September 3, 2024 • 53 mins
SEASON 3 EPISODE 19: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Once again, American political media is broken in a new way. Trump has now blamed the families of the dead servicemen he was supposedly honoring at Arlington for his campaign illegally filming and illegally using that video for political purposes. The female victim of physical abuse by Trump staff is afraid to escalate her complaint and so is the military - and the media is doing its best to cover it all up like they cover up everything else Trump does.
TRUMP filmed a commercial while standing on top of the graves of dead American war heroes. I’m surprised he didn’t try to sell us sneakers or bitcoin or the rest of his crap. And his staffers assaulted a woman employee at Arlington National Cemetery. And he blamed the families of the dead because his campaign broke the law. And his fascist gang of thugs is running wild with this as if Kamala Harris has anything to do with it. And eight days later there STILL isn’t a Senate investigation or a Defense Department investigation and one of them better be started goddamned immediately.
The media is ALSO covering up Trump's Egypt bribe, his mental condition, whatever was in the emails hacked from his campaign, and the nonexistent Wille Brown Flight Logs. Because between its own failures, its own loss of moral compass, and its own fear of retribution, it is a de facto arm of the Trump campaign.
THERE IS GOOD POLLING NEWS: Not only is Harris up by 6 in ABC-Ipsos but the Times' battleground data suggests the number one issue for women in swing states has changed from the economy to abortion. And private polling for Trump in New Hampshire is so bad they're punting the state - and punting the guy whose memo about the polling somehow got to the Boston Globe.
B-Block (30:41) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Peter Hasson of Free Beacon and the implication that because Kamala Harris never put her summer job on her resume, it didn't happen (I will tell you of my summer job climbing into Hostess Thrift Store Dumpsters with an exacto knife). Harris has "puppet masters" says Tulsi Gabbard, who evidently doesn't know about antisemitic tropes. And Erick Erickson says her career began on her knees in front of Willie Brown, as if Erick Erickson could ever get up off his own knees.
C-Block (43:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If fall college semesters have started and the National Football League starts Thursday that means only one thing for me: the day my college professor nearly failed all of us, because of one of the most infamous meatheaded plays in NFL history. Of Joe Pisarcik and Cornell History.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump
filmed a commercial while standing on top of the graves
(00:25):
of dead American war heroes. I am surprised he didn't
try to sell us sneakers or trading cards or bitcoin
or the rest of his shit. And his staffers assaulted
a woman employee at Arlington National Cemetery, and he blamed
the families of the dead because his campaign broke the
law at his fascist gang of thugs is running wild
(00:48):
with this, as if Kamala Harris has anything to do
with it. And eight days later, there still is at a
Senate investigation, or a Defense Department investigation, or a real
journalistic investigation, and one of them better be started, god
damned immediately. And the media continued to cover up for
Donald Trump. Cover up. Not the cover up of his
(01:11):
campaign emails hacked by a foreign government and sent to
the New York Times, Washington Post and Politico. Not their
cover up of that story, because this time that matters.
Not the cover up of the reported ten million dollar
bribing of Trump just before the twenty sixteen election by
President Elcesi of Egypt. Not that cover up by the
(01:35):
major newspapers and by the Department of Justice, which should
just publicly release all it has on the Egyptian bribe,
and if it won't, Biden should order it to not
That cover up. The cover up of Trump grinning like
the psychotic that he is, thumbs up, violating all codes
of decency and respect for veterans, which can only be
(01:58):
re established in this country if we prosecute scumbags like
Trump who helped to tear them down every day. The
cover up of him illegally filming a commercial for his
campaign to end democracy and filming it in a place
marked no political activity. The cover up of whoever hit
(02:20):
an Arlington National Cemetery employee and how they hit her,
and the cover up of why she is now too
afraid to proceed or to go public. Where is the
daily pounding on this utterly, transcendently disgusting story, this deeply
(02:41):
meaningful story, and most importantly for the simpletons running places
like the New York Times, the Washington Post in Politico,
this really easy to follow story. I give the New
York Times some credit for paying some attention to this story,
but even they have let it slide, even as the
Trump campaign continues to use the video illegally shot not
(03:05):
only to promote his campaign, but also to try to
smear the vice president because she didn't literally dance on
the graves of soldiers alongside Trump the way Trump did.
But even this from the Times, this is six days old. Quote.
The family of a Green Beret who died by suicide
(03:25):
after serving eight combat tours and is buried at Arlington
express concern Wednesday that Trump's campaign had filmed his gravesite
without permission, as Trump stood in an area where campaign
photography is not allowed. Relatives of Master Sergeant Andrew Marcasano
(03:46):
issued their statement two days after Trump's visit, which also
included a confrontation between members of the Trump campaign and
an Arlington employee. The former president's campaign took video in
a heavily restricted section of the cemetery known as Section sixty,
which is largely reserved for the fallen veterans of the
Iraq and acts Afghanistan wars. A woman who works at
(04:07):
the cemetery filed an incident report with the military authorities
over the altercation, but the official, who has not been identified,
later declined to press charges. Military officials said she feared
mister Trump's supporters pursuing retaliation unquote. You will recall that
(04:31):
the worker who asked them to stop was yelled at
by Trump goons then abused physically in some way. We
still don't know if it was a tap on the
shoulder or a broken goddamn jaw. Then, when the story
of how the Trump people trampled the graves of the
war dead at Arlington National Cemetery, this Trump spokesclown Stephen
(04:57):
Chung said the woman who tried to stop them was
quote suffering from a mental health episode. And this phony
Trump patriot Chris las Sevida, the swift boat asshole, called
her a quote despicable individual who does not deserve to
represent the hollowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, and half
(05:19):
the media, including The Times, covered up the fact that
this idiot las Savita indeed wrote hollowed as in hollowed
out conscience instead of the correct word, which is hallowed
with an A. And by the way, when the Trump
campaign issued a statement from Senator Tom Cotton, who was
a candidate for Dumbest Man Alive but he looks serious,
(05:42):
so Trump likes him, the quote from Cotton misspelled the
word cemetery, and your goddamn right. It matters because it's
the Arlington National Cemetery, and since literally the Civil War
when we seized it from the trader Robert E. Lee,
it has been our most hallowed ground, this cemetery, and
(06:03):
these Trump it it's can't even get that part right,
let alone the laws right, or the respect right, or
the solemnity right required of anybody who goes there. I mean,
do you know who the Sullivan brothers are. They are
in Arlington two. They're going to be there for a while.
They're in Section MC, basically across the street from Section
(06:28):
thirty five. They're the equivalent of about three city blocks
away from where Trump shot his commercial. The former marine
and former Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Kesling brought this up.
The Sullivans were five brothers from Iowa who served together
in the Second World War on the same ship, on
(06:49):
the light cruiser USS, you know, and it was sunk
by the Japanese at Guadalcanal on November thirteenth, nineteen forty two,
and they all died, all five of them, all five brothers.
Trump could have taken five minutes to go and salute them,
or five seconds to salute anybody at Arlington, even Robert F.
(07:12):
Kennedy Senior the hell. As Kesling notes, this isn't the
first time Trump specifically ignored the Sullivan brothers. Waterloo, Iowa
named its convention center after them, and Kesling was there
when Trump campaigned there more than eight years ago. And
just to be as cynical as possible, you go to
the Sullivan Center, it's a layup politically. There's a big
(07:34):
picture of them, their story, their deaths, where they are now,
unbelievably tragic story. Trump didn't pose with the picture. He
didn't reference them in the speech at their center. Just
like a week ago yesterday, he just went to Arlington
as he'd gone to Waterloo, just to sell you more shit,
(07:55):
and f the Sullivans and f the soldiers in Afghanistan,
and especially f this Arlington employee, and after yelling at
the employee, after touching or slandering her, questioning her mental health,
questioning her patriotism, threatening her in some way, when it
was reported that she initially filed her report then declined
(08:16):
to pursue it at Joint Base Meyer Henderson Hall in
Virginia for fear of retaliation. This breathing cartoon spokesman Stephen
Chung went in for another hit, quoting him that is
ridiculous and sounds like someone who has Trump derangement syndrome. Unquote.
You know who has Trump derangement syndrome? Trump Trump has
(08:39):
Trump derangement syndrome. He's the one with the derangement. Oh.
By the way, there are two fatally flawed strains of
pseudo logic operating within our newsrooms that are covering up
for Trump about Arlington and all the other stories. One
of these strains is, as the Inn saying goes, that
(09:01):
this is another opportunity for news organizations with vestigial and
long since expired reputations for being liberal, like The Times
could be mistaken for liberal anymore. It's an opportunity for
them to comply in advance in case Trump regains power.
The other pseudo logic is this claim that Trump people
(09:23):
continued to belch that they have exculpatory video of this
incident with that crazy National Cemetery employee and it'll show
you and don't you dare criticize Trump because you'll look
really stupid when we release the video and take our revenge.
And there are eighth graders starting at school newspapers this week,
(09:45):
this minute. Who know there is no video that the
only video Trump has he shot illegally and used all
of it illegally for an illegal campaign. Add but don't
try explaining that to the New York Times, the Washington
Post in Politico, because for them to say there is
no video requires them to say something. And the point
(10:09):
right now is for them to not say anything. Two
generations of the fascist Republicans working the refs of the
media of this nation, plus the ever spiraling gyre of
the shrinking news business, have in short worked. Democracy may
(10:31):
die in darkness, but inside the Washington Post, the real
fear is the Washington Post will die because somebody there
said something. Now when others say something, When the family
of the PTSD suicide whose grave was shown by Trump
(10:51):
without that family's permission, when they say something, then then
the Times or the Post or the others will go
just far enough out onto that limb to point at
what they said and say, oh, please, don't hurt us.
Right wingers keep buying our shit newspapers. Trump blamed the
(11:14):
family of the soldier he was supposedly honoring. It wasn't us.
We just saw it on the TV. Then and only
then will they report something like this, should your campaign
have put out those videos and photos? Well, we have
a lot of.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
People, you know, we have people, TikTok people.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
You know, we're leading the internet. That was the other thing.
