March 24, 2023 • 37 mins
EPISODE 161: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:41) If I told you Donald Trump was an "animal" who "should be removed immediately;" If I told you Trump was "doing...the work of the devil;" If I told you Trump was destroying our country "as they tell US to be peaceful;" If I showed you two pictures, one of Trump and - next to it - one of me holding a baseball bat, about to swing it, posed exactly as was Robert DeNiro portraying Al Capone in "The Untouchables" just before he beat another character to death WITH a baseball bat; If I showed you 30 other social media posts I had made in just 24 hours, each of them filled with threatening and violent and hateful language about Trump, what would you think I was TELLING you? What would you THINK I was hoping you would DO?
Donald Trump is a stochastic terrorist.
He used stochastic terrorism to get somebody to attack the FBI after the Mar-a-Lago search and within days a man breached a local FBI headquarters to try to kill FBI agents. He used stochastic terrorism to get others to commit the insurrection of January 6. He used stochastic terrorism to inspire somebody to attack Democrats in 2018 and Cesar Sayoc sent out 12 liberals and he had a second list in his computer and I know because I was on it.
Trump is not just committing stochastic terrorism, he knows he is doing it, because it has worked for him, so well, and so often.
Arrest him, today. And he has openly threatened four prosecutors and countless journalists and witnesses. He must not only be arrested - he must NOT be granted bail.
B-Block (17:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The judge may order Rupert Murdoch to testify in the Fox/Dominion defamation case; a NEW defamation case may be filed against Tucker Carlson; Ron DeSantis comes out in favor of immediately eliminating The New York Post and all of conservative media (20:01) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: You're going to CHARGE for Apple TV Baseball? After what it sounded like LAST year? A dishonest media attack on Alvin Bragg. And the Congressman who wants to stop The Biden Student Debt Relief program insisting "debt can not be forgiven" - after he filed for bankruptcy FIVE TIMES.
C-Block (25:30) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Lace, on death row in New York (26:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Please meet Muggs - "The Dog That Bit People."
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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. If
I told you Donald Trump was an animal who should
(00:26):
be removed immediately, not removed from office, but just removed.
If I told you Trump was quote doing the work
of the devil. If I told you Trump was destroying
our country, quote as they tell us to be peaceful.
If I showed you two pictures, one of Trump and
next to it one of me, and I'm holding a
(00:48):
baseball bat about to swing it, posed exactly as Robert
de Niro portraying Al Capone was in the movie The Untouchables,
just before he beat another character to death with a
baseball bat. If I showed you thirty other social media
posts I had made in twenty four hours, each of
them filled with threatening and violent and hateful language about
(01:09):
Donald Trump, what would you think I was trying to
tell you? What would you think I was hoping you
would do? Donald Trump is a stochastic terrorist, And the
Stormy Daniel's case is legitimate but comparatively trivial, and the
(01:32):
Jack Smith's Special Council investigations are legitimate and anything but trivial.
But Trump's posts yesterday about Alvin Bragg, the baseball bat
photo post and the post reading quote a srost backed
animal who just doesn't care about right or wrong, no
matter how many people are hurt. And the post reading quote,
this is the Gestapo, this is Russia and China but worse.
(01:55):
And the post reading quote who should be removed immediately.
These are terrorist threats, terrorist threats made by Donald Trump
on a public platform. Arrest him now for terrorism, and
his intent and his process, and his awareness that his
(02:18):
words will be interpreted by the most deranged of his
cultists as calls as instructions to kill Alvin Bragg and
to kill Jack Smith, and to kill Latitia James, and
to kill Fanny Willis his awareness of all that process
is undeniable. Because Trump has used stochastic terrorism to incite
(02:41):
January sixth, and dozens and dozens of the violent insurrectionists
of that day who attacked the Capitol said on trial
under oath, most with a sense of surprise that everybody
didn't already understand this, that they went to capture or
kill senators and congressmen and a vice president and the
media because Donald Trump told them too. Stochastic terrorism is
(03:07):
often a vague thing. That is why it is used
you say something, somebody else goes and kills ormaimes or
destroys on your behalf, and you respond, I never told
them to do that. It is the King Henry. The
second excuse. Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest,
said King Henry about the Archbishop of Canterbury on Christmas
(03:31):
Day eleven seventy, and four days later Hugh de Morville,
William de Tracy, Reginald Fitzers and Richard LeBreton ran the
archbishop through with their swords. They in eleven seventy then
expressed surprise that everybody didn't already understand that their king
had ordered them or somebody to kill the archbishop. The
(03:56):
murderers were excommunicated and punished, and on the premise then,
since he was only making a rhetorical statement, not unlike
strict attorney, Bragg is a danger to our country and
should be removed immediately. King Henry got the benefit of
the doubt, and he served another seventeen years as the
King of England. But Trump has already lost that benefit
(04:21):
of the doubt. He attacked the FBI last summer for
executing a completely legal search warrant at Marilago days later,
a Trump fanatic tried to get into FBI headquarters in
Cincinnati to kill FBI agents. That was Trump committing terrorism
by proxy, stochastic terrorism. January sixth, bottled a series of
(04:42):
tweets and posts and speeches and his screeching quote that morning,
if you don't fight like hell, You're not going to
have a country anymore. That was Trump committing terrorism by proxy,
stochastic terrorism. Before the two thousand and eight midterms, Trump
attacked Democrats and liberals in a way never heard before
(05:03):
in American politics. And Caesar Sayok then sent pipe bombs
to Joe Biden and Corey Booker and John Brennan and
James Clapper and Hillary Clinton and Robert de Niro and
Kamala Harris and Eric Holder and Barack Obama and George
Soros and Tom Steyer and Maxine Waters. And a year later,
when the FBI finally got through Sayok's laptop, it turned
(05:25):
out there was a second list of targets. And I
know this because I was on that list. That was
Trump committing terrorism by proxy, stochastic terrorism. And these social
media rage tweets yesterday, primarily against Alvin Bragg, but mentioning
(05:45):
James and Smith and Willis. They are implausibly deniable instructions
to whoever is sick enough and violent enough and lost
enough to accept them as what they were intended instructions.
Trump told me to attack Alvin Bragg. Trump committing terrorism
by proxy. Stochastic terrorism. This is going to have to stop,
(06:11):
and it is going to have to stop immediately. Because
of all the things that happened on January six, twenty
twenty one, the one we talked the least about is
the fact that this country on that day was extraordinarily
goddamned lucky. Well, somebody's lucky is going to run out
hours or Trumps and no, specifically, precisely and exactly nobody
(06:34):
should attack Trump or menace Trump, or shoot Trump or
kill Trump or any Republican. But if the words that
Trump wrote yesterday about Alban Bragg were written about him,
what would you think the writer meant? This is stochastic terrorism.
