuminated. He tried to get past her into the
salesman's arms. She simply lifted up her head towards him,
and it actually crossed my mind that she looked like
she was about to say, Hi, Jeffrey, how are you today.
He put her gently down in the playpen at the
right corner of the counter. T F g F asked
if she could pick the puppy and nodded to me
(28:05):
to get the camera ready. Honestly, Jeffrey said, this is
the sweetest dog we've had in here for months. I
say that every day to almost everybody, but this time
I'm actually not lying. T F GF cradled the Maltese
in her arms, with the dog's head facing to my right.
I tapped the camera on the phone. My hand was
already shaking as I centered up t F g F
(28:27):
and the puppy in the frame. The Maltese suddenly wiggled upright,
placed her front paws on my girlfriend's chest, and just
as I snapped the image, the dog reached up and
kissed my girlfriend on the lips. I am, on occasion
completely incapable of remembering anything that happened in my entire
(28:49):
life before that moment. T f GF made the appropriate
sounds of approval. Jeffrey began discussing how little grooming the
Maltese breed needs and the great price he could give us,
and even as my head spun, it seems silly to
me that he was calculating the tax on something that
was obviously timelessly and eternally priceless. T f g F
(29:12):
said something about how we needed a minute outside to
discuss it, and she handed the puppy back to Jeffrey,
and the dog looked at each of each of us
and as if she was about to say, nice to
meet you. As the pup went back up into the
cage with her brother, something extraordinary happened. The little girl
was reaching her head up towards the spout of the
(29:32):
cage's water bottle with the same graceful movement she had
made to bestow that kiss on t F GF. When
her brother puppy abruptly body slammed her out of the way,
and her tiny frame bounced off the side of the cage.
And then, to my shock and confusion, a deep and
threatening growl, a vengeful reverberated throughout the pet shop. The
(29:59):
growl was coming from me. The next sounds were from
t F GF. My god, what's wrong with you? I
didn't know it at the time, but as we turned
to fight our way back out through the shop to
the street, I evidently half skidded into a displayful of
chew toys. They nearly toppled to the floor. I nearly
(30:20):
toppled to the floor. I couldn't see, but I didn't
recognize my own tears until they hit the edges of
my lips. Somehow I managed to say it again, this
time in despair. I always wanted a dog, but I
could never have one. She suddenly realized what had happened.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm an asshole. T F GF
was now holding me upright and steering me towards the
(30:41):
door to the street. I didn't listen to I'm an asshole.
I'm an asshole. You told me. I didn't believe you,
I'm so sorry. Well, now the stories came pouring out,
all jumbled, one on top of the other. Tiny, the
st Bernard at the Katzenstein's, He only wanted to embrace me.
He wasn't trying to eat me. And the mcconnons Mutt
next door. Boots used to come sit on my lap,
(31:01):
and Tiny didn't make me sneezing only scared me. The
mcconnons had three boys and a mother who baked cookies
by the car load lot, and Boots never left their side,
and I was always at their house. And if I
was allergic, how was it that I never once had
a problem with Boots? How in the hell did that work? Huh?
And what about Vladimir or the straight cat my sister found?
He used to live in the garage and behave like
a dog and like to be carried around like a baby.
(31:22):
And how allergic was I had? Beautiful, beautiful little Maltese
reached up and kissed you on the mouth. And the
one time I took my dad's movie camera to the
mcconnons house, half of the film was of Boots. And
what if I went back and got the allergy shots again?
And it was my mother who said she was really allergic,
so I must be too, And what's the use The
little Maltese was perfect and the next person, who was Caesar,
will snap her up in an instant. And I asked
(31:42):
them just to let me try a little dog who
wouldn't shed. The only thing my mother would let me
have were lizards, and I could take a zyr tech
every day. I'm so sorry, Tiny, I didn't realize I
never said goodbye to Boots. Maltese is gone. She's gone.
She's gone, and she's my dog. I know what. I
could feel it. She's my dog and she's gone. What
(32:02):
happened next Beggar's fiction. It involves Rudy Giulianti and his
part of this story of ten years ago today and
what happened to the dog and to me continues after
this back to the number one story on the countdown
(32:28):
and the day I fell in love with a dog
for the first time and my girlfriend, the former girlfriend
t F GF and I left the puppy in the
pet shop. T F GF and I were walking me
mid meltdown somehow, now nearing the Park Avenue Armory one
block west and four blocks north of the pet shop
(32:49):
that I thought we were still in. To her credit,
t F GF had kept me from throwing myself into
traffic or dissolving into a puddle on sixty Street. The
overwhelming sensation I had was not one of having left
the tiny puppy in the shop, but of having left
a part of myself there that was my dog. And
(33:10):
what was worse was she was obviously going to be
taken by somebody else, even before I got back there,
even if we turned around right away. Who could resist her?
I certainly hadn't. My chaotic stream of consciousness monologue paused
only when I had no choice but to shut up
and gasp for breath, and the comments with which t
F g F tried to soothe me in these moments
(33:31):
were self abnegating and solemn. She had talked me off
the limb of my certainty that the dog had already
been sold, and was now steering me back towards sanity.
I had to, she would say, later, you were having
a breakdown. She said we should go home, and if
I wanted to talk seriously about the practicalities of owning
the dog, we could do that and still get the
(33:52):
puppy the next morning, even if it meant delaying her
departure for d C. Don't worry. I'm sure she's still there.
They were getting ready to close. She'll be there in
the morning. I exhaled, and then I repanicked. She's she's
I sniffed anew and the tears resumed. She's in that
cage with that brother of hers in the basement somewhere.
(34:15):
Before t F GF could answer, and I swear this
is true, Rudy Giuliani spilled down the stairs from the
armory we were passing. A cop suddenly appeared from a
different nowhere and put out an arm and firmly asked
us to stop walking, and Giuliani scuttled rodent like into
a waiting car. A wife was with him. I did
(34:38):
not and do not know which number. The driver was
already closing the door behind them when I shouted it,
how come my dog has to spend the night in
a cage while that ass hat is allowed to roam
around this city without a leash on him. Later that evening,
t F GF said that was the first moment she
thought we might just get home safe and sound. After all,
(35:02):
it was not ten more minutes back to my apartment
and walked it in silence. Now I had long since
saturated my handkerchief and some tissues t f GF had
in her pockets. I was breathing deeply and restorative lee.