We're so far above her on.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
The end, I'm not hallowed ground so that they have.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Put out I don't know what the rules and regulations are.
I don't know who did it. And it could have
been them. It could have been the parents, it could
have been somebody. It was your campaign's TikTok theild I
put out there.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I really don't know anything about it.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
All I do is I stood there and I said,
if you'd like to have a picture, we can have
a picture. If somebody did, if this was a setup
by the people in the administration that oh Trump is
coming to Arlington.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
That looks so bad for us. There ought to be
a story in every newspaper every day demanding that the
Trump campaign released the video showing it was the woman
employee who attacked the Trump campaign goons, you know, the
video that doesn't exist, because otherwise he gets away with it,
like he's getting away with the Egypt bribe, like he's
(12:22):
getting away with whatever was in the emails the Iranians hacked,
because this election foreign hacking matters. Like he's getting away
with saying Kamala Harris treated Mike Pence terribly because she
told him to stop interrupting him during the debate, as
opposed to you know, the whole gallowsy hangy thing that
Trump did. Like he's getting away with the Willie Brown
(12:46):
helicopter flight logs from when Brown slimed Kamala Harris. He's
going to release them from ten years ago. Only it
wasn't ten years ago, and they didn't talk about Harris,
and for that matter, it wasn't Willie Brown, and it
wasn't ten years ago, and it wasn't a helicopter, and
it wasn't in San Francisco. He's getting away with it,
(13:11):
and you get away with it when the media covers
up for you so thoroughly, so automatically, as the Times
and the Post and the politico operations of this world
and all but a few others are so thoroughly, so
automatically defaulting to covering up for Trump. Not wanting to
(13:31):
touch it, it's too much trouble. It's a third rail.
Nothing good can come of it. Everybody knows he's crazy.
We can't report this. They're doing it so thoroughly that
the Trump campaign and the Trump psychopaths don't even have
to bother to cover it up themselves anymore. By the way,
(14:11):
the Arlington National Cemetery employee slimed and manhandled by the
Trump campaign in ways we still don't know, she doesn't
have to in effect press charges. The army can take
it from here. The evidence is the commercial. The Trump
physical attack on her is almost unbelievable, but in one
(14:33):
context it's unnecessary to this story. The laws were broken,
whether they beat her over the head with a tire
iron or they said sorry, ma'am and bowed on the
way out and the breeze was too strong for her.
But you're not going to read about that either, because
the media is so so broken. It was broken in
(14:56):
twenty sixteen. It tried with some success to fix itself
in twenty twenty, but it's now broken in new and
worse your waves. Joe Scarborough, who has unsuccessfully tried to
purge from the Internet all those photos of Trump standing
next to him like he Scarborough was also a tombstone,
(15:19):
and both of them are grinning like con men giving
the thumbs up sign. Joe Scarborough his show followed up
on the CNN Kamala Harrison interview last week with a
focus group of mixed race voters, and sure enough, one
of them, a guy named Adul Ali, just happens to
(15:39):
echo this Trump insult to everybody in the world, almost
word for word, quoting from the Scarborough focus group. I
didn't know she was black until a number of years
ago when she happened to turn black, and now she
wants to be known as black. I don't know is
she Indian or is she black? Unquote this Adul Ali
(16:02):
is a Trump podcaster running for Congress as the Republican
in the North Carolina twelfth Congressional district as a Trumpist.
And guess you never mentioned that. Joe Scarborough and his
people and MSNBC, and they matter of factly told the
(16:23):
website Mediaite. Sure they knew he was a Republican running
for Congress, they just didn't mention it. That's where we
are again. The media is pitted against the Democratic candidate
because bluntly, liberals do not punish bad media. I don't
(16:43):
care about that. I think the Democratic candidate can handle it.
For herself. What I'm worried about is this also coincides
with the reality that the media is pitted against democracy
as a result of this stand up for democracy. You guys,
you're all going to wind up in the camps with us.
You saw this from Politico. Next question, Harris evades questions
(17:07):
about her identity. This was in the wake of the
CNN interview with Kamala Harris, which admittedly didn't provide a
lot of headlines. And Kamala Harris did, as I've said before,
showed respray I could never muster in thirty five thousand lifetimes.
They read her the Trump quote about turning black and
she just went same old playbook. Next question. It was
(17:31):
a dignified answer to a piece of shit. Next question,
Harris evades questions about her identity. Well, the blowback on
this the ratio of let me see if I've got
this right. The ratio on the tweet was fifty seven million,
two three. That's a lot, isn't it. I made those
(17:53):
numbers up, but what the hell it's Politico. Politico then
changed in a matter of I guess three hours or
so to Harris sidesteps the spotlight when it comes to
her identity, and of course the picture of her from
the video still says next question, Harris evades questions, and
then they did a little thread for the record. This
(18:16):
replaces a deleted tweet to better reflect Harris's response. It's
a funny way to spell apology. We're idiots, We're Politico,
We're run by a German right winger. We have retreads
who got fired from every other news organization in the world.
You saw this from the New York Times. They got
(18:38):
something wrong, they tried to fix it. They got it
wrong again in a different way. If you saw this.
The Moms for Liberty can get a bit carried away,
one of their local chapters, once accidentally quoted Atoll Hitler,
He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future. Well, well,
(18:59):
well that's fun. Accidentally, the Moms for Liberty can get
a bit carried away, one of their local chapters, once
quoted Adolf Hitler. He alone, who owns the youth, gains
the future. A correction was made on September first, twenty
twenty four. At the Times wrote an earlier version of
this article incorrectly said that a local chapter of Moms
for Liberty had accidentally quoted Adolf Hitler in a newsletter.
(19:22):
The group, which later issued an apology, was aware that
the quote was from Hitler when the newsletter was published. Well,
the Times correction is wrong. They didn't just acknowledge that
they were aware Hitler, said that they defended quoting Hitler.
They defended quoting Hitler after people in their own organization
(19:42):
threatened to shut this chapter of Moms for Liberty, which
is a brand name. After that, then finally they apologized,
you saw this from Puck News, from this perpetual hot
and cold running clown Dylan Buyers representing the closed ranks
of political media. Fascist propaganda dits are not really fascist propagandists.
(20:08):
It's just stiff. Fox News is just another flavor of
news right, and it's like MSNBC. It's a different kind.
One is sweet, one is sour. You decide which is witch.
Not even the fascist propagandists whose names came up in
the dominion lawsuit and are shown in texts trying to
get their own network to take back their call of
(20:31):
Arizona for Joe Biden in twenty twenty, they're not really
fascist propagandists. They're the same as everybody else. This is
what Dylan Byers wrote first, The perceived bias of television
news networks is almost always a red herring, bullshit. Of
the three well known popular television networks, add Fox and CNN.
(20:55):
Let's make it five. I've worked for NBC, I've worked
for Fox, I've worked for CNN. I worked locally for
ABC and CBS. Why it's a complete set. Guess what.
The perceived bias of television news networks is almost never
a red herring. Actually, but he goes on all available
evidence suggests foxes Brett Bhar and Martha McCallum would be
(21:18):
equally responsible moderators or interviewers of either candidate. Likewise, NBC's
Less Your hold In, Savannah Guthrie, by the Way, Savannah
Guthrie and Less Your Whole perfectly nice people, Ciphers, there's
nobody there. They're television performers. At one point each of
them was a newsman or newswoman. But they're Cipher's. Martha
(21:42):
McCallum is a Republican who often advocates for right wing
causes on her show and takes a right wing slanted
point of view. And as I said, Brett Behar is
in this huge lawsuit, demanding that his own network, and
he's the newsman, added, demanding that they put Arizona back
in play, because it's making everybody look bad for all
(22:03):
the mission creep. Dylan Byers right, anybody knows creeps. It
would be Dylan Byer's for all the mission creep and
conflicts of interest in TV news. These days, all of
the major companies, yes, even Fox, employ capable newsmen and
women whose reputations, like those of the network that employ them,
depend on their ability to moderate a debate or conduct
an interview with journalistic integrity. I'm waiting for the punchline
(22:27):
to this, in which it turns out Dylan Byers does
not own a TV of any kind. To a quick
run of the polls New York Times in Swing States,
the number one issue in Swing states for women voters
(22:48):
is no longer the economy. It is abortion. ABC ipsos
Harris by six over the weekend. Favorable's good for her
and for Walls, not so hot for the Republicans, widening
her advantage among women. In the new ABC News IPSOS poll,
(23:09):
she now leads by thirteen points, fifty four to forty one.
Among the men, Trump leads by five fifty one forty six,
which is declared not statistically significant. Between the lines to
use the phrase the female male change occurs among pasty
(23:31):
white people quoting it, White women have gone from thirteen
points for Trump pre convention to a virtual dead heat
Trump plus two now. White men from plus thirteen points
for Trump before the convention to plus twenty one points now,
according to the ABC News polling director, So the women
(23:51):
are all even and the men are even more for
Trump than they were before and in this isn't really
a poll, this is the oops. Those were internal numbers.
I didn't know they'd go public where they went public.
In the Boston Globe, Tom Mountain, who had served as
one of several vice chairs of the former president's effort
(24:12):
in Massachusetts, wrote in an email to Trump volunteers in
the state that the campaign has determined that New Hampshire
is no longer a battleground state, advis supporters to instead
direct their attention to Pennsylvania. The GOP, the Boston Globe says,
had been bullish about winning New Hampshire before President Biden
dropped out. In the email, Mountain, former official with the
(24:33):
Massachusetts GOP, said Trump was quote sure to lose by
an even higher margin in New Hampshire than he did
in sixteen and twenty. Citing campaign data slash research. Can
you guess where I'm going with this? For the joke
that ends this segment, he claimed, resources the Globe continues
(24:53):
would be suspended and the campaign would not send Trump
or high profile surrogates such as his sons. Well, thank
goodness for small blessings New Hampshire. The email was obtained
by the Globe and confirmed with multiple recipients. Trump campaign
official Tom Mountain has now resigned, thus making a molehill
(25:15):
out of a mountain. Just sitting there on a tee.
