November 18, 2022 • 39 mins
EPISODE 79: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) How could the Republicans be THIS stupid? The man who will lead their attack on Hunter and Joe Biden, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, has been credibly accused by his college girlfriend of violence, psychological abuse, threatening her life, and driving her to the clinic to abort their child. (2:05) Did they think that because the story broke seven years ago it had fallen off the internet? The first full day they are the Majority-Elect they trot out a new head of House Oversight, James Comer of Kentucky, who announces a Hunter Biden investigation and then says "I want to be clear: This is an investigation of JOE Biden." (3:05) No, let ME be clear: this needs to be an investigation of JAMES COMER. This is where this crap STOPS. (5:20) You don't like this kind of stuff? This is the only way to STOP this kind of stuff: the bully has to get the crap beaten out of him, and James Comer is the bully here. Let's Go. (7:15) What the GOP should've announced it was investigating was Ticketmaster (9:10) Still the co-defendant in the Republican Investigation Machine is the media. The Washington Examiner and Red State didn't headline Comer's Folly over Pelosi's Retirement - CNN and The New York Times did. (11:50) And once again CNN's Chief Chris Licht stepped right up with that big "Hit Me" sign around his neck and said "So the play is not to be offensive to A side, right?" I'll explain how wrong he is. (13:43) The good news is: the Democrats are finally getting smart, and David Brock has left Media Matters to run a "SWAT Team" that will investigate the GOP investigators. And they can start with the James Comer scandal. Oh, did I mention the James Comer scandal?
B-Block (20:20) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Miller in Pennsylvania, who ate a sock (21:16) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Space Karen kills Twitter; 1/6 Subcommittee to decide whether to make criminal referrals (23:43) IN SPORTS: The Most Valuable Players are named. If a guy finishes 2nd in that vote AND 4th in the vote for best pitcher, isn't he by definition the "most valuable?" What the hell does "most valuable" mean? (26:38) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Mike Pompeo forgets his part in the insurrection, the New York Post has never heard of "Run Of Show" or "Rundown" documents. They compete with Baseball's Commissioner who suddenly announced that if you bet on baseball, you should be banned BY baseball.
C-Block (31:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: His classic stories of Man vs. Life: "Nine Needles" and "The Mouse Who Went To The Country."
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Oldman is a production of I Heart Radio.
The James Comber Scandal. James Comber, the Republican Congressman from
(00:28):
Kentucky who yesterday was anointed as the chief inquisitor in
the meaningless, endless, perpetual investigations coming of Hunter Biden. That
James Comer, the incoming head of the House Oversight Committee.
James Comer of the James Comer scandal. James Comer was
credibly accused seven years ago by his college girlfriend from
(00:49):
the nineteen nineties of physically and mentally abusing her, of
calling her mother and threatening the girlfriend's life, of becoming
enraged after finding that she, she said, had written in
his real name on the paperwork at the abortion clinic.
She says the quote pro life unquote Comber had driven
(01:11):
them to to end their pregnancy. Oh and she still
had that paperwork in a safe deposit box. That James
Comber House Republicans spent their first full day as majority
elect counting a Hunter Biden investigation, And as soon as
those words were out of their mouths, the incoming chairman
(01:31):
of the Oversight Committee, this Yokol Comber from Kentucky. You
may have heard of the James Comer scandal, he said, no,
it's not an investigation of Hunter Biden. Quote, I want
to be clear, this is an investigation of Joe Biden.
This is where this crap finally stops. No, I want
to be clear. This is not an investigation of Joe Biden.
(01:52):
This is not an investigation of Hunter Biden. This is
an investigation of James Comber and violence against women and
the abortion he allegedly took her to and his apparent
attempt to cover it up. Or that's what it will
be if Democrats have learned anything. James Comber, Chairman of
(02:12):
the House Oversight Committee, James Comber, the face of the
Hunter Biden investigations, already squeezing real news off the front pages,
because that's what news in this country has become. James
Comer on meet the Press Sunday or this week Sunday,
or face the Nation Sunday, and they will think themselves
geniuses for booking him Sunday. James Comber ran for governor
(02:33):
of Kentucky in two thousand fifteen, and in the waning
weeks of the primary, he was hit with a double scandal.
His girlfriend of the early nineteen nineties, Marilyn Thomas, who
was still a Republican, wrote a letter to a local
newspaper and accused him of hitting her, of threatening her,
of separating her from her family, of being quote toxic, abusive,
(02:55):
and causing me a lot of suffering. Everything I did,
everywhere I went, and everyone with whom I interacted had
to be approved. Consequences were violent and swift, otherwise eyes
seven years ago, a Republican state senator rushed to defend
MS Thomas, saying she had known her since believed every
word of it. MS Thomas's college roommate rushed to defend
(03:18):
MS Thomas, saying she had seen all the Comber abuse
in real time, and her mother said Comber had called
their home in the middle of the night and threatened
the daughter, and a James Comber lawyer came back with,
what quote, I've heard unpleasant things about her personality and
mental state. All of this was front page news in
(03:41):
Kentucky in two thousand fifteen, and then Comber lost that
primary for governor and he wasn't news anymore. And because
this is the other biggest thing wrong with the news media,
the Maryland Thomas story and the violence allegation, and the
threat allegation and the abortion allegation just vanished. You don't
like this sort of stuff, Well, this is how anybody
(04:04):
ever ends anything they don't like that is being done
to them. You have to do it more and louder
and worse to the guy who started it. And if
the Democrats are smart, they make and they can put
whatever distance they want to between themselves and the party
itself and the new congressional leadership itself. They can make
(04:24):
James Comber and what happened at Western Kentucky University in
the face of the Republican Party and its savagery and
its violence, and its misogyny and its hypocrisy, and they
can make him the face of it for as long
as is necessary, until every goddamned last Republican politician understands
(04:44):
that whatever damage they think they will do to a
president or to a campaign will be exceeded by the
damage they do to themselves. This is how you defeat
bullies like James Comber. You want oversight, James Comber, or,
as she's said, she calls you, Jamie Comber. You got it?
(05:08):
What about Maryland Thomas, Jamie Comber? Why haven't you addressed
Maryland Thomas Jamie Comber. I don't see any stories about
Marylyn Thomas Sin's two thousand nineteen Jamie Comber. What did
you do to suppress news coverage of Maryland Thomas Jamie Comber?
What about the abortion, Jamie Comber? What about the abortion paperwork?
Jamie Comber? Is any of this in your laptop? Jamie Comber?
(05:31):
We do this or we have a new Jamie Comber
and a new Hunter Biden every time the Republicans take
the House forever. If they are not stopped, Republicans will
be doing this in the week before climate change kills
half the population. See. The thing is, if House Republicans
(05:52):
were smart, what they would be investigating first would be Ticketmaster.
But they're not, and House Democrats have the opposite problem.
They are often too smart for their own goods. They
would not be investigating Ticketmaster either, even though it is
the softest, easiest, highest yielding, slowest moving target in the world,
(06:13):
the one guaranteed to generate the most votes and the
most goodwill for the party which gets one of Ticketmasters
executives in front of the hot lights of a live
congressional hearing and has its most vicious conspiracy theorist. It's
James Comber's scream, have you no sense of decency? Sir?
At long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
And as the ticketmaster stooge sits there live on all networks,
(06:37):
stone faced, the congressman then says, perhaps our next witness
will refresh your memories, sir, and the hearing roomor ups
in gasps as from a side door in walks Taylor Swift.
Then the ticket master executive bursts into tears. As ludicrous
(06:58):
as it sounds, wouldn't that be a better use of
the House Oversight Committee? And I mean better politically. I'm
not talking about governmentally, although that's true too. I'm not
talking about ethics or reality or importance or policy here.
