November 17, 2023 • 44 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 77: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-BLOCK (1:44) BULLETIN: White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates issues searing condemnation of the antisemitism rampant on Twitter-X and specifically calls out Elon Musk's repetition of the antisemitic madness behind the 2018 "Tree Of Life" synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. It is a dramatic and unyielding statement with language so strong it must have been approved by President Biden himself and signals his willingness to confront the antisemitism, and all religious and anti-minority hate, and Musk himself. It is a startling development.
The remainder of this podcast is a repeat of Friday's regular 76th episode and if you've heard it you may skip it with my full blessing. But it does emphasize how a threat to ban Twitter-X and end all government contracts with him, could rescue it from Musk's prejudice and bullying (6:56) It is time for the government of the United States to ban “X” – the social media site still primarily known as Twitter - and to terminate all government contracts with its owner.
Under Trump the government moved to ban TikTok as a security risk to the United States, so there is precedent for at least the attempt, because a process that has been accelerating for more than a year reached a climax Wednesday when owner Elon Musk answered a blatantly antisemitic tweet with the reply quote “you have said the actual truth.” Combined with surging anti-semitism throughout the website, and the use of Nazi hate speech and paraphrases of infamous Hitler quotes by the likely Republican candidate for president, the tinderbox of antisemitism has never been fuller or drier and Trump and Musk seem determined to light it ablaze – and with it, light ablaze the peace and security of this nation.
Musk’s bizarre running of the Twitter-X platform had already destroyed more than half its value and even more of its advertising. Yesterday afternoon, IBM announced it was pulling its already-scheduled ads for the next three months – the New York Times says that was a million dollars’ worth. Rather remarkably, as of the close of business yesterday The New York Times had not yet cancelled Musk’s scheduled appearance twelve days from now at a Times event it calls its “DealBook Summit” which it describes as the gathering of quote “the most consequential leaders in business, politics, and culture,” unquote… and, I guess, the most consequential leaders in antisemitism.
As the snowball rolling down the hill toward her reached speeds of about a thousand miles an hour, Musk’s hand-picked CEO Linda Yaccarino posted a comment at 3:45 PM Eastern that seemed crafted by the nation’s finest satirical comedians, or maybe Tim Robinson in the hot dog suit and the “We’re All Trying To Find The Guy Who Did This” meme. Quote: “X’s point of view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should STOP across the boad – I think that’s something we can and should all agree on. When it comes to this platform, X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination. There’s no place for it anywhere in the world – it’s ugly and wrong. Full stop.” If taken sincerely and literally, Yaccarino’s only possible next action would be… to suspend Elon Musk’s account.
Musk has gone down a path from which he cannot backtrack. Twitter-X – at least HIS version of it – must be banned, and government contracts and other agreements – local, state, national - with his other firms: Space-X, Tesla, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and xAI must be terminated. Today. There is no other option.
B-BLOCK (23:07) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The George Santos ethics investigation is in. He doesn't have any. Remarkable research that suggests the Republicans haven't ONCE needed his vote. Paul Pelosi's attacker is found guilty, as is a J6 insurrectionist that MAGA has convinced itself was actually a Black Lives Matter An
Mark as Played
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. This
is a Countdown Bulletin podcast. Joe Biden's White House Deputy
Press Secretary and Senior Communications Advisor, Andrew Bates, has issued
on Friday an extraordinary statement eviscerating Elon Musk and Twitter
(00:29):
x and the anti semitism not only promulgated on Musk's platform,
but by Musk himself personally. To read it in full,
from White House spokesperson Andrew Bates, quote, it is unacceptable
to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act
of anti Semitism in American history at any time, let
(00:52):
alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish
people since the Holocaust. Like President Biden said weeks ago
memorializing the victims of the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting, the October seventh,
quote DEBI stating atrocity has brought to the surface painful
memories left by millennia of anti semitism unquote, and under
(01:13):
his presidency quote, we will continue to condemn anti semitism
at every turn unquote, The statement continues, we condemn this
abhorrent promotion of anti Semitic and racist hate in the
strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans.
We all have a responsibility to bring people together against
(01:37):
hate and an obligation to speak out against anyone who
attacks the dignity of their fellow Americans and compromises the
safety of our communities. The statement Friday from the White
House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates. The most important part
of this statement is the fact of the statement itself.
(01:58):
It indicates that the White House is not going to
shy away from this issue, Tomess Stickley, even when the
other side, the Elon Musk amplification of the kind of
replacement theory anti Semitism behind the twenty eighteen Pittsburgh Synagogue
mass shooting, has such a huge platform behind it. As
(02:19):
Musks now provides, what is in Andrew Bates's statement is
indisputably true and it transcends as he notes the specifics
of which religion or race or group is the target
of the hate. Elon Musk and the anti Semites are peddling, promoting, pushing,
(02:39):
and trafficking in the White House is taking Elon Musk
head on. Also contained in the fact of the statement
from Deputy Press Secretary Bates is the implication that President
Biden will say something himself about what twitter X and
Musk are doing. Not necessarily a speech, although bluntly that
(03:02):
would be a terrific and impact idea, and not necessarily
drastic action against Musk or twitter x. But to issue
such a statement is to invite even the somnambulent White
House Press Corps to ask Biden about it at the
first opportunity. It is easy enough even for reporters. The
(03:26):
language is strong and unyielding. All they are required to
do is ask Biden if he agrees with it, and certainly,
when this statement was composed, none of that language was
used without President Biden's knowledge. There are words in here
such as horrific. There are words in here such as holocaust.
(03:50):
There are words in here such as millennia of anti Semitism, abhorrent,
condemn This is serious stuff. What should be next is
leveraging the power of the White House, the power of
the US government, from Congress to States to the White House,
(04:12):
to remove the Twitter x platform from Elon Musk's control.
By utilizing the very real threat that the government can
ban twitter x as a danger to American safety, it
can also cancel all contracts with Musks, SpaceX, and Tesla
(04:33):
and other firms. This I elaborated on in Friday's regular
edition of Countdown, So if you have already listened, there
is no need to play through the entirety of this
bulletin episode. But the gist is the safety and indeed
the lives not just of Jewish Americans, but of all
(04:53):
Americans who could be reduced and diminished and pigeonholed into
some minority some other in a time of hatred. These
are at risk in a time when Musk and his
Ilk slander and smear and libel whoever they feel like
(05:13):
without anyone stopping them. So, as this full episode that
follows makes clear, it is up to the United States
government to stop them. It is up to President Joe
Biden to stop them to protect American lives here in America.
Either Musk exits Twitter X or we must move to
(05:38):
ban Twitter X. It is time for the government of
the United States to ban x, the social media site
still primarily known as Twitter, and to terminate all government
(06:01):
contracts with its owner. Under Trump, the government had moved
to ban TikTok as a security risk to the United States.
So there is precedent for at least the attempt, because
a process that has been accelerating for more than a
year reached a climax Wednesday, then continued Thursday, when owner
Elon Musk answered a blatantly anti Semitic tweet echoing the
(06:23):
language of the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooter with a reply from
him that read, quote you have said the actual truth.
Combined with surging anti semitism throughout the website and the
use of Nazi hate speech and paraphrases of infamous Hitler
quotes by the likely Republican candidate for president, the tinderbox
of anti semitism, indeed of hatred against races and religions
(06:48):
of all kinds. The tinder box has never been fuller
nor drier, and Trump and Musk seemed determined to light
it ablaze, and with it, to light a blaze the
peace and the security of this nation. Ban twitter x now,
and ban all government financial dealings with Musk now, before
(07:09):
it is too late, and before the burgeoning anti semitism
of twitter x and Musk's endorsement by extension of the
mass shooting at the Pittsburgh Synagogue becomes the sole purpose
of that platform. As I said in an extraordinary irony.