All right, if you're new here, thanks for responding to
the advertising, appreciate it. I put a new one of
these out, usually forty minutes to an hour in length.
Every night, just after midnight, a version goes up on
YouTube about five am. So this is the Tuesday edition
(25:38):
or the Monday Bulldog edition that you're listening to now
starting next Monday, now, next Sunday night about midnight. That'll
be five nights a week. Though the one Sunday night
Monday morning, that's going to be real short eight minutes
unless I get worked up, and of course, as you know,
I never get worked up. Four is about the maximum
(25:59):
I can handle. We got eight weeks to go until
the election. If I can ask you to do something
like listen, the least I can do is actually add
the fifth piece. Anyhow, back to this one. Also of
interest here, it is amazing to watch right wing racists
and misogynists goes so nuts over somebody like Kamala Harris.
(26:22):
I don't know if you notice this, but she's a
woman of color that the misogynists and racists and their
defenses melt and they all default to assuming she's where
she is because of quote puppet masters and or quote
oral sex. Worst persons in the world is next. This
(26:43):
is countdown. This is countdown. With Keith Olberman still ahead
(27:11):
of us on this ediative countdown. The college year has
just begun. The pro football year starts day after tomorrow.
These things may combine to mean many things for you.
For me, they combine into only one story. The day
one of the most infamous mistakes in football history led
(27:33):
my college professor to have to talk himself out of
taking it out on everybody in his course by failing
us all f's for everybody. You get an F, and
you get an F, and you get an F next,
and things I promised not to tell first. There are
still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup
(27:55):
of the miscrants, morons and dunning Kruger effects specimens who
constitute two day's worst persons in the World's fellow's name
is Peter J. Hassen. He is an editor. The editor.
It's hard to say they won't assume responsibility at the
Free Beacon, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's free.
(28:19):
Peter Jay Hassen is we think the person behind the
big story on the far right that Kamala Harris should
not be president of the United States because nowhere in
her past resumes, autobiographies, or campaigns does it say she
worked at McDonald's. You may have heard she worked at McDonald's, new,
(28:45):
writes Peter J. Hassen. And there's a picture of Mickey
De's at least the logo the Golden Arches. And next
to a picture of that is picture of Kamala Harris
looking concerned as she holds a microphone. New Kamala Harris's
missing summer job at McDonald's job. Uh Kamala Harris is
missing summer job at McDonald's job. The guy has a
(29:08):
blue check on Twitter x and he didn't edit this.
Kamala Harris is missing summer job at McDonald's job. I
got a new job for you, fella, and it is
not in the grammar police her resume and job application
a year after graduating college free beacon obtained through FOIA.
Didn't mention it. Yeah, okay, neither to either of her
(29:32):
books or either of the biographies on her exclusive report
from Chuck Somebody and Andrew and Simon something Peter Jay
Hassen editor, He offers subscriptions to his feed in which
he writes things like Kamala Harris's missing summer job at
McDonald's job, her resume, job and job application job a
(29:55):
year job after graduating job college job, beginning to sound
like a money Python script. In any event, I'd like
to just point something out. This is the Vice president
of the United States. Why on her resume, even when
she was just a graduate from university, why would she
include a summer job. A summer job at McDonald's. No
(30:19):
offense to anybody who's ever had a summer job at McDonald's,
but I just point something out. I have not had
a lot of jobs in the real world. I've been
in media almost all of my life. However, one summer
I had a job once with real work involved in it,
something between freelance and independent contractor. I was sixteen years old,
(30:42):
and I managed to figure out that instead of trying
to buy and sell the Baseball cards that came on
the back of Hostess cupcakes and other Hostess confectionery and
baked goods in the summer of nineteen seventy five, instead
of simply buying the boxes retail or maybe even wholesale,
there was a place called the host Store in which
(31:05):
they would sell day old or two day old or
a couple hours passed the expiration date, bread and other
baked goods for lower prices, and then if they didn't sell,
I wondered what happened to them. My dad and I
went to the one nearest our home. We went in
and talked to the guy, and he said, well, after that,
they'd all go in that dumpster over there. I swear
(31:28):
to God, as big a dumpster as I've ever seen
in my life. The ones in the dumpster fire memes
not as big as this dumpster, and in that dumpster
were all the boxes with the baseball cards on them.
And where do they go from here? Well, we send
them to Jersey and they feed them to the hogs.
(31:48):
My job, and I created this job. I was a
job creator at age sixteen. My job was I paid
this guy a fee to hop into this dumpster with
an exact o knife and cut the baseball cards off
the boxes for the boxes and the now you know,
three week old twinkies and ding dongs and everything else
(32:12):
that they sold went out to New Jersey to be
fed to the pigs. The smell of a six day
old twinkie is contrary to rumor that they have the
shelf life of a cockroach or a rat or I
don't know, radioactive carbon dating material. A six day old
(32:34):
twinkie left out in the elements begins to smell six
or seven hundred of them, and the bugs that accompany
them they smell bad too. But I went in there
for hour after hour cutting these things off, and frankly,
I was able to sell them for about a dollar apiece.
I must have gotten about a thousand of them. You
know what. I did not mention this on any of
(32:56):
my job applications in the let's see forty forty five,
now forty nine years since then. This is what I
was doing forty nine years ago, and for some reason
I left it off my resume. I have a copy
outside of this studio right now of my resume from
nineteen seventy nine, which includes things that I don't know
(33:19):
why I put them on, like my height and weight.
Who needs a height and weight on a resume? But
there it was, I guess for television purposes. I don't
know what I was thinking. It says height and weight.
It does not say hostess, dumpster diver, hostess thrift chop
dumpster diver in nineteen seventy five, and I had no
(33:39):
intention of running to be attorney general of any state
or a senator or vice president of United States, were
president of the United States. I didn't put it on
my resume. And I've written, now I guess, three books
that have included at least in part autobiographies. I have
mentioned it in any of those. Either I didn't put
(34:03):
it on my resume. And this guy Hassen, you know him,
Kamala Harris is missing summer job at McDonald's job Hassen
he's in the Daily Caller News Foundation. I'm confident that
he hasn't put that on his resume. Kamala Harris didn't
put her job at McDonald's on her resume, which would
(34:23):
be the same thing as you know, if she worked
at the Free Beacon, she wouldn't say, put that on
her resume either. Morons the runner up the silver Now
it gets a little darker. Tulsy Gabbard. You remember Tulsa Gabbard.
Every time you think there is some sort of bottom
for old skunk hair, turns out you are mistaken. Tulsi,
of course, is still mad that her bid for the
(34:46):
presidential nomination in twenty twenty earned her exactly two delegates.
She is, now, though, dropped below that red line of
respectability where you have to now not say her name
without putting an obscenity in the middle of it. You know,
Tulsey effing Gabbard. That's her name now, because, as I
quote also twitter x, Harris's CNN interview exposed her as
(35:10):
insecure and weak, which of course is exactly the qualities
that will make her again. Grammar is not Tulsi's strength,
which of course is exactly the qualities that will make
her the perfect puppet uh oh, controlled by the faceless
power hungry warmongers who run our country right now, she
will be the dream quote president unquote for the You're
(35:34):
ready puppet masters, Tulsy Gabbard writes, puppet masters, because she'll
be so easy to control and influence. I don't know
how many people there are left in this country who
would not recognize the phrase puppet masters for what it is.
The American Jewish Center and the SPLC, the Southern Poverty
(35:55):
Law Center both identify the phrase puppet masters, the one
Telsy Gabbard used. They identify that phrase as an anti
Semitic trope. It's jew hate in common parlance, and Tulsey
Gabbard just used it and also made a grammatical mistake
in there. So her next stop book is clearly to
become an editor of the Free Beacon. But our winner,
(36:18):
how do you top that? Well, you move from anti
semitism to pure misogyny and racial hatred and just grossness.
And that's Eric Ericksson. It's hard to believe now, but
Eric Erickson, who's always been kind of a schmuck, has
seen the entirety of the right wing movement move past
(36:39):
him as they have gone into proverbial you know, hostess,
thrift shop, dumpster diving. He stayed right where he was schmuck,
and now he's seen as some sort of moderate who
doesn't want Trump or Harris. But this is how disoriented
Kamala Harris, being a woman of color, being an intelligent person,
(37:02):
being a woman, How all these things have disoriented them
beyond their ability to shot the f up. You remember
Eric Ericson, apart from the joke I always use about
him that he's one of those guys like Lars Larson
and Hugh Hewitt, came from a family so poor we
could only afford the one syllable for our name. In
(37:22):
the immediate aftermath of when the Maga gun nut shot
at Trump, he put out a tweet blaming it on
MSNBC in Comcast. He's also the guy who, three weeks ago,
barely three weeks ago, wrote at this point, the GOP
has so devastated Tim Walls, I wouldn't be surprised to
see Josh Shapiro show up at the DNC as their
(37:42):
vice presidential pick. Well, of course, as we know he
got that one right. Well, Eric's misogyny and racism is
now leaking out of his ears. This is Eric Ericksson
talking about the Vice president of the United States and
how she got to that position and what she's doing
now running for president. This is him.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
People who were so willing to say, oh, we have
to support Kamala Harris because she's going to stop Donald Trump.
You know what, She's an authoritarian Kamala Harris. Did you
pay attention to her record as Attorney general in California?
You really want me to believe that we have to
save democracy by voting for Kamala Harris. If Kamala Harris
could get in office and ensure she'd never leave again,
she'd do it. Kamala Harris has done nothing but climbed
(38:26):
the ladder of power since the moment she got up
off her knees in front of Willie Brown.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
To put it bluntly to you, every Republican accusation is
an admission. Just remember that I would make the same
slander about Eric Erickson. But if you've ever seen Eric Erickson,
if you go look up the video that I just
played there, you would know that if ever in his
life he had gotten down on his knees they would
(38:50):
need a winch to get him upright again. Eric Erickson,
you're worse than Tulsey Gabbard two days worse person and Lord.