Now the sniffle frequency reduced to once or twice per block,
and my mind was crowded with the dogs I had known, Boots, Tiny, Vladimir,
(35:24):
the Cat, even t fgf's little Casey dying out in
Jersey and unaware of the seismic events which she had
set in motion. I was thinking of other dogs. To
all of the dogs, and all of the stories of
James Thurber that I read on TV every Friday night,
I had smiled along with his poetic descriptions of them,
but never confessed I loved them as he must have.
(35:48):
There was Samantha, who my late friend Bruce Hagen used
to bring everywhere, including our college radio station newsroom, the
first really big dog who did not frighten me. My
great aunts Yorkie, whose gas was so potent that the
Christmas just before I turned nine, my great uncle's he
was convinced she had been a German terror weapmon at
Chateau Terry in the First World War, and he and
(36:10):
I had bonded because I knew what Chateau Terry was.
There was Nellie McNally, the only dog that any of
my sometimes out of town girlfriends ever had actually put
on the phone with me. In my mind. They all
stood before me, all lined up, all quiet, smiling, all
with the kindest type of I told you so, dummy
(36:31):
on their wonderful faces, and dozens more behind them, vague
shapes and sizes, who belonged to neighbors or co workers passed,
who are just chance encounters on the streets of any
of a dozen cities decades before. No, I'm sorry, she said,
I shouldn't have been that selfish. But now I disagreed
with her, and as I unlocked the apartment door, I
(36:53):
began to tell her of the dogs I had just
been communing within my mind, and what had suddenly become necessary, urgent,
inevitable and perfect, but about which I needed as much
detail as I could in as sure a period as possible.
T F GF tried, well, you just take the dog
wherever you can. My parents have been saying this a
lot lately. Now they regret not doing more things with Casey,
(37:16):
not adventures, not kayaking, just taking her with them or
going out in the yard, or just holding her while
they watched TV. You just let the dog in. We
went through topic after topic, cleaning, training, handling, poop walks, food,
puppy sitters, moving books off ground level shelves, discipline, and
(37:37):
most importantly of all, a backup plan in case this
epiphany was false and or I was still allergic or
terrified or incompetent or all three. I don't think it
will take much to convince my parents to take her.
I mean, even after Casey recovers and I can take
(37:57):
her with me to d C tomorrow, I'll bring her
back next weekend, so you can get the apartment ready,
and you can get you ready, and you don't have
to go in at the deep end. Right away, I
interrupted her with a kiss. Let's go back there before
they close. I don't want to wait till morning. I'm
still terrified somebody else will realize how extraordinary she is unexpectedly.
(38:20):
I had a moment of doubt at this point. This
isn't just me having a breakdown, right, I mean, she
is extraordinary. I'm having a breakdown, and she is extraordinary,
isn't she t F GF stopped being nice, and now
for the first time, looked at me like I had
just gone crazy, even though I just had gone crazy. Obviously,
she said that was a real kiss. The pet shop
had stayed open, partly because t F GF phoned them
(38:44):
as we hit the street outside of the apartment building,
and partly because they knew you were coming back. Jeffrey said,
you just see it sometimes. Also, you seemed kind of emotional.
T F GF helpfully mentioned that I'd had a breakdown.
They had all the paraphernal you're ready, A little aquabed,
(39:05):
a series of attached gates that could be used as
a pen or a barrier, a small pink blanket, a
bag of training pads, and a plastic pad holder, enough
dry food to last twelve fourteen months, some horrific wet
food that looked like a discarded early design for liverwurst,
a few chew toys, a bright pink harness and a
leash as light as a ribbon, a black carrying bag,
(39:25):
and paperwork with the Pempy Puppies family tree, which, to
my astonishment, stretched back beyond her birth one week Shy
and three months before, through the six preceding generations, all
the way back to six entire years earlier. In addition
to all this, they could have included a moped, a
stock portfolio to guarantee her college education, and I'm all
(39:46):
t size typewriter with a twenty years supply of replacement ribbons,
and I would have also bought them. Very nice lady
named Ellie tried to train me to be a dog
owner in about ninety four seconds and handed me a
voucher for a vet at a checklist of stuff to do,
I signed a credit card bill. I think I used
my own name. I absolved myself of the guilt of
(40:08):
not getting a shelter dog because I was allergic and
kind of had to go the shop route. Plus I
was not looking for a dog. I had actually fallen
in love at first sight with this dog. And lastly,
because no matter how the obvious and often tragic flaws
in this system, there was no arguing with the fact
that those dogs who came from a pet shop had
as much of a right to a happy life as
(40:29):
any other dog. At that moment, they produced her from
the back room behind the block of cages, where we
had first seen her. Her curls had been fluffed up
and her hair freshly brushed. It would be lovely to
say she made eye contact him across the shop floor,
or was aware of our presence, or yipped happily at
the sight of me, and it would be completely untrue.
(40:51):
The little Maltese calmly scanned the room, only occasionally glancing
up at the manager who carried her, and not once
at us, until she was, without ceremony or comment, handed
to me, whereupon she immediately twisted out of my trembling hands,
stuck her front paws on my chest, and reached up
to give me a kiss on the lips, and then another,
(41:14):
and a third, and my sunglasses hid the tears that
welled up again. I managed to ask if they all
did that. No, came the answer from that salesman, Jeffrey. Honestly,
like I told you, sweetest pup we've had here in months,
loves people, loves people. I'm sad to see her go.
