December 12, 2024 • 50 mins
SERIES 3 EPISODE 78: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: How did this not generate more headlines? It's just a proposed maneuver out of the legal morass Judge Juan Merchan has helped Trump create. But New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg has suggested that one way to solve this sentencing/but he's president/but we can't dismiss the conviction is to treat Trump - in a legal sense - the way you treat a convicted defendant who DIES before he appeals or is sentence.
In short: just pretend Trump is dead.
SPEAKING OF A BROKEN LEGAL SYSTEM: I'm not advocating for that, nor for guys assassinating CEO's five blocks from my home. But our legal system is broken and it would behoove commentators, columnists, writers, those who suck up to the moneyed class, and conservatives to stop being so surprised at the idea that maybe a majority of Americans is not as outraged as the wealthy are at the actions of Luigi McDreamy. Maybe you need to wonder more about why they perceive the legal system to be broken and the corporations to be legal excuses for nobody being responsible for innocent people dying and being injured.
CHRIS WRAY OBEYS IN ADVANCE: He'll quit as FBI director before the inauguration. Maybe he can make a comeback as Trump's second pick for DNI because Tulsi Gabbard is being attacked from the left, the middle, and now from The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board. Also Hegseth's been caught in another lie, about something he had said in public 48 hours earlier.
B-Block (23:46) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The World Cup goes to Saudi Arabia because everything is for sale. And an announcement of a candidacy for New York City Council suddenly made me realize that Bill DeBlasio and Eric Adams both became mayor here in part because between us one of my exes and I screwed around with the 2013 campaign. OOPS. (30:22) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Yes she sneaked a gold-plated gun into Australia but how else was she supposed to protect herself at clown school? Speaking of: Newsweek beats the L.A. Times to a "Fairness Meter" for its articles. And Elon Musk insists there's no homelessness because now is exactly the right time for a CEO to assert that.
C-Block (39:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My favorite Holiday story. The day, on my way to interview Mickey Mantle, I ran into somebody I mistook for just another fan - albeit a well-dressed man. Oops. Turned out he was one of the stars of the greatest movie ever made.
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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. Manhattan
District Attorney Alvin Bragg, one of only two American heroes
(00:28):
to actually convict Trump, has a novel legal argument about
how to handle sentencing him for his election interference hush
money crimes here, since Mershan seems to be convinced that
you can't act against Trump legally while he is the
sitting president, and more practically, there is literally no way
Trump's sentence could begin before he becomes sitting Dick. To President,
(00:52):
Bragg's novel argument, pretend Trump is dead Merry Christmas. This
is in Bragg's filing to Judge Wan Mershawan, who has
to figure out something to do other than vacate the
guilty verdict some way out of this legal morass. Mershan
(01:12):
himself helped to create a morass unique even for what
has proved to be a laughably useless American system of justice,
the envy of the world until it turned out you
can defeat its entire purpose if you can simply put
a dozen utterly corrupt alitos and canons and others in
just the right positions within that system. And the solution
(01:36):
boils down to pretend Trump is dead. Not trying to
make that happen, not wishing that happens, nothing like that.
Just pretending Trump is dead, and it's in legal papers
because bureaucracy abhors a vacuum. And if his conviction is
not overturned or vacated, or his sentence can't be pronounced,
(02:00):
or he can't be sent to Rikers Island, he's got
to be something. And that's some would be legally pretend dead.
The legalies itself actually isn't much more complicated than that.