(39:13):
Finally to the number one story on the countdown and
my favorite topic, me and things I promised not to
tell so September again. I literally don't know anybody whoever
shakes the childhood dread of back to school days in
August and the beginning of September. Third grade, high school,
college doesn't matter. Forty four degrees, ninety four degrees, doesn't matter.
(39:37):
It's September and by now. The dread, even if you
liked school, remains until the day you die, especially if
it invokes memories like the one I have about the
day I nearly failed a for credit course in college
because of a fumble in a professional football game. Forty
(39:59):
four years ago. This week, I actually walked reluctantly but
proudly into a class at Cornell University. If I remem correctly.
To get into Professor Joel Silby's nineteenth Century American history
course eight credits spanning two semesters, I had to get
special permission from the History department because I was not
a history major. I just took all the history classes
(40:19):
they would let me, and this was one of the
best ones. And I remember Professor Silby's first lecture and
the accent and the mannerisms that quickly identified him not
only as a fellow native New Yorker, but as a
Brookly Knight and a Brookly Knight fan of as he
quickly told us the New York Football Giants. What Professor
(40:39):
Joel Silby said next, cause the I think it was
two hundred or so other students in the lecture hall
to laugh, all of them except me, because I was
the sports director of the Cornhill student owned radio station,
and in those days, you could actually know everything about
and everybody in all the national sports off the top
(41:00):
of your head. And usually that meant you could figure
out all the teams in all the sports that had
the lightest chance of succeeding, and all the teams and
all the sports that did not. And the New York
Football Giants did not. I want you to know, I
graded the papers, not the teaching assistance me and I
happened to be a lifelong, therefore long suffering fan of
the New York Football Giants. I saw my first Giants
(41:23):
game in nineteen forty five, and over the years I
happened to have developed this habit of grading your papers
on Sunday afternoons and evenings right after I watch my
New York Football Giants. So, to some degree great or small,
your grade will depend on how well the New York
Football Giants do in this nineteen seventy eight National Football
(41:44):
League season. One hundred and ninety nine of Joel Silbey's
students laughed. I emitted a low moan, since they had
gone to five NFL championship games in the six seasons
ending in nineteen sixty three and lost all five. By
the way, the Giants had had exact actly two winning seasons,
(42:06):
and they had lost nine of fourteen games the year
before nineteen seventy seven. Though they had opened this nineteen
seventy eight season with a narrow victory over a very
bad Tampa Bay team, and the first half of their
schedule had as many as four more opponents who they
might be better than they would be lucky to win
two games in the second half of the season. When
I got back to the radio station, I looked at
(42:28):
the Giants' schedule and Professor Silby's class schedule and I
circled one critical day when the schedules converged Sunday, November nineteenth,
nineteen seventy eight. Our term papers were due on Thursday
the sixteenth. He could actually read them all after the
Giants Eagles game that night. In the following day. Amazingly,
(42:52):
your New York Football Giants actually opened the season winning
three of their first four. In the middle of October,
they were still five and three, and in the history
lecture room, Professor Sylvie was very happy, and he often
recreated highlights of his his glorious Giants pleasing success, and
he was furiously fanboying on the new quarterback they'd brought
in from the Canadian League, Joe Pisarchick. If you are
(43:16):
a football history fan, or god forbid, a fan of
the New York Football Giants, you already know where I'm
going with this. The Giants lost the next three games,
and then our term papers were due on November sixteenth,
and Joel Sylbey turned morose. And I was at the
radio station watching the Giants Eagles game of the nineteenth
(43:37):
on a big black and white TV in the lounge
when my nightmare unfolded impossibly. The Giants led the much
better Philadelphia Eagles fourteen to nothing. After the first quarter.
Pisarcik threw two touchdown passes. After the third quarter, it
was still seventeen to six Giants. Then the Eagles scored,
and they were driving to go ahead with a minute
and a half left in the game, when the impossible
(43:59):
happened deep in Giants' territory. The Philly quarterback threw an
interception with eighty three seconds left and in possession of
the ball. The Giants led seventeen thirteen. The crowd at
the radio station was ecstatic. I was even more ecstatic.
All the Giants now had to do was stall and
have the quarterback fall on the ball, maybe twice, as
(44:22):
if he had heard me. The quarterback, Joe Pisarcik, fell
on the ball. Then he nearly killed me by handing
the ball off to his running back Larry Zanka, who
plowed up the middle to get a first down and
burn another thirty seconds off the clock. The Eagles called
their last time out thirty one seconds left, thirty one
seconds to my grade in Joel Silbey's nineteenth century American
(44:43):
history class, probably ending up being half or maybe even
a full grade. Better than I deserved. All Joe Pisarchi
had to do was fall on the damn ball again
and it was over. However, on the Giants sideline, offensive
coordinator Bob Gibson decided that the safe play, the winning play,
was for Jopisarcik to hand the ball off again to
(45:06):
Larry Zanka. Now that might have been the right play,
only Bob Gibson and everybody else failed to tell Larry Zanka.
Larry Zanka assumed he was there just to block for
Joe Pisarcik, as Joe Pisarcik collapsed to the turf and
ran out the clock and got me a better grade. Instead,
Pisarchik handed the ball to where Zanka's hands should have been,
(45:28):
except Larry Zanka was in the blocking stance, and Pisarchik
in fact handed it off directly to Larry Zanka's helmet.
I screamed. The ball bounced once off the turf and
directly into the hands of Philadelphia cornerback Herman Edwards. I
continued to scream. There was nobody near Edwards, and he
scooted twenty six yards into the end zone and the
(45:49):
Giants lost the damn game. Nineteen to seventeen. In the
last seconds, and as the Giants fans at the radio
station shouted or moaned or swore, I could see Professor
Joel Sylvie shutting off the TV, grabbing our papers and
sentencing us to hell, and I continued to scream. Our
(46:09):
term papers were returned on Tuesday the twenty first, just
before school broke for Thanksgiving. I actually was thankful I
got either a B or a B plus. I can't
find the paper. It should be somewhere in a box.
There was a rumor which I was never able to confirm,
that my B or B plus was the highest grade
in the class. I can confirm. I saw classmates most
(46:32):
far more prepared and astute than myself, most of them
history majors, looking at their grades and blanching visibly. One
girl cried, a C, really a C. Professor Joel Silbey
said much of our grade would depend on how well
the New York Football Giants did in that nineteen seventy
eight National football season, and my god, they had just
(46:52):
sustained a loss so bad that it has still talked
about to this day. My classmates did not listen, and
I only am escaped alone to tell thee there is
a PostScript. The PostScript takes place thirty two and one
half years later. I returned to Cornell in March of
(47:16):
twenty eleven to give a lecture and teach a series
of classes to students who no longer afterwards felt they
had gotten their full money from the university. My alma
mater was very kind to me. They gave me a
tour of the secret places they never would have shown
me when I was a struggling student, like where they
kept Cornell's copy of the Gettysburg address. And they promised
(47:37):
me something special for lunch the first day, And sure
enough I was dropped off at a restaurant, and there,
rising from a table to greet me with applause, were
Cornell's official historian and former Professor Glenn Altschuler, and their
very famous history professor Walter Lefeber, and I swear Professor
Joel Silby, and they were fans of mine. Of course,
(48:02):
I could not leave well enough alone. After a few
minutes of very pleasant conversation with mister alt Schuller and
Professor la Faber and Professor Silby, I brought up the
nineteen seventy eight term paper Joe pisarcik handoff story. Professor
la Faber looked at Professor Silby like Professor Silby was
out of his mind. Is that true? And Sylby smiled
(48:24):
and said, yes, yes it is. And then Joel Silby
looked off into the distance as if he were peering
backwards through time. Nineteen seventy eight, that's when you could
really enjoy being a professor. He then looked back at
me and smiled, Keith, you won't believe this, but I
(48:45):
actually graded those papers pretty fairly, and I didn't follow
through on my original plan. After the fumble, I actually
turned off the TV and I sat there for a
few minutes, and I asked my soul if it was
okay for me to take my revenge on the universe
by failing all of you. Gulped Oh, said Sylby. It
(49:08):
was so great to be a professor back then. I
laughed so much I had tears in my eyes. And
then Sylbe said, okay, okay, maybe I was a little
unfair to you guys, but you know, it's the Giants
and you have to take this as a whole. The
year they won their first Super Bowl, what was that
eighty six. The final exam in that class was like
(49:29):
two days after they finished the regular season, fourteen and two,
eight o'clock in the morning. So I go to the
final see, which I never do. And I waited until
they were all sitting there sweating, and I said, remember
last September when I told you your grade will depend
on how well the New York Football Giants doing this
nineteen eighty six National Football League season. And it was
(49:49):
just silence, and I said, well, if you didn't notice,
they went fourteen and two, and I haven't been this
happy since when they won the title in nineteen fifty six.
So guess what, there's no final exam. And nobody moved,
so I said it again, there's no final exam, Go home,
go study for something else. Y'all get a's. And then
(50:11):
there was a couple of seconds of silence, and they
all simultaneously realized I was not kidding, and everybody cheered
and ran out into the sunshine. So with me and
professors Altschuler and la Faber, now in tears, Sylby said,
see it evens out, and I said, the hell it does.
I graduated in nineteen seventy nine, How does it canceled
(50:33):
final in nineteen eighty six. Even it out for me, Fella.
Joel Silby thought for a second and then he said, Wow,
I am buying you lunch forty six years ago. Forty
(50:59):
six years ago? What did I say? Forty three? Twenty three?
It was nineteen seventy eight. See, I was considered a
math prodigy. However, this was when I was still very
short and had blonde hair, all of which has changed.
I just like to add and subtract numbers. Now I'm
not even any good at that anymore. When we got
finally to algebra, I would just sit and stare at
(51:21):
the board and ask the math teacher which side was
the question and which side was the answer? And I
turned my head upside down, so I was looking upside down.