I'm talking about Republicans. Wouldn't that be better than what
the Republicans actually did on their first full day as
the majority elect. Send this Jamie Comber out there to
(07:19):
be eaten alive by those abuse and abortion allegations. Wait,
you haven't heard about the Jamie Comer abuse and abortion allegations.
Just give me a minute. Let me go through them.
That the American news media more broken, perhaps even than
our political system and way more broken than our governmental
system will eat. This crap up from Jamie Comber was
(07:42):
underscored by this reality. The Republicans do not get the
gabble for another forty six days. Lauren Bobert's race is
probably headed to a recount. Now. Nancy Pelosi had just
retired as Speaker and after a record ten terms as
the leader of her party in the House. An African
American man was going to lead the Democrats in Congress
as her successor. And the top two story is on
(08:04):
the New York Times websites were about Pelosi, but the
third was about Comber and Hunter Biden. On the CNN website,
two of the top five stories Republican investigations. I mean,
even the Washington Examiner and Red State dot Com did
not fall for the Comber announcement about Hunter Biden. The
(08:25):
race is certainly on to see which of the Sunday
shows books Comber and which offers Comber not just one interview,
but the opportunity to bring a second guest for a
second segment on this nonsense. At As always, my money
is on Chuck Todd. We have a confluence of both sides.
Is um right? Now? A magic moment in the media's
(08:46):
desire to insist that gravity is real, but also to
prove its quote objectivity unquote by adding that in this
Ohio diner, diners and dishwashers alike say they're not so sure.
For the ten years between the Clinton investigations and the
wearing off of the Post nine eleven, everything including the
bad weather, could be al Quaeda. Hayes. Fox News worked
(09:09):
the news refs ceaselessly and surgically, and the news refs
went home and spent long nights sitting there thinking what
if they're right? Or worse, what if my bosses think
they're right. That has never really ended. Its intensity was
doubled by the Trump assault on journalism, because you will
find no businessman alive whose self confidence is more of
(09:31):
an act than a guy who runs a news organization.
And now, as what was thought of as new news media,
cable digital streaming begins to follow old news media into
the ratings and readership toilet, now all of them are
as afraid as anybody in the world that tomorrow they
will learn that their job no longer exists, or their
(09:52):
outlet no longer exists, or their audience no longer exist.
Or they no longer exist. If you have one thousand
fewer consumers this week then last week, you sudden we
do start to think maybe we can convince some Republicans
to start watching us, and you get things said like
we're said by CNN's Chris Licked, and I know I'm
(10:14):
harping on him. Of course I'm harping on him. I'm
trying to destroy him. He was on a Carrot Swisher podcast.
By the way, there's an hour I'll never get back.
It's like being trapped in an elevator with three valley
girls and guys. Good lord. Anyway, Chris Licked actually said this,
and this is actually why I'm trying to destroy him. Quote.
(10:37):
The competition for me and cable is not MSNBC or Fox. Hopefully,
what we're doing is so different and unique that we
are affecting people who perhaps have found cable news to
be irrelevant in their lives. So the play is not
to be offensive to a side, right, and perhaps they
will come to us for an unvarnished truth, to allow
(10:58):
themselves to make their own decisions. Unquote. I have aspected
him to pivot to announce that CNN would be opening
a new Bureau in this Ohio diner, so it can
stop being irrelevant to people who don't believe in gravity.
So he can make the play of not being offensive
to gravity deniers and offer them unvarnished gravity truth to
(11:20):
allow themselves to make their own decisions about whether gravity
is fake or they are just morons who do not
know the answer to that question. And we are going
to grab them as new viewers by pandering to them
instead of saying, your stupidity is what is destroying this country.
Go tonight, school. This is CNN where gravity is optional.
(11:42):
The James Comers of this world make life easier for
the Chris Lickts because they can give fascists air time
yet still quiet the left by saying, oh, but we
will have fact checkers on top of them all the time,
as if the very act of fact checking propagandist conspiracy
theories does not imbue those theories with a kind of credibility.
(12:04):
Because you're saying, well, commerce claim that Hunter Biden stole
all the gravity, Our fact checkers say that's nonsense. But
this other stuff that Comer said, well that might be
less untrue. It remains to be seen. This is CNN
Live from this Ohio gravity denying diner. It is not
(12:25):
entirely bleak. It is encouraging to see that after thirty
years of getting their bells rung by Republicans, some Democrats
have prepared for this moment. At are mounting a gadfly
operation here and there to investigate the investigators facts first.
Is one of them. It's David Brock. Who else? And
this is what he left media matters for, and he
(12:46):
said yesterday it will have a five million dollar a
year quote swat team to counter Republican congressional investigations, and
it will not shy from things that quoting him again,
maybe too personal or delicate for the White House to
be responding or to even be seen as directing a response.
Jamie commerce Garlf friend Dave. David Brock once paid me
(13:08):
to fly to Florida for his fundraiser the night before
Trump's inauguration in two thousand seventeen to give a speech.
What are you looking for, I asked, Give me some guidance,
give me a live version of the resistance. He said,
These are legacy Democratic leaders who do not think Trump
actually represents anything new. One of them is going to
get up and say it proves we need more retail politics.
(13:32):
I want you to give them some old fire and brimstone.
So I did. The speech was outside on a wonderfully
warm January night in Fort Lauderdale, and when I got
to the part about hounding Trump and bruising him every
day in some way, and invoking Russia, I came to
what should have been bluntly an applause point, and nobody
(13:53):
said anything, And since we were outside, I literally heard crickets.
You do not truly know what the imagery of crickets
actually means until you are giving a speech outdoors and
there is a pause and there are actually crickets, to
(14:13):
the audience's credit, and I guess to mine when I
finished with no matter how long the trip back is
from tomorrow, remember and take strength from, and remind all
those who forget, and remind all those who deny, and
remind all those who lie. Remember one thing, we are
the majority. There was another brief silence and a couple
(14:36):
of crickets, and then they all got my points simultaneously,
and the crowd stood up and roared, and Brock said
I should have charged him more for the speech. The
solution to Republican obstructionism the answer to Jamie Comber. He's
always been there. The obstructionism has almost always been there,
(14:59):
and it's always been the same, vile and putrid and destructive.
But it actually hasn't evolved at all since Newt Gingrich
tried to pull off a coup against Bill Clinton and
Al Gore. It is contained within the republican methods. James
Comer of Kentucky is going to use the easily wielded
weapons of your news organization is not balanced, and your
(15:21):
news organization needs more on air conflict to draw viewers.
You go to these same organizations and you say, your
news organization is not balanced. You gave James Comber all
this publicity, Yet where are your stories about the Jamie
Comber scandal? And when they say what Jamie Comber scandal,
David Brock is there to answer them? Jamie Comber, Maryland Thomas,
(15:43):
Western Kentucky University, or you could just google it because
that's what I did. Still ahead, the January six committee
(16:08):
has about forty days left as well. It has just
appointed a subcommittee to decide whether or not to make
criminal referrals. Baseball's two thousand two most valuable players are out,
and thus the annual debate about what the hell the
phrase most valuable player means is out? And of course
here's the secret that debate is kind of the point.
(16:29):
And Fridays with James Thurber two stories of man, not
versus spouse nor dumb relatives, but of man versus life.
You don't have to have actually destroyed your own neighbor's bathroom,
medicine cabinet to feel as if you have been seen
when I read you Thurber's classic nine Needles. That's next.
(16:50):
This is countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still
ahead with her Twitter. Were their January six criminal referrals?
And what dumb thing did the Commissioner Baseball just say?
This time first? In each edition of Countdown, we feature
(17:12):
a dog in need you can help. Every dog has
its day. Remember Elsa from Wednesday when the Brooklyn Pound
told the humans surrendering Elsa that it would cost them
a small fee, so they left and while nobody was watching,
they tied Elsa to a fence behind the pound. Elsa
has been reserved. She is safe today. A classic story
of human stupidity about dogs. A big puppy Miller was
(17:34):
adopted from Outcast Rescue. At seven months, he ate something
he shouldn't have and had to have surgery to get
it removed. Now at nine months, he's done it again.