This Court could adopt a remedy that some courts have
followed in the abatement by death context, to terminate proceedings
(02:23):
without vacating the jury verdict or dismissing indictment. Even if
this Court were to believe it the mere pendency of
the criminal proceeding we are somehow inconsistent with defenders' future
official duties as president, Dismissal and vacating would still not
be warranted under the abatement doctrine. Courts have considered an
(02:43):
analogous question of what to do with the jury verdict
and indictment when further criminal proceedings are no longer possible
because of the defendant's death, this court would likewise adopt
one of the alternatives to abatement ab initio here in
place of the extreme remedy of dismissal and vacatur that
(03:05):
defendant has proposed. Specifically, under the so called Alabama rule,
when a defendant dies after he is found guilty but
before the conviction becomes final through the appellate process, the
court places in the record of the case a notation
to the effect that the conviction removed the presumption of innocence,
but was neither affirmed nor reverse on appeal. Because the
(03:28):
defendant died, it makes sense to borrow from the manner
in which Court's address abatement, because many of defendant's arguments
here parallel the arguments made in favor of dismissal and vacatur.
Upon a defendant's death, he said it, I didn't. The
(03:53):
essence of that is that you essentially freeze the case
where it is trump convicted, appeal pending, and you let
future events soart it out. You don't overturn the verdant,
you don't expunge it. You don't wrongly clear this slimy
bastard elect. You simply stuff it over here in a
(04:14):
kind of legal purgatory, a suspended animation. You'll come back
to it if and when circumstances change and he stops
being legally dead. Bluntly, Wan mare Sean will go down
in American history if any more of it is written
or permitted in our schools, as one of our greatest
(04:35):
fools and greatest cowards, and greatest both sides. This enablers
the Merrick Garland of judges, if you will. So somebody
here has to do something other than saying, oh, well,
the corrupt Supreme Court says corrupt presidents are immune. So
I'll just go at the corrupt flow and overturn the
(04:55):
verdict of an American jury made up of American citizens
who sat there and stared at the devil in his fat,
orange makeuped face for weeks on end, and spoke for
the rest of us in this country and said, this
asshole paid off a porn star to keep her as
part of his extraordinary exertions to deceive the public and
(05:16):
get himself elected president of the United States. And we're
mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore.
Trump is corrupt. The jury was not the prosecution was not,
the system was not. The judge now has to decide
if he's corrupt or he's not. He can't do anything
(05:36):
about his own stupidity, and he can't do anything about
the million lies Trump has told to get elected again.
But he and we can do something legally meaningful and
culturally symbolic, something like sticking an asterisk on a sports
record obtained by cheating, something that Trump will always carry
with him. Freeze the case exactly where it is, and
(05:59):
do what Alvin Bragg suggests, Treat it like you would
if Trump We're dead. Merry Christmas. Not advocating for that, obviously,
(06:39):
as I am not and previously have stated, I was
not advocating for Luigi or any other guy sharing the
name of a famous video game character assassinating CEOs five
goddamned blocks from my home. I am an indictem convictim,
lock them up for life absolutist. On the other hand,
(07:02):
as I said Monday, nothing about the assassination of the
CEO of United Healthcare by Luigi McDreamy or whatever his
name is is more startling than wide swaths of the
media writing nearly hysterical pieces about how the support or
passive approval for what he did indicates some kind of
breakdown in American society and is inconceivable and cannot in
(07:25):
any way be tolerated for a minute longer. There was
a long magazine article yesterday blaming it on a communist
philosopher from one hundred years ago as CEOs and those
who worshiped them and cover them as if they were,
you know, superstar human beings recoil from this as if
(07:47):
it were another pope getting shot. I mean, sure, his
company has done some bad things over the centuries, and
millions have died as a result, but he's a good guy.
It's not like that's all his fault. These glorifiers of
greed have so disconnected from reality that they have forgotten
the essence of the definition of a corporation of the
(08:07):
thing Brian Thompson was the CEO of of the thing
Luigi Mangione was shooting. A corporation exists so that a
group of people can spend their money without any of
them being liable for any real moral or legal responsibility.
When people get killed or hurt or ripped off. If
(08:28):
you are not at the Wall Street Journal or CNBC
or any of the news organizations led by and run
by and anchored by generations of people who have grown
up in the era when the media has worshiped money
and the people who make it for their own sake,
it is impossible to conceive how corporations are viewed by
(08:48):
people who don't own stocks. How many people have died
as the direct result of corporate criminality? And a second question,
how many corporate executives have been given the death penalty
in a court of law. The answer to the first
question is a whole lot. The answer to the second
(09:10):
question is none. Nobody even went to jail after the Titanic.