I marveled and how light she was, and yet how
(41:37):
articulated on strong her body was. Her eyes were far
more beautiful than I had realized, oversized even for a puppy,
Almost no white visible, the reflection off the deep brown
iris is almost iridescent. And more astonishingly, this little soul
who was about one twelve my age and about one
seven my weight, and who had a great great great
(42:00):
great grandmother born in two thousand six, when my great
great great great grandmother was born in like d she
was meeting and holding my gaze with her own. Whatever
I was seeing in her eyes, whatever the inner being
I was actually processing, she seemed to be doing her
equivalent vetting. I gave her a little kiss, and was
(42:23):
by now not surprised when she kissed me again. The
little tongue poked out a fraction of an inch, just
enough so any one of us dumb, unsettled bipeds could
tell she meant it. And then she relaxed from her
upright pose and settled back into my arms, her head
and the crook of my right elbow, in an attitude
I would soon discover she would repeat every time I
(42:43):
ever picked her up. A couple hours later, the name
came to me her hair cut. It was Stevie Nicks's haircut.
I named her Stevie. We went and got rose. A
year later, T F G F and I split a
(43:03):
year after that, so was a win win win. Ted,
my rescue with the bad heart, arrived in two thousand
eighteen and had surgery and he doesn't have a bad
heart anymore. He's fine. Mishu, my other rescue with a
bad heart, was here last year and had a very
happy life, just not a very long one. Mena, who
is fifteen, who we thought had dementia, but it was
(43:24):
like just rotten teeth. Get your dog's teeth checked. He
showed up this June. It is a crowd. There are
four Maltese is here. But then again, I wasted the
first fifty three years of my life living without a dog.
So I have to make up for lost time ten
years ago today when it became official, when I was adopted.
(43:59):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Help
me out with wait, hold on, let me stop the
music or something. Stevie, do you want to treat? Do
you want to treat? Girl? All right, there you go, Rose,
you want one? Here you go, Rose, Ted one for
you me and he's asleep. When he's fifteen, he gets
to basically you another treat. Steve A, say something. No,
(44:22):
you don't have to sit, just talk. Is it like
the third time in your life you've ever sat. You
want one? Come on right, okay? Whatever? Help me out here.
Give this thing a good review or a rating, or
a heart or a smiley emoji or whatever. Forward it
to somebody. The Countdown theme from Beethoven's ninth the Range,
(44:45):
produced and performed by Countdown Musical directors Brian Ray and
John Philip Chanelle. Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle. Produced by
t Ko Brothers with help from Stevie Rose, Ted and Manet.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No
Horns allowed. Our sports music the Alderman theme written by
(45:05):
Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments by
Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever, and our
an outre today was well, who else could it be?
Stevie Van's aunt. Everything else was pretty much my fault.
So that's countdown for this, the third day since Donald
Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of
(45:26):
the United States. Arrest him now while we still can
a new episode Monday till then I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(45:48):
Olderman is a production of I heart Radio. For more
podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
This should have been a landmark day, the investiture ceremony
(00:29):
for Justice Katangi Brown Jackson at the Supreme Court, but
it comes instead, just as the court she joins has
lost its last shred of authenticity and relevance and honesty
and credibility, and we are forced to look at it
and say, there are no other options. It must be
reconceived or at least enlarged, or if there is nothing
(00:52):
else to do, it must be ignored. Justice Samuel Alito
is a prejudiced, dishonest, lazy, proselytizing fraud with a missile,
a complex and an agenda to serve not the law,
not the democracy, not the nation, but to serve his
own religious beliefs. He is intent on turning the Supreme
(01:15):
Court into the Republican Supreme Religious Court, and intent on
turning this nation into a theocracy. And he has gotten
quite a headstart on both. And yet somehow, this week,
on the eve of the investiture of Justice Jackson, he
has reached a personal new high in law. It goes
(01:37):
without saying that everyone is free to express disagreement with
our decisions and to criticize our reasoning as they see fit,
Alito said in response to a stark but mild reality
check from Justice Elena Kagan. But saying or implying that
the Court is becoming an illegitimate institution, or questioning our
(01:59):
integrity crosses an important line, Mr Alito. You have no
integrity left to be questioned. Mr Alito, Your institution consists
of at least four justices who perjured themselves under oath
to the Senate in their confirmation hearings. One of your justices,
(02:22):
Mr Alito, is married to a woman who needed to
testify yesterday to the House committee investigating the attempt to
overthrow the government of the United States by coup, and
she had to reassure that committee that she never discussed
any of her involvement with her husband, the Justice. These justices,
(02:43):
Mr Alito, are illegitimate, and they alone would make the
Court illegitimate. Mr Alito, at least one of your justices
sits with you only because of the destruction of the
Senate of the United States by its lead Republican member.
The line, Sir, was crossed when Merrick Garland was pocket vetoed.
(03:06):
Ever since that moment, your Institution has been nothing more
than a tool of the Republican Party, designed to use
the trappings of the law to legitimize the illegitimate, and
to assert integrity when there is nothing but corruption. Mr Alito,
you are a political prostitute. And Justice Clarence Thomas is
(03:28):
a political prostitute. Justice Neil Gorsuch is a political prostitute.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh is a political prostitute. Justice Amy Coney
Barrett is a political prostitute. Chief Justice John Roberts is
a political prostitute. Whatever you once aspired to, Mr Alito,
(03:51):
whatever you believed you had become when you were given
your seat, whatever dignity or respect you thought you were
now owed, you have long since forfeited, and forfeited beyond
the most remote possibility of reclamation. You and that room
full of partisan hacks have destroyed the Supreme Court of
the United States, And had you either intelligence or dignity,
(04:14):
you would resign and devote the rest of your life
to seeking forgiveness for the damage you have personally inflicted
up on this nation in the name of a corrupt
and morally bankrupt political party, and in the name of religion,
not just your religion, but all religions, which, whatever else
it is or is not, is just a belief, just
(04:38):
a hope, just a wish, perhaps more reliable than a horoscope,
but perhaps not. Two years ago, sixty seven percent of
this country said it had a great deal or fair
amount of trust in the Supreme Court. Last year that
(04:59):
number was still fifty four percent. As of a gallop
pole least yesterday, it is now forty seven percent. The
Court's job approval in was percent it is now. The
political majority has not changed on the Court since, indeed
(05:20):
it has not changed since. The citizens of this country
have not politicized their view of you and the Court,
Mr Alito. It is you and the frauds with whom
you sit who have politicized the Court beyond this nation's
ability to withstand it anymore. And it is you and
the frauds with whom you sit who have now substituted
(05:42):
the Bible for the law book. Saying or implying that
the Court is becoming an illegitimate institution, or questioning our
integrity crosses an important line. No one has said this,
Mr Alito, but you and the charlatan in robes around
(06:05):
you have accomplished this. You are the assassins of your
own institution, and you are the murderers of your own integrity,
and you are the erasers of the most important line
between legal impartiality and political fagg ury. The very worst moments,
said Justice Kagan, of the Court's history, have been times
(06:28):
when judges have even essentially reflected one parties or one
ideology set of views in their legal decisions. The thing
that builds up reservoirs of public confidence is the court
acting like a court and not acting like an extension
of the political process. If over time the court loses
(06:50):
all connection with the public and with public sentiment, that
is a dangerous thing for democracy. To that judicious, polite,
almost milk toast recitation of facts from Justice Kagan, You,
Mr Alito, decided you needed to try to metaphorically martyr
yourself and to threaten this country for having had the
(07:11):
nerve to recognize your illegitimacy and the audacity to question
what had been your integrity. The Alito Court, and make
no mistake, it is his court, John Roberts is sinking
into utter irrelevance. The Alito Court is to hear cases
starting next month that could roll back affirmative action in
(07:35):
the admissions offices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina,
and thus at every American college and university. The Court
may circumscribe the Voting Rights Act as it pertains to
draw in congressional districts and African American voters. It may
rule to permit rogue state legislatures to eliminate election results
(07:57):
at will. It may repeal laws that protect lgbt Q
customers from discriminate by businesses. Do we expect the Alito
Court will examine legal precedents or the opinions of televangelists.