That's when he said, take the class, pass fail and
I'll pass you forty nineteen seventy eight. It was AnyWho,
(51:43):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Please share this podcast with somebody who
does not yet listen. And again, if you're just joining
us after the advertising, thank you kindly. Brian Ray and
John Phillip Chanel, the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled the
orchestration in keyboards, mister Ray was on the guitars, bass,
(52:03):
and drums, and it was pretty by Tko Brothers. Yes,
every day we do this. It was four days a week,
and it's four days a week this week. Next week
I'm gonna start doing it five days a week. And
as I said, Mondays will be brief. In any event.
Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best
baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music we
(52:26):
do sports segments periodically. The Old Woman theme from ESPN
two was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
And my announcer today is my friend Larry David. Everything
else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for
this the sixty fourth day until the twenty twenty four
(52:47):
presidential election, the one three hundred and thirty first day
since convicted Feldon Donald J. Trump's first attempted coup against
the democratically elected government of the United States use the
September eighteenth sentencing hearing. If it happens, use the mental
health system. Use president immunity. The Supreme Theocratic Court has
given it to you. President Biden. I say, if it's official,
(53:11):
it's legal. Have fun. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Bulletins as the news requires until the next one on
Keith Olderman good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
(53:39):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump
filmed a commercial while standing on top of the graves
(00:25):
of dead American war heroes. I am surprised he didn't
try to sell us sneakers or trading cards or bitcoin
or the rest of his shit. And his staffers assaulted
a woman employee at Arlington National Cemetery, and he blamed
the families of the dead because his campaign broke the
law at his fascist gang of thugs is running wild
(00:48):
with this, as if Kamala Harris has anything to do
with it. And eight days later, there still is at a
Senate investigation, or a Defense Department investigation, or a real
journalistic investigation, and one of them better be started, god
damned immediately. And the media continued to cover up for
Donald Trump. Cover up. Not the cover up of his
(01:11):
campaign emails hacked by a foreign government and sent to
the New York Times, Washington Post and Politico. Not their
cover up of that story, because this time that matters.
Not the cover up of the reported ten million dollar
bribing of Trump just before the twenty sixteen election by
President Elcesi of Egypt. Not that cover up by the
(01:35):
major newspapers and by the Department of Justice, which should
just publicly release all it has on the Egyptian bribe,
and if it won't, Biden should order it to not
That cover up. The cover up of Trump grinning like
the psychotic that he is, thumbs up, violating all codes
of decency and respect for veterans, which can only be
(01:58):
re established in this country if we prosecute scumbags like
Trump who helped to tear them down every day. The
cover up of him illegally filming a commercial for his
campaign to end democracy and filming it in a place
marked no political activity. The cover up of whoever hit
(02:20):
an Arlington National Cemetery employee and how they hit her,
and the cover up of why she is now too
afraid to proceed or to go public. Where is the
daily pounding on this utterly, transcendently disgusting story, this deeply
(02:41):
meaningful story, and most importantly for the simpletons running places
like the New York Times, the Washington Post in Politico,
this really easy to follow story. I give the New
York Times some credit for paying some attention to this story,
but even they have let it slide, even as the
Trump campaign continues to use the video illegally shot not
(03:05):
only to promote his campaign, but also to try to
smear the vice president because she didn't literally dance on
the graves of soldiers alongside Trump the way Trump did.
But even this from the Times, this is six days old. Quote.
The family of a Green Beret who died by suicide
(03:25):
after serving eight combat tours and is buried at Arlington
express concern Wednesday that Trump's campaign had filmed his gravesite
without permission, as Trump stood in an area where campaign
photography is not allowed. Relatives of Master Sergeant Andrew Marcasano
(03:46):
issued their statement two days after Trump's visit, which also
included a confrontation between members of the Trump campaign and
an Arlington employee. The former president's campaign took video in
a heavily restricted section of the cemetery known as Section sixty,
which is largely reserved for the fallen veterans of the
Iraq and acts Afghanistan wars. A woman who works at
(04:07):
the cemetery filed an incident report with the military authorities
over the altercation, but the official, who has not been identified,
later declined to press charges. Military officials said she feared
mister Trump's supporters pursuing retaliation unquote. You will recall that
(04:31):
the worker who asked them to stop was yelled at
by Trump goons then abused physically in some way. We
still don't know if it was a tap on the
shoulder or a broken goddamn jaw. Then, when the story
of how the Trump people trampled the graves of the
war dead at Arlington National Cemetery, this Trump spokesclown Stephen
(04:57):
Chung said the woman who tried to stop them was
quote suffering from a mental health episode. And this phony
Trump patriot Chris las Sevida, the swift boat asshole, called
her a quote despicable individual who does not deserve to
represent the hollowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, and half
(05:19):
the media, including The Times, covered up the fact that
this idiot las Savita indeed wrote hollowed as in hollowed
out conscience instead of the correct word, which is hallowed
with an A. And by the way, when the Trump
campaign issued a statement from Senator Tom Cotton, who was
a candidate for Dumbest Man Alive but he looks serious,
(05:42):
so Trump likes him, the quote from Cotton misspelled the
word cemetery, and your goddamn right. It matters because it's
the Arlington National Cemetery, and since literally the Civil War
when we seized it from the trader Robert E. Lee,
it has been our most hallowed ground, this cemetery, and
(06:03):
these Trump it it's can't even get that part right,
let alone the laws right, or the respect right, or
the solemnity right required of anybody who goes there. I mean,
do you know who the Sullivan brothers are. They are
in Arlington two. They're going to be there for a while.
They're in Section MC, basically across the street from Section
(06:28):
thirty five. They're the equivalent of about three city blocks
away from where Trump shot his commercial. The former marine
and former Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Kesling brought this up.
The Sullivans were five brothers from Iowa who served together
in the Second World War on the same ship, on
(06:49):
the light cruiser USS, you know, and it was sunk
by the Japanese at Guadalcanal on November thirteenth, nineteen forty two,
and they all died, all five of them, all five brothers.
Trump could have taken five minutes to go and salute them,
or five seconds to salute anybody at Arlington, even Robert F.
(07:12):
Kennedy Senior the hell. As Kesling notes, this isn't the
first time Trump specifically ignored the Sullivan brothers. Waterloo, Iowa
named its convention center after them, and Kesling was there
when Trump campaigned there more than eight years ago. And
just to be as cynical as possible, you go to
the Sullivan Center, it's a layup politically. There's a big
(07:34):
picture of them, their story, their deaths, where they are now,
unbelievably tragic story. Trump didn't pose with the picture. He
didn't reference them in the speech at their center. Just
like a week ago yesterday, he just went to Arlington
as he'd gone to Waterloo, just to sell you more shit,
(07:55):
and f the Sullivans and f the soldiers in Afghanistan,
and especially f this Arlington employee, and after yelling at
the employee, after touching or slandering her, questioning her mental health,
questioning her patriotism, threatening her in some way, when it
was reported that she initially filed her report then declined
(08:16):
to pursue it at Joint Base Meyer Henderson Hall in
Virginia for fear of retaliation. This breathing cartoon spokesman Stephen
Chung went in for another hit, quoting him that is
ridiculous and sounds like someone who has Trump derangement syndrome. Unquote.
You know who has Trump derangement syndrome? Trump Trump has
(08:39):
Trump derangement syndrome. He's the one with the derangement. Oh.
By the way, there are two fatally flawed strains of
pseudo logic operating within our newsrooms that are covering up
for Trump about Arlington and all the other stories. One
of these strains is, as the Inn saying goes, that
(09:01):
this is another opportunity for news organizations with vestigial and
long since expired reputations for being liberal, like The Times
could be mistaken for liberal anymore. It's an opportunity for
them to comply in advance in case Trump regains power.
The other pseudo logic is this claim that Trump people
(09:23):
continued to belch that they have exculpatory video of this
incident with that crazy National Cemetery employee and it'll show
you and don't you dare criticize Trump because you'll look
really stupid when we release the video and take our revenge.
And there are eighth graders starting at school newspapers this week,
(09:45):
this minute. Who know there is no video that the
only video Trump has he shot illegally and used all
of it illegally for an illegal campaign. Add but don't
try explaining that to the New York Times, the Washington
Post in Politico, because for them to say there is
no video requires them to say something. And the point
(10:09):
right now is for them to not say anything. Two
generations of the fascist Republicans working the refs of the
media of this nation, plus the ever spiraling gyre of
the shrinking news business, have in short worked. Democracy may
(10:31):
die in darkness, but inside the Washington Post, the real
fear is the Washington Post will die because somebody there
said something. Now when others say something, When the family
of the PTSD suicide whose grave was shown by Trump
(10:51):
without that family's permission, when they say something, then then
the Times or the Post or the others will go
just far enough out onto that limb to point at
what they said and say, oh, please, don't hurt us.
Right wingers keep buying our shit newspapers. Trump blamed the
(11:14):
family of the soldier he was supposedly honoring. It wasn't us.
We just saw it on the TV. Then and only
then will they report something like this, should your campaign
have put out those videos and photos? Well, we have
a lot of.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
People, you know, we have people, TikTok people.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
You know, we're leading the internet. That was the other thing.
We're so far above her on.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
The end, I'm not hallowed ground so that they have.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Put out I don't know what the rules and regulations are.
I don't know who did it. And it could have
been them. It could have been the parents, it could
have been somebody. It was your campaign's TikTok theild I
put out there.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I really don't know anything about it.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
All I do is I stood there and I said,
if you'd like to have a picture, we can have
a picture. If somebody did, if this was a setup
by the people in the administration that oh Trump is
coming to Arlington.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
That looks so bad for us. There ought to be
a story in every newspaper every day demanding that the
Trump campaign released the video showing it was the woman
employee who attacked the Trump campaign goons, you know, the
video that doesn't exist, because otherwise he gets away with it,
like he's getting away with the Egypt bribe, like he's
(12:22):
getting away with whatever was in the emails the Iranians hacked,
because this election foreign hacking matters. Like he's getting away
with saying Kamala Harris treated Mike Pence terribly because she
told him to stop interrupting him during the debate, as
opposed to you know, the whole gallowsy hangy thing that
Trump did. Like he's getting away with the Willie Brown
(12:46):
helicopter flight logs from when Brown slimed Kamala Harris. He's
going to release them from ten years ago. Only it
wasn't ten years ago, and they didn't talk about Harris,
and for that matter, it wasn't Willie Brown, and it
wasn't ten years ago, and it wasn't a helicopter, and
it wasn't in San Francisco. He's getting away with it,
(13:11):
and you get away with it when the media covers
up for you so thoroughly, so automatically, as the Times
and the Post and the politico operations of this world
and all but a few others are so thoroughly, so
automatically defaulting to covering up for Trump. Not wanting to
(13:31):
touch it, it's too much trouble. It's a third rail.