The precedent for this begins with Trump's moves against TikTok,
including an executive order in twenty twenty, and then a
(07:32):
Biden Department of Justice investigation of TikTok that began on
March seventeenth of this year. The TikTok ban is a
separate issue, and I don't want to mix it in
here with the prospect of banning twitter x because in
response to the appalling fan boying of Osama bin Laden's
hate screed against America and against Jewish people on TikTok
(07:53):
this week, at least, that was followed by a meeting
between TikTok executives and prominent Jewish figures. TikTok might actually
be trying to fix things on its that remains to
be seen. Twitter x, on the other hand, is doing nothing,
and its madman owner Musk seems to have no awareness
(08:14):
of the impact of his own diseased and hateful mind,
and he has attacked those who have dared to criticize
him about this. The post that turned twitter x from
a mere sewer to a sewer on fire belching toxic smoke,
read in part quote Jewish communities have been pushing the
(08:35):
exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim
to want people to stop using against them, even though
these are virtually word for word the sentiments of the
so called Tree of Life shooter, who murdered eleven people,
including Holocaust survivors, at a synagogue in twenty eighteen. Musk replied,
as noted, quote, you have said the actual truth. When
(08:57):
criticized by the anti defamation lead, Musk doubled down. I
am deeply offended by ADL's mess and any other groups
who pushed de facto anti white racism or anti Asian racism,
or racism of any kind. I'm sick of it. Stop
it now unquote. Musk's bizarre, self destructive running of the
(09:21):
Twitter x platform had already destroyed more than half of
its value and even more of its advertising. Then yesterday afternoon,
IBM announced it was pulling it's already scheduled ads for
the next three months. The New York Times says that
was about a million dollars worth. Rather remarkably, as of
the close of business yesterday, the New York Times had
not yet canceled Musk's scheduled appearance twelve days from now
(09:45):
at a Times event that it calls its deal Book Summit,
which it describes as the gathering of quote, the most
consequential leaders in business, politics and culture unquote and I
guess the most consequential leaders in anti Semitism. It seems
impossible to believe that The Times will actually permit Musk
(10:07):
to participate in its branded event. He has not only
rendered Twitter X toxic, but the revulsion has spread to
his other companies. As the publication The Street wrote last night,
some prominent Tesla investors seemed to finally be losing faith
in the company's often controversial CEO. The stockfell roughly four
percent Thursday after Musk highlighted an anti Semitic conspiracy theory,
(10:32):
then issued a series of seemingly bigoted tweets on X.
The Future fund partner Gary Black wrote, I want to
believe the CEO's attitudes and Tesla brand equity are not linked,
but my common sense tells me otherwise. And wealth and
investment manager Ross Gerber, whose fund owned four hundred and
twenty thousand shares of Tesla at the last counting, reached
(10:55):
the inevitable conclusion. He wrote that Musk has now gone
too far. He's like Trump now as the snowball rolling
down the hill toward her reached speeds of about one
thousand miles an hour. Musk's handpicked CEO, Linda Yakarino, posted
a comment at three forty five pm Eastern that seemed
(11:16):
to have been crafted by the nation's finest satirical comedians,
maybe Tim Robinson in his hot dog suit in the
middle of the We're all trying to find the guy
who did this meme, quoting Yakarino, X's point of view
has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should
stop across the board. I think that's something we can
(11:38):
and should all agree on when it comes to this platform.
X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to
combat anti Semitism and discrimination. There's no place for it
anywhere in the world. It's ugly and wrong, full stop, unquote.
If taken sincerely and literally, Yakarino's only possible next action
(11:59):
would be to suspend the account of Elon Musk. As
a gentile, I will note that the phrase X has
also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat anti
Semitism and discrimination may also be literally true. It has
been extremely clear that it has made no efforts to
(12:19):
combat anti semitism and discrimination, and it is rather incredibly
bigger than anti semitism alone. Twitter x is rife with
other racism and other flavors of religious hatred and other
forms of discrimination at a time when the concept stigmatizing,
blaming and persecuting a generalized other, and white supremacist thuggery,
(12:44):
when these things are resurgent in the United States and elsewhere.
If Twitter x or other private entities cannot force Musk
to sell the platform immediately, he leaves the government of
the United States no other option in such a perilous time.
Congress could act, individual states could act as some have
(13:06):
acted against TikTok. The President could resort to his own
executive order, or all branches and all parties could work
in concert in a rare and frankly rather easy display
a bipartisanship. Musk has gone down a path from which
he cannot backtrack. Twitter x. At least his version of
(13:26):
it must be banned, and government contracts and other agreements local, state,
and national with his other firms, SpaceX, Tesla, the boring company, Neulink,
and Xai must be terminated today there is no other
option elsewhere another judge has proved incapable of seeing or
(13:53):
proved that he is deliberately ignoring the similar danger to
the peace and safety of the United States posed by
the musk of politics dementia j. Trump. A New York
State Appellate Division judge who identifies as a Democrat but
was appointed twenty five years ago by a Republican governor,
has joined the DC Court of Appeals in staying one
(14:13):
of the gag orders against Trump. This time it is
the gag order in the New York civil fraud case,
during which Trump has doxed Judge Arthur Engern's courtroom clerk
and fabricated a backstory for her to the benefit and
pleasure of his cult. Judge David Friedman said the order
raised constitutional and statutory rights at issue, and stayed it
(14:37):
until the full State Appeals Court panel can consider it
a week from Monday. Apart from Judge Friedman's cluelessness as
to the reality and imminence of the mortal danger to
which Trump subjects his targets, the most remarkable aspect to
the staying of this gag order, and also the one
imposed by Judge Tanya Chutkin in the federal elections subversion trial.
(14:58):
Is that. In response, Trump has shown for the first
time unexpected did weakness while celebrating his lawyer's manipulation of
Judge Friedman. In a social media post, Trump wrote about
the quote ridiculous and unconstitutional gag order not allowing me
to defend myself against him, and is politically biased and
(15:19):
out of control. Trump hating clerk unquote. In the post,
Trump names and gern Trump names the Attorney General, Letitia James.
He does not name the clerk, even though there is
nothing at the moment preventing him from doing so. It
has not been noted widely, but since the DC Appeals
Court stayed that gag order in that case, Trump has
(15:41):
barely mentioned the judge or the Special Council or anybody
else in that case. It cannot be good judgment. Trump
does not have good judgment. It has to be fear.
In another curious Trump legal twist, he has been hoist
with his own petard in the New York City criminal
case against him for falsifying business records to hide hush
(16:03):
money to Stormy Daniels. Trump's ambulance chasers moved to dismiss
that case. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has now replied by
reconstructing Trump's words of self martyrdom and using them against Trump. Quote.
Defendant repeatedly suggests, begins Bragg's filing that because he is
(16:23):
a current presidential candidate, the ordinary rules for criminal law
and procedure should be applied differently. Here. This argument is
essentially an attempt to evade criminal responsibility because defendant is
politically powerful. Courts have repeatedly rejected Defendant's demands for special
treatment and instead have adhered to the core principle that
(16:47):
the rule of law applies equally to the power full
as to the powerless. Unquote did you say that, mister
District Attorney? What a guy. I'm hoping that mister Bragg
sent a copy of that to Jack Smith. Judge Eileen Cannon,
the former yoga and flamenco dancing correspondent of the Miami
(17:08):
Nuevo Herald, has refused to establish now a deadline for
Trump to disclose which classified materials he later intends to
use in his defense in the Florida case. Establishing the
deadline now would increase the chances of keeping the already
tardy Florida trial schedule intact. Judge Cannon says she will
(17:30):
set that deadline in March of next year, not four
March of next year, but in March of next year.
The trial is supposed to begin in May. Reporters covering
that trial and legal experts guess that we are now
several months behind that schedule and the thing can't possibly
start before July. Clearly, Judge Cannon has no intention of
(17:54):
ever going back to covering yoga and flamenco as another
note of curiosity. As the Trump circumspection in the wake
of the stage bag order seems strange, so does Special
Counsel Smith's relative inactivity, some might say inertness when it
comes to delay after delay sought by Trump and granted
(18:17):
by the judge Trump appointed. It's almost as if the
Florida case is there is a sidebar to the DC case,
and Smith isn't trying to get other courts to overrule
Judge Cannon in order to foster some sense in Trump
that his lawyers are not idiots and his strategy is
not going to guarantee his conviction in Washington and not
(18:39):
guarantee that he will die in prison and in hockey
at least this would all be called a deek on.
One more thing to add to Trump's paranoia, special council
investigating the small collection of mishandled classified documents in two
locations connected to President Biden. CNN quotes two sources close
(18:59):
to that investigation as saying that the investigation is complete
and the Special Council, Robert Hrr, is writing an extensive
report and he is going to charge nobody, nobody with nothing.