This is not subtle stochastic terrorism, nor vague stochastic terrorism,
(06:58):
nor gray area stochastic terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security
and the Department of Justice need to act immediately ahead
of the Special Prosecutor and with the same urgency with
which one would approach the Republican cliche of two thousand
and three, the ticking nuclear time bomb in some American city, Charge,
indict and arrest Trump, and do it today. He is
(07:23):
a stochastic terrorist. He must be stopped by the law,
not by vigilantism nor terrorism. And he must be prosecuted
and convicted by the law, because, as we have all
seen for the last eight years, the moment you let
a stochastic terrorist like Donald Trump get away with it
once the premise will no one rid me of this
(07:46):
turbulent prosecutor, reporter, democrat, liberal vice president. The premise of
that becomes more and more normalized, and more and more prevalent,
and more and more understood by the diseased minds that
accept Trump's word as a message from their president. You
(08:06):
do not have to thrust a knife into someone to
be convicted of murder in this country, Ask Charles Manson.
You do not have to have built a bomb nor
thrown a bomb to go to jail because a bomb
was built and thrown. Ask Kathy Wilkerson of the weather Men.
You do not have to have protested the building of
cops city in Georgia, nor even who have been there
(08:28):
to be arrested and jailed without bond, asked to Cab
County District Attorney Sherry Boston. And you do not have
to wait until somebody tries to hurt a man named
Alvin Bragg. To apprehend the creature who is inciting, insisting, demanding, encouraging, beseeching, instigating,
instructing somebody, anybody to hurt him or hurt Letitia James,
(08:53):
or hurt Jack Smith or hurt Fanny Willis. Arrest Donald
Trump today. And when he is arrested in New York
or elsewhere or everywhere, the judge or judges must do
two things. A complete gag order. Trump has lost his
(09:15):
right to speak aloud in this nation. And after his
threats and his implorations, he has proven he is a
material lethal danger to the prosecutors and the witnesses and
anyone who thwarts him. He wants them to be killed.
(09:37):
He wants others to kill them. There must not be,
there must never be bail for Donald Trump. Separate of
the commentary, let me give you the headlines from the
Trump Stormy Daniel's story. As you know, the grand jury
(09:58):
reconvened yesterday, but did not address this case. It will
reconvene Monday. Re reconvene, I guess, presumably to pick up
Trump's indictment on business and electoral crimes. Attorney General Bragg
did act against some of those attempting to obstruct justice
in this case, namely three of Kevin McCarthy's lawless fellow
(10:19):
travelers in Congress. The Manhattan District Attorney's General counsel replied
to a letter from Jamie Comer, whose college girlfriend says
he beat her, and Jim Jordan, who was accused of
covering up rape at Ohio State, and Brian Stile, who
appears to have misled the Capitol police into opening a
January sixth video viewing station they thought was for congressmen
(10:40):
but was actually for Tucker Carlson. The three wanted details
and documents from Bragg about the Trump investigation. The answer
was ask Trump. The congressional letter to the Manhattan DA's
office quote only came after Donald Trump created a false
expectation that he would be arrested the next day, and
(11:03):
his lawyers are portably urged you to intervene. Neither fact
is a legitimate basis for Congressional inquiry. The General Council
went on to remind the three McCarthy henchmen of the
independence of state law enforcement from federal interference. However, it
does offer to meet with committee staff to see if
there might be some basis to share any information, and
(11:25):
it underscores that the demands of the three scumbag congressmen
are illegal. It was a very polite, very businesslike, and
very profound f you. As I have mentioned here previously,
Congress might have enough Republican votes to hold Alvin Bragg
in contempt. Such a citation would be referred to the
(11:45):
Department of Justice, which would ignore it. A Republican Attorney
General would probably also ignore. Politicians cannot access details of
ongoing investigations, in part because so many of them are
the subjects of ongoing investigations. Back in Washington, Comer and
McCarthy replied by saying stupid things, even for them. McCarthy
(12:06):
said a Bragg quote, he doesn't prosecute anybody, He only
does political ones. Comer, who is just not bright, said
something even not brighter than usual. Quote a local DA
prosecuting a presidential candidate over federal election law. That happened
six years ago. That's a little unprecedented. Unquote. That also
(12:29):
neglects that you cannot prosecute a sitting president, so there
was no window for four of those years January twenty
seventeen to January twenty twenty one. Moron. One more headline
Rolling Stone reporting Trump's lawyers have told him that if
he is indicted and tried in New York, he is
going to lose that case, and so should set his
(12:51):
hopes on the appeal, which might help to explain the
thirty four stochastic terrorist posts still ahead of us. On
this edition of Countdown, we are in the moment between
(13:12):
starbursts of excitement in the dominion lawsuit against Fox, but
maybe we ain't seen nothing yet. How about hearing this
The plaintiff calls as the next witness Rupert Murdock. And
there could be another lawsuit against Fox that would make
at least three big time ones, and it could stem
(13:32):
directly from Tucker Carlson's attempt to gaslight the world about
January sixth, and it may be filed by a man
named Ray Epps and in worse persons. He is an
upright congressman from Utah and a former football star. He's
trying to get the House to stop the Biden student
debt cancelation plan after he filed for bankruptcy five times.
(13:56):
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
Postscripts to the news some headlines, some update, some snarks,
some predictions. Dateline, Wilmington, Delaware. Just when you thought the
(14:19):
Dominion Voting System's defamation suit against Fox quote News unquote
was cooling off. At a preliminary hearing, the Delaware Superior
Court judge who will decide if the suit continues and
will preside over it if it does, ask the Fox
lawyers something very interesting. Did ownership quote have the power
to stop unquote TV hosts from booking guests who might
(14:42):
have been lying about the twenty twenty election outcome? Rupert
Murdoch said Judge Eric Davis holds a special role at
Fox Corporation that he may be able to be compelled
to be here. Davis has yet to decide if he
might issue summary judgment. Both sides want it. If not,
jury selection starts April thirteenth, and Rupert Murdoch testimony begins,
(15:06):
we'll see Dateline Arizona. Fox may have another suit to
deal with a lawyer for Ray. Epps has written to
Tucker Carlson, Don't worry, somebody will read it to him,
demanding a retraction of his quote false and defamatory statements
that Epps was a government plant who instigated the January
sixth coup. He also wants a quote formal on air
(15:27):
apology for the lies from Carlson. The fanciful notions that
mister Carlson advances on his show regarding mister Epps's involvement
in the January sixth insurrection are demonstrably and already proven
to be false, and yet mister Carlson persists with his
assault on the truth. Thank Go, Nancy Faust and Dateline Tallahassee.
(16:11):
Ron de Santis announced details of his intention to roll
back the First Amendment, and he emphasized one particular aspect.
If they're using anonymous sources, then that can be a
presumption that that was done with malice. On quote. Several
commentators have noted that if anonymous sources are suddenly presumed
to be evidence of malice, the entirety of right wing
(16:35):
media will disappear overnight. So go Ronda de Santis is
my choice for a leader of a party going after
drag queens while he wears high heeled shoes and tries
to put the New York posts out of business. Stell ahead.