Nothing good can come of it. Everybody knows he's crazy.
We can't report this. They're doing it so thoroughly that
the Trump campaign and the Trump psychopaths don't even have
to bother to cover it up themselves anymore. By the way,
(14:11):
the Arlington National Cemetery employee slimed and manhandled by the
Trump campaign in ways we still don't know, she doesn't
have to in effect press charges. The army can take
it from here. The evidence is the commercial. The Trump
physical attack on her is almost unbelievable, but in one
(14:33):
context it's unnecessary to this story. The laws were broken,
whether they beat her over the head with a tire
iron or they said sorry, ma'am and bowed on the
way out and the breeze was too strong for her.
But you're not going to read about that either, because
the media is so so broken. It was broken in
(14:56):
twenty sixteen. It tried with some success to fix itself
in twenty twenty, but it's now broken in new and
worse your waves. Joe Scarborough, who has unsuccessfully tried to
purge from the Internet all those photos of Trump standing
next to him like he Scarborough was also a tombstone,
(15:19):
and both of them are grinning like con men giving
the thumbs up sign. Joe Scarborough his show followed up
on the CNN Kamala Harrison interview last week with a
focus group of mixed race voters, and sure enough, one
of them, a guy named Adul Ali, just happens to
(15:39):
echo this Trump insult to everybody in the world, almost
word for word, quoting from the Scarborough focus group. I
didn't know she was black until a number of years
ago when she happened to turn black, and now she
wants to be known as black. I don't know is
she Indian or is she black? Unquote this Adul Ali
(16:02):
is a Trump podcaster running for Congress as the Republican
in the North Carolina twelfth Congressional district as a Trumpist.
And guess you never mentioned that. Joe Scarborough and his
people and MSNBC, and they matter of factly told the
(16:23):
website Mediaite. Sure they knew he was a Republican running
for Congress, they just didn't mention it. That's where we
are again. The media is pitted against the Democratic candidate
because bluntly, liberals do not punish bad media. I don't
(16:43):
care about that. I think the Democratic candidate can handle it.
For herself. What I'm worried about is this also coincides
with the reality that the media is pitted against democracy
as a result of this stand up for democracy. You guys,
you're all going to wind up in the camps with us.
You saw this from Politico. Next question, Harris evades questions
(17:07):
about her identity. This was in the wake of the
CNN interview with Kamala Harris, which admittedly didn't provide a
lot of headlines. And Kamala Harris did, as I've said before,
showed respray I could never muster in thirty five thousand lifetimes.
They read her the Trump quote about turning black and
she just went same old playbook. Next question. It was
(17:31):
a dignified answer to a piece of shit. Next question,
Harris evades questions about her identity. Well, the blowback on
this the ratio of let me see if I've got
this right. The ratio on the tweet was fifty seven million,
two three. That's a lot, isn't it. I made those
(17:53):
numbers up, but what the hell it's Politico. Politico then
changed in a matter of I guess three hours or
so to Harris sidesteps the spotlight when it comes to
her identity, and of course the picture of her from
the video still says next question, Harris evades questions, and
then they did a little thread for the record. This
(18:16):
replaces a deleted tweet to better reflect Harris's response. It's
a funny way to spell apology. We're idiots, We're Politico,
We're run by a German right winger. We have retreads
who got fired from every other news organization in the world.
You saw this from the New York Times. They got
(18:38):
something wrong, they tried to fix it. They got it
wrong again in a different way. If you saw this.
The Moms for Liberty can get a bit carried away,
one of their local chapters, once accidentally quoted Atoll Hitler,
He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future. Well, well,
(18:59):
well that's fun. Accidentally, the Moms for Liberty can get
a bit carried away, one of their local chapters, once
quoted Adolf Hitler. He alone, who owns the youth, gains
the future. A correction was made on September first, twenty
twenty four. At the Times wrote an earlier version of
this article incorrectly said that a local chapter of Moms
for Liberty had accidentally quoted Adolf Hitler in a newsletter.
(19:22):
The group, which later issued an apology, was aware that
the quote was from Hitler when the newsletter was published. Well,
the Times correction is wrong. They didn't just acknowledge that
they were aware Hitler, said that they defended quoting Hitler.
They defended quoting Hitler after people in their own organization
(19:42):
threatened to shut this chapter of Moms for Liberty, which
is a brand name. After that, then finally they apologized,
you saw this from Puck News, from this perpetual hot
and cold running clown Dylan Buyers representing the closed ranks
of political media. Fascist propaganda dits are not really fascist propagandists.
(20:08):
It's just stiff. Fox News is just another flavor of
news right, and it's like MSNBC. It's a different kind.
One is sweet, one is sour. You decide which is witch.
Not even the fascist propagandists whose names came up in
the dominion lawsuit and are shown in texts trying to
get their own network to take back their call of
(20:31):
Arizona for Joe Biden in twenty twenty, they're not really
fascist propagandists. They're the same as everybody else. This is
what Dylan Byers wrote first, The perceived bias of television
news networks is almost always a red herring, bullshit. Of
the three well known popular television networks, add Fox and CNN.
(20:55):
Let's make it five. I've worked for NBC, I've worked
for Fox, I've worked for CNN. I worked locally for
ABC and CBS. Why it's a complete set. Guess what.
The perceived bias of television news networks is almost never
a red herring. Actually, but he goes on all available
evidence suggests foxes Brett Bhar and Martha McCallum would be
(21:18):
equally responsible moderators or interviewers of either candidate. Likewise, NBC's
Less Your hold In, Savannah Guthrie, by the Way, Savannah
Guthrie and Less Your Whole perfectly nice people, Ciphers, there's
nobody there. They're television performers. At one point each of
them was a newsman or newswoman. But they're Cipher's. Martha
(21:42):
McCallum is a Republican who often advocates for right wing
causes on her show and takes a right wing slanted
point of view. And as I said, Brett Behar is
in this huge lawsuit, demanding that his own network, and
he's the newsman, added, demanding that they put Arizona back
in play, because it's making everybody look bad for all
(22:03):
the mission creep. Dylan Byers right, anybody knows creeps. It
would be Dylan Byer's for all the mission creep and
conflicts of interest in TV news. These days, all of
the major companies, yes, even Fox, employ capable newsmen and
women whose reputations, like those of the network that employ them,
depend on their ability to moderate a debate or conduct
an interview with journalistic integrity. I'm waiting for the punchline
(22:27):
to this, in which it turns out Dylan Byers does
not own a TV of any kind. To a quick
run of the polls New York Times in Swing States,
the number one issue in Swing states for women voters
(22:48):
is no longer the economy. It is abortion. ABC ipsos
Harris by six over the weekend. Favorable's good for her
and for Walls, not so hot for the Republicans, widening
her advantage among women. In the new ABC News IPSOS poll,
(23:09):
she now leads by thirteen points, fifty four to forty one.
Among the men, Trump leads by five fifty one forty six,
which is declared not statistically significant. Between the lines to
use the phrase the female male change occurs among pasty
(23:31):
white people quoting it, White women have gone from thirteen
points for Trump pre convention to a virtual dead heat
Trump plus two now. White men from plus thirteen points
for Trump before the convention to plus twenty one points now,
according to the ABC News polling director, So the women
(23:51):
are all even and the men are even more for
Trump than they were before and in this isn't really
a poll, this is the oops. Those were internal numbers.
I didn't know they'd go public where they went public.
In the Boston Globe, Tom Mountain, who had served as
one of several vice chairs of the former president's effort
(24:12):
in Massachusetts, wrote in an email to Trump volunteers in
the state that the campaign has determined that New Hampshire
is no longer a battleground state, advis supporters to instead
direct their attention to Pennsylvania. The GOP, the Boston Globe says,
had been bullish about winning New Hampshire before President Biden
dropped out. In the email, Mountain, former official with the
(24:33):
Massachusetts GOP, said Trump was quote sure to lose by
an even higher margin in New Hampshire than he did
in sixteen and twenty. Citing campaign data slash research. Can
you guess where I'm going with this? For the joke
that ends this segment, he claimed, resources the Globe continues
(24:53):
would be suspended and the campaign would not send Trump
or high profile surrogates such as his sons. Well, thank
goodness for small blessings New Hampshire. The email was obtained
by the Globe and confirmed with multiple recipients. Trump campaign
official Tom Mountain has now resigned, thus making a molehill
(25:15):
out of a mountain. Just sitting there on a tee.
All right, if you're new here, thanks for responding to
the advertising, appreciate it. I put a new one of
these out, usually forty minutes to an hour in length.
Every night, just after midnight, a version goes up on
YouTube about five am. So this is the Tuesday edition
(25:38):
or the Monday Bulldog edition that you're listening to now
starting next Monday, now, next Sunday night about midnight. That'll
be five nights a week. Though the one Sunday night
Monday morning, that's going to be real short eight minutes
unless I get worked up, and of course, as you know,
I never get worked up. Four is about the maximum
(25:59):
I can handle. We got eight weeks to go until
the election. If I can ask you to do something
like listen, the least I can do is actually add
the fifth piece. Anyhow, back to this one. Also of
interest here, it is amazing to watch right wing racists
and misogynists goes so nuts over somebody like Kamala Harris.
(26:22):
I don't know if you notice this, but she's a
woman of color that the misogynists and racists and their
defenses melt and they all default to assuming she's where
she is because of quote puppet masters and or quote
oral sex. Worst persons in the world is next. This
(26:43):
is countdown. This is countdown. With Keith Olberman still ahead
(27:11):
of us on this ediative countdown. The college year has
just begun. The pro football year starts day after tomorrow.