You probably already know of Alito's speech in Rome in
(08:20):
July at the Notre Dame Religious Freedom Summit, which, as
with most religious conferences, is misnamed and was actually the
Notre Dame Religious You have no freedom but to obey
us summit. You probably heard him mock the world leaders
who were appalled by the courts dishonest overturning of Roe v. Wade,
with its reliance on the legal wisdom of a judge
(08:43):
who used to oversee the hanging of witches. You may
have heard him bash secular values and the quote new
Moral Code, but you probably did not hear him tell
this meaningless anecdote, which he told with the gravity of
someone who has just watched the burning of an original
(09:05):
copy of the Constitution. I'm reminded of an experience I
had a number of years ago in a museum in
um in Berlin. One of the exhibits was a rustic
wooden cross. A young uh, an effluent woman, a well
(09:26):
dressed woman, and a young boy who were looking at
this exhibit. And the young boy turned to the woman,
presumably his mother, and said, who is that man? That
memory has stuck in my mind as a harbinger of
what may lie ahead for our culture. Samuel Alito believes
(09:47):
it is his job. It is the job of an
American judge. It is the job of the Supreme Court.
It is the job of the United States of America
government to force its citizens to be able to identify
a man on a cross who may or may not
have ever existed, To force them to honor the businesses
(10:09):
that have built themselves into world influencing powers by attributing
quotes to this potentially fictional character, and to defer to
the interpretations of what this man, who may or may
not have ever lived, had to say about what the
laws of the United States of America should be and
who the President of the United States of America should be.
(10:33):
Mr Alito, that rustic wouldn't cross I have a suggestion
where you can put it. There is one last vital
point about what Samuel Alito said and the danger it
represents and the necessity for action that it causes. When
Alito says, questioning the court's integrity, quote crosses an important line.
(10:59):
What line does he mean? What also does he believes
should be done after whatever that line is is crossed?
I believe the answer is far more ominous than is
currently being recognized. On June this year, I tweeted, forgive
(11:21):
the self quote, it has become necessary to dissolve the
Supreme Court of the United States. The first step is
for a state the court has now forced guns upon
to ignore this ruling. Great your court, Why and how
do you think you can enforce your rulings? Hashtag ignore
(11:42):
the Court? It's a tweet. Three days later, on June,
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida retweeted my remarks and added quote,
it is a federal offense to incite rebellion or insurrection
against the authority of the United States or the laws
(12:03):
there are of what Rubio all but said there. What
Alito has opaquely danced around when asserting the questioning the
Court's integrity crosses an important line is that they intend
not just to suppress criticism of a corrupt, prostituted Supreme Court,
(12:23):
but to criminalize it. If Marco Rubio can look at
a tweet calling for states to ignore court rulings, which
is one of the court values of his Republican party,
if he can do that and apply that I am
guilty of inciting rebellion and insurrection by tweeting, then unfortunately,
(12:47):
we have to take Alito's reference to saying or implying
that the Court is becoming an illegitimate institution, or questioning
our integrity crosses an important line, not as a defensive
Holier than Thou spasm, but as a threat to every
(13:08):
one of us still ahead on countdown. The self owned
by Ben Shapiro in Worst Persons and frankly, a lot
of the anniversaries I bring you in things I promised
(13:30):
not to tell her kind of lame. They're off by
a day or a week or a month, or it's
a clunky anniversary year like the or the third, not today,
September two thousand and twelve, ten years ago to the day,
very probably the most important day of my life, all
(13:51):
because the girlfriend needed what she called a puppy fix.
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith open.
(14:14):
Still ahead on Countdown, I need a puppy fix. This
will be explained coming up first. In each edition of Countdown,
we feature a dog in need whom you can help.
Every dog has its day. This is a bigger picture.
Every dog has its day than usual. This is an
entire dog rescue that needs your help. The Gulf Coast
Humane Society in Fort Myers, Florida. I don't have to
(14:38):
tell you what they are facing right now. It is
still unclear whether they're dogs and cats got through it,
or their building got through it, or if they got
through it. But already Giving Grid is running a fundraiser
trying to get them ten dollars with which to restart.
If you can help, go to Giving Grid, search for
Gulf Coast Humane or just look for my tweet on
my feed for dogs in need at tom Jumbo Grumbo
(15:02):
and thank you very much. Still ahead, coming up, things
(15:28):
I promised not to tell I didn't promise not to
tell you about her. I just haven't. Please meet Stevie First,
the daily roundup of the miscreants, morons, and dunning Krueger
effect specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world.