(17:03):
Every dog has its day, even the dog that bid
people please meet Mugs on Fridays with Thurber Next, first
time for the daily round up with the miscrants, morons
and Dunning Krueger Effect specimens who constitute today's worst persons
in the world Lebronze. Apple TV Plus. A year ago,
Apple TV Plus brought America possibly the worst set of
(17:27):
live sports broadcasts since Monday Night Football. Inexplicably put Dennis
Miller in the booth with Al Michaels Friday Night Baseball
on Apple TV Plus. I believe there were seven and
maybe eight different regular announcers who did two games every
Friday night, and they were all replaced for this season
except for one of the dugout reporters. Naturally, Apple has
(17:49):
announced that something else has changed for this year. Friday
Night Baseball was free last year, but this year you'll
need to have a subscription to Apple TV Plus seven
dollars a month to watch. Seven dollars. I mean, when
Apple TV Friday Night Baseball was free, it was overpriced
(18:10):
runner up, the New York Post columnist Paul Sperry. Naturally,
the Murdock Rag's minion used the paper's unique ability to
leave out just enough facts to lie without really lying.
Sperry tweeted a link to a London Daily Mail article
from last year attacking Manhattan da Alvin Bragg's story of
having grown up in a rough neighborhood in Harlem. The
article noted that the brownstone on one hundred thirty ninth
(18:32):
Street in which he was raised is now worth two
point one million dollars. The article also left out that
in nineteen eighty five, when Bragg was growing up in
that neighborhood, the City of New York was auctioning off
brownstones throughout Harlem, including one on Bragg's exact street, on
his block of one hundred and thirty ninth Streets Strivers Row,
(18:54):
one that the city owned because previous owners had defaulted
the entire building in a neighborhood where they're now worth
two point one million. The entire brownstone was auctioned for
one hundred and fifty six thousand. Paulsberry con Man, but
our winner, Burgess Owens all America defensive back, former New
(19:14):
York Jet, member of the nineteen eighties Super Bowl champion Rails,
and since twenty twenty one, the esteemed Republican congressman from
the fourth District of Utah. He is chairing a congressional
committee investigating the Biden student debt relief program. Owens is
very pious about this quote. Debt cannot be canceled. He scolds,
(19:38):
only transferred from those who borrowed to those who did not.
The newspaper of the Salt Lake City Tribune noted something
else that was kind of flowery and unusual about Congressman Owens'
stance on this quote. Federal court records show Owens filed
for bankruptcy five times. No, Sir, debt cannot be canceled, cannet, Congressman,
(20:03):
but clearly it can try. Like hell huh Burgess one
All America Team two, Chapter seven bankruptcy filings, three, Chapter
thirteen bankruptcy filings. Owens two days worst person and still ahead.
(20:37):
On Countdown Fridays with James Thurber. James Thurbert loved dogs,
and he loved imperfect dogs like Mugs, the dog who
bit people first. In each edition of Countdown, fittingly, we
feature a dog, usually an imperfect dog, who is in
need and who you can help. Every dog has its day.
(21:00):
Lace is not just on death row at the New
York Pound. He's been taken off the public lists. That
means he may be gone by the time you hear
about him. But our pledges to help a dog rescue
group pull and save and train him might yelp pull
off a miracle. Lace is a gray black dog of pity,
(21:21):
so he's got strikes against him already. Yet he loves
other dogs and people. He may have too much energy
for kids, but he's never bitten, he's never guarded stuff,
and he's eighteen months old. You can find Lace on
my Twitter feeds. Just your retweet can also help. Your
pledge would help more. I thank you, and Lace thanks
you to the number one story on the Countdown and
(21:57):
Fridays with Thurber. And it's amazing to me in retrospect,
how I read all of his wonderful, realistic, goopy writing
about dogs and enjoyed it thoroughly, years before I was
ever adopted by a dog. Now, reading his dog stories
and anecdotes is like reading about a bunch of friends,
(22:21):
even that one surly friend for whom we must continuously
make excuses. The dog that bit people by James Thurber.
Probably no one man should have as many dogs in
this life as I have had, But there was more
(22:42):
pleasure than distress in them for me, except in the
case of an airedale named Mugs. He gave me more
trouble than all the other fifty four or five put together.
Although my moment of keenest embarrassment was the time a
Scotch Terrier named Genie, who had just had six puppies
in the clothes closet of a fourth floor apartment in
(23:04):
New York, had the unexpected seventh and last at the
corner of Eleventh Street and Fifth Avenue during a walk
she had insisted on taking. Then two there was the
prize winning French poodle, a giant, big black poodle, none
of your little, untroublesome white miniatures, who got sick riding
in the rumble seat of a car with me on
(23:26):
her way to the Greenwich Dog Show. She had a
red rubber bib tucked around her throat end. Since a
rainstorm came up when we were halfway through the Bronx,
I had to hold over her. A small green umbrella
really more of a parasol. The rain beat down fearfully,
and suddenly the driver of the car drove into a
(23:46):
big garage filled with mechanics. It happened so quickly that
I forgot to put the umbrella down, and I will
always remember with sickening distress the look of incredulity mixed
with hatred that came over the face of the particular
hardened garage man that came over to see what we
wanted when he took a look at me and the poodle.
(24:08):
All garage men and people of that intolerant stripe hate
poodles with their curious haircuts, especially the pom poms that
you got to leave on their hips if you expect
the dogs to win a prize. But the Airedale, as
I have said, was the worst of all my dogs.
(24:28):
He really wasn't my dog. Matter of fact, I came
home from a vacation one summer to find that my
brother Roy had bought him while I was away. The big, burly,
choleric dog. He always acted as if he thought I
wasn't one of the family. There was a slight advantage
in being one of the family, for he didn't bite
the family as often as a bit strangers still. In
(24:52):
the years that we had him, he bit everybody but mother,
and he made a pass at her once but missed.
It was during the month when we suddenly had mice,
and Mugs refused to anything about them. Nobody ever had
mice exactly like the mice we had that month. They
acted like pet mice, almost like mice somebody had trained.
(25:15):
They were so friendly that one night, when Mother entertained
at dinner the Free relilas a club she and my
father had belonged to for twenty years, she put down
a lot of little dishes with food in them on
the pantry floor so that the mice would be satisfied
with that and would not come into the dining room.
Muggs stayed out in the pantry with the mice lying
(25:36):
on the floor, growling to himself, not at the mice,
but about all the people in the next room that
he would have liked to get at. Mother slipped out
into the pantry once to see how everything was going.
Everything was going fine. It made her so mad to
see Mugs lying there oblivious of the mice. They came
running up to her that she slapped him, and he
(26:01):
slashed at her, but didn't make it. He was sorry immediately.
Mother said he was always sorry, she said after he
bit someone. But we could not understand how she figured
this out. He didn't act sorry. Mother used to send
a box of candy every Christmas to the people the
airedale bit. The list finally contained forty or more names.
(26:24):
Nobody could understand why we did not get rid of
the dog. I didn't understand it very well myself, but
we didn't get rid of him. I think that one
or two people tried to poison Mugs. He acted poisoned
once in a while, and old Major Moberly fired at
him once with his service revolver near the Seneca Hotel
(26:44):
and He's Broad Street. But Muggs lived to almost eleven
years old, and even when he could hardly get around.