(19:20):
Also of interest here to continue the hockey imagery, George
Santos is two thirds of the way to a hat trick.
After the ethics report came in. He's saying he will
not run for reelection. What in waste the negative sixteen
thousand dollars his campaign did not raise in the third quarter,
and momentum is building towards expelling him, which would leave
(19:40):
only the third option where he quits immediately. And there
is startling new research that the Republicans actually would not
miss his vote. And speaking of fraud, there is the
sportscaster here, Curisa Thompson's startling boast that some of her
halftime off camera Network TV interviews with football coaches happened
(20:05):
and she just made the stuff up. It's shocking unless
she also just made that up. That's next. This discountdown.
This is countdown with Keith Olberman. Postscripts to the news,
(20:31):
some headlines, some updates, some snark, some predictions. Dateline. Washington
House Ethics Committee report is back. Surprise, surprise, surprise, George
Santos doesn't have any In response, Speaker Ugly Johnson has
advised members to consider whether or not to vote to
(20:51):
expel him. Santo says he will not run for reelection.
He may try to position that as a great moral
stance for a change. In fact, it probably has more
to do with the fact that his campaign fundraising for
the third order of this year was minus sixteen five
hundred dollars. But most interesting of all, the impeccable Philip
(21:12):
Bump of the Washington Post has researched all the Republican
votes since they swore Santos in Santos if that is
his real name, and guess what. The Republicans actually did
not need him there to pass anything, not even usual
Republican time wasting stuff. Quoting Phil Bump's calculations, there have
(21:35):
been nearly six hundred and seventy four votes this year,
only ten resulted in a one vote margin or in
a tie. And while that would theoretically mean that in
those ten votes you could say Santos's vote was essential
in getting Republican stuff passed, Bump found a surprising caveat
none of the amendments or bills covered by those ten
(21:56):
votes ever became law anyway. Each one of them passed
the House and then went into conference with the Senate,
where they all all died. Bump has also found out
that as the year has gone by, Santos has become
a less reliable vote for Republicans, so from the GOP
point of view, instead of helping their well oiled voting
(22:18):
machine in Congress, he had become kind of a drag. Sorry,
(23:09):
thank you, Nancy Faust. And yes, if Santos does resign,
the likeliest successor to his seat is Republican newcomer Katara
Ravasche Dateline, San Francisco. Most of them will never believe it,
but another right wing conspiracy theory just blew up. David
(23:29):
de Pap has been found guilty on both counts in
his violent attack with a hammer against Nancy Pelosi's husband
after Depap broke into their home hoping to kidnap and
or torture and or assassinate her. De Pap could face
maximum sentences of thirty and twenty years on the two
convictions and dateline Washington. Another part of the Tucker Carlson
(23:54):
Maga January sixth conspiracy theory. No, not the ghost USUS thing,
but rather the Antifa plant thing is again disproven. John
Earl Sullivan, widely proclaimed to be an informant or a
plant or something, who said he was just a citizen journalist,
just a member of Black Lives Matter who happened to
(24:15):
record the shooting of the terrorist Ashley babbittt He has
been convicted on all counts, including carrying a knife into
the Capitol. His lawyers may have sealed his fate for
him when they called another quote citizen journalist unquote to
testify on his behalf, and she played video of him
shouting into a bullhorn, exhorting the crowd to go into
(24:36):
the capitol and telling that crowd, We're about to burn
this spit down. Unclear how much time he'll spend in
the big house. Unclear how much money he spent on
those lawyers. Still ahead of us on countdown Fridays with
(25:12):
Thurber and the one of all of his short stories
that has been in middle and junior, high school and
high school textbooks for eighty years, The Night the Bed
Fell first time. For the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons,
and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons
in the world. The Brons to Caitlin Jenner, who responded
(25:36):
to a Donald Trump Junior post about how people of
a certain age should be able to use the R word.
If you're not clear what I mean by that. The
R word is a version of one of the words
in the following phrase fire retardant. Jenner responded to the
Trump tweet quote, I'll say it quote retarted unquote. She
(26:00):
spelled it wrong. R E T A R T ed
like you we're a tart and now you're a tart again?
What a tart? The runner up, well, why it's Trump
Junior again in his own right. His word of the
day was Congresswoman. I thank Ron Philipkowski for pointing this out.
It's worth listening to a couple of times from his
(26:23):
video cast as Junior tries to introduce Marjorie Taylor Green
and gets it wrong. I love this one Congress rooman
MTG Marjorie Taylor Green. We're gonna be talking to her
new book. I love this one Congress rooman MTG Marjorie
Taylor Green, friends, congress romans, countrymen, lend me your ears,
(26:47):
But our winner is Curisa Thompson, former football sideline reporter
at Fox and at this rate, former sports broadcaster. I
did the baseball equivalent of the sideline reporter job dugout
reporter I guess for about twenty twenty five games for
Fox Sports and NBC from nine two thousand and I
remember once needing to get a reaction in the middle
(27:08):
of a game from Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and having
to literally crawl under a camera and then crawl through
a half door to get out of the Yankee Stadium
dugout and back towards where Selig was seated. So this
was kind of shocking. On a podcast, MS Thompson announced
where it actually is, boasted that when tasked with doing
(27:30):
some of those I talked to coach Smith halftime reports.
She she didn't she didn't talk to coach Smith. She
just just she just made it up.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
And I've said this before so I haven't been fired
for saying it, but I'll say it again. I would
make up the report sometimes because a the coach wouldn't
come out at halftime or it was too late, and
I was like, I didn't want to screw up the report.
So I was like, I'm just going to make this
up because first of all, no coach is going to
get mad if I say, hey, we need to stop
hurting ourselves. We needed to be better on third down,
(28:02):
we need to stop turning the ball over. Yeah, exactly,
and do a better job of getting off the field.
Like they're not going to correct me on that. I'm like,
it's fine, I'll just make.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Up the report now. In terms of the quality of
the journalistic content, Miss Thompson is entirely correct. The coach
rarely ever says anything maybe we do not need sideline reporters.
But then there's that one time when you talk to
him or to somebody and he says something like what
happened during a near riot at a playoff game at
(28:32):
Fenway Park in nineteen ninety nine On Fox. I got
Yankees owner George stein Renner for my little report, and
I said something really deep, like what do you think George,
and George said he thought that the Red Sox manager
Jimmy Williams had incited the crowd to riot. That was
a hell of a statement, and it basically became the
(28:52):
lead story that night and the next day. And I
didn't contribute anything more to that than asking George if
he would come on with me, and then asking him
the most generic question ever, But I asked him. You
can't not ask them and then say you ask them.
(29:13):
You can't make it up. The premise is you never
make it up. Manel or trivial or meaningless. You can't
make it up, and you certainly can't then boast about
making it up. Harrissa Thompson is the host of Thursday
Night Football on Amazon Management. There was asked by The
Sports Business Journal if she would address this or if
(29:34):
there'd be a suspension or something, and the answer came back, quote,
she was telling the story from fifteen years ago. Unquote. Well,
we assume she was telling a story from fifteen years ago,
unless she made that up, too, Which is the point.
You say something like that and you kind of destroy
the presumption that you're not making stuff up all the time.
(29:55):
There are three other dimensions to this, The people who
did the podcast tweeted out the clip, apparently proudly, and
then when the blowback occurred, they deleted it. The other
two dimensions to this I think are really mallid. At
least a dozen other women who still work as sideline reporters,
especially in football, were appalled at Thompson's revelation. They work hard,
(30:19):
the results, the goals, what they are there for. That's
not their decision, that's not their fault. They work hard,
they do what they're supposed to do. And Mike Freeman,
a veteran football reporter and an African American man, asked
a really disturbing and important question. What if that announcement
I didn't interview the coach, I just made up what
(30:40):
he probably would have said. What if that had been
made by a sideline reporter who was also an African
American man? How quickly would he have been fired? And justifiably,
you can't make it up. Amazon may not be able
to fire her, she didn't make it up while she
was working for them, But how do you keep her
on your broadcast when she's admitted toting a key element
(31:06):
of all football broadcasts. Harisa I wouldn't worry too much
about the next contract negotiation. Thompson two days, worst person
in the world to say he had no comment. I
(31:33):
have argued before that James Thurber is the greatest American humorist,
and it dawns on me that the argument is not
unlike the idea that shohe Otani of the Los Angeles
Angels is almost automatically the most valuable player in baseball
each year because he is an All Star hitter and
an All Star pitcher in the same body. James Thurber
(31:54):
was a brilliant writer, and in his spare time, he
was an equally brilliant, almost avant garde artist in the
same body. His simple drawings to pick the most complex
of emote and comedic situations. His dogs are immortal, and
then there were his captions. Well, I can't do anything
with his drawings in a podcast, so I'll just read
(32:14):
and I will read you now in this episode, what
is probably his most famous story from my life in
hard times, the night the bed fell James Thurber. I
suppose that the high water mark of my youth in Columbus,
Ohio was the night the bed fell on my father.