The bronze right wing troll Ben Shapiro, the little boy
who once explained that climate change was no problem because
(15:50):
long before the ocean's actually rose, people with waterfront homes
would simply sell them. He's back with another snippet of genius.
To quote a tweet. This Lizzo Flute controversy is a
perfect example of what I have termed face to phenomenon,
the phenomenon whereby someone does something deliberately controversial in an
attempt to draw attention, and then acts offended when you
(16:14):
notice unquote in other words, Ben your entire career the
runner up everybody mentioned in this next story. This is
like a collision of worse persons. The Saudi Blood Money
golf tour with the ironic name Live Golf, is reportedly
close to a deal to show its tournaments on the
cable outlet Fox Sports one. So what, Well, Unlike every
(16:38):
other sports rights deal in television. In this one, the
sports league will be paying the TV network, not the
other way around. Nobody wanted to touch the Saudi Blood
Money Golf Tour, so CEO Greg Norman had to resort
to buying time on Fox like an infomercial for electorate
(16:58):
heating hangers or something. Golf Digest reports that Live employed
an unusual will intermediary back when it thought it still
would get paid rather than having to pay Jared Kushner.
Kushner finally begged Lochlan Murdoch to help him out, So
the Blood Money Golf Tour is using Mr. Blood Money's
son in law to pay Blood Money to the Blood
(17:20):
Money TV Network. But our winner politicos John Harris. He
has written a ponderous piece called The Reporters Who Proved
that Journalism is More Powerful than Trump, in which he
defends what he mistakenly calls CNN CEO Chris Lickts plans
to steer the network back towards journalistic traditionalism, never once
(17:41):
mentioning that licks boss doesn't want that he wants a
network full of Brett Bears. Harris also never mentions paste
for some reason. Harris also never mentions that Politico is
now owned by a German right winger, who wrote, do
we all want to get together for an hour and
the morning of November three and pray that Donald Trump
will again become president? But Harris did go to the
(18:03):
online equivalent of a massage parlor about the others in
journalism that he's referring to, summing up the rest of
his piece by writing, quote, no, journalism doesn't need to
reinvent itself in the face of the Trump challenge. It
just needs more reporting of the kind offered by Maggie Haberman,
Susan Glasser, Peter Baker, who's her husband, Alexander Burns, and
(18:28):
his co author Jonathan Martin, Josh Gerstein, and alex Ward Haberman, Glasser, Baker,
Burns and Martin all wrote Trump Books this year, featuring
galling and sometimes important revelations about Trump's threat to American democracy.
That we're all eighteen months old or older. Because Haberman, Glasser, Baker, Burns,
and Martin had been sitting on, hiding, suppressing, secreting, and
(18:52):
embargoing breaking news that should have been reported in their
own breaking news outlets, because that's kind of the point
of breaking news. They hit all this stuff until they
could monetize it with book deal. What Harris does not
understand is that American quote journalism unquote did reinvent itself.
The overriding principle used to be get a scoop, get
(19:15):
it in the paper or on the air as soon
as possible, because that's your job, and that's your only
actual value to society as well. It is also, and
I speak as somebody who broke a lot of sports news,
including the Wayne Gretzky trade and Michael Jordan's first dalliance
with a comeback, It is the joy of doing a journalism.
You have the story and nobody else does. But now Haberman,
(19:40):
glassar Baker, Burns, Martin and John Harris think the point
of American journalism is how much money you can make
by withholding vital public information. The reporters who proved the
journalism is more powerful than Trump is Harris's title. Yeah,
proved journalism is more powerful than Trump in moving merchandise, John,
I've completely lost the journalistic Fred Harris today a's worst
(20:06):
person in the world. Now to the top of the
countdown and my favorite topic, me and things I promised
(20:28):
not to tell. I never promised not to tell this
I just haven't told it to you yet. This is
exactly the right day to tell you. Olivia looked at
me and said, I need a puppy fix. Ten years
ago today, my girlfriend's family dog was dying. My girlfriend
would not say it, her folks would not say it.
The dog, a Jack Russell Terrier named Casey, did her
(20:52):
best to be the only truthful one in the bunch,
moving purposefully and unsteadily with every step and looking out
at her world with a seeming mixture of acceptance and sadness,
and especially regret that the one time she really needed
her bipeds to speak for her, they would not. I
just need for dogs, not to mean sadness, Olivia said,
(21:12):
just for a while, can we go to that pet
shop on lex? I mumbled that we could go, but
that I had resisted the dog entreaties of eleven girlfriends
before her, and I would successfully resist hers. I had
always loved dogs, but I was really allergic to them,
and my doctors had all said that even hypo allergenic
(21:33):
dogs were a crap shoot. She said, I do not
want a dog. I am not trying to convince you
to get us a dog. I just want to hold
a puppy for a little while. She paused, as she
always did when she felt both hopeless and angry at
being at the mercy of feelings, and she lapsed into
the shrug emoji. As sappy as that sounds, Olivia the girlfriend,
(21:58):
the former girlfriend, let me make this easier, and both
of us will call her t f g F the
former girlfriend e f GF and I left for the
pet shop in mid afternoon, and I told her my
true fear here that my native but dormant shared affinity
with dogs would all of a moment spring fully grown
from my soul, and I would blurt, just give me
(22:18):
all of them. I mean, what kind of life could
I offer a dog? I was on television, and thus
always in a television studio, and thus never home for
play or walks or just the prevention of canine loneliness.
I had a girlfriend who lived out of town. Half
the time, I was clueless as to every practical aspect
(22:38):
of the dog thing. I had littered the continent with
dead house plants, and I no longer thought myself capable
of pulling my ego out of my backside sufficiently to
take care of fish. I had literally not had a
pet of any kind, since I had come to terms
with living in a wistful, hazy world in which I
(23:01):
might inadvertently have a dog pal for a few moments,
but almost never indoors, and never without the pang of
knowing that the hello itself contained the start of the goodbye.