He bit a congressman who had called to see my
father on business. My mother had never liked the congressman.
She said the signs of his horoscope showed he couldn't
be trusted. He was saturned with the moon and virgo.
(27:06):
But she sent him a box of candy that Christmas. Anyway,
he sent it right back, probably because he suspected it
was trick candy. Mother persuaded herself that it was all
for the best that the dog had bitten him, even
though father lost an important business association because of it.
I wouldn't be associated with such a man. Mother said,
Muggs could read him like a book. We used to
(27:30):
take turns feeding Mugs to be on his good side,
but that didn't always work. He was never in a
very good humor even after a meal. Nobody knew exactly
what was the matter with him, but whatever it was,
it made him irascible, especially in the mornings. Roy my brother,
never felt very well in the morning either, especially before breakfast,
(27:51):
and once when he came downstairs and found that Muggs
had moodily chewed up the morning paper, he hit him
in the face with a grapefruit and then jumped up
on the dining room table, scattering dishes and overwear and
spilling the coffee. Mug's first free leap carried him all
the way across the table and into a brass fire
(28:13):
screen in front of the gas grate, but he was
back on his feet in a moment, and in the
end he got Roy and gave him a pretty vicious
bite in the leg. Then he was all over it.
He never bid anyone more than once at a time.
Mother always mentioned that as an argument in his favor.
She said he had a quick temper, but that he
didn't hold a grudge. She was forever defending him. I
(28:36):
think she liked him because he wasn't well. He's not strong,
she would say, pityingly, But that was inaccurate. He may
not have been well, but he was terribly strong. One
time my mother went to the Chittenden Hotel to call
on a woman mental healer who was lecturing in Columbus
(28:57):
on the subject of harmonious vibrations. She wanted to find
out if it was possible to get harmonious vibrations into
a dog. He's a large, tan colored Airdale, Mother explained.
The woman said that she had never treated a dog,
but she advised my mother to hold the thought that
he did not bite and would not bite. Mother was
(29:21):
holding the thought the very next morning when Muggs got
the ice man. But she blamed that slip up on
the ice man. If you didn't think he would bite you,
he wouldn't. Mother told him. He stomped out of the
house in a terrible jangle of vibrations. One morning when
Mugs bit me slightly more or less in passing. I
(29:41):
reached down and grabbed his short, stumpy tail and hoisted
him into the air. It was a foolhardy thing to do,
and the last time I saw my mother, about six
months ago, she said she didn't know what possessed me.
I don't either, except that I was pretty mad. As
long as I held the dog off the floor by
his tail, he couldn't get at me, but he twisted
(30:03):
and jerked so snarl all the time that I realized
I couldn't hold him that way very long, and I
carried him into the kitchen and flung him onto the
floor and shut the door on him just as he
crashed against it. But I forgot about the backstairs. Muggs
went up the backstairs and down the front stairs and
(30:23):
had me cornered in the living room. I managed to
get up onto the mantelpiece above the fireplace, but it
gave way and came down with a tremendous crash, throwing
a large marble clock, several vases, and myself heavily to
the floor. Muggs was so alarmed by the racket that
when I picked myself up, he had disappeared. We couldn't
(30:45):
find him anywhere, although we whistled and shouted, until old
Missus Detwiler called after dinner that night. Muggs had bitten
her once in the leg, and she came into the
living room only after we assured her that Muggs had
run away. She had just seated herself when with great
growling and scratching of claws, mugs emerged from under a
(31:08):
davenport where he had been quietly hiding all the time
and bit her again. Mother examined the bite and put
arnica on it and told Missus Detwiller that it was
only a bruise. He just bumped you, she said. But
Missus Detwiller left our house in a nasty state of mind.
(31:30):
Lots of people reported our airdale to the police, but
my father held a municipal office at the time and
was on friendly terms with the police. Even so, the
cops had been out a couple of times, once when
Muggs bit Missus Rufus Stirred event and again when he
bit Lieutenant Governor Malloy, But mother told him it hadn't
been Muggs's fault, but the fault of the people who
(31:51):
were bitten. When he starts for them, they scream, she explained,
and that excites him. The cops suggested that it might
be a good idea to tie the dog up, but
mother said that it mortified him to be up, and
that he wouldn't eat when he was tied up. Mugs
at his meals was an unusual sight because of the
(32:11):
fact that if you reach toward the floor, he would
bite you. We usually put his food plate on top
of an old kitchen table with a bench alongside the table.
Mugs would stand on the bench and eat. I remember
that my mother's uncle Horatio, who boasted that he was
the third man up Missionary Ridge, was flutteringly indignant when
(32:35):
he found out that we fed the dog on a
table because we were afraid to put his plate on
the floor. He said he wasn't afraid of any dog
that ever lived, and that he would put the dog's
plate on the floor if we would give it to him.
Roy said that if Uncle Horatio had fed mugs on
the ground just before the battle, he would have been
the first man up Missionary Ridge. Uncle Horatio was furious,
(32:59):
Ray raymen, now, he shouted, I'll feed them murmur on
the floor. Roy was all for giving him a chance,
but my father wouldn't hear of it. He said that
Muggs had already been fed. I'll feed him again, bawled
Uncle Horatio. We had quite a time quieting him. In
(33:21):
his last year. Muggs used to spend practically all of
his time outdoors. He didn't like to stay in the
house for some reason or other. Perhaps it held too
many unpleasant memories for him. Anyway, it was hard to
get him to come in, and as a result, the
garbage man, the iceman, and the laundryman would not come
near our house. We had to haul the garbage down
(33:41):
to the corner, take the laundry out, and bring it
back and meet the ice man a block from home.
After this had gone on for some time, we hit
on an ingenious arrangement for getting the dog in the
house so that we could lock him up while the
gas meter was read and so on. Muggs was afraid
of only one thing. An electrical storm. Thunder and lightning
(34:08):
frightened him out of his senses. I think he thought
a storm had broken the day the mantelpiece spell. He
would rush into the house and hide under a bed
or in a clothes closet, so we fixed up a
thunder machine out of a long, narrow piece of sheet
iron with a wooden handle on one end. Mother would
shake this vigorously when she wanted to get Mugs into
(34:31):
the house. It made an excellent imitation of thunder. But
I suppose it was the most roundabout system for running
a household that was ever devised. It took a lot
out of Mother. A few months before Mugs died, he
got to seeing things. He would rise slowly from the floor,
(34:51):
growling low and stalk, stiff legged and menacing toward nothing
at all. Sometimes the thing would be just a little
to the right or left of a visitor. Once a
fuller brush salesman got hysterics. Muggs came wandering into the
room like Hamlet following his father's ghost. His eyes were
(35:14):
fixed on a spot just to the left of the
fuller brushman, who stood it until Muggs was about three
slow creeping paces from him. Then he shouted it. Muggs
wavered on past him into the hallway, grumbling to himself,
but the fuller man went on shouting. I think Mother
had to throw a pan of cold water on him
(35:34):
before he stopped. That was the way she used to
stop us boys when we got into fights. Muggs died
quite suddenly one night. Mother wanted to bury him in
the family lot under a marble stone with some such
inscription as flights of angels seeing thee to thy rest.