He ate a human sock. So instead of bringing Miller
back to the rescue or to the vet this time,
the human waited a week and simply then dumped him
at the local pound outside Philadelphia. He went septic, head
(17:55):
of surgery again and special treatment, and he's back at
Outcast and they need help via Cuddly covering his expenses
which should have been far or less but for this
idiotic human. You can find Miller at Cudley. Will also
be on my Twitter feeds. If you can donate, that
will be a big help. If you can't, a retweet
will be greatly helpful. I thank you, and Miller thanks you.
(18:24):
Post Scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snark,
some predictions. Dateline, San Francisco, What no harde wide world
of sports is going on? At Twitter? By one account,
Elon Musk's five pm deadline yesterday for employees to commit
to going hardcore or getting three months severance ended with
seventy of the staff choosing severance. We know this much
(18:49):
Musk closed all Twitter offices until Monday and shut off
all badge access, reportedly out of fear that employees would
sabotage the company. Fear that who would sabotage the company?
Moron from the Twitter slack feed. I have worked here
at Twitter for over eleven years. Back in July, i
was the seven tenured employee at the company. Now I'm
(19:13):
the fifteenth. Well that flashed me back to my days
at Channel two in Los Angeles. Nothing there ever lasted
more than three months. I started there on August. They
tinkered with who was on each newscast, which news anchors,
which weather men. They fired some people, they took some
off some shows and put them on other shows. But
I was the sportscaster, and I looked up around Thanksgiving
(19:36):
and realized that in terms of continuous service on Channel
two Action News at five, six, and eleven, after three months,
I had already become the senior guy in terms of
continued service and day line. Washington is officially a lame duck,
and there is a chance the Republicans will try to
morph it into a committee investigating the January six committee. Hey,
(19:59):
did you hear about the James Comber scandal, But for now,
the Benny Thompson Liz Cheney Joint is still in business
and it has now impaneled a four member sub committee,
Zoe Lofgren, Adam Schiff, Cheney, and the sub chair Jamie Raskin.
They will examine whether or not to make criminal and
civil referrals to the Justice Department based on what they
(20:19):
have found. Cheney, Schiff, Raskin, Lofgren, I think I know
where this is going, and I think I know how
unanimously it will be when it gets there. This is
(20:43):
Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This is Countdown
with Keith in Sports. Paul gold Schmidt of the Cardinals
and Aaron Judge of the Yankee Stars of two perpetually
underachieving teams, were voted the most valuable players of the
National and American Leagues, respectively. Gold Schmidt got twenty two
(21:04):
of the first place votes, and Manny Machado of the
underachieving Padres was second. Goldschmidt's teammate, Nolan Ironado on the
underachieving Cardinals was third. The American league vote was not
close after sixty two Homers. Aaron Judge got twenty eight
first place votes and two seconds show Hey Otani of
the night not quite underachieving Angels got to first place
(21:25):
votes and twenty eight seconds lost in this. Otany also
finished fourth in the vote for the American League Cy
Young Award as the top pitcher in And if you
think about it, this by itself fourth of among the
best pitchers, second among most valuable players. That by itself
suggests Otani is almost definitionally the most valuable player in
(21:47):
the American League. He is literally accomplishing more than any
other combination of two players, one hitter and one pitcher.
Baseball has never once to find what it means by
most Valuable Player, although there are waves of time in
which assumed that no picture should be considered. On the
other hand, there used to be ruled that if you
were voted to m v P, you were not eligible
(22:09):
to win it again. Ever, which is why Babe Ruth
had so few MVP awards. Why not set criteria, because
then we wouldn't have the annual argument over who is
most valuable and what most valuable means? And baseball needs
every last second of publicity can possibly get. And oh,
what a bunch of knee jerk reactions around the National
(22:30):
Football League after it announced that Sunday's games scheduled between
the Browns and Bills in Buffalo would be moved because
of impending snow right now to Detroit. Thank you, Nancy Faust.
(22:53):
The standard reaction to this was, what, they've never played
in snow before in Buffalo, or they have to build
a dome in Buffalo. The relocation of the game to
Detroit is not because of snow in the stadium during
the game. It is to keep residents off the streets unnecessarily.
Between now and Saturday night, Buffalo is expected to get
as much as five feet of snow. Had Fridays with
(23:25):
Thurber and It's man versus the eternal madness that is life.
Whether you are on the bus with the mouse who
went to the Country, or you've done the equivalent of
dropping Thurber's nine needles, you will feel these two stories
coming up first, the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons
and Dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute today's worst persons
(23:46):
in the world. The bronze former Secretary of State. Really
that happened? I thought that was just a nightmare. I
had former Secretary of State and one of the Republican
presidential hopefuls, Mike Pompeo tweeting, we need more serious bousness,
less noise, and leaders who are looking forward, not staring
(24:08):
in the rear view mirror claiming victimhood. This is the
same Mike Pompeio who said on November ten, two thousand twenty,
that there would be a smooth transition all right to
a second Trump term after Biden had won the election. Well,
that's very serious, that's very unnoisy, that's very forward looking,
that's very non victim, very very much a lie runner up, Snaike.
(24:32):
Jonna Farbarov of The New York Post quote President Biden
was once again spotted using a detailed cheat sheet, this
time at the G twenty summit in Bali, instructing him
where to sit, when to deliver remarks, and when to
pose for photos. Additional instructions said, you will sit at
the center, and you will deliver opening remarks. Imagine being
(24:55):
so unaware of the world. Imagine being snag Jonna Farbareov
of The New York Post that you've never before heard
of nor seen what all event organizers hand out at
all live events to all participants, which is called a
run of show or a rundown. They have wanted every
awards show, every live television broadcast. Many corporations give them
(25:19):
to their own executives who are just gonna go speak
at luncheons or media events. Why I saw a run
of show handed to a guy from the owners of
the Post News Corps. His name was Roger Ales, and
he had one that said, you go here, you say this,
you make a pass at this woman. But our winner,
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred. It is one thing to get
(25:41):
a letter from Pete Rose apologizing and seeking reinstatement after
being suspended for thirty three years for having wagered on
Cincinnati Reds games while he was managing the Cincinnati Reds
and denying it because the nodding the appeal, that is,
because he wagered on games he was managing. It's quite
another to explain this to the media, as Manfred did
(26:01):
last night, by saying, just I believe that when you
bet on baseball, you belong on the permanently ineligible list.
He never made the distinction of who bet or when
I believe that when you bet on baseball you belong
on the permanently ineligible list. What Manfred says, there was
that if you bet on baseball. Ever, as every other
(26:23):
commercial in every baseball telecast now tries to get you
to do bet on baseball. If you do bet on baseball,
White Baseball wants you to bet on baseball, you should
be banned from baseball. Rob did I mention, we have
an official betting partner of Major League Baseball. But if
you bet on baseball, your band Manfred Today's worst person
(26:46):
and the world. She's the number one story on the Countdown,
and it's Friday's with Thurber and a lot of his
work details the fundamental clash between people, husband and wife,
(27:07):
he and various relatives, a guy in a bed and
a seal, two animals representing any too, humans in conflict.