These things may combine to mean many things for you.
For me, they combine into only one story. The day
one of the most infamous mistakes in football history led
(27:33):
my college professor to have to talk himself out of
taking it out on everybody in his course by failing
us all f's for everybody. You get an F, and
you get an F, and you get an F next,
and things I promised not to tell first. There are
still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup
(27:55):
of the miscrants, morons and dunning Kruger effects specimens who
constitute two day's worst persons in the World's fellow's name
is Peter J. Hassen. He is an editor. The editor.
It's hard to say they won't assume responsibility at the
Free Beacon, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's free.
(28:19):
Peter Jay Hassen is we think the person behind the
big story on the far right that Kamala Harris should
not be president of the United States because nowhere in
her past resumes, autobiographies, or campaigns does it say she
worked at McDonald's. You may have heard she worked at McDonald's, new,
(28:45):
writes Peter J. Hassen. And there's a picture of Mickey
De's at least the logo the Golden Arches. And next
to a picture of that is picture of Kamala Harris
looking concerned as she holds a microphone. New Kamala Harris's
missing summer job at McDonald's job. Uh Kamala Harris is
missing summer job at McDonald's job. The guy has a
(29:08):
blue check on Twitter x and he didn't edit this.
Kamala Harris is missing summer job at McDonald's job. I
got a new job for you, fella, and it is
not in the grammar police her resume and job application
a year after graduating college free beacon obtained through FOIA.
Didn't mention it. Yeah, okay, neither to either of her
(29:32):
books or either of the biographies on her exclusive report
from Chuck Somebody and Andrew and Simon something Peter Jay
Hassen editor, He offers subscriptions to his feed in which
he writes things like Kamala Harris's missing summer job at
McDonald's job, her resume, job and job application job a
(29:55):
year job after graduating job college job, beginning to sound
like a money Python script. In any event, I'd like
to just point something out. This is the Vice president
of the United States. Why on her resume, even when
she was just a graduate from university, why would she
include a summer job. A summer job at McDonald's. No
(30:19):
offense to anybody who's ever had a summer job at McDonald's,
but I just point something out. I have not had
a lot of jobs in the real world. I've been
in media almost all of my life. However, one summer
I had a job once with real work involved in it,
something between freelance and independent contractor. I was sixteen years old,
(30:42):
and I managed to figure out that instead of trying
to buy and sell the Baseball cards that came on
the back of Hostess cupcakes and other Hostess confectionery and
baked goods in the summer of nineteen seventy five, instead
of simply buying the boxes retail or maybe even wholesale,
there was a place called the host Store in which
(31:05):
they would sell day old or two day old or
a couple hours passed the expiration date, bread and other
baked goods for lower prices, and then if they didn't sell,
I wondered what happened to them. My dad and I
went to the one nearest our home. We went in
and talked to the guy, and he said, well, after that,
they'd all go in that dumpster over there. I swear
(31:28):
to God, as big a dumpster as I've ever seen
in my life. The ones in the dumpster fire memes
not as big as this dumpster, and in that dumpster
were all the boxes with the baseball cards on them.
And where do they go from here? Well, we send
them to Jersey and they feed them to the hogs.
(31:48):
My job, and I created this job. I was a
job creator at age sixteen. My job was I paid
this guy a fee to hop into this dumpster with
an exact o knife and cut the baseball cards off
the boxes for the boxes and the now you know,
three week old twinkies and ding dongs and everything else
(32:12):
that they sold went out to New Jersey to be
fed to the pigs. The smell of a six day
old twinkie is contrary to rumor that they have the
shelf life of a cockroach or a rat or I
don't know, radioactive carbon dating material. A six day old
(32:34):
twinkie left out in the elements begins to smell six
or seven hundred of them, and the bugs that accompany
them they smell bad too. But I went in there
for hour after hour cutting these things off, and frankly,
I was able to sell them for about a dollar apiece.
I must have gotten about a thousand of them. You
know what. I did not mention this on any of
(32:56):
my job applications in the let's see forty forty five,
now forty nine years since then. This is what I
was doing forty nine years ago, and for some reason
I left it off my resume. I have a copy
outside of this studio right now of my resume from
nineteen seventy nine, which includes things that I don't know
(33:19):
why I put them on, like my height and weight.
Who needs a height and weight on a resume? But
there it was, I guess for television purposes. I don't
know what I was thinking. It says height and weight.
It does not say hostess, dumpster diver, hostess thrift chop
dumpster diver in nineteen seventy five, and I had no
(33:39):
intention of running to be attorney general of any state
or a senator or vice president of United States, were
president of the United States. I didn't put it on
my resume. And I've written, now I guess, three books
that have included at least in part autobiographies. I have
mentioned it in any of those. Either I didn't put
(34:03):
it on my resume. And this guy Hassen, you know him,
Kamala Harris is missing summer job at McDonald's job Hassen
he's in the Daily Caller News Foundation. I'm confident that
he hasn't put that on his resume. Kamala Harris didn't
put her job at McDonald's on her resume, which would
(34:23):
be the same thing as you know, if she worked
at the Free Beacon, she wouldn't say, put that on
her resume either. Morons the runner up the silver Now
it gets a little darker. Tulsy Gabbard. You remember Tulsa Gabbard.
Every time you think there is some sort of bottom
for old skunk hair, turns out you are mistaken. Tulsi,
of course, is still mad that her bid for the
(34:46):
presidential nomination in twenty twenty earned her exactly two delegates.
She is, now, though, dropped below that red line of
respectability where you have to now not say her name
without putting an obscenity in the middle of it. You know,
Tulsey effing Gabbard. That's her name now, because, as I
quote also twitter x, Harris's CNN interview exposed her as
(35:10):
insecure and weak, which of course is exactly the qualities
that will make her again. Grammar is not Tulsi's strength,
which of course is exactly the qualities that will make
her the perfect puppet uh oh, controlled by the faceless
power hungry warmongers who run our country right now, she
will be the dream quote president unquote for the You're
(35:34):
ready puppet masters, Tulsy Gabbard writes, puppet masters, because she'll
be so easy to control and influence. I don't know
how many people there are left in this country who
would not recognize the phrase puppet masters for what it is.
The American Jewish Center and the SPLC, the Southern Poverty
(35:55):
Law Center both identify the phrase puppet masters, the one
Telsy Gabbard used. They identify that phrase as an anti
Semitic trope. It's jew hate in common parlance, and Tulsey
Gabbard just used it and also made a grammatical mistake
in there. So her next stop book is clearly to
become an editor of the Free Beacon. But our winner,
(36:18):
how do you top that? Well, you move from anti
semitism to pure misogyny and racial hatred and just grossness.
And that's Eric Ericksson. It's hard to believe now, but
Eric Erickson, who's always been kind of a schmuck, has
seen the entirety of the right wing movement move past
(36:39):
him as they have gone into proverbial you know, hostess,
thrift shop, dumpster diving. He stayed right where he was schmuck,
and now he's seen as some sort of moderate who
doesn't want Trump or Harris. But this is how disoriented
Kamala Harris, being a woman of color, being an intelligent person,
(37:02):
being a woman, How all these things have disoriented them
beyond their ability to shot the f up. You remember
Eric Ericson, apart from the joke I always use about
him that he's one of those guys like Lars Larson
and Hugh Hewitt, came from a family so poor we
could only afford the one syllable for our name. In
(37:22):
the immediate aftermath of when the Maga gun nut shot
at Trump, he put out a tweet blaming it on
MSNBC in Comcast. He's also the guy who, three weeks ago,
barely three weeks ago, wrote at this point, the GOP
has so devastated Tim Walls, I wouldn't be surprised to
see Josh Shapiro show up at the DNC as their
(37:42):
vice presidential pick. Well, of course, as we know he
got that one right. Well, Eric's misogyny and racism is
now leaking out of his ears. This is Eric Ericksson
talking about the Vice president of the United States and
how she got to that position and what she's doing
now running for president. This is him.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
People who were so willing to say, oh, we have
to support Kamala Harris because she's going to stop Donald Trump.
You know what, She's an authoritarian Kamala Harris. Did you
pay attention to her record as Attorney general in California?
You really want me to believe that we have to
save democracy by voting for Kamala Harris. If Kamala Harris
could get in office and ensure she'd never leave again,
she'd do it. Kamala Harris has done nothing but climbed
(38:26):
the ladder of power since the moment she got up
off her knees in front of Willie Brown.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
To put it bluntly to you, every Republican accusation is
an admission. Just remember that I would make the same
slander about Eric Erickson. But if you've ever seen Eric Erickson,
if you go look up the video that I just
played there, you would know that if ever in his
life he had gotten down on his knees they would
(38:50):
need a winch to get him upright again. Eric Erickson,
you're worse than Tulsey Gabbard two days worse person and Lord.
(39:13):
Finally to the number one story on the countdown and
my favorite topic, me and things I promised not to
tell so September again. I literally don't know anybody whoever
shakes the childhood dread of back to school days in
August and the beginning of September. Third grade, high school,
college doesn't matter. Forty four degrees, ninety four degrees, doesn't matter.
(39:37):
It's September and by now. The dread, even if you
liked school, remains until the day you die, especially if
it invokes memories like the one I have about the
day I nearly failed a for credit course in college
because of a fumble in a professional football game. Forty
(39:59):
four years ago. This week, I actually walked reluctantly but
proudly into a class at Cornell University. If I remem correctly.