But we persuaded her it was against the law. In
(35:55):
the end we just put up a smooth board above
his grave along a lonely road. On the board I
wrote with an indelible pencil, kab Khana. Mother was quite
pleased with the simple, classic dignity of the old Latin
epitaph The Dog that Bit People by James Thurber. I've
(36:31):
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening. Tell the others. Here are credits. Most of
the music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray
and John Philip Channel, who are the Countdown musical directors.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel, guitarist based
and drums by Brian Ray, produced by t Ko Brothers.
(36:52):
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olderman
theme from ESPN two, and 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
Larry David. Everything else is pretty much my fault. So
(37:13):
let's countdown for this, the eight hundred and eighth day
since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
government of the United States. Arrest him now for stochastic
terrorism while we still can. The next schedule in countdown
is Monday. Until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(37:47):
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. If
I told you Donald Trump was an animal who should
(00:26):
be removed immediately, not removed from office, but just removed.
If I told you Trump was quote doing the work
of the devil. If I told you Trump was destroying
our country, quote as they tell us to be peaceful.
If I showed you two pictures, one of Trump and
next to it one of me, and I'm holding a
(00:48):
baseball bat about to swing it, posed exactly as Robert
de Niro portraying Al Capone was in the movie The Untouchables,
just before he beat another character to death with a
baseball bat. If I showed you thirty other social media
posts I had made in twenty four hours, each of
them filled with threatening and violent and hateful language about
(01:09):
Donald Trump, what would you think I was trying to
tell you? What would you think I was hoping you
would do? Donald Trump is a stochastic terrorist, And the
Stormy Daniel's case is legitimate but comparatively trivial, and the
(01:32):
Jack Smith's Special Council investigations are legitimate and anything but trivial.
But Trump's posts yesterday about Alvin Bragg, the baseball bat
photo post and the post reading quote a srost backed
animal who just doesn't care about right or wrong, no
matter how many people are hurt. And the post reading quote,
this is the Gestapo, this is Russia and China but worse.
(01:55):
And the post reading quote who should be removed immediately.
These are terrorist threats, terrorist threats made by Donald Trump
on a public platform. Arrest him now for terrorism, and
his intent and his process, and his awareness that his
(02:18):
words will be interpreted by the most deranged of his
cultists as calls as instructions to kill Alvin Bragg and
to kill Jack Smith, and to kill Latitia James, and
to kill Fanny Willis his awareness of all that process
is undeniable. Because Trump has used stochastic terrorism to incite
(02:41):
January sixth, and dozens and dozens of the violent insurrectionists
of that day who attacked the Capitol said on trial
under oath, most with a sense of surprise that everybody
didn't already understand this, that they went to capture or
kill senators and congressmen and a vice president and the
media because Donald Trump told them too. Stochastic terrorism is
(03:07):
often a vague thing. That is why it is used
you say something, somebody else goes and kills ormaimes or
destroys on your behalf, and you respond, I never told
them to do that. It is the King Henry. The
second excuse. Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest,
said King Henry about the Archbishop of Canterbury on Christmas
(03:31):
Day eleven seventy, and four days later Hugh de Morville,
William de Tracy, Reginald Fitzers and Richard LeBreton ran the
archbishop through with their swords. They in eleven seventy then
expressed surprise that everybody didn't already understand that their king
had ordered them or somebody to kill the archbishop. The
(03:56):
murderers were excommunicated and punished, and on the premise then,
since he was only making a rhetorical statement, not unlike
strict attorney, Bragg is a danger to our country and
should be removed immediately. King Henry got the benefit of
the doubt, and he served another seventeen years as the
King of England. But Trump has already lost that benefit
(04:21):
of the doubt. He attacked the FBI last summer for
executing a completely legal search warrant at Marilago days later,
a Trump fanatic tried to get into FBI headquarters in
Cincinnati to kill FBI agents. That was Trump committing terrorism
by proxy, stochastic terrorism. January sixth, bottled a series of
(04:42):
tweets and posts and speeches and his screeching quote that morning,
if you don't fight like hell, You're not going to
have a country anymore. That was Trump committing terrorism by proxy,
stochastic terrorism. Before the two thousand and eight midterms, Trump
attacked Democrats and liberals in a way never heard before
(05:03):
in American politics. And Caesar Sayok then sent pipe bombs
to Joe Biden and Corey Booker and John Brennan and
James Clapper and Hillary Clinton and Robert de Niro and
Kamala Harris and Eric Holder and Barack Obama and George
Soros and Tom Steyer and Maxine Waters. And a year later,
when the FBI finally got through Sayok's laptop, it turned
(05:25):
out there was a second list of targets. And I
know this because I was on that list. That was
Trump committing terrorism by proxy, stochastic terrorism. And these social
media rage tweets yesterday, primarily against Alvin Bragg, but mentioning
(05:45):
James and Smith and Willis. They are implausibly deniable instructions
to whoever is sick enough and violent enough and lost
enough to accept them as what they were intended instructions.
Trump told me to attack Alvin Bragg. Trump committing terrorism
by proxy. Stochastic terrorism. This is going to have to stop,
(06:11):
and it is going to have to stop immediately. Because
of all the things that happened on January six, twenty
twenty one, the one we talked the least about is
the fact that this country on that day was extraordinarily
goddamned lucky. Well, somebody's lucky is going to run out
hours or Trumps and no, specifically, precisely and exactly nobody
(06:34):
should attack Trump or menace Trump, or shoot Trump or
kill Trump or any Republican. But if the words that
Trump wrote yesterday about Alban Bragg were written about him,
what would you think the writer meant? This is stochastic terrorism.
This is not subtle stochastic terrorism, nor vague stochastic terrorism,
(06:58):
nor gray area stochastic terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security
and the Department of Justice need to act immediately ahead
of the Special Prosecutor and with the same urgency with
which one would approach the Republican cliche of two thousand
and three, the ticking nuclear time bomb in some American city, Charge,
indict and arrest Trump, and do it today. He is
(07:23):
a stochastic terrorist. He must be stopped by the law,
not by vigilantism nor terrorism. And he must be prosecuted
and convicted by the law, because, as we have all
seen for the last eight years, the moment you let
a stochastic terrorist like Donald Trump get away with it
once the premise will no one rid me of this
(07:46):
turbulent prosecutor, reporter, democrat, liberal vice president. The premise of
that becomes more and more normalized, and more and more prevalent,
and more and more understood by the diseased minds that
accept Trump's word as a message from their president. You
(08:06):
do not have to thrust a knife into someone to
be convicted of murder in this country, Ask Charles Manson.
You do not have to have built a bomb nor
thrown a bomb to go to jail because a bomb
was built and thrown. Ask Kathy Wilkerson of the weather Men.