But some of the most magical writing is the stuff
that is just about one person alone against life. One
of his stories ends with a great grandmother struggling with
(27:27):
a butter churn and screaming into the void, why doesn't
somebody take this goddamn thing away from me? A line
which I think could be the start of a national
anthem somewhere. Such a story is nine Needles. This week's selection,
as you will see it is a little short for
our usual time frames here, so I'll give you a
bonus another man versus life story afterwards, in the form
(27:50):
of one of Thurber's fables for our time, the mouse
who went to the country. But first, it's unlikely this
event has ever happened to you, but the anxiety that
should be immediately familiar Nine Needles by James Thurber. One
of the more spectacular minor happenings of the past few years,
(28:13):
which I am sorry that I missed, took place in
the Columbus, Ohio home of some friends of a friend
of mine. It seems that a Mr. Albatross, while looking
for something in his medicine cabinet one morning, discovered a
bottle of a kind of patent medicine which his wife
had been taking for a stomach element. Now. Mr Albatross
(28:33):
is one of those apprehensive men who are afraid of
patent medicines and of almost everything else. Some weeks before,
he had encountered a paragraph and a consumer's research bulletin
which announced that this particular medicine was bad for you.
He had thereupon ordered his wife to throw out what
was left of her supply of the stuff and never
buy anymore she had promised, And here now was another
(28:57):
bottle of the perilous liquid. Mr. Albatross. A man given
to quick rages, shouted the conclusion of the story. It,
my friend, I threw the bottle out the bathroom window,
and the medicine chest after it. It seems to me
that must have been a spectacle worth going a long
(29:17):
way to see. I am sure that many a husband
has wanted to wrench the family medicine cabinet off the
wall and throw it out the window, if only because
the average medicine cabinet is so filled with mysterious bottles
and unidentifiable objects of all kinds, that it is a
source of constant bewilderment and exasperation to the American male. Surely,
(29:41):
the British medicine cabinet, and the French medicine cabinet, all
the other medicine cabinets must be simpler and better ordered
than ours. It may be that the American habit of
saving everything and never throwing anything away, even empty bottles,
causes the domestic medicine cabinet to become as cluttered in
its small way as the American attic becomes cluttered in
(30:04):
its major way. I have encountered few medicine cabinets in
this country which were not packed jammed with something between
a hundred and fifty and two hundred different items, from
dental floss to barassic acid, from razor blades to sodium perborate,
from adhesive tape to coconut oil. Even the neatest wife
(30:28):
will put off clearing out the medicine cabinet on the
ground that she has something else to do that is
more important at that moment, or more diverting. It was
in the apartment of such a wife and her husband
that I became enormously involved with a medicine cabinet. One
morning not long ago, I had spent the weekend with
this couple. They live on East tenth Street near Fifth Avenue.
(30:50):
Such a weekend as left me reluctant to rise up
on Monday morning with bright and shining face and go
to work. They got up and went to work, but
I didn't. I didn't get up until about to two
thirty in the afternoon. I had my face all lathered
for shaving, and the wash bowl was full of hot water,
(31:11):
when suddenly I cut myself with the razor. I cut
my ear. Very few men cut their ears with razors,
but I do, possibly because I was taught the old
Spencerian free risk movements by my writing teacher in the
grammar grades. The ear bleeds rather profusely when cut with
a razor, and is difficult to get at. More angry
(31:34):
than hurt, I jerked open the door of the medicine
cabinet to see if I could find a stiptic pencil,
and out fell from the top shelf a little black
paper packet containing nine needles. It seems that his wife
kept a little paper packet containing nine needles on the
top shelf of the medicine cabinet. The packet fell into
(31:54):
the soapy water of the wash bowl, where the paper
rapidly disintegrated, leaving nine needles at large in the bowl.
I was, naturally enough, not in the best condition, either
physical or mental, to recover nine needles from a washbowl.
No gentleman who has lather on his face and whose
(32:14):
ear is bleeding is in the best condition for anything,
even something involving the handling of nine large blunt objects.
It did not seem wise to me to pull the
plug out of the washbowl and let the needles go
down the drain. I had visions of clogging up the
plumbing system of the house, and also a vague fear
(32:35):
of causing short circuits somehow or other. I know very
little about electricity, and I don't want to have it
explained to me. Finally, I groped very gently around the bowl,
and eventually had four of the needles in the palm
of one hand and three in the palm of the other.
Two I couldn't find if I had thought quickly and clearly,
(32:59):
I wouldn't have done that. The lathered man whose ear
is bleeding, and who has four wet and needles in
one hand and three and the other may be said
to have reached the lowest known point of human efficiency.
There is nothing he can do but stand there. I
tried transferring the needles in my left hand to the
palm of my right hand, but I couldn't get the
(33:20):
off my left hand wet needles cling to you. In
the end, I wiped the needles off onto a bath
towel which was hanging on a rod above the bath tub.
It was the only towel that I could find. I
had to dry my hands afterwards on the bath mat.
Then I tried to find the needles in the towel.
(33:42):
Hunting for seven needles in a bath towel is the
most tedious occupation I have ever engaged in. I could
find only five of them, with the two that had
been left in the bowl. That meant there were four
needles in all, missing, two in the washbowl, and two
others lurking in the towel or lying in the bathtub
under the towel. Frightful thoughts aim to me of what
(34:05):
might happen to anyone who used that towel or washed
his face in the bowl, or got into the tub
if I didn't find the missing needles. Well, I didn't
find them. I sat down on the edge of the
tub to think, and I decided finally that the only
thing to do was to wrap up the towel in
a newspaper and take it away with me. I also
(34:27):
decided to leave a note for my friends, explaining as
clearly as I could that I was afraid there were
two needles in the bathtub and two needles in the
wash bowl, and that they better be careful. I looked
everywhere in the apartment, but I could not find a
pencil or a pen or a typewriter. I could find
pieces of paper, but nothing with which to write on them.
(34:50):
I don't know what gave me the idea. A movie
I had seen, perhaps, or a story I had read.
But I suddenly thought of writing a message with lipstick.
The wife might have an extra lipstick lying around, and
if so, I concluded it would be in the medicine cabinet.
I went back to the medicine cabinet began poking around
(35:11):
in it for a lipstick. I saw what I thought
looked like the metal tip of one, and I got
two fingers around it began to pull gently. It was
under a lot of things. Every object in the medicine
cabinet began to slide. Bottles broken the washbowl and on
the floor, red, brown, and white liquids, spurted, nail files, scissors,
(35:32):
razor blades, and miscellaneous objects sang and clattered and tinkled.
I was covered with perfume, peroxide, and cold cream. It
took me half an hour to get all the debris
all together in the middle of the bathroom floor. I
made no attempt to put anything back in the medicine cabinet.
(35:55):
I knew it would take a steadier hand than mine
and a less shattered spirit. Before I went away only
partly shaved and abandon the shambles. I left a note
saying that I was afraid there were needles in the
bathtub and the wash bowl, and that I had taken
their towel, and that I would call up and tell
them everything. I wrote it in I had dined with
(36:15):
the end of a tooth brush. I have not yet
called up. I am sorry to say I have neither
found the courage nor thought up the words to explain
what happened. I suppose my friends believe that I deliberately
smashed up their bathroom and stole their towel. I don't
know for sure, because they have not yet called me
(36:38):
up either. Nine Needles by James Thurber, and as I
suggested in a broad sense on the same subject, from
his Fables for our Time and famous poems illustrated. The
Mouse who Went to the Country by James Thurber. Once
(37:03):
upon a Sunday there was a city mouse who went
to visit a country mouse. He hit away on a
train the country mouse had told him to take, only
to find that on Sundays it did not stop at Beddington.
Hence the city mouse could not get off at Beddington
and catch a bus for Cybert's Junction, where he was
to be met by the country mouse. The city mouse,
(37:24):
in fact, was carried on to Middleburgh, where he waited
three hours for a train to take him back. When
he got back to Beddington, he found out that the
last bus for Seaberts Junction had just left, so he ran,
and he ran, and he ran, and he finally caught
the bus and crept aboard, only to find that it
was not the bus for Seaberts Junction at all, but
was going in the opposite direction through Pell's Hollow and
(37:47):
Grum to a place called Wimberbee. When the bus finally stopped,
the city mouse got out into a heavy rain and
found that there were no more busses that night going anywhere.