(32:37):
It makes a better recitation unless, as some friends of
mine have said, one has heard it five or six
times than it does a piece of writing, For it
is almost necessary to throw furniture around, shakedoors and bark
like a dog to lend the proper atmosphere and verisimilitude
to what is admittedly a somewhat incredible tale. Still it
(32:59):
did take place. It happened then that my father had
decided to sleep in the attic one night, to be
away where he could think. My mother opposed the notion
strongly because she said the old wooden bed up there
was unsafe. It was wobbly, and the heavy headboard would
crash down on father's head in case the bed fell
and kill him. There was no dissuading him, however, and
(33:24):
at a quarter past ten, he closed the attic door
behind him and went up the narrow, twisting stairs. We
later heard am in his creakings as he crawled into bed. Grandfather,
who usually slept in the attic bed when he was
with us, had disappeared some days before. On those occasions,
he was usually gone six or eight days, and returned
growling and out of temper, with the news that the
(33:46):
Federal Union was run by a passel of blockheads, and
that the army of the Potomac didn't have any more
chance than a fiddler's bitch. We had visiting us at
the time, a nervous first cousin of mine named Briggs Beale,
who believed that he was likely to cease breathing when
he was asleep. He was his feeling that if he
were not awakened every hour during the night, he might
(34:09):
die of suffocation. He had been accustomed to setting an
alarm clock to ring at intervals until morning, but I
persuaded him to abandon this. He slept in my room,
and I told him that I was such a light
sleeper that if anybody quit breathing in the same room
with me, I would wake instantly. He tested me the
first night, which I had suspected he would, by holding
(34:32):
his breath after my regular breathing, had convinced him I
was asleep. I was not asleep, however, and called to him.
This seemed to allay his fears a little, but he
took the precaution of putting a glass of spirits of
camphor on a little table at the head of his
bed in case I didn't arouse him. Until he was
(34:53):
almost gone, he said he would sniff the camphor. A
powerful reviver, Briggs was not the only member of his
family who had his crotchets. Old Aunt Melissa Beal, who
could whistle like a man with two fingers in her mouth,
suffered under the premonition that she was destined to die
on South High Street because she had been born on
(35:14):
South High Street and married on South High Street. Then
there was Aunt Sarah Schauf, who never went to bed
at night without the fear that a burglar was going
to get in and blow chloroform under her door through
a tube. To avert this calamity, for she was in
greater dread of anesthetics than of losing her household goods.
(35:34):
She always piled her money, silverware, and other valuables in
a neat stack just outside her bedroom, with a note reading,
this is all I have. Please take it and do
not use your chloroform, as this is all I have.
Aunt Gracie's Chauf also had a burglar phobia, but she
met it with more fortitude. She was confident that burglars
(35:55):
had been getting into her house every night for forty years.
The fact that she never missed anything was to her
no proof to the contrary, always claimed that she scared
them off before they could take anything by throwing shoes
down the hallway. When she went to bed, she piled
where she could get at them handily, all the shoes
(36:16):
there were about her house. Five minutes after she had
turned off the light, she would sit up in bed
and say hark. Her husband, who had learned to ignore
the whole situation as long ago as nineteen o three,
would either be sound asleep or pretend to be sound asleep.
In either case, he would not respond to her tugging
(36:37):
and pulling, so that presently she would arise, tiptoe to
the door, open it slightly, and heave a shoe down
the hall in one direction, and its mate down the
hall in the other direction. Some nights she threw them all,
some nights only a couple of pear. But I am
straying from the remarkable incidents that took place during the
(36:59):
night that the bed fell on father. By midnight we
were all in bed. Layout of the rooms and the
disposition of their occupants is important to an understanding of
what later occurred. In the front room upstairs, just under
father's attic bedroom, where my mother and my brother Herman,
who sometimes sang in his sleep, usually marching through Georgia
(37:21):
or onward Christian soldiers. Briggs Beale and myself were in
a room adjoining this one. My brother Roy was in
a room across the hall from ours. Now our bull
terrier Wrecks slept in the hall. My bed was an
army cot, one of those affairs which were made wide
enough to sleep on comfortably only by putting up flat
with the middle section the two sides, which ordinarily hang
(37:44):
down like the sideboards of a drop leaf table. When
these sides are up, it is perilous to roll too
far toward the edge, for then the cot is likely
to tip completely over, bringing the whole bed down on
top of one with a tremendous banging crash. This, in fact,
is precisely what happened about two o'clock in the morning.
(38:07):
It was my mother who, in recalling the scene later
first referred to it as the night the bedfellow on.
Your father, always a deep sleeper and slow to arouse,
I had lied to Briggs. I was at first unconscious
of what had happened when the ironcot rolled me onto
the floor and toppled over on me. It left me
(38:28):
still warmly bundled up and unheard, for the bed rested
above me like a canopy. Hence I did not wake up,
only reached the edge of consciousness and went back. The racket, however,
instantly awakened my mother in the next room, who came
to the immediate conclusion that her worst dread was realized.
The big wooden bed upstairs had fallen on father. She
(38:49):
therefore screamed, let's go to your poor father. It was
this shout, rather than the noise of my cot falling,
that awakened Herman in the same room with her, He
thought that mother had become, for no apparent reason, hysterical.
All right, Mama, he shouted, trying to calmer. They exchanged
shout for shout for perhaps ten seconds. Let's go to
(39:12):
your poor father, and you're all right. That woke up Briggs.
By this time I was conscious of what was going
on in a vague way, but did not yet realize
that I was under my bed instead of on it. Briggs,
awakening in the midst of loud shouts of fear and apprehension,
(39:32):
came to the quick conclusion that he was suffocating, and
that we were all trying to bring him out. With
a low moan, he grasped the glass of camphor at
the head of his bed, and instead of sniffing it,
he poured it over himself. The room reeked of camphor.
Uh Ah, choked Briggs like a drowning man, for he
(39:55):
had almost succeeded in stopping his breath under the deluge
of pungent spirits. He leaped out of bed and groped
toward the open window, but he came up against one
that closed. With his hand, he beat out the glass,
and I could hear it crash and tinkle on the
alleyway below. He was at this juncture that I, in
trying to get up, had the uncanny sensation of feeling
(40:18):
my bed above me foggy with sleep. I now suspected,
in my turn, that the whole uproar was being made
in a frantic endeavor to extricate me from what must
be an unheard of and perilous situation. Get me out
of this, I bawled, Get me out. I think I
had the night marriage belief that I was entombed in
a mine o gas. Briggs floundering in his camphor. By
(40:43):
this time my mother still shouting, pursued by Hermann, still shouting,
was trying to open the door to the attic in
order to go up and get my father's body out
of the wreckage. The door was stuck, however, and would
not yield her frantic pulls on it only added to
the general banging and confusion. Roy and the the dog
(41:05):
were now up, the one shouting questions, the other barking. Father,
farthest away and soundest sleeper of all, had by this
time been awakened by the battering on the attic door.
He decided that the house was on fire. Oh come, okay,
he wailed in a slow, sleepy voice. It took him
(41:25):
many minutes to regain full consciousness. My mother, still believing
he was caught under the bed, detected in his I'm coming,
the mournful resigned note of one who was preparing to
meet his maker. He's dying, she shouted, I'm all right.
Briggs yelled to reassure her. I'm all right. He still
believed that it was his own closeness to death that
(41:47):
was worrying Mother. I found at last the light switch
in my room, unlocked the door, and Briggs and I
joined the others at the attic door. The dog, who
never did like Briggs, jumped for him, assuming that he
was the culprit in whatever was going on, and Roy
had to throw Rack and hold him. We could hear
Father crawling out of the bed upstairs. Roy pulled the
(42:09):
attic door open with a mighty jerk, and Father came
down the stairs, sleepy and irritable, but safe and sound.