You do not have to have protested the building of
cops city in Georgia, nor even who have been there
(08:28):
to be arrested and jailed without bond, asked to Cab
County District Attorney Sherry Boston. And you do not have
to wait until somebody tries to hurt a man named
Alvin Bragg. To apprehend the creature who is inciting, insisting, demanding, encouraging, beseeching, instigating,
instructing somebody, anybody to hurt him or hurt Letitia James,
(08:53):
or hurt Jack Smith or hurt Fanny Willis. Arrest Donald
Trump today. And when he is arrested in New York
or elsewhere or everywhere, the judge or judges must do
two things. A complete gag order. Trump has lost his
(09:15):
right to speak aloud in this nation. And after his
threats and his implorations, he has proven he is a
material lethal danger to the prosecutors and the witnesses and
anyone who thwarts him. He wants them to be killed.
(09:37):
He wants others to kill them. There must not be,
there must never be bail for Donald Trump. Separate of
the commentary, let me give you the headlines from the
Trump Stormy Daniel's story. As you know, the grand jury
(09:58):
reconvened yesterday, but did not address this case. It will
reconvene Monday. Re reconvene, I guess, presumably to pick up
Trump's indictment on business and electoral crimes. Attorney General Bragg
did act against some of those attempting to obstruct justice
in this case, namely three of Kevin McCarthy's lawless fellow
(10:19):
travelers in Congress. The Manhattan District Attorney's General counsel replied
to a letter from Jamie Comer, whose college girlfriend says
he beat her, and Jim Jordan, who was accused of
covering up rape at Ohio State, and Brian Stile, who
appears to have misled the Capitol police into opening a
January sixth video viewing station they thought was for congressmen
(10:40):
but was actually for Tucker Carlson. The three wanted details
and documents from Bragg about the Trump investigation. The answer
was ask Trump. The congressional letter to the Manhattan DA's
office quote only came after Donald Trump created a false
expectation that he would be arrested the next day, and
(11:03):
his lawyers are portably urged you to intervene. Neither fact
is a legitimate basis for Congressional inquiry. The General Council
went on to remind the three McCarthy henchmen of the
independence of state law enforcement from federal interference. However, it
does offer to meet with committee staff to see if
there might be some basis to share any information, and
(11:25):
it underscores that the demands of the three scumbag congressmen
are illegal. It was a very polite, very businesslike, and
very profound f you. As I have mentioned here previously,
Congress might have enough Republican votes to hold Alvin Bragg
in contempt. Such a citation would be referred to the
(11:45):
Department of Justice, which would ignore it. A Republican Attorney
General would probably also ignore. Politicians cannot access details of
ongoing investigations, in part because so many of them are
the subjects of ongoing investigations. Back in Washington, Comer and
McCarthy replied by saying stupid things, even for them. McCarthy
(12:06):
said a Bragg quote, he doesn't prosecute anybody, He only
does political ones. Comer, who is just not bright, said
something even not brighter than usual. Quote a local DA
prosecuting a presidential candidate over federal election law. That happened
six years ago. That's a little unprecedented. Unquote. That also
(12:29):
neglects that you cannot prosecute a sitting president, so there
was no window for four of those years January twenty
seventeen to January twenty twenty one. Moron. One more headline
Rolling Stone reporting Trump's lawyers have told him that if
he is indicted and tried in New York, he is
going to lose that case, and so should set his
(12:51):
hopes on the appeal, which might help to explain the
thirty four stochastic terrorist posts still ahead of us. On
this edition of Countdown, we are in the moment between
(13:12):
starbursts of excitement in the dominion lawsuit against Fox, but
maybe we ain't seen nothing yet. How about hearing this
The plaintiff calls as the next witness Rupert Murdock. And
there could be another lawsuit against Fox that would make
at least three big time ones, and it could stem
(13:32):
directly from Tucker Carlson's attempt to gaslight the world about
January sixth, and it may be filed by a man
named Ray Epps and in worse persons. He is an
upright congressman from Utah and a former football star. He's
trying to get the House to stop the Biden student
debt cancelation plan after he filed for bankruptcy five times.
(13:56):
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
Postscripts to the news some headlines, some update, some snarks,
some predictions. Dateline, Wilmington, Delaware. Just when you thought the
(14:19):
Dominion Voting System's defamation suit against Fox quote News unquote
was cooling off. At a preliminary hearing, the Delaware Superior
Court judge who will decide if the suit continues and
will preside over it if it does, ask the Fox
lawyers something very interesting. Did ownership quote have the power
to stop unquote TV hosts from booking guests who might
(14:42):
have been lying about the twenty twenty election outcome? Rupert
Murdoch said Judge Eric Davis holds a special role at
Fox Corporation that he may be able to be compelled
to be here. Davis has yet to decide if he
might issue summary judgment. Both sides want it. If not,
jury selection starts April thirteenth, and Rupert Murdoch testimony begins,
(15:06):
we'll see Dateline Arizona. Fox may have another suit to
deal with a lawyer for Ray. Epps has written to
Tucker Carlson, Don't worry, somebody will read it to him,
demanding a retraction of his quote false and defamatory statements
that Epps was a government plant who instigated the January
sixth coup. He also wants a quote formal on air
(15:27):
apology for the lies from Carlson. The fanciful notions that
mister Carlson advances on his show regarding mister Epps's involvement
in the January sixth insurrection are demonstrably and already proven
to be false, and yet mister Carlson persists with his
assault on the truth. Thank Go, Nancy Faust and Dateline Tallahassee.
(16:11):
Ron de Santis announced details of his intention to roll
back the First Amendment, and he emphasized one particular aspect.
If they're using anonymous sources, then that can be a
presumption that that was done with malice. On quote. Several
commentators have noted that if anonymous sources are suddenly presumed
to be evidence of malice, the entirety of right wing
(16:35):
media will disappear overnight. So go Ronda de Santis is
my choice for a leader of a party going after
drag queens while he wears high heeled shoes and tries
to put the New York posts out of business. Stell ahead.
(17:03):
Every dog has its day, even the dog that bid
people please meet Mugs on Fridays with Thurber Next, first
time for the daily round up with the miscrants, morons
and Dunning Krueger Effect specimens who constitute today's worst persons
in the world Lebronze. Apple TV Plus. A year ago,
Apple TV Plus brought America possibly the worst set of
(17:27):
live sports broadcasts since Monday Night Football. Inexplicably put Dennis
Miller in the booth with Al Michaels Friday Night Baseball
on Apple TV Plus. I believe there were seven and
maybe eight different regular announcers who did two games every
Friday night, and they were all replaced for this season
except for one of the dugout reporters. Naturally, Apple has
(17:49):
announced that something else has changed for this year. Friday
Night Baseball was free last year, but this year you'll
need to have a subscription to Apple TV Plus seven
dollars a month to watch. Seven dollars. I mean, when
Apple TV Friday Night Baseball was free, it was overpriced
(18:10):
runner up, the New York Post columnist Paul Sperry. Naturally,
the Murdock Rag's minion used the paper's unique ability to
leave out just enough facts to lie without really lying.