And I was allergic. I was allergic to the obvious big, furry,
friendly dogs, and I might be allergic to the ones
that were billed as non allergic. And if I disobeyed
(23:23):
this immutable cannon, the buried tears of permanent exclusion might
be replaced by far worse ones of separation and loss.
Me I would get over it, probably, but without overvaluing
myself too much to betray the love of a dog
to send a dog back because of allergies. As t F,
(23:46):
g F and I approached the shop, there was, as
they're almost always is, there a small crowd undulating around it.
Lexington avenues narrow sidewalks make these human clots easier to form,
even late on the first Sunday of autumn. There's also
an obstacle course of greats and cellar doors and bikes,
chained poles and parking meters and canopies for diners and
(24:09):
restaurants and mattress show rooms and other places. They're not
quite seedy, but also aren't quite your first choice. The
uptown edges of the grime and noise that constitute the
maze of fifty nine Street bridge approaches lend the place
a congested feeling even when it's otherwise quiet. We are
three blocks up from the trying just a little too
(24:31):
hard merchandizing of Bloomingdale's. There are unwashed delivery trucks, double
parked five days a year, and then totally out of
place amid the prosaic trappings of a big city at
its most men there they are bouncing off each other,
tearing impotitely at other, tiny heads and tails and paws
(24:51):
doing a seeming pantomime of dismemberment. Their yips and the
crunch of the shredded cavorting paper are just audible through
the glass and over the din of the street. They
create an oasis of cute and us. In case you
can't tell what they are, there's this big Neon sign
above their street front window that reads, puppies don't make
(25:16):
me go in, I pleaded. She reassured me. We'd go
in she'd hold the dog. All I had to do
was take a picture. You don't understand, I reached for
her hand. What I'm trying to say is I always
wanted a dog, but I could never have a dog.
Just as the door to the shop opened, she grabbed
my arm. She yanked hard, She swore, and she muttered,
(25:37):
you'll survive. Man up. Don't make eye contact. Don't make
eye contact. Don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact.
We were going towards puppies and past puppies, and the
appearance of a small staircase to a training laft confirmed
we're now going under puppies. And in the deepest recesses
of the shop there was a wall of puppies two
our right, three cages high, six across, all a yellowish
(26:00):
beige behind a reddish brown for mica countertop, then a
structural be and then three cages high, two across, then
a corner with a small visiting pen built into the countertop.
Then right in front of me, the Hollywood squares of
puppies three high, three across, and all of their inmates,
all nine of them, staring at me and screaming at
(26:21):
me and making eye contact and saying, by EESP, take
me home. A salesman now introduced himself as Jeffrey, and
Jeffrey asked if t F GF had any particular dog
she wanted him to bring to her. Let me see
the Maltese the girl. In that moment, two things struck me. Firstly,
(26:42):
this was my cue to get the phone out and
prepared to take the photo of her with the puppy. Secondly,
the dog, whom the salesman was now temporarily liberating from
the surprisingly spare cage, was the only living soul inside
that pet shop besides me, who was not making any
damn noise. Every other puppy was perfecting its adolescent bark.
(27:03):
The cats were making a bewildered variety of noises. And
and was that a Norwegian blue parrots squawk? Remarkable bird,
the Norwegian blue? Isn't it beautiful plumage? This Maltese said nothing.
She looked like her torso would easily fit in one
of my hands if she was three pounds. A quarter
of it was hair, and half of that was curled.
(27:23):
And presumably somebody came by every day to turn what
sat atop her head into a mohawk up top and
a mullet in the back. Her cage mate brothers seemed
a little bigger, but his eyes were clearly smaller, and
their ocular contrast was immediately visible, even if you still
had forlorn hopes of avoiding eye contact. His shown hers.
(27:45):
We're illuminated. He tried to get past her into the
salesman's arms. She simply lifted up her head towards him,
and it actually crossed my mind that she looked like
she was about to say, Hi, Jeffrey, how are you today.
He put her gently down in the playpen at the
right corner of the counter. T F g F asked
if she could pick the puppy and nodded to me
(28:05):
to get the camera ready. Honestly, Jeffrey said, this is
the sweetest dog we've had in here for months. I
say that every day to almost everybody, but this time
I'm actually not lying. T F GF cradled the Maltese
in her arms, with the dog's head facing to my right.
I tapped the camera on the phone. My hand was
already shaking as I centered up t F g F
(28:27):
and the puppy in the frame. The Maltese suddenly wiggled upright,
placed her front paws on my girlfriend's chest, and just
as I snapped the image, the dog reached up and
kissed my girlfriend on the lips. I am, on occasion
completely incapable of remembering anything that happened in my entire
(28:49):
life before that moment. T f GF made the appropriate
sounds of approval. Jeffrey began discussing how little grooming the
Maltese breed needs and the great price he could give us,
and even as my head spun, it seems silly to
me that he was calculating the tax on something that
was obviously timelessly and eternally priceless. T f g F
(29:12):
said something about how we needed a minute outside to
discuss it, and she handed the puppy back to Jeffrey,
and the dog looked at each of each of us
and as if she was about to say, nice to
meet you. As the pup went back up into the
cage with her brother, something extraordinary happened. The little girl
was reaching her head up towards the spout of the
(29:32):
cage's water bottle with the same graceful movement she had
made to bestow that kiss on t F GF. When
her brother puppy abruptly body slammed her out of the way,
and her tiny frame bounced off the side of the cage.
And then, to my shock and confusion, a deep and
threatening growl, a vengeful reverberated throughout the pet shop. The
(29:59):
growl was coming from me. The next sounds were from
t F GF. My god, what's wrong with you? I
didn't know it at the time, but as we turned
to fight our way back out through the shop to
the street, I evidently half skidded into a displayful of
chew toys. They nearly toppled to the floor. I nearly
(30:20):
toppled to the floor. I couldn't see, but I didn't
recognize my own tears until they hit the edges of
my lips. Somehow I managed to say it again, this
time in despair. I always wanted a dog, but I
could never have one. She suddenly realized what had happened.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm an asshole. T F GF
was now holding me upright and steering me towards the
(30:41):
door to the street. I didn't listen to I'm an asshole.