My mother began to weep when she saw him. Rex
began to howl. What in the name of God is
going on here? Asked father. The situation was finally put
(42:31):
together like a giant gigsaw puzzle. Father caught a cold
from prowling around in his bare feet, but there were
no other bad results. I'm glad, said mother, who always
looked on the bright side of things, that your grandfather
wasn't here. I've done all the damage I can do here.
(43:04):
I just talking to Coach Smith at halftime, and thank
you for listening. Countdown has come to you from the
Vin Scully Studios at the Old Women Broadcasting Empire in
New York. Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillips
Chanel arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister
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(43:24):
bass and drums, produced by Tko Brothers. See that's why
sometimes when I put in something that isn't true, I
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(43:45):
by Mitch Warren Davis. And we call it the Olderman
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comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Debatable,
but if you say that's not true, you're wrong. Our
announcer today was my friend Richard Lewis, and he is
(44:06):
a dear friend, so that's true. And everything else was
pretty much my fault, which has been true about me
since more or less nineteen sixty one. That's countdown for this,
the one and forty six day since dementia Jay Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States convict him now while we still can. The
next scheduled countdown is Tuesday. Bulletins as the news warrants
(44:29):
till then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(44:54):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This
is a Countdown Bulletin podcast. Joe Biden's White House Deputy
Press Secretary and Senior Communications Advisor, Andrew Bates, has issued
on Friday an extraordinary statement eviscerating Elon Musk and Twitter
(00:29):
x and the anti semitism not only promulgated on Musk's platform,
but by Musk himself personally. To read it in full,
from White House spokesperson Andrew Bates, quote, it is unacceptable
to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act
of anti Semitism in American history at any time, let
(00:52):
alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish
people since the Holocaust. Like President Biden said weeks ago
memorializing the victims of the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting, the October seventh,
quote DEBI stating atrocity has brought to the surface painful
memories left by millennia of anti semitism unquote, and under
(01:13):
his presidency quote, we will continue to condemn anti semitism
at every turn unquote, The statement continues, we condemn this
abhorrent promotion of anti Semitic and racist hate in the
strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans.
We all have a responsibility to bring people together against
(01:37):
hate and an obligation to speak out against anyone who
attacks the dignity of their fellow Americans and compromises the
safety of our communities. The statement Friday from the White
House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates. The most important part
of this statement is the fact of the statement itself.
(01:58):
It indicates that the White House is not going to
shy away from this issue, Tomess Stickley, even when the
other side, the Elon Musk amplification of the kind of
replacement theory anti Semitism behind the twenty eighteen Pittsburgh Synagogue
mass shooting, has such a huge platform behind it. As
(02:19):
Musks now provides, what is in Andrew Bates's statement is
indisputably true and it transcends as he notes the specifics
of which religion or race or group is the target
of the hate. Elon Musk and the anti Semites are peddling, promoting, pushing,
(02:39):
and trafficking in the White House is taking Elon Musk
head on. Also contained in the fact of the statement
from Deputy Press Secretary Bates is the implication that President
Biden will say something himself about what twitter X and
Musk are doing. Not necessarily a speech, although bluntly that
(03:02):
would be a terrific and impact idea, and not necessarily
drastic action against Musk or twitter x. But to issue
such a statement is to invite even the somnambulent White
House Press Corps to ask Biden about it at the
first opportunity. It is easy enough even for reporters. The
(03:26):
language is strong and unyielding. All they are required to
do is ask Biden if he agrees with it, and certainly,
when this statement was composed, none of that language was
used without President Biden's knowledge. There are words in here
such as horrific. There are words in here such as holocaust.
(03:50):
There are words in here such as millennia of anti Semitism, abhorrent,
condemn This is serious stuff. What should be next is
leveraging the power of the White House, the power of
the US government, from Congress to States to the White House,
(04:12):
to remove the Twitter x platform from Elon Musk's control.
By utilizing the very real threat that the government can
ban twitter x as a danger to American safety, it
can also cancel all contracts with Musks, SpaceX, and Tesla
(04:33):
and other firms. This I elaborated on in Friday's regular
edition of Countdown, So if you have already listened, there
is no need to play through the entirety of this
bulletin episode. But the gist is the safety and indeed
the lives not just of Jewish Americans, but of all
(04:53):
Americans who could be reduced and diminished and pigeonholed into
some minority some other in a time of hatred. These
are at risk in a time when Musk and his
Ilk slander and smear and libel whoever they feel like
(05:13):
without anyone stopping them. So, as this full episode that
follows makes clear, it is up to the United States
government to stop them. It is up to President Joe
Biden to stop them to protect American lives here in America.
Either Musk exits Twitter X or we must move to
(05:38):
ban Twitter X. It is time for the government of
the United States to ban x, the social media site
still primarily known as Twitter, and to terminate all government
(06:01):
contracts with its owner. Under Trump, the government had moved
to ban TikTok as a security risk to the United States.
So there is precedent for at least the attempt, because
a process that has been accelerating for more than a
year reached a climax Wednesday, then continued Thursday, when owner
Elon Musk answered a blatantly anti Semitic tweet echoing the
(06:23):
language of the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooter with a reply from
him that read, quote you have said the actual truth.
Combined with surging anti semitism throughout the website and the
use of Nazi hate speech and paraphrases of infamous Hitler
quotes by the likely Republican candidate for president, the tinderbox
of anti semitism, indeed of hatred against races and religions
(06:48):
of all kinds. The tinder box has never been fuller
nor drier, and Trump and Musk seemed determined to light
it ablaze, and with it, to light a blaze the
peace and the security of this nation. Ban twitter x now,
and ban all government financial dealings with Musk now, before
(07:09):
it is too late, and before the burgeoning anti semitism
of twitter x and Musk's endorsement by extension of the
mass shooting at the Pittsburgh Synagogue becomes the sole purpose
of that platform. As I said in an extraordinary irony.
The precedent for this begins with Trump's moves against TikTok,
including an executive order in twenty twenty, and then a
(07:32):
Biden Department of Justice investigation of TikTok that began on
March seventeenth of this year. The TikTok ban is a
separate issue, and I don't want to mix it in
here with the prospect of banning twitter x because in
response to the appalling fan boying of Osama bin Laden's
hate screed against America and against Jewish people on TikTok
(07:53):
this week, at least, that was followed by a meeting
between TikTok executives and prominent Jewish figures. TikTok might actually
be trying to fix things on its that remains to
be seen. Twitter x, on the other hand, is doing nothing,
and its madman owner Musk seems to have no awareness
(08:14):
of the impact of his own diseased and hateful mind,
and he has attacked those who have dared to criticize
him about this. The post that turned twitter x from
a mere sewer to a sewer on fire belching toxic smoke,
read in part quote Jewish communities have been pushing the
(08:35):
exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim
to want people to stop using against them, even though
these are virtually word for word the sentiments of the
so called Tree of Life shooter, who murdered eleven people,
including Holocaust survivors, at a synagogue in twenty eighteen. Musk replied,
as noted, quote, you have said the actual truth. When
(08:57):
criticized by the anti defamation lead, Musk doubled down. I
am deeply offended by ADL's mess and any other groups
who pushed de facto anti white racism or anti Asian racism,
or racism of any kind. I'm sick of it. Stop
it now unquote. Musk's bizarre, self destructive running of the
(09:21):
Twitter x platform had already destroyed more than half of
its value and even more of its advertising. Then yesterday afternoon,
IBM announced it was pulling it's already scheduled ads for
the next three months. The New York Times says that
was about a million dollars worth. Rather remarkably, as of
the close of business yesterday, the New York Times had
not yet canceled Musk's scheduled appearance twelve days from now
(09:45):
at a Times event that it calls its deal Book Summit,
which it describes as the gathering of quote, the most
consequential leaders in business, politics and culture unquote and I
guess the most consequential leaders in anti Semitism. It seems
impossible to believe that The Times will actually permit Musk
(10:07):
to participate in its branded event. He has not only
rendered Twitter X toxic, but the revulsion has spread to
his other companies. As the publication The Street wrote last night,
some prominent Tesla investors seemed to finally be losing faith
in the company's often controversial CEO. The stockfell roughly four
percent Thursday after Musk highlighted an anti Semitic conspiracy theory,
(10:32):
then issued a series of seemingly bigoted tweets on X.