Sperry tweeted a link to a London Daily Mail article
from last year attacking Manhattan da Alvin Bragg's story of
having grown up in a rough neighborhood in Harlem. The
article noted that the brownstone on one hundred thirty ninth
(18:32):
Street in which he was raised is now worth two
point one million dollars. The article also left out that
in nineteen eighty five, when Bragg was growing up in
that neighborhood, the City of New York was auctioning off
brownstones throughout Harlem, including one on Bragg's exact street, on
his block of one hundred and thirty ninth Streets Strivers Row,
(18:54):
one that the city owned because previous owners had defaulted
the entire building in a neighborhood where they're now worth
two point one million. The entire brownstone was auctioned for
one hundred and fifty six thousand. Paulsberry con Man, but
our winner, Burgess Owens all America defensive back, former New
(19:14):
York Jet, member of the nineteen eighties Super Bowl champion Rails,
and since twenty twenty one, the esteemed Republican congressman from
the fourth District of Utah. He is chairing a congressional
committee investigating the Biden student debt relief program. Owens is
very pious about this quote. Debt cannot be canceled. He scolds,
(19:38):
only transferred from those who borrowed to those who did not.
The newspaper of the Salt Lake City Tribune noted something
else that was kind of flowery and unusual about Congressman Owens'
stance on this quote. Federal court records show Owens filed
for bankruptcy five times. No, Sir, debt cannot be canceled, cannet, Congressman,
(20:03):
but clearly it can try. Like hell huh Burgess one
All America Team two, Chapter seven bankruptcy filings, three, Chapter
thirteen bankruptcy filings. Owens two days worst person and still ahead.
(20:37):
On Countdown Fridays with James Thurber. James Thurbert loved dogs,
and he loved imperfect dogs like Mugs, the dog who
bit people first. In each edition of Countdown, fittingly, we
feature a dog, usually an imperfect dog, who is in
need and who you can help. Every dog has its day.
(21:00):
Lace is not just on death row at the New
York Pound. He's been taken off the public lists. That
means he may be gone by the time you hear
about him. But our pledges to help a dog rescue
group pull and save and train him might yelp pull
off a miracle. Lace is a gray black dog of pity,
(21:21):
so he's got strikes against him already. Yet he loves
other dogs and people. He may have too much energy
for kids, but he's never bitten, he's never guarded stuff,
and he's eighteen months old. You can find Lace on
my Twitter feeds. Just your retweet can also help. Your
pledge would help more. I thank you, and Lace thanks
you to the number one story on the Countdown and
(21:57):
Fridays with Thurber. And it's amazing to me in retrospect,
how I read all of his wonderful, realistic, goopy writing
about dogs and enjoyed it thoroughly, years before I was
ever adopted by a dog. Now, reading his dog stories
and anecdotes is like reading about a bunch of friends,
(22:21):
even that one surly friend for whom we must continuously
make excuses. The dog that bit people by James Thurber.
Probably no one man should have as many dogs in
this life as I have had, But there was more
(22:42):
pleasure than distress in them for me, except in the
case of an airedale named Mugs. He gave me more
trouble than all the other fifty four or five put together.
Although my moment of keenest embarrassment was the time a
Scotch Terrier named Genie, who had just had six puppies
in the clothes closet of a fourth floor apartment in
(23:04):
New York, had the unexpected seventh and last at the
corner of Eleventh Street and Fifth Avenue during a walk
she had insisted on taking. Then two there was the
prize winning French poodle, a giant, big black poodle, none
of your little, untroublesome white miniatures, who got sick riding
in the rumble seat of a car with me on
(23:26):
her way to the Greenwich Dog Show. She had a
red rubber bib tucked around her throat end. Since a
rainstorm came up when we were halfway through the Bronx,
I had to hold over her. A small green umbrella
really more of a parasol. The rain beat down fearfully,
and suddenly the driver of the car drove into a
(23:46):
big garage filled with mechanics. It happened so quickly that
I forgot to put the umbrella down, and I will
always remember with sickening distress the look of incredulity mixed
with hatred that came over the face of the particular
hardened garage man that came over to see what we
wanted when he took a look at me and the poodle.
(24:08):
All garage men and people of that intolerant stripe hate
poodles with their curious haircuts, especially the pom poms that
you got to leave on their hips if you expect
the dogs to win a prize. But the Airedale, as
I have said, was the worst of all my dogs.
(24:28):
He really wasn't my dog. Matter of fact, I came
home from a vacation one summer to find that my
brother Roy had bought him while I was away. The big, burly,
choleric dog. He always acted as if he thought I
wasn't one of the family. There was a slight advantage
in being one of the family, for he didn't bite
the family as often as a bit strangers still. In
(24:52):
the years that we had him, he bit everybody but mother,
and he made a pass at her once but missed.
It was during the month when we suddenly had mice,
and Mugs refused to anything about them. Nobody ever had
mice exactly like the mice we had that month. They
acted like pet mice, almost like mice somebody had trained.
(25:15):
They were so friendly that one night, when Mother entertained
at dinner the Free relilas a club she and my
father had belonged to for twenty years, she put down
a lot of little dishes with food in them on
the pantry floor so that the mice would be satisfied
with that and would not come into the dining room.
Muggs stayed out in the pantry with the mice lying
(25:36):
on the floor, growling to himself, not at the mice,
but about all the people in the next room that
he would have liked to get at. Mother slipped out
into the pantry once to see how everything was going.
Everything was going fine. It made her so mad to
see Mugs lying there oblivious of the mice. They came
running up to her that she slapped him, and he
(26:01):
slashed at her, but didn't make it. He was sorry immediately.
Mother said he was always sorry, she said after he
bit someone. But we could not understand how she figured
this out. He didn't act sorry. Mother used to send
a box of candy every Christmas to the people the
airedale bit. The list finally contained forty or more names.
(26:24):
Nobody could understand why we did not get rid of
the dog. I didn't understand it very well myself, but
we didn't get rid of him. I think that one
or two people tried to poison Mugs. He acted poisoned
once in a while, and old Major Moberly fired at
him once with his service revolver near the Seneca Hotel
(26:44):
and He's Broad Street. But Muggs lived to almost eleven
years old, and even when he could hardly get around.
He bit a congressman who had called to see my
father on business. My mother had never liked the congressman.
She said the signs of his horoscope showed he couldn't
be trusted. He was saturned with the moon and virgo.
(27:06):
But she sent him a box of candy that Christmas. Anyway,
he sent it right back, probably because he suspected it
was trick candy. Mother persuaded herself that it was all
for the best that the dog had bitten him, even
though father lost an important business association because of it.
I wouldn't be associated with such a man. Mother said,
Muggs could read him like a book. We used to
(27:30):
take turns feeding Mugs to be on his good side,
but that didn't always work. He was never in a
very good humor even after a meal. Nobody knew exactly
what was the matter with him, but whatever it was,
it made him irascible, especially in the mornings. Roy my brother,
never felt very well in the morning either, especially before breakfast,
(27:51):
and once when he came downstairs and found that Muggs
had moodily chewed up the morning paper, he hit him
in the face with a grapefruit and then jumped up
on the dining room table, scattering dishes and overwear and
spilling the coffee. Mug's first free leap carried him all
the way across the table and into a brass fire
(28:13):
screen in front of the gas grate, but he was
back on his feet in a moment, and in the
end he got Roy and gave him a pretty vicious
bite in the leg. Then he was all over it.