To the hell with it, said the city mouse, and
he walked back to the city. Moral stay where you are,
you're sitting pretty The mouse who went to the Country
(38:12):
by James Thurber. I've done all the damage I can
do here. Thank you for listening. If you're not following
or subscribed to the podcast and whatever, please do so
and stop a stranger on the street and tell them
to as well, and if they give you a hard
(38:34):
time about it, I don't know. Here are the credits.
Most of the music, including our theme from Beethoven's Ninth,
was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Philip Chanelle, where the countdown musical directors. All orchestration and
keyboards by John Philip Chanelle, guitars based and drums by
Brian Ray, produced by t k O Brothers. Some other
(38:54):
Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns allowed.
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two.
It was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
M Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium
organist ever. Our announcer today was John Deane. Everything else,
including the pronunciation of seabirds junction and Cybert's junction, was
(39:15):
pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this. The
six hunted an eighty second day since Donald Trump's first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Arrest him now while we still can a new episode Monday.
Have a good weekend till then. On Keith Olderman, good morning,
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman
(39:42):
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 Oldman is a production of I Heart Radio.
The James Comber Scandal. James Comber, the Republican Congressman from
(00:28):
Kentucky who yesterday was anointed as the chief inquisitor in
the meaningless, endless, perpetual investigations coming of Hunter Biden. That
James Comer, the incoming head of the House Oversight Committee.
James Comer of the James Comer scandal. James Comer was
credibly accused seven years ago by his college girlfriend from
(00:49):
the nineteen nineties of physically and mentally abusing her, of
calling her mother and threatening the girlfriend's life, of becoming
enraged after finding that she, she said, had written in
his real name on the paperwork at the abortion clinic.
She says the quote pro life unquote Comber had driven
(01:11):
them to to end their pregnancy. Oh and she still
had that paperwork in a safe deposit box. That James
Comber House Republicans spent their first full day as majority
elect counting a Hunter Biden investigation, And as soon as
those words were out of their mouths, the incoming chairman
(01:31):
of the Oversight Committee, this Yokol Comber from Kentucky. You
may have heard of the James Comer scandal, he said, no,
it's not an investigation of Hunter Biden. Quote, I want
to be clear, this is an investigation of Joe Biden.
This is where this crap finally stops. No, I want
to be clear. This is not an investigation of Joe Biden.
(01:52):
This is not an investigation of Hunter Biden. This is
an investigation of James Comber and violence against women and
the abortion he allegedly took her to and his apparent
attempt to cover it up. Or that's what it will
be if Democrats have learned anything. James Comber, Chairman of
(02:12):
the House Oversight Committee, James Comber, the face of the
Hunter Biden investigations, already squeezing real news off the front pages,
because that's what news in this country has become. James
Comer on meet the Press Sunday or this week Sunday,
or face the Nation Sunday, and they will think themselves
geniuses for booking him Sunday. James Comber ran for governor
(02:33):
of Kentucky in two thousand fifteen, and in the waning
weeks of the primary, he was hit with a double scandal.
His girlfriend of the early nineteen nineties, Marilyn Thomas, who
was still a Republican, wrote a letter to a local
newspaper and accused him of hitting her, of threatening her,
of separating her from her family, of being quote toxic, abusive,
(02:55):
and causing me a lot of suffering. Everything I did,
everywhere I went, and everyone with whom I interacted had
to be approved. Consequences were violent and swift, otherwise eyes
seven years ago, a Republican state senator rushed to defend
MS Thomas, saying she had known her since believed every
word of it. MS Thomas's college roommate rushed to defend
(03:18):
MS Thomas, saying she had seen all the Comber abuse
in real time, and her mother said Comber had called
their home in the middle of the night and threatened
the daughter, and a James Comber lawyer came back with,
what quote, I've heard unpleasant things about her personality and
mental state. All of this was front page news in
(03:41):
Kentucky in two thousand fifteen, and then Comber lost that
primary for governor and he wasn't news anymore. And because
this is the other biggest thing wrong with the news media,
the Maryland Thomas story and the violence allegation, and the
threat allegation and the abortion allegation just vanished. You don't
like this sort of stuff, Well, this is how anybody
(04:04):
ever ends anything they don't like that is being done
to them. You have to do it more and louder
and worse to the guy who started it. And if
the Democrats are smart, they make and they can put
whatever distance they want to between themselves and the party
itself and the new congressional leadership itself. They can make
(04:24):
James Comber and what happened at Western Kentucky University in
the face of the Republican Party and its savagery and
its violence, and its misogyny and its hypocrisy, and they
can make him the face of it for as long
as is necessary, until every goddamned last Republican politician understands
(04:44):
that whatever damage they think they will do to a
president or to a campaign will be exceeded by the
damage they do to themselves. This is how you defeat
bullies like James Comber. You want oversight, James Comber, or,
as she's said, she calls you, Jamie Comber. You got it?
(05:08):
What about Maryland Thomas, Jamie Comber? Why haven't you addressed
Maryland Thomas Jamie Comber. I don't see any stories about
Marylyn Thomas Sin's two thousand nineteen Jamie Comber. What did
you do to suppress news coverage of Maryland Thomas Jamie Comber?
What about the abortion, Jamie Comber? What about the abortion paperwork?
Jamie Comber? Is any of this in your laptop? Jamie Comber?
(05:31):
We do this or we have a new Jamie Comber
and a new Hunter Biden every time the Republicans take
the House forever. If they are not stopped, Republicans will
be doing this in the week before climate change kills
half the population. See. The thing is, if House Republicans
(05:52):
were smart, what they would be investigating first would be Ticketmaster.
But they're not, and House Democrats have the opposite problem.
They are often too smart for their own goods. They
would not be investigating Ticketmaster either, even though it is
the softest, easiest, highest yielding, slowest moving target in the world,
(06:13):
the one guaranteed to generate the most votes and the
most goodwill for the party which gets one of Ticketmasters
executives in front of the hot lights of a live
congressional hearing and has its most vicious conspiracy theorist. It's
James Comber's scream, have you no sense of decency? Sir?
At long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
And as the ticketmaster stooge sits there live on all networks,
(06:37):
stone faced, the congressman then says, perhaps our next witness
will refresh your memories, sir, and the hearing roomor ups
in gasps as from a side door in walks Taylor Swift.
Then the ticket master executive bursts into tears. As ludicrous
(06:58):
as it sounds, wouldn't that be a better use of
the House Oversight Committee? And I mean better politically. I'm
not talking about governmentally, although that's true too. I'm not
talking about ethics or reality or importance or policy here.
I'm talking about Republicans. Wouldn't that be better than what
the Republicans actually did on their first full day as
the majority elect. Send this Jamie Comber out there to
(07:19):
be eaten alive by those abuse and abortion allegations. Wait,
you haven't heard about the Jamie Comer abuse and abortion allegations.
Just give me a minute. Let me go through them.
That the American news media more broken, perhaps even than
our political system and way more broken than our governmental
system will eat. This crap up from Jamie Comber was
(07:42):
underscored by this reality. The Republicans do not get the
gabble for another forty six days. Lauren Bobert's race is
probably headed to a recount. Now. Nancy Pelosi had just
retired as Speaker and after a record ten terms as
the leader of her party in the House. An African
American man was going to lead the Democrats in Congress
as her successor. And the top two story is on
(08:04):
the New York Times websites were about Pelosi, but the
third was about Comber and Hunter Biden. On the CNN website,
two of the top five stories Republican investigations. I mean,
even the Washington Examiner and Red State dot Com did
not fall for the Comber announcement about Hunter Biden. The
(08:25):
race is certainly on to see which of the Sunday
shows books Comber and which offers Comber not just one interview,
but the opportunity to bring a second guest for a
second segment on this nonsense. At As always, my money
is on Chuck Todd. We have a confluence of both sides.