The Future fund partner Gary Black wrote, I want to
believe the CEO's attitudes and Tesla brand equity are not linked,
but my common sense tells me otherwise. And wealth and
investment manager Ross Gerber, whose fund owned four hundred and
twenty thousand shares of Tesla at the last counting, reached
(10:55):
the inevitable conclusion. He wrote that Musk has now gone
too far. He's like Trump now as the snowball rolling
down the hill toward her reached speeds of about one
thousand miles an hour. Musk's handpicked CEO, Linda Yakarino, posted
a comment at three forty five pm Eastern that seemed
(11:16):
to have been crafted by the nation's finest satirical comedians,
maybe Tim Robinson in his hot dog suit in the
middle of the We're all trying to find the guy
who did this meme, quoting Yakarino, X's point of view
has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should
stop across the board. I think that's something we can
(11:38):
and should all agree on when it comes to this platform.
X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to
combat anti Semitism and discrimination. There's no place for it
anywhere in the world. It's ugly and wrong, full stop, unquote.
If taken sincerely and literally, Yakarino's only possible next action
(11:59):
would be to suspend the account of Elon Musk. As
a gentile, I will note that the phrase X has
also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat anti
Semitism and discrimination may also be literally true. It has
been extremely clear that it has made no efforts to
(12:19):
combat anti semitism and discrimination, and it is rather incredibly
bigger than anti semitism alone. Twitter x is rife with
other racism and other flavors of religious hatred and other
forms of discrimination at a time when the concept stigmatizing,
blaming and persecuting a generalized other, and white supremacist thuggery,
(12:44):
when these things are resurgent in the United States and elsewhere.
If Twitter x or other private entities cannot force Musk
to sell the platform immediately, he leaves the government of
the United States no other option in such a perilous time.
Congress could act, individual states could act as some have
(13:06):
acted against TikTok. The President could resort to his own
executive order, or all branches and all parties could work
in concert in a rare and frankly rather easy display
a bipartisanship. Musk has gone down a path from which
he cannot backtrack. Twitter x. At least his version of
(13:26):
it must be banned, and government contracts and other agreements local, state,
and national with his other firms, SpaceX, Tesla, the boring company, Neulink,
and Xai must be terminated today there is no other
option elsewhere another judge has proved incapable of seeing or
(13:53):
proved that he is deliberately ignoring the similar danger to
the peace and safety of the United States posed by
the musk of politics dementia j. Trump. A New York
State Appellate Division judge who identifies as a Democrat but
was appointed twenty five years ago by a Republican governor,
has joined the DC Court of Appeals in staying one
(14:13):
of the gag orders against Trump. This time it is
the gag order in the New York civil fraud case,
during which Trump has doxed Judge Arthur Engern's courtroom clerk
and fabricated a backstory for her to the benefit and
pleasure of his cult. Judge David Friedman said the order
raised constitutional and statutory rights at issue, and stayed it
(14:37):
until the full State Appeals Court panel can consider it
a week from Monday. Apart from Judge Friedman's cluelessness as
to the reality and imminence of the mortal danger to
which Trump subjects his targets, the most remarkable aspect to
the staying of this gag order, and also the one
imposed by Judge Tanya Chutkin in the federal elections subversion trial.
(14:58):
Is that. In response, Trump has shown for the first
time unexpected did weakness while celebrating his lawyer's manipulation of
Judge Friedman. In a social media post, Trump wrote about
the quote ridiculous and unconstitutional gag order not allowing me
to defend myself against him, and is politically biased and
(15:19):
out of control. Trump hating clerk unquote. In the post,
Trump names and gern Trump names the Attorney General, Letitia James.
He does not name the clerk, even though there is
nothing at the moment preventing him from doing so. It
has not been noted widely, but since the DC Appeals
Court stayed that gag order in that case, Trump has
(15:41):
barely mentioned the judge or the Special Council or anybody
else in that case. It cannot be good judgment. Trump
does not have good judgment. It has to be fear.
In another curious Trump legal twist, he has been hoist
with his own petard in the New York City criminal
case against him for falsifying business records to hide hush
(16:03):
money to Stormy Daniels. Trump's ambulance chasers moved to dismiss
that case. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has now replied by
reconstructing Trump's words of self martyrdom and using them against Trump. Quote.
Defendant repeatedly suggests, begins Bragg's filing that because he is
(16:23):
a current presidential candidate, the ordinary rules for criminal law
and procedure should be applied differently. Here. This argument is
essentially an attempt to evade criminal responsibility because defendant is
politically powerful. Courts have repeatedly rejected Defendant's demands for special
treatment and instead have adhered to the core principle that
(16:47):
the rule of law applies equally to the power full
as to the powerless. Unquote did you say that, mister
District Attorney? What a guy. I'm hoping that mister Bragg
sent a copy of that to Jack Smith. Judge Eileen Cannon,
the former yoga and flamenco dancing correspondent of the Miami
(17:08):
Nuevo Herald, has refused to establish now a deadline for
Trump to disclose which classified materials he later intends to
use in his defense in the Florida case. Establishing the
deadline now would increase the chances of keeping the already
tardy Florida trial schedule intact. Judge Cannon says she will
(17:30):
set that deadline in March of next year, not four
March of next year, but in March of next year.
The trial is supposed to begin in May. Reporters covering
that trial and legal experts guess that we are now
several months behind that schedule and the thing can't possibly
start before July. Clearly, Judge Cannon has no intention of
(17:54):
ever going back to covering yoga and flamenco as another
note of curiosity. As the Trump circumspection in the wake
of the stage bag order seems strange, so does Special
Counsel Smith's relative inactivity, some might say inertness when it
comes to delay after delay sought by Trump and granted
(18:17):
by the judge Trump appointed. It's almost as if the
Florida case is there is a sidebar to the DC case,
and Smith isn't trying to get other courts to overrule
Judge Cannon in order to foster some sense in Trump
that his lawyers are not idiots and his strategy is
not going to guarantee his conviction in Washington and not
(18:39):
guarantee that he will die in prison and in hockey
at least this would all be called a deek on.
One more thing to add to Trump's paranoia, special council
investigating the small collection of mishandled classified documents in two
locations connected to President Biden. CNN quotes two sources close
(18:59):
to that investigation as saying that the investigation is complete
and the Special Council, Robert Hrr, is writing an extensive
report and he is going to charge nobody, nobody with nothing.
(19:20):
Also of interest here to continue the hockey imagery, George
Santos is two thirds of the way to a hat trick.
After the ethics report came in. He's saying he will
not run for reelection. What in waste the negative sixteen
thousand dollars his campaign did not raise in the third quarter,
and momentum is building towards expelling him, which would leave
(19:40):
only the third option where he quits immediately. And there
is startling new research that the Republicans actually would not
miss his vote. And speaking of fraud, there is the
sportscaster here, Curisa Thompson's startling boast that some of her
halftime off camera Network TV interviews with football coaches happened
(20:05):
and she just made the stuff up. It's shocking unless
she also just made that up. That's next. This discountdown.
This is countdown with Keith Olberman. Postscripts to the news,
(20:31):
some headlines, some updates, some snark, some predictions. Dateline. Washington
House Ethics Committee report is back. Surprise, surprise, surprise, George
Santos doesn't have any In response, Speaker Ugly Johnson has
advised members to consider whether or not to vote to
(20:51):
expel him. Santo says he will not run for reelection.