To get into Professor Joel Silby's nineteenth Century American history
course eight credits spanning two semesters, I had to get
special permission from the History department because I was not
a history major. I just took all the history classes
(40:19):
they would let me, and this was one of the
best ones. And I remember Professor Silby's first lecture and
the accent and the mannerisms that quickly identified him not
only as a fellow native New Yorker, but as a
Brookly Knight and a Brookly Knight fan of as he
quickly told us the New York Football Giants. What Professor
(40:39):
Joel Silby said next, cause the I think it was
two hundred or so other students in the lecture hall
to laugh, all of them except me, because I was
the sports director of the Cornhill student owned radio station,
and in those days, you could actually know everything about
and everybody in all the national sports off the top
(41:00):
of your head. And usually that meant you could figure
out all the teams in all the sports that had
the lightest chance of succeeding, and all the teams and
all the sports that did not. And the New York
Football Giants did not. I want you to know, I
graded the papers, not the teaching assistance me and I
happened to be a lifelong, therefore long suffering fan of
the New York Football Giants. I saw my first Giants
(41:23):
game in nineteen forty five, and over the years I
happened to have developed this habit of grading your papers
on Sunday afternoons and evenings right after I watch my
New York Football Giants. So, to some degree great or small,
your grade will depend on how well the New York
Football Giants do in this nineteen seventy eight National Football
(41:44):
League season. One hundred and ninety nine of Joel Silbey's
students laughed. I emitted a low moan, since they had
gone to five NFL championship games in the six seasons
ending in nineteen sixty three and lost all five. By
the way, the Giants had had exact actly two winning seasons,
(42:06):
and they had lost nine of fourteen games the year
before nineteen seventy seven. Though they had opened this nineteen
seventy eight season with a narrow victory over a very
bad Tampa Bay team, and the first half of their
schedule had as many as four more opponents who they
might be better than they would be lucky to win
two games in the second half of the season. When
I got back to the radio station, I looked at
(42:28):
the Giants' schedule and Professor Silby's class schedule and I
circled one critical day when the schedules converged Sunday, November nineteenth,
nineteen seventy eight. Our term papers were due on Thursday
the sixteenth. He could actually read them all after the
Giants Eagles game that night. In the following day. Amazingly,
(42:52):
your New York Football Giants actually opened the season winning
three of their first four. In the middle of October,
they were still five and three, and in the history
lecture room, Professor Sylvie was very happy, and he often
recreated highlights of his his glorious Giants pleasing success, and
he was furiously fanboying on the new quarterback they'd brought
in from the Canadian League, Joe Pisarchick. If you are
(43:16):
a football history fan, or god forbid, a fan of
the New York Football Giants, you already know where I'm
going with this. The Giants lost the next three games,
and then our term papers were due on November sixteenth,
and Joel Sylbey turned morose. And I was at the
radio station watching the Giants Eagles game of the nineteenth
(43:37):
on a big black and white TV in the lounge
when my nightmare unfolded impossibly. The Giants led the much
better Philadelphia Eagles fourteen to nothing. After the first quarter.
Pisarcik threw two touchdown passes. After the third quarter, it
was still seventeen to six Giants. Then the Eagles scored,
and they were driving to go ahead with a minute
and a half left in the game, when the impossible
(43:59):
happened deep in Giants' territory. The Philly quarterback threw an
interception with eighty three seconds left and in possession of
the ball. The Giants led seventeen thirteen. The crowd at
the radio station was ecstatic. I was even more ecstatic.
All the Giants now had to do was stall and
have the quarterback fall on the ball, maybe twice, as
(44:22):
if he had heard me. The quarterback, Joe Pisarcik, fell
on the ball. Then he nearly killed me by handing
the ball off to his running back Larry Zanka, who
plowed up the middle to get a first down and
burn another thirty seconds off the clock. The Eagles called
their last time out thirty one seconds left, thirty one
seconds to my grade in Joel Silbey's nineteenth century American
(44:43):
history class, probably ending up being half or maybe even
a full grade. Better than I deserved. All Joe Pisarchi
had to do was fall on the damn ball again
and it was over. However, on the Giants sideline, offensive
coordinator Bob Gibson decided that the safe play, the winning play,
was for Jopisarcik to hand the ball off again to
(45:06):
Larry Zanka. Now that might have been the right play,
only Bob Gibson and everybody else failed to tell Larry Zanka.
Larry Zanka assumed he was there just to block for
Joe Pisarcik, as Joe Pisarcik collapsed to the turf and
ran out the clock and got me a better grade. Instead,
Pisarchik handed the ball to where Zanka's hands should have been,
(45:28):
except Larry Zanka was in the blocking stance, and Pisarchik
in fact handed it off directly to Larry Zanka's helmet.
I screamed. The ball bounced once off the turf and
directly into the hands of Philadelphia cornerback Herman Edwards. I
continued to scream. There was nobody near Edwards, and he
scooted twenty six yards into the end zone and the
(45:49):
Giants lost the damn game. Nineteen to seventeen. In the
last seconds, and as the Giants fans at the radio
station shouted or moaned or swore, I could see Professor
Joel Sylvie shutting off the TV, grabbing our papers and
sentencing us to hell, and I continued to scream. Our
(46:09):
term papers were returned on Tuesday the twenty first, just
before school broke for Thanksgiving. I actually was thankful I
got either a B or a B plus. I can't
find the paper. It should be somewhere in a box.
There was a rumor which I was never able to confirm,
that my B or B plus was the highest grade
in the class. I can confirm. I saw classmates most
(46:32):
far more prepared and astute than myself, most of them
history majors, looking at their grades and blanching visibly. One
girl cried, a C, really a C. Professor Joel Silbey
said much of our grade would depend on how well
the New York Football Giants did in that nineteen seventy
eight National football season, and my god, they had just
(46:52):
sustained a loss so bad that it has still talked
about to this day. My classmates did not listen, and
I only am escaped alone to tell thee there is
a PostScript. The PostScript takes place thirty two and one
half years later. I returned to Cornell in March of
(47:16):
twenty eleven to give a lecture and teach a series
of classes to students who no longer afterwards felt they
had gotten their full money from the university. My alma
mater was very kind to me. They gave me a
tour of the secret places they never would have shown
me when I was a struggling student, like where they
kept Cornell's copy of the Gettysburg address. And they promised
(47:37):
me something special for lunch the first day, And sure
enough I was dropped off at a restaurant, and there,
rising from a table to greet me with applause, were
Cornell's official historian and former Professor Glenn Altschuler, and their
very famous history professor Walter Lefeber, and I swear Professor
Joel Silby, and they were fans of mine. Of course,
(48:02):
I could not leave well enough alone. After a few
minutes of very pleasant conversation with mister alt Schuller and
Professor la Faber and Professor Silby, I brought up the
nineteen seventy eight term paper Joe pisarcik handoff story. Professor
la Faber looked at Professor Silby like Professor Silby was
out of his mind. Is that true? And Sylby smiled
(48:24):
and said, yes, yes it is. And then Joel Silby
looked off into the distance as if he were peering
backwards through time. Nineteen seventy eight, that's when you could
really enjoy being a professor. He then looked back at
me and smiled, Keith, you won't believe this, but I
(48:45):
actually graded those papers pretty fairly, and I didn't follow
through on my original plan. After the fumble, I actually
turned off the TV and I sat there for a
few minutes, and I asked my soul if it was
okay for me to take my revenge on the universe
by failing all of you. Gulped Oh, said Sylby. It
(49:08):
was so great to be a professor back then. I
laughed so much I had tears in my eyes. And
then Sylbe said, okay, okay, maybe I was a little
unfair to you guys, but you know, it's the Giants
and you have to take this as a whole. The
year they won their first Super Bowl, what was that
eighty six. The final exam in that class was like
(49:29):
two days after they finished the regular season, fourteen and two,
eight o'clock in the morning. So I go to the
final see, which I never do. And I waited until
they were all sitting there sweating, and I said, remember
last September when I told you your grade will depend
on how well the New York Football Giants doing this
nineteen eighty six National Football League season. And it was
(49:49):
just silence, and I said, well, if you didn't notice,
they went fourteen and two, and I haven't been this
happy since when they won the title in nineteen fifty six.
So guess what, there's no final exam. And nobody moved,
so I said it again, there's no final exam, Go home,
go study for something else. Y'all get a's. And then
(50:11):
there was a couple of seconds of silence, and they
all simultaneously realized I was not kidding, and everybody cheered
and ran out into the sunshine. So with me and
professors Altschuler and la Faber, now in tears, Sylby said,
see it evens out, and I said, the hell it does.
I graduated in nineteen seventy nine, How does it canceled
(50:33):
final in nineteen eighty six. Even it out for me, Fella.
Joel Silby thought for a second and then he said, Wow,
I am buying you lunch forty six years ago. Forty
(50:59):
six years ago? What did I say? Forty three? Twenty three?
It was nineteen seventy eight. See, I was considered a
math prodigy. However, this was when I was still very
short and had blonde hair, all of which has changed.
I just like to add and subtract numbers. Now I'm
not even any good at that anymore. When we got
finally to algebra, I would just sit and stare at
(51:21):
the board and ask the math teacher which side was
the question and which side was the answer? And I
turned my head upside down, so I was looking upside down.
That's when he said, take the class, pass fail and
I'll pass you forty nineteen seventy eight. It was AnyWho,
(51:43):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Please share this podcast with somebody who
does not yet listen. And again, if you're just joining
us after the advertising, thank you kindly. Brian Ray and
John Phillip Chanel, the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled the
orchestration in keyboards, mister Ray was on the guitars, bass,
(52:03):
and drums, and it was pretty by Tko Brothers. Yes,
every day we do this. It was four days a week,
and it's four days a week this week. Next week
I'm gonna start doing it five days a week. And
as I said, Mondays will be brief. In any event.
Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best
baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music we
(52:26):
do sports segments periodically. The Old Woman theme from ESPN
two was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
And my announcer today is my friend Larry David. Everything
else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for
this the sixty fourth day until the twenty twenty four
(52:47):
presidential election, the one three hundred and thirty first day
since convicted Feldon Donald J. Trump's first attempted coup against
the democratically elected government of the United States use the
September eighteenth sentencing hearing. If it happens, use the mental
health system. Use president immunity. The Supreme Theocratic Court has
given it to you. President Biden. I say, if it's official,
(53:11):
it's legal. Have fun. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Bulletins as the news requires until the next one on
Keith Olderman good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
(53:39):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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