Is um right? Now? A magic moment in the media's
(08:46):
desire to insist that gravity is real, but also to
prove its quote objectivity unquote by adding that in this
Ohio diner, diners and dishwashers alike say they're not so sure.
For the ten years between the Clinton investigations and the
wearing off of the Post nine eleven, everything including the
bad weather, could be al Quaeda. Hayes. Fox News worked
(09:09):
the news refs ceaselessly and surgically, and the news refs
went home and spent long nights sitting there thinking what
if they're right? Or worse, what if my bosses think
they're right. That has never really ended. Its intensity was
doubled by the Trump assault on journalism, because you will
find no businessman alive whose self confidence is more of
(09:31):
an act than a guy who runs a news organization.
And now, as what was thought of as new news media,
cable digital streaming begins to follow old news media into
the ratings and readership toilet, now all of them are
as afraid as anybody in the world that tomorrow they
will learn that their job no longer exists, or their
(09:52):
outlet no longer exists, or their audience no longer exist.
Or they no longer exist. If you have one thousand
fewer consumers this week then last week, you sudden we
do start to think maybe we can convince some Republicans
to start watching us, and you get things said like
we're said by CNN's Chris Licked, and I know I'm
(10:14):
harping on him. Of course I'm harping on him. I'm
trying to destroy him. He was on a Carrot Swisher podcast.
By the way, there's an hour I'll never get back.
It's like being trapped in an elevator with three valley
girls and guys. Good lord. Anyway, Chris Licked actually said this,
and this is actually why I'm trying to destroy him. Quote.
(10:37):
The competition for me and cable is not MSNBC or Fox. Hopefully,
what we're doing is so different and unique that we
are affecting people who perhaps have found cable news to
be irrelevant in their lives. So the play is not
to be offensive to a side, right, and perhaps they
will come to us for an unvarnished truth, to allow
(10:58):
themselves to make their own decisions. Unquote. I have aspected
him to pivot to announce that CNN would be opening
a new Bureau in this Ohio diner, so it can
stop being irrelevant to people who don't believe in gravity.
So he can make the play of not being offensive
to gravity deniers and offer them unvarnished gravity truth to
(11:20):
allow themselves to make their own decisions about whether gravity
is fake or they are just morons who do not
know the answer to that question. And we are going
to grab them as new viewers by pandering to them
instead of saying, your stupidity is what is destroying this country.
Go tonight, school. This is CNN where gravity is optional.
(11:42):
The James Comers of this world make life easier for
the Chris Lickts because they can give fascists air time
yet still quiet the left by saying, oh, but we
will have fact checkers on top of them all the time,
as if the very act of fact checking propagandist conspiracy
theories does not imbue those theories with a kind of credibility.
(12:04):
Because you're saying, well, commerce claim that Hunter Biden stole
all the gravity, Our fact checkers say that's nonsense. But
this other stuff that Comer said, well that might be
less untrue. It remains to be seen. This is CNN
Live from this Ohio gravity denying diner. It is not
(12:25):
entirely bleak. It is encouraging to see that after thirty
years of getting their bells rung by Republicans, some Democrats
have prepared for this moment. At are mounting a gadfly
operation here and there to investigate the investigators facts first.
Is one of them. It's David Brock. Who else? And
this is what he left media matters for, and he
(12:46):
said yesterday it will have a five million dollar a
year quote swat team to counter Republican congressional investigations, and
it will not shy from things that quoting him again,
maybe too personal or delicate for the White House to
be responding or to even be seen as directing a response.
Jamie commerce Garlf friend Dave. David Brock once paid me
(13:08):
to fly to Florida for his fundraiser the night before
Trump's inauguration in two thousand seventeen to give a speech.
What are you looking for, I asked, Give me some guidance,
give me a live version of the resistance. He said,
These are legacy Democratic leaders who do not think Trump
actually represents anything new. One of them is going to
get up and say it proves we need more retail politics.
(13:32):
I want you to give them some old fire and brimstone.
So I did. The speech was outside on a wonderfully
warm January night in Fort Lauderdale, and when I got
to the part about hounding Trump and bruising him every
day in some way, and invoking Russia, I came to
what should have been bluntly an applause point, and nobody
(13:53):
said anything, And since we were outside, I literally heard crickets.
You do not truly know what the imagery of crickets
actually means until you are giving a speech outdoors and
there is a pause and there are actually crickets, to
(14:13):
the audience's credit, and I guess to mine when I
finished with no matter how long the trip back is
from tomorrow, remember and take strength from, and remind all
those who forget, and remind all those who deny, and
remind all those who lie. Remember one thing, we are
the majority. There was another brief silence and a couple
(14:36):
of crickets, and then they all got my points simultaneously,
and the crowd stood up and roared, and Brock said
I should have charged him more for the speech. The
solution to Republican obstructionism the answer to Jamie Comber. He's
always been there. The obstructionism has almost always been there,
(14:59):
and it's always been the same, vile and putrid and destructive.
But it actually hasn't evolved at all since Newt Gingrich
tried to pull off a coup against Bill Clinton and
Al Gore. It is contained within the republican methods. James
Comer of Kentucky is going to use the easily wielded
weapons of your news organization is not balanced, and your
(15:21):
news organization needs more on air conflict to draw viewers.
You go to these same organizations and you say, your
news organization is not balanced. You gave James Comber all
this publicity, Yet where are your stories about the Jamie
Comber scandal? And when they say what Jamie Comber scandal,
David Brock is there to answer them? Jamie Comber, Maryland Thomas,
(15:43):
Western Kentucky University, or you could just google it because
that's what I did. Still ahead, the January six committee
(16:08):
has about forty days left as well. It has just
appointed a subcommittee to decide whether or not to make
criminal referrals. Baseball's two thousand two most valuable players are out,
and thus the annual debate about what the hell the
phrase most valuable player means is out? And of course
here's the secret that debate is kind of the point.
(16:29):
And Fridays with James Thurber two stories of man, not
versus spouse nor dumb relatives, but of man versus life.
You don't have to have actually destroyed your own neighbor's bathroom,
medicine cabinet to feel as if you have been seen
when I read you Thurber's classic nine Needles. That's next.
(16:50):
This is countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still
ahead with her Twitter. Were their January six criminal referrals?
And what dumb thing did the Commissioner Baseball just say?
This time first? In each edition of Countdown, we feature
(17:12):
a dog in need you can help. Every dog has
its day. Remember Elsa from Wednesday when the Brooklyn Pound
told the humans surrendering Elsa that it would cost them
a small fee, so they left and while nobody was watching,
they tied Elsa to a fence behind the pound. Elsa
has been reserved. She is safe today. A classic story
of human stupidity about dogs. A big puppy Miller was
(17:34):
adopted from Outcast Rescue. At seven months, he ate something
he shouldn't have and had to have surgery to get
it removed. Now at nine months, he's done it again.
He ate a human sock. So instead of bringing Miller
back to the rescue or to the vet this time,
the human waited a week and simply then dumped him
at the local pound outside Philadelphia. He went septic, head
(17:55):
of surgery again and special treatment, and he's back at
Outcast and they need help via Cuddly covering his expenses
which should have been far or less but for this
idiotic human. You can find Miller at Cudley. Will also
be on my Twitter feeds. If you can donate, that
will be a big help. If you can't, a retweet
will be greatly helpful. I thank you, and Miller thanks you.
(18:24):
Post Scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snark,
some predictions. Dateline, San Francisco, What no harde wide world
of sports is going on? At Twitter? By one account,
Elon Musk's five pm deadline yesterday for employees to commit
to going hardcore or getting three months severance ended with
seventy of the staff choosing severance. We know this much
(18:49):
Musk closed all Twitter offices until Monday and shut off
all badge access, reportedly out of fear that employees would
sabotage the company. Fear that who would sabotage the company?