He never bid anyone more than once at a time.
Mother always mentioned that as an argument in his favor.
She said he had a quick temper, but that he
didn't hold a grudge. She was forever defending him. I
(28:36):
think she liked him because he wasn't well. He's not strong,
she would say, pityingly, But that was inaccurate. He may
not have been well, but he was terribly strong. One
time my mother went to the Chittenden Hotel to call
on a woman mental healer who was lecturing in Columbus
(28:57):
on the subject of harmonious vibrations. She wanted to find
out if it was possible to get harmonious vibrations into
a dog. He's a large, tan colored Airdale, Mother explained.
The woman said that she had never treated a dog,
but she advised my mother to hold the thought that
he did not bite and would not bite. Mother was
(29:21):
holding the thought the very next morning when Muggs got
the ice man. But she blamed that slip up on
the ice man. If you didn't think he would bite you,
he wouldn't. Mother told him. He stomped out of the
house in a terrible jangle of vibrations. One morning when
Mugs bit me slightly more or less in passing. I
(29:41):
reached down and grabbed his short, stumpy tail and hoisted
him into the air. It was a foolhardy thing to do,
and the last time I saw my mother, about six
months ago, she said she didn't know what possessed me.
I don't either, except that I was pretty mad. As
long as I held the dog off the floor by
his tail, he couldn't get at me, but he twisted
(30:03):
and jerked so snarl all the time that I realized
I couldn't hold him that way very long, and I
carried him into the kitchen and flung him onto the
floor and shut the door on him just as he
crashed against it. But I forgot about the backstairs. Muggs
went up the backstairs and down the front stairs and
(30:23):
had me cornered in the living room. I managed to
get up onto the mantelpiece above the fireplace, but it
gave way and came down with a tremendous crash, throwing
a large marble clock, several vases, and myself heavily to
the floor. Muggs was so alarmed by the racket that
when I picked myself up, he had disappeared. We couldn't
(30:45):
find him anywhere, although we whistled and shouted, until old
Missus Detwiler called after dinner that night. Muggs had bitten
her once in the leg, and she came into the
living room only after we assured her that Muggs had
run away. She had just seated herself when with great
growling and scratching of claws, mugs emerged from under a
(31:08):
davenport where he had been quietly hiding all the time
and bit her again. Mother examined the bite and put
arnica on it and told Missus Detwiller that it was
only a bruise. He just bumped you, she said. But
Missus Detwiller left our house in a nasty state of mind.
(31:30):
Lots of people reported our airdale to the police, but
my father held a municipal office at the time and
was on friendly terms with the police. Even so, the
cops had been out a couple of times, once when
Muggs bit Missus Rufus Stirred event and again when he
bit Lieutenant Governor Malloy, But mother told him it hadn't
been Muggs's fault, but the fault of the people who
(31:51):
were bitten. When he starts for them, they scream, she explained,
and that excites him. The cops suggested that it might
be a good idea to tie the dog up, but
mother said that it mortified him to be up, and
that he wouldn't eat when he was tied up. Mugs
at his meals was an unusual sight because of the
(32:11):
fact that if you reach toward the floor, he would
bite you. We usually put his food plate on top
of an old kitchen table with a bench alongside the table.
Mugs would stand on the bench and eat. I remember
that my mother's uncle Horatio, who boasted that he was
the third man up Missionary Ridge, was flutteringly indignant when
(32:35):
he found out that we fed the dog on a
table because we were afraid to put his plate on
the floor. He said he wasn't afraid of any dog
that ever lived, and that he would put the dog's
plate on the floor if we would give it to him.
Roy said that if Uncle Horatio had fed mugs on
the ground just before the battle, he would have been
the first man up Missionary Ridge. Uncle Horatio was furious,
(32:59):
Ray raymen, now, he shouted, I'll feed them murmur on
the floor. Roy was all for giving him a chance,
but my father wouldn't hear of it. He said that
Muggs had already been fed. I'll feed him again, bawled
Uncle Horatio. We had quite a time quieting him. In
(33:21):
his last year. Muggs used to spend practically all of
his time outdoors. He didn't like to stay in the
house for some reason or other. Perhaps it held too
many unpleasant memories for him. Anyway, it was hard to
get him to come in, and as a result, the
garbage man, the iceman, and the laundryman would not come
near our house. We had to haul the garbage down
(33:41):
to the corner, take the laundry out, and bring it
back and meet the ice man a block from home.
After this had gone on for some time, we hit
on an ingenious arrangement for getting the dog in the
house so that we could lock him up while the
gas meter was read and so on. Muggs was afraid
of only one thing. An electrical storm. Thunder and lightning
(34:08):
frightened him out of his senses. I think he thought
a storm had broken the day the mantelpiece spell. He
would rush into the house and hide under a bed
or in a clothes closet, so we fixed up a
thunder machine out of a long, narrow piece of sheet
iron with a wooden handle on one end. Mother would
shake this vigorously when she wanted to get Mugs into
(34:31):
the house. It made an excellent imitation of thunder. But
I suppose it was the most roundabout system for running
a household that was ever devised. It took a lot
out of Mother. A few months before Mugs died, he
got to seeing things. He would rise slowly from the floor,
(34:51):
growling low and stalk, stiff legged and menacing toward nothing
at all. Sometimes the thing would be just a little
to the right or left of a visitor. Once a
fuller brush salesman got hysterics. Muggs came wandering into the
room like Hamlet following his father's ghost. His eyes were
(35:14):
fixed on a spot just to the left of the
fuller brushman, who stood it until Muggs was about three
slow creeping paces from him. Then he shouted it. Muggs
wavered on past him into the hallway, grumbling to himself,
but the fuller man went on shouting. I think Mother
had to throw a pan of cold water on him
(35:34):
before he stopped. That was the way she used to
stop us boys when we got into fights. Muggs died
quite suddenly one night. Mother wanted to bury him in
the family lot under a marble stone with some such
inscription as flights of angels seeing thee to thy rest.
But we persuaded her it was against the law. In
(35:55):
the end we just put up a smooth board above
his grave along a lonely road. On the board I
wrote with an indelible pencil, kab Khana. Mother was quite
pleased with the simple, classic dignity of the old Latin
epitaph The Dog that Bit People by James Thurber. I've
(36:31):
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening. Tell the others. Here are credits. Most of
the music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray
and John Philip Channel, who are the Countdown musical directors.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel, guitarist based
and drums by Brian Ray, produced by t Ko Brothers.
(36:52):
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olderman
theme from ESPN two, and 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
Larry David. Everything else is pretty much my fault. So
(37:13):
let's countdown for this, the eight hundred and eighth day
since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
government of the United States. Arrest him now for stochastic
terrorism while we still can. The next schedule in countdown
is Monday. Until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(37:47):
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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