I'm an asshole. You told me. I didn't believe you,
I'm so sorry. Well, now the stories came pouring out,
all jumbled, one on top of the other. Tiny, the
st Bernard at the Katzenstein's, He only wanted to embrace me.
He wasn't trying to eat me. And the mcconnons Mutt
next door. Boots used to come sit on my lap,
(31:01):
and Tiny didn't make me sneezing only scared me. The
mcconnons had three boys and a mother who baked cookies
by the car load lot, and Boots never left their side,
and I was always at their house. And if I
was allergic, how was it that I never once had
a problem with Boots? How in the hell did that work? Huh?
And what about Vladimir or the straight cat my sister found?
He used to live in the garage and behave like
a dog and like to be carried around like a baby.
(31:22):
And how allergic was I had? Beautiful, beautiful little Maltese
reached up and kissed you on the mouth. And the
one time I took my dad's movie camera to the
mcconnons house, half of the film was of Boots. And
what if I went back and got the allergy shots again?
And it was my mother who said she was really allergic,
so I must be too, And what's the use The
little Maltese was perfect and the next person, who was Caesar,
will snap her up in an instant. And I asked
(31:42):
them just to let me try a little dog who
wouldn't shed. The only thing my mother would let me
have were lizards, and I could take a zyr tech
every day. I'm so sorry, Tiny, I didn't realize I
never said goodbye to Boots. Maltese is gone. She's gone.
She's gone, and she's my dog. I know what. I
could feel it. She's my dog and she's gone. What
(32:02):
happened next Beggar's fiction. It involves Rudy Giulianti and his
part of this story of ten years ago today and
what happened to the dog and to me continues after
this back to the number one story on the countdown
(32:28):
and the day I fell in love with a dog
for the first time and my girlfriend, the former girlfriend
t F GF and I left the puppy in the
pet shop. T F GF and I were walking me
mid meltdown somehow, now nearing the Park Avenue Armory one
block west and four blocks north of the pet shop
(32:49):
that I thought we were still in. To her credit,
t F GF had kept me from throwing myself into
traffic or dissolving into a puddle on sixty Street. The
overwhelming sensation I had was not one of having left
the tiny puppy in the shop, but of having left
a part of myself there that was my dog. And
(33:10):
what was worse was she was obviously going to be
taken by somebody else, even before I got back there,
even if we turned around right away. Who could resist her?
I certainly hadn't. My chaotic stream of consciousness monologue paused
only when I had no choice but to shut up
and gasp for breath, and the comments with which t
F g F tried to soothe me in these moments
(33:31):
were self abnegating and solemn. She had talked me off
the limb of my certainty that the dog had already
been sold, and was now steering me back towards sanity.
I had to, she would say, later, you were having
a breakdown. She said we should go home, and if
I wanted to talk seriously about the practicalities of owning
the dog, we could do that and still get the
(33:52):
puppy the next morning, even if it meant delaying her
departure for d C. Don't worry. I'm sure she's still there.
They were getting ready to close. She'll be there in
the morning. I exhaled, and then I repanicked. She's she's
I sniffed anew and the tears resumed. She's in that
cage with that brother of hers in the basement somewhere.
(34:15):
Before t F GF could answer, and I swear this
is true, Rudy Giuliani spilled down the stairs from the
armory we were passing. A cop suddenly appeared from a
different nowhere and put out an arm and firmly asked
us to stop walking, and Giuliani scuttled rodent like into
a waiting car. A wife was with him. I did
(34:38):
not and do not know which number. The driver was
already closing the door behind them when I shouted it,
how come my dog has to spend the night in
a cage while that ass hat is allowed to roam
around this city without a leash on him. Later that evening,
t F GF said that was the first moment she
thought we might just get home safe and sound. After all,
(35:02):
it was not ten more minutes back to my apartment
and walked it in silence. Now I had long since
saturated my handkerchief and some tissues t f GF had
in her pockets. I was breathing deeply and restorative lee.
Now the sniffle frequency reduced to once or twice per block,
and my mind was crowded with the dogs I had known, Boots, Tiny, Vladimir,
(35:24):
the Cat, even t fgf's little Casey dying out in
Jersey and unaware of the seismic events which she had
set in motion. I was thinking of other dogs. To
all of the dogs, and all of the stories of
James Thurber that I read on TV every Friday night,
I had smiled along with his poetic descriptions of them,
but never confessed I loved them as he must have.
(35:48):
There was Samantha, who my late friend Bruce Hagen used
to bring everywhere, including our college radio station newsroom, the
first really big dog who did not frighten me. My
great aunts Yorkie, whose gas was so potent that the
Christmas just before I turned nine, my great uncle's he
was convinced she had been a German terror weapmon at
Chateau Terry in the First World War, and he and
(36:10):
I had bonded because I knew what Chateau Terry was.
There was Nellie McNally, the only dog that any of
my sometimes out of town girlfriends ever had actually put
on the phone with me. In my mind. They all
stood before me, all lined up, all quiet, smiling, all
with the kindest type of I told you so, dummy
(36:31):
on their wonderful faces, and dozens more behind them, vague
shapes and sizes, who belonged to neighbors or co workers passed,
who are just chance encounters on the streets of any
of a dozen cities decades before. No, I'm sorry, she said,
I shouldn't have been that selfish. But now I disagreed
with her, and as I unlocked the apartment door, I
(36:53):
began to tell her of the dogs I had just
been communing within my mind, and what had suddenly become necessary, urgent,
inevitable and perfect, but about which I needed as much
detail as I could in as sure a period as possible.
T F GF tried, well, you just take the dog
wherever you can. My parents have been saying this a
lot lately. Now they regret not doing more things with Casey,
(37:16):
not adventures, not kayaking, just taking her with them or
going out in the yard, or just holding her while
they watched TV. You just let the dog in. We
went through topic after topic, cleaning, training, handling, poop walks, food,
puppy sitters, moving books off ground level shelves, discipline, and
(37:37):
most importantly of all, a backup plan in case this
epiphany was false and or I was still allergic or
terrified or incompetent or all three. I don't think it
will take much to convince my parents to take her.