Moron from the Twitter slack feed. I have worked here
at Twitter for over eleven years. Back in July, i
was the seven tenured employee at the company. Now I'm
(19:13):
the fifteenth. Well that flashed me back to my days
at Channel two in Los Angeles. Nothing there ever lasted
more than three months. I started there on August. They
tinkered with who was on each newscast, which news anchors,
which weather men. They fired some people, they took some
off some shows and put them on other shows. But
I was the sportscaster, and I looked up around Thanksgiving
(19:36):
and realized that in terms of continuous service on Channel
two Action News at five, six, and eleven, after three months,
I had already become the senior guy in terms of
continued service and day line. Washington is officially a lame duck,
and there is a chance the Republicans will try to
morph it into a committee investigating the January six committee. Hey,
(19:59):
did you hear about the James Comber scandal, But for now,
the Benny Thompson Liz Cheney Joint is still in business
and it has now impaneled a four member sub committee,
Zoe Lofgren, Adam Schiff, Cheney, and the sub chair Jamie Raskin.
They will examine whether or not to make criminal and
civil referrals to the Justice Department based on what they
(20:19):
have found. Cheney, Schiff, Raskin, Lofgren, I think I know
where this is going, and I think I know how
unanimously it will be when it gets there. This is
(20:43):
Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This is Countdown
with Keith in Sports. Paul gold Schmidt of the Cardinals
and Aaron Judge of the Yankee Stars of two perpetually
underachieving teams, were voted the most valuable players of the
National and American Leagues, respectively. Gold Schmidt got twenty two
(21:04):
of the first place votes, and Manny Machado of the
underachieving Padres was second. Goldschmidt's teammate, Nolan Ironado on the
underachieving Cardinals was third. The American league vote was not
close after sixty two Homers. Aaron Judge got twenty eight
first place votes and two seconds show Hey Otani of
the night not quite underachieving Angels got to first place
(21:25):
votes and twenty eight seconds lost in this. Otany also
finished fourth in the vote for the American League Cy
Young Award as the top pitcher in And if you
think about it, this by itself fourth of among the
best pitchers, second among most valuable players. That by itself
suggests Otani is almost definitionally the most valuable player in
(21:47):
the American League. He is literally accomplishing more than any
other combination of two players, one hitter and one pitcher.
Baseball has never once to find what it means by
most Valuable Player, although there are waves of time in
which assumed that no picture should be considered. On the
other hand, there used to be ruled that if you
were voted to m v P, you were not eligible
(22:09):
to win it again. Ever, which is why Babe Ruth
had so few MVP awards. Why not set criteria, because
then we wouldn't have the annual argument over who is
most valuable and what most valuable means? And baseball needs
every last second of publicity can possibly get. And oh,
what a bunch of knee jerk reactions around the National
(22:30):
Football League after it announced that Sunday's games scheduled between
the Browns and Bills in Buffalo would be moved because
of impending snow right now to Detroit. Thank you, Nancy Faust.
(22:53):
The standard reaction to this was, what, they've never played
in snow before in Buffalo, or they have to build
a dome in Buffalo. The relocation of the game to
Detroit is not because of snow in the stadium during
the game. It is to keep residents off the streets unnecessarily.
Between now and Saturday night, Buffalo is expected to get
as much as five feet of snow. Had Fridays with
(23:25):
Thurber and It's man versus the eternal madness that is life.
Whether you are on the bus with the mouse who
went to the Country, or you've done the equivalent of
dropping Thurber's nine needles, you will feel these two stories
coming up first, the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons
and Dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute today's worst persons
(23:46):
in the world. The bronze former Secretary of State. Really
that happened? I thought that was just a nightmare. I
had former Secretary of State and one of the Republican
presidential hopefuls, Mike Pompeo tweeting, we need more serious bousness,
less noise, and leaders who are looking forward, not staring
(24:08):
in the rear view mirror claiming victimhood. This is the
same Mike Pompeio who said on November ten, two thousand twenty,
that there would be a smooth transition all right to
a second Trump term after Biden had won the election. Well,
that's very serious, that's very unnoisy, that's very forward looking,
that's very non victim, very very much a lie runner up, Snaike.
(24:32):
Jonna Farbarov of The New York Post quote President Biden
was once again spotted using a detailed cheat sheet, this
time at the G twenty summit in Bali, instructing him
where to sit, when to deliver remarks, and when to
pose for photos. Additional instructions said, you will sit at
the center, and you will deliver opening remarks. Imagine being
(24:55):
so unaware of the world. Imagine being snag Jonna Farbareov
of The New York Post that you've never before heard
of nor seen what all event organizers hand out at
all live events to all participants, which is called a
run of show or a rundown. They have wanted every
awards show, every live television broadcast. Many corporations give them
(25:19):
to their own executives who are just gonna go speak
at luncheons or media events. Why I saw a run
of show handed to a guy from the owners of
the Post News Corps. His name was Roger Ales, and
he had one that said, you go here, you say this,
you make a pass at this woman. But our winner,
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred. It is one thing to get
(25:41):
a letter from Pete Rose apologizing and seeking reinstatement after
being suspended for thirty three years for having wagered on
Cincinnati Reds games while he was managing the Cincinnati Reds
and denying it because the nodding the appeal, that is,
because he wagered on games he was managing. It's quite
another to explain this to the media, as Manfred did
(26:01):
last night, by saying, just I believe that when you
bet on baseball, you belong on the permanently ineligible list.
He never made the distinction of who bet or when
I believe that when you bet on baseball you belong
on the permanently ineligible list. What Manfred says, there was
that if you bet on baseball. Ever, as every other
(26:23):
commercial in every baseball telecast now tries to get you
to do bet on baseball. If you do bet on baseball,
White Baseball wants you to bet on baseball, you should
be banned from baseball. Rob did I mention, we have
an official betting partner of Major League Baseball. But if
you bet on baseball, your band Manfred Today's worst person
(26:46):
and the world. She's the number one story on the Countdown,
and it's Friday's with Thurber and a lot of his
work details the fundamental clash between people, husband and wife,
(27:07):
he and various relatives, a guy in a bed and
a seal, two animals representing any too, humans in conflict.
But some of the most magical writing is the stuff
that is just about one person alone against life. One
of his stories ends with a great grandmother struggling with
(27:27):
a butter churn and screaming into the void, why doesn't
somebody take this goddamn thing away from me? A line
which I think could be the start of a national
anthem somewhere. Such a story is nine Needles. This week's selection,
as you will see it is a little short for
our usual time frames here, so I'll give you a
bonus another man versus life story afterwards, in the form
(27:50):
of one of Thurber's fables for our time, the mouse
who went to the country. But first, it's unlikely this
event has ever happened to you, but the anxiety that
should be immediately familiar Nine Needles by James Thurber. One
of the more spectacular minor happenings of the past few years,
(28:13):
which I am sorry that I missed, took place in
the Columbus, Ohio home of some friends of a friend
of mine. It seems that a Mr. Albatross, while looking
for something in his medicine cabinet one morning, discovered a
bottle of a kind of patent medicine which his wife
had been taking for a stomach element. Now. Mr Albatross
(28:33):
is one of those apprehensive men who are afraid of
patent medicines and of almost everything else. Some weeks before,
he had encountered a paragraph and a consumer's research bulletin
which announced that this particular medicine was bad for you.