He may try to position that as a great moral
stance for a change. In fact, it probably has more
to do with the fact that his campaign fundraising for
the third order of this year was minus sixteen five
hundred dollars. But most interesting of all, the impeccable Philip
(21:12):
Bump of the Washington Post has researched all the Republican
votes since they swore Santos in Santos if that is
his real name, and guess what. The Republicans actually did
not need him there to pass anything, not even usual
Republican time wasting stuff. Quoting Phil Bump's calculations, there have
(21:35):
been nearly six hundred and seventy four votes this year,
only ten resulted in a one vote margin or in
a tie. And while that would theoretically mean that in
those ten votes you could say Santos's vote was essential
in getting Republican stuff passed, Bump found a surprising caveat
none of the amendments or bills covered by those ten
(21:56):
votes ever became law anyway. Each one of them passed
the House and then went into conference with the Senate,
where they all all died. Bump has also found out
that as the year has gone by, Santos has become
a less reliable vote for Republicans, so from the GOP
point of view, instead of helping their well oiled voting
(22:18):
machine in Congress, he had become kind of a drag. Sorry,
(23:09):
thank you, Nancy Faust. And yes, if Santos does resign,
the likeliest successor to his seat is Republican newcomer Katara
Ravasche Dateline, San Francisco. Most of them will never believe it,
but another right wing conspiracy theory just blew up. David
(23:29):
de Pap has been found guilty on both counts in
his violent attack with a hammer against Nancy Pelosi's husband
after Depap broke into their home hoping to kidnap and
or torture and or assassinate her. De Pap could face
maximum sentences of thirty and twenty years on the two
convictions and dateline Washington. Another part of the Tucker Carlson
(23:54):
Maga January sixth conspiracy theory. No, not the ghost USUS thing,
but rather the Antifa plant thing is again disproven. John
Earl Sullivan, widely proclaimed to be an informant or a
plant or something, who said he was just a citizen journalist,
just a member of Black Lives Matter who happened to
(24:15):
record the shooting of the terrorist Ashley babbittt He has
been convicted on all counts, including carrying a knife into
the Capitol. His lawyers may have sealed his fate for
him when they called another quote citizen journalist unquote to
testify on his behalf, and she played video of him
shouting into a bullhorn, exhorting the crowd to go into
(24:36):
the capitol and telling that crowd, We're about to burn
this spit down. Unclear how much time he'll spend in
the big house. Unclear how much money he spent on
those lawyers. Still ahead of us on countdown Fridays with
(25:12):
Thurber and the one of all of his short stories
that has been in middle and junior, high school and
high school textbooks for eighty years, The Night the Bed
Fell first time. For the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons,
and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons
in the world. The Brons to Caitlin Jenner, who responded
(25:36):
to a Donald Trump Junior post about how people of
a certain age should be able to use the R word.
If you're not clear what I mean by that. The
R word is a version of one of the words
in the following phrase fire retardant. Jenner responded to the
Trump tweet quote, I'll say it quote retarted unquote. She
(26:00):
spelled it wrong. R E T A R T ed
like you we're a tart and now you're a tart again?
What a tart? The runner up, well, why it's Trump
Junior again in his own right. His word of the
day was Congresswoman. I thank Ron Philipkowski for pointing this out.
It's worth listening to a couple of times from his
(26:23):
video cast as Junior tries to introduce Marjorie Taylor Green
and gets it wrong. I love this one Congress rooman
MTG Marjorie Taylor Green. We're gonna be talking to her
new book. I love this one Congress rooman MTG Marjorie
Taylor Green, friends, congress romans, countrymen, lend me your ears,
(26:47):
But our winner is Curisa Thompson, former football sideline reporter
at Fox and at this rate, former sports broadcaster. I
did the baseball equivalent of the sideline reporter job dugout
reporter I guess for about twenty twenty five games for
Fox Sports and NBC from nine two thousand and I
remember once needing to get a reaction in the middle
(27:08):
of a game from Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and having
to literally crawl under a camera and then crawl through
a half door to get out of the Yankee Stadium
dugout and back towards where Selig was seated. So this
was kind of shocking. On a podcast, MS Thompson announced
where it actually is, boasted that when tasked with doing
(27:30):
some of those I talked to coach Smith halftime reports.
She she didn't she didn't talk to coach Smith. She
just just she just made it up.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
And I've said this before so I haven't been fired
for saying it, but I'll say it again. I would
make up the report sometimes because a the coach wouldn't
come out at halftime or it was too late, and
I was like, I didn't want to screw up the report.
So I was like, I'm just going to make this
up because first of all, no coach is going to
get mad if I say, hey, we need to stop
hurting ourselves. We needed to be better on third down,
(28:02):
we need to stop turning the ball over. Yeah, exactly,
and do a better job of getting off the field.
Like they're not going to correct me on that. I'm like,
it's fine, I'll just make.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Up the report now. In terms of the quality of
the journalistic content, Miss Thompson is entirely correct. The coach
rarely ever says anything maybe we do not need sideline reporters.
But then there's that one time when you talk to
him or to somebody and he says something like what
happened during a near riot at a playoff game at
(28:32):
Fenway Park in nineteen ninety nine On Fox. I got
Yankees owner George stein Renner for my little report, and
I said something really deep, like what do you think George,
and George said he thought that the Red Sox manager
Jimmy Williams had incited the crowd to riot. That was
a hell of a statement, and it basically became the
(28:52):
lead story that night and the next day. And I
didn't contribute anything more to that than asking George if
he would come on with me, and then asking him
the most generic question ever, But I asked him. You
can't not ask them and then say you ask them.
(29:13):
You can't make it up. The premise is you never
make it up. Manel or trivial or meaningless. You can't
make it up, and you certainly can't then boast about
making it up. Harrissa Thompson is the host of Thursday
Night Football on Amazon Management. There was asked by The
Sports Business Journal if she would address this or if
(29:34):
there'd be a suspension or something, and the answer came back, quote,
she was telling the story from fifteen years ago. Unquote. Well,
we assume she was telling a story from fifteen years ago,
unless she made that up, too, Which is the point.
You say something like that and you kind of destroy
the presumption that you're not making stuff up all the time.
(29:55):
There are three other dimensions to this, The people who
did the podcast tweeted out the clip, apparently proudly, and
then when the blowback occurred, they deleted it. The other
two dimensions to this I think are really mallid. At
least a dozen other women who still work as sideline reporters,
especially in football, were appalled at Thompson's revelation. They work hard,
(30:19):
the results, the goals, what they are there for. That's
not their decision, that's not their fault. They work hard,
they do what they're supposed to do. And Mike Freeman,
a veteran football reporter and an African American man, asked
a really disturbing and important question. What if that announcement
I didn't interview the coach, I just made up what
(30:40):
he probably would have said. What if that had been
made by a sideline reporter who was also an African
American man? How quickly would he have been fired? And justifiably,
you can't make it up. Amazon may not be able
to fire her, she didn't make it up while she
was working for them, But how do you keep her
on your broadcast when she's admitted toting a key element
(31:06):
of all football broadcasts. Harisa I wouldn't worry too much
about the next contract negotiation. Thompson two days, worst person
in the world to say he had no comment. I
(31:33):
have argued before that James Thurber is the greatest American humorist,
and it dawns on me that the argument is not
unlike the idea that shohe Otani of the Los Angeles
Angels is almost automatically the most valuable player in baseball
each year because he is an All Star hitter and
an All Star pitcher in the same body. James Thurber
(31:54):
was a brilliant writer, and in his spare time, he
was an equally brilliant, almost avant garde artist in the
same body. His simple drawings to pick the most complex
of emote and comedic situations. His dogs are immortal, and
then there were his captions. Well, I can't do anything
with his drawings in a podcast, so I'll just read
(32:14):
and I will read you now in this episode, what
is probably his most famous story from my life in
hard times, the night the bed fell James Thurber. I
suppose that the high water mark of my youth in Columbus,
Ohio was the night the bed fell on my father.
(32:37):
It makes a better recitation unless, as some friends of
mine have said, one has heard it five or six
times than it does a piece of writing, For it
is almost necessary to throw furniture around, shakedoors and bark
like a dog to lend the proper atmosphere and verisimilitude
to what is admittedly a somewhat incredible tale. Still it
(32:59):
did take place. It happened then that my father had
decided to sleep in the attic one night, to be
away where he could think. My mother opposed the notion
strongly because she said the old wooden bed up there
was unsafe. It was wobbly, and the heavy headboard would
crash down on father's head in case the bed fell
and kill him. There was no dissuading him, however, and
(33:24):
at a quarter past ten, he closed the attic door
behind him and went up the narrow, twisting stairs. We
later heard am in his creakings as he crawled into bed. Grandfather,
who usually slept in the attic bed when he was
with us, had disappeared some days before. On those occasions,
he was usually gone six or eight days, and returned
growling and out of temper, with the news that the
(33:46):
Federal Union was run by a passel of blockheads, and
that the army of the Potomac didn't have any more
chance than a fiddler's bitch. We had visiting us at
the time, a nervous first cousin of mine named Briggs Beale,
who believed that he was likely to cease breathing when
he was asleep. He was his feeling that if he
were not awakened every hour during the night, he might
(34:09):
die of suffocation. He had been accustomed to setting an
alarm clock to ring at intervals until morning, but I
persuaded him to abandon this. He slept in my room,
and I told him that I was such a light
sleeper that if anybody quit breathing in the same room
with me, I would wake instantly. He tested me the
first night, which I had suspected he would, by holding
(34:32):
his breath after my regular breathing, had convinced him I
was asleep. I was not asleep, however, and called to him.