I mean, even after Casey recovers and I can take
(37:57):
her with me to d C tomorrow, I'll bring her
back next weekend, so you can get the apartment ready,
and you can get you ready, and you don't have
to go in at the deep end. Right away, I
interrupted her with a kiss. Let's go back there before
they close. I don't want to wait till morning. I'm
still terrified somebody else will realize how extraordinary she is unexpectedly.
(38:20):
I had a moment of doubt at this point. This
isn't just me having a breakdown, right, I mean, she
is extraordinary. I'm having a breakdown, and she is extraordinary,
isn't she t F GF stopped being nice, and now
for the first time, looked at me like I had
just gone crazy, even though I just had gone crazy. Obviously,
she said that was a real kiss. The pet shop
had stayed open, partly because t F GF phoned them
(38:44):
as we hit the street outside of the apartment building,
and partly because they knew you were coming back. Jeffrey said,
you just see it sometimes. Also, you seemed kind of emotional.
T F GF helpfully mentioned that I'd had a breakdown.
They had all the paraphernal you're ready, A little aquabed,
(39:05):
a series of attached gates that could be used as
a pen or a barrier, a small pink blanket, a
bag of training pads, and a plastic pad holder, enough
dry food to last twelve fourteen months, some horrific wet
food that looked like a discarded early design for liverwurst,
a few chew toys, a bright pink harness and a
leash as light as a ribbon, a black carrying bag,
(39:25):
and paperwork with the Pempy Puppies family tree, which, to
my astonishment, stretched back beyond her birth one week Shy
and three months before, through the six preceding generations, all
the way back to six entire years earlier. In addition
to all this, they could have included a moped, a
stock portfolio to guarantee her college education, and I'm all
(39:46):
t size typewriter with a twenty years supply of replacement ribbons,
and I would have also bought them. Very nice lady
named Ellie tried to train me to be a dog
owner in about ninety four seconds and handed me a
voucher for a vet at a checklist of stuff to do,
I signed a credit card bill. I think I used
my own name. I absolved myself of the guilt of
(40:08):
not getting a shelter dog because I was allergic and
kind of had to go the shop route. Plus I
was not looking for a dog. I had actually fallen
in love at first sight with this dog. And lastly,
because no matter how the obvious and often tragic flaws
in this system, there was no arguing with the fact
that those dogs who came from a pet shop had
as much of a right to a happy life as
(40:29):
any other dog. At that moment, they produced her from
the back room behind the block of cages, where we
had first seen her. Her curls had been fluffed up
and her hair freshly brushed. It would be lovely to
say she made eye contact him across the shop floor,
or was aware of our presence, or yipped happily at
the sight of me, and it would be completely untrue.
(40:51):
The little Maltese calmly scanned the room, only occasionally glancing
up at the manager who carried her, and not once
at us, until she was, without ceremony or comment, handed
to me, whereupon she immediately twisted out of my trembling hands,
stuck her front paws on my chest, and reached up
to give me a kiss on the lips, and then another,
(41:14):
and a third, and my sunglasses hid the tears that
welled up again. I managed to ask if they all
did that. No, came the answer from that salesman, Jeffrey. Honestly,
like I told you, sweetest pup we've had here in months,
loves people, loves people. I'm sad to see her go.
I marveled and how light she was, and yet how
(41:37):
articulated on strong her body was. Her eyes were far
more beautiful than I had realized, oversized even for a puppy,
Almost no white visible, the reflection off the deep brown
iris is almost iridescent. And more astonishingly, this little soul
who was about one twelve my age and about one
seven my weight, and who had a great great great
(42:00):
great grandmother born in two thousand six, when my great
great great great grandmother was born in like d she
was meeting and holding my gaze with her own. Whatever
I was seeing in her eyes, whatever the inner being
I was actually processing, she seemed to be doing her
equivalent vetting. I gave her a little kiss, and was
(42:23):
by now not surprised when she kissed me again. The
little tongue poked out a fraction of an inch, just
enough so any one of us dumb, unsettled bipeds could
tell she meant it. And then she relaxed from her
upright pose and settled back into my arms, her head
and the crook of my right elbow, in an attitude
I would soon discover she would repeat every time I
(42:43):
ever picked her up. A couple hours later, the name
came to me her hair cut. It was Stevie Nicks's haircut.
I named her Stevie. We went and got rose. A
year later, T F G F and I split a
(43:03):
year after that, so was a win win win. Ted,
my rescue with the bad heart, arrived in two thousand
eighteen and had surgery and he doesn't have a bad
heart anymore. He's fine. Mishu, my other rescue with a
bad heart, was here last year and had a very
happy life, just not a very long one. Mena, who
is fifteen, who we thought had dementia, but it was
(43:24):
like just rotten teeth. Get your dog's teeth checked. He
showed up this June. It is a crowd. There are
four Maltese is here. But then again, I wasted the
first fifty three years of my life living without a dog.
So I have to make up for lost time ten
years ago today when it became official, when I was adopted.
(43:59):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Help
me out with wait, hold on, let me stop the
music or something. Stevie, do you want to treat? Do
you want to treat? Girl? All right, there you go, Rose,
you want one? Here you go, Rose, Ted one for
you me and he's asleep. When he's fifteen, he gets
to basically you another treat. Steve A, say something. No,
(44:22):
you don't have to sit, just talk. Is it like
the third time in your life you've ever sat. You
want one? Come on right, okay? Whatever? Help me out here.
Give this thing a good review or a rating, or
a heart or a smiley emoji or whatever. Forward it
to somebody. The Countdown theme from Beethoven's ninth the Range,
(44:45):
produced and performed by Countdown Musical directors Brian Ray and
John Philip Chanelle. Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle. Produced by
t Ko Brothers with help from Stevie Rose, Ted and Manet.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No
Horns allowed. Our sports music the Alderman theme written by
(45:05):
Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments by
Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever, and our
an outre today was well, who else could it be?
Stevie Van's aunt. Everything else was pretty much my fault.
So that's countdown for this, the third day since Donald
Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of
(45:26):
the United States. Arrest him now while we still can
a new episode Monday till then I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(45:48):
Olderman is a production of I heart Radio. For more
podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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