He had thereupon ordered his wife to throw out what
was left of her supply of the stuff and never
buy anymore she had promised, And here now was another
(28:57):
bottle of the perilous liquid. Mr. Albatross. A man given
to quick rages, shouted the conclusion of the story. It,
my friend, I threw the bottle out the bathroom window,
and the medicine chest after it. It seems to me
that must have been a spectacle worth going a long
(29:17):
way to see. I am sure that many a husband
has wanted to wrench the family medicine cabinet off the
wall and throw it out the window, if only because
the average medicine cabinet is so filled with mysterious bottles
and unidentifiable objects of all kinds, that it is a
source of constant bewilderment and exasperation to the American male. Surely,
(29:41):
the British medicine cabinet, and the French medicine cabinet, all
the other medicine cabinets must be simpler and better ordered
than ours. It may be that the American habit of
saving everything and never throwing anything away, even empty bottles,
causes the domestic medicine cabinet to become as cluttered in
its small way as the American attic becomes cluttered in
(30:04):
its major way. I have encountered few medicine cabinets in
this country which were not packed jammed with something between
a hundred and fifty and two hundred different items, from
dental floss to barassic acid, from razor blades to sodium perborate,
from adhesive tape to coconut oil. Even the neatest wife
(30:28):
will put off clearing out the medicine cabinet on the
ground that she has something else to do that is
more important at that moment, or more diverting. It was
in the apartment of such a wife and her husband
that I became enormously involved with a medicine cabinet. One
morning not long ago, I had spent the weekend with
this couple. They live on East tenth Street near Fifth Avenue.
(30:50):
Such a weekend as left me reluctant to rise up
on Monday morning with bright and shining face and go
to work. They got up and went to work, but
I didn't. I didn't get up until about to two
thirty in the afternoon. I had my face all lathered
for shaving, and the wash bowl was full of hot water,
(31:11):
when suddenly I cut myself with the razor. I cut
my ear. Very few men cut their ears with razors,
but I do, possibly because I was taught the old
Spencerian free risk movements by my writing teacher in the
grammar grades. The ear bleeds rather profusely when cut with
a razor, and is difficult to get at. More angry
(31:34):
than hurt, I jerked open the door of the medicine
cabinet to see if I could find a stiptic pencil,
and out fell from the top shelf a little black
paper packet containing nine needles. It seems that his wife
kept a little paper packet containing nine needles on the
top shelf of the medicine cabinet. The packet fell into
(31:54):
the soapy water of the wash bowl, where the paper
rapidly disintegrated, leaving nine needles at large in the bowl.
I was, naturally enough, not in the best condition, either
physical or mental, to recover nine needles from a washbowl.
No gentleman who has lather on his face and whose
(32:14):
ear is bleeding is in the best condition for anything,
even something involving the handling of nine large blunt objects.
It did not seem wise to me to pull the
plug out of the washbowl and let the needles go
down the drain. I had visions of clogging up the
plumbing system of the house, and also a vague fear
(32:35):
of causing short circuits somehow or other. I know very
little about electricity, and I don't want to have it
explained to me. Finally, I groped very gently around the bowl,
and eventually had four of the needles in the palm
of one hand and three in the palm of the other.
Two I couldn't find if I had thought quickly and clearly,
(32:59):
I wouldn't have done that. The lathered man whose ear
is bleeding, and who has four wet and needles in
one hand and three and the other may be said
to have reached the lowest known point of human efficiency.
There is nothing he can do but stand there. I
tried transferring the needles in my left hand to the
palm of my right hand, but I couldn't get the
(33:20):
off my left hand wet needles cling to you. In
the end, I wiped the needles off onto a bath
towel which was hanging on a rod above the bath tub.
It was the only towel that I could find. I
had to dry my hands afterwards on the bath mat.
Then I tried to find the needles in the towel.
(33:42):
Hunting for seven needles in a bath towel is the
most tedious occupation I have ever engaged in. I could
find only five of them, with the two that had
been left in the bowl. That meant there were four
needles in all, missing, two in the washbowl, and two
others lurking in the towel or lying in the bathtub
under the towel. Frightful thoughts aim to me of what
(34:05):
might happen to anyone who used that towel or washed
his face in the bowl, or got into the tub
if I didn't find the missing needles. Well, I didn't
find them. I sat down on the edge of the
tub to think, and I decided finally that the only
thing to do was to wrap up the towel in
a newspaper and take it away with me. I also
(34:27):
decided to leave a note for my friends, explaining as
clearly as I could that I was afraid there were
two needles in the bathtub and two needles in the
wash bowl, and that they better be careful. I looked
everywhere in the apartment, but I could not find a
pencil or a pen or a typewriter. I could find
pieces of paper, but nothing with which to write on them.
(34:50):
I don't know what gave me the idea. A movie
I had seen, perhaps, or a story I had read.
But I suddenly thought of writing a message with lipstick.
The wife might have an extra lipstick lying around, and
if so, I concluded it would be in the medicine cabinet.
I went back to the medicine cabinet began poking around
(35:11):
in it for a lipstick. I saw what I thought
looked like the metal tip of one, and I got
two fingers around it began to pull gently. It was
under a lot of things. Every object in the medicine
cabinet began to slide. Bottles broken the washbowl and on
the floor, red, brown, and white liquids, spurted, nail files, scissors,
(35:32):
razor blades, and miscellaneous objects sang and clattered and tinkled.
I was covered with perfume, peroxide, and cold cream. It
took me half an hour to get all the debris
all together in the middle of the bathroom floor. I
made no attempt to put anything back in the medicine cabinet.
(35:55):
I knew it would take a steadier hand than mine
and a less shattered spirit. Before I went away only
partly shaved and abandon the shambles. I left a note
saying that I was afraid there were needles in the
bathtub and the wash bowl, and that I had taken
their towel, and that I would call up and tell
them everything. I wrote it in I had dined with
(36:15):
the end of a tooth brush. I have not yet
called up. I am sorry to say I have neither
found the courage nor thought up the words to explain
what happened. I suppose my friends believe that I deliberately
smashed up their bathroom and stole their towel. I don't
know for sure, because they have not yet called me
(36:38):
up either. Nine Needles by James Thurber, and as I
suggested in a broad sense on the same subject, from
his Fables for our Time and famous poems illustrated. The
Mouse who Went to the Country by James Thurber. Once
(37:03):
upon a Sunday there was a city mouse who went
to visit a country mouse. He hit away on a
train the country mouse had told him to take, only
to find that on Sundays it did not stop at Beddington.
Hence the city mouse could not get off at Beddington
and catch a bus for Cybert's Junction, where he was
to be met by the country mouse. The city mouse,
(37:24):
in fact, was carried on to Middleburgh, where he waited
three hours for a train to take him back. When
he got back to Beddington, he found out that the
last bus for Seaberts Junction had just left, so he ran,
and he ran, and he ran, and he finally caught
the bus and crept aboard, only to find that it
was not the bus for Seaberts Junction at all, but
was going in the opposite direction through Pell's Hollow and
(37:47):
Grum to a place called Wimberbee. When the bus finally stopped,
the city mouse got out into a heavy rain and
found that there were no more busses that night going anywhere.
To the hell with it, said the city mouse, and
he walked back to the city. Moral stay where you are,
you're sitting pretty The mouse who went to the Country
(38:12):
by James Thurber. I've done all the damage I can
do here. Thank you for listening. If you're not following
or subscribed to the podcast and whatever, please do so
and stop a stranger on the street and tell them
to as well, and if they give you a hard
(38:34):
time about it, I don't know. Here are the credits.
Most of the music, including our theme from Beethoven's Ninth,
was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Philip Chanelle, where the countdown musical directors. All orchestration and
keyboards by John Philip Chanelle, guitars based and drums by
Brian Ray, produced by t k O Brothers. Some other
(38:54):
Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns allowed.
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two.
It was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
M Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium
organist ever. Our announcer today was John Deane. Everything else,
including the pronunciation of seabirds junction and Cybert's junction, was
(39:15):
pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this. The
six hunted an eighty second day since Donald Trump's first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Arrest him now while we still can a new episode Monday.
Have a good weekend till then. On Keith Olderman, good morning,
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman
(39:42):
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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