This seemed to allay his fears a little, but he
took the precaution of putting a glass of spirits of
camphor on a little table at the head of his
bed in case I didn't arouse him. Until he was
(34:53):
almost gone, he said he would sniff the camphor. A
powerful reviver, Briggs was not the only member of his
family who had his crotchets. Old Aunt Melissa Beal, who
could whistle like a man with two fingers in her mouth,
suffered under the premonition that she was destined to die
on South High Street because she had been born on
(35:14):
South High Street and married on South High Street. Then
there was Aunt Sarah Schauf, who never went to bed
at night without the fear that a burglar was going
to get in and blow chloroform under her door through
a tube. To avert this calamity, for she was in
greater dread of anesthetics than of losing her household goods.
(35:34):
She always piled her money, silverware, and other valuables in
a neat stack just outside her bedroom, with a note reading,
this is all I have. Please take it and do
not use your chloroform, as this is all I have.
Aunt Gracie's Chauf also had a burglar phobia, but she
met it with more fortitude. She was confident that burglars
(35:55):
had been getting into her house every night for forty years.
The fact that she never missed anything was to her
no proof to the contrary, always claimed that she scared
them off before they could take anything by throwing shoes
down the hallway. When she went to bed, she piled
where she could get at them handily, all the shoes
(36:16):
there were about her house. Five minutes after she had
turned off the light, she would sit up in bed
and say hark. Her husband, who had learned to ignore
the whole situation as long ago as nineteen o three,
would either be sound asleep or pretend to be sound asleep.
In either case, he would not respond to her tugging
(36:37):
and pulling, so that presently she would arise, tiptoe to
the door, open it slightly, and heave a shoe down
the hall in one direction, and its mate down the
hall in the other direction. Some nights she threw them all,
some nights only a couple of pear. But I am
straying from the remarkable incidents that took place during the
(36:59):
night that the bed fell on father. By midnight we
were all in bed. Layout of the rooms and the
disposition of their occupants is important to an understanding of
what later occurred. In the front room upstairs, just under
father's attic bedroom, where my mother and my brother Herman,
who sometimes sang in his sleep, usually marching through Georgia
(37:21):
or onward Christian soldiers. Briggs Beale and myself were in
a room adjoining this one. My brother Roy was in
a room across the hall from ours. Now our bull
terrier Wrecks slept in the hall. My bed was an
army cot, one of those affairs which were made wide
enough to sleep on comfortably only by putting up flat
with the middle section the two sides, which ordinarily hang
(37:44):
down like the sideboards of a drop leaf table. When
these sides are up, it is perilous to roll too
far toward the edge, for then the cot is likely
to tip completely over, bringing the whole bed down on
top of one with a tremendous banging crash. This, in fact,
is precisely what happened about two o'clock in the morning.
(38:07):
It was my mother who, in recalling the scene later
first referred to it as the night the bedfellow on.
Your father, always a deep sleeper and slow to arouse,
I had lied to Briggs. I was at first unconscious
of what had happened when the ironcot rolled me onto
the floor and toppled over on me. It left me
(38:28):
still warmly bundled up and unheard, for the bed rested
above me like a canopy. Hence I did not wake up,
only reached the edge of consciousness and went back. The racket, however,
instantly awakened my mother in the next room, who came
to the immediate conclusion that her worst dread was realized.
The big wooden bed upstairs had fallen on father. She
(38:49):
therefore screamed, let's go to your poor father. It was
this shout, rather than the noise of my cot falling,
that awakened Herman in the same room with her, He
thought that mother had become, for no apparent reason, hysterical.
All right, Mama, he shouted, trying to calmer. They exchanged
shout for shout for perhaps ten seconds. Let's go to
(39:12):
your poor father, and you're all right. That woke up Briggs.
By this time I was conscious of what was going
on in a vague way, but did not yet realize
that I was under my bed instead of on it. Briggs,
awakening in the midst of loud shouts of fear and apprehension,
(39:32):
came to the quick conclusion that he was suffocating, and
that we were all trying to bring him out. With
a low moan, he grasped the glass of camphor at
the head of his bed, and instead of sniffing it,
he poured it over himself. The room reeked of camphor.
Uh Ah, choked Briggs like a drowning man, for he
(39:55):
had almost succeeded in stopping his breath under the deluge
of pungent spirits. He leaped out of bed and groped
toward the open window, but he came up against one
that closed. With his hand, he beat out the glass,
and I could hear it crash and tinkle on the
alleyway below. He was at this juncture that I, in
trying to get up, had the uncanny sensation of feeling
(40:18):
my bed above me foggy with sleep. I now suspected,
in my turn, that the whole uproar was being made
in a frantic endeavor to extricate me from what must
be an unheard of and perilous situation. Get me out
of this, I bawled, Get me out. I think I
had the night marriage belief that I was entombed in
a mine o gas. Briggs floundering in his camphor. By
(40:43):
this time my mother still shouting, pursued by Hermann, still shouting,
was trying to open the door to the attic in
order to go up and get my father's body out
of the wreckage. The door was stuck, however, and would
not yield her frantic pulls on it only added to
the general banging and confusion. Roy and the the dog
(41:05):
were now up, the one shouting questions, the other barking. Father,
farthest away and soundest sleeper of all, had by this
time been awakened by the battering on the attic door.
He decided that the house was on fire. Oh come, okay,
he wailed in a slow, sleepy voice. It took him
(41:25):
many minutes to regain full consciousness. My mother, still believing
he was caught under the bed, detected in his I'm coming,
the mournful resigned note of one who was preparing to
meet his maker. He's dying, she shouted, I'm all right.
Briggs yelled to reassure her. I'm all right. He still
believed that it was his own closeness to death that
(41:47):
was worrying Mother. I found at last the light switch
in my room, unlocked the door, and Briggs and I
joined the others at the attic door. The dog, who
never did like Briggs, jumped for him, assuming that he
was the culprit in whatever was going on, and Roy
had to throw Rack and hold him. We could hear
Father crawling out of the bed upstairs. Roy pulled the
(42:09):
attic door open with a mighty jerk, and Father came
down the stairs, sleepy and irritable, but safe and sound.
My mother began to weep when she saw him. Rex
began to howl. What in the name of God is
going on here? Asked father. The situation was finally put
(42:31):
together like a giant gigsaw puzzle. Father caught a cold
from prowling around in his bare feet, but there were
no other bad results. I'm glad, said mother, who always
looked on the bright side of things, that your grandfather
wasn't here. I've done all the damage I can do here.
(43:04):
I just talking to Coach Smith at halftime, and thank
you for listening. Countdown has come to you from the
Vin Scully Studios at the Old Women Broadcasting Empire in
New York. Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillips
Chanel arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister
Chanale handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars,
(43:24):
bass and drums, produced by Tko Brothers. See that's why
sometimes when I put in something that isn't true, I
put it in for comedic effect. I say I made
that part up. Other music, including other Beethoven tunes, arranged
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports
music is courtesy of ESPN, Inc. And it was written
(43:45):
by Mitch Warren Davis. And we call it the Olderman
theme from ESPN two. Now, the reason I say we
call it the Olderman theme from ESPN two is it
really didn't have a title. Our satirical and fifthy musical
comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Debatable,
but if you say that's not true, you're wrong. Our
announcer today was my friend Richard Lewis, and he is
(44:06):
a dear friend, so that's true. And everything else was
pretty much my fault, which has been true about me
since more or less nineteen sixty one. That's countdown for this,
the one and forty six day since dementia Jay Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States convict him now while we still can. The
next scheduled countdown is Tuesday. Bulletins as the news warrants
(44:29):
till then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(44:54):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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