Nobody went to jail after the Johnstown flood. Nobody went
to jail after the Deep Water Horizon BP spill in
the Gulf. They charged two supervisors with manslaughter. End result,
one of them pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Water Act.
(09:34):
Corporations are designed to ensure irresponsibility. If, as a disastrous
Supreme Court misruling from the nineteenth century suggests, corporations are persons.
That person would be Trump, So please columnists, reporters, right wingers,
(09:55):
business editors celebrating the guy who slowly choked a crazy
man to death on the subway, spare me at least
your shock that what might be a majority of Americans
is not getting that worked up about Luigi. When the
legal system has failed, When in the case of the
concept of the corporation, it has been designed to fail
(10:19):
as badly as ours has failed, people are not only
going to cheer vigilantes, they will fear that they have
nobody else to cheer. Four And oh, by the way,
if you also can't figure out why the serial murderer
of women Ted Bundy got hundreds of marriage proposals while
(10:39):
on trial and probably while they were walking into the
electric chair in nineteen eighty nine, just read some of
the stuff online about Luigi. This is obviously lost on me, ladies,
But I'm not blaming you for our human biology. I
am confident that if Luigi was Louise and was as
apparently attractive, men of today would be writing the same things.
(11:04):
But please, ladies, let's dial this down just a little,
because anything you write that sounds like he's hot. I mean,
I know, he murdered a guy, but he's hot is
not as they say the flex that.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
You think it is.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, that construction sound you hear
is the Trump ists trying to move the Overton window
yet again. You heard Trump say Sunday that he thinks
everybody on the January sixth Committee and every elected official
who voted for the January sixth Committee should be in jail,
but that no, he wouldn't order anybody to prosecute him.
(11:50):
That would be decided by his FBI director. Prune face
from Dick Tracy? Am I remembering that correctly decided by
his FBI director and his Attorney general? Neon Noodle from
the bugs? Bunny VERSI, Dick Tracy, if I have that right?
This idea that he wouldn't order it is now being
(12:11):
painted as some sort of concession by Trump. He won't
order his law enforcement agencies to fabricate crimes and make
up evidence against elected members of the House of Representatives
who tried to expose his actual criminal and seditious attempt
to overthrow the government. He'll just let others do it.
(12:31):
Fox headlined this a kinder, gentler Trump president elect taking
a more moderate stance. Jason Miller says the reactions from
Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and others wasn't necessary because
the January sixth, Committee threat was taken out of context.
Quoting him, if you listen to the entire interview with
President Trump, he said he's going to leave that up
(12:54):
to the law enforcement agents in charge, including Pam Bondi
and Cash Patel. Translation by way of current events analogy,
Trump isn't going to shoot the CEO in the head.
Some sick event working for Trump is going to shoot
the CEO in the head, because that's all right. Then
Pam Bondi and Cash Battel would never do something they
(13:16):
thought would please the Furer just to please the Furer,
and Pam Bondi and Cash Pateel would never tell Trump
in advance which elected officials and former elected officials and
political opponents they were planning to jail like this was Syria.
Just to pick an example on the confirmations front, Pete
Hegseeth met with Senator Susan Collins for an hour. Shockingly enough,
(13:40):
she did not commit to anything. She says she wants
to see a full FBI betting hag Seth has also
gotten caught in a spectacular lie. Monday, he went on
Hannity's Fascist Fallatio Hour and insisted that his comments had
been misconstrued that quote, I somehow don't support women in
(14:00):
the military. Some of our best warriors out there are women.
That remark came literally forty eight hours after he'd gone
on somebody's podcast and said, quote, I am straight up
just saying we should not have women in combat roles.
There's a little wiggle room in between those two statements.
You could probably fit something tiny between them, like heg
(14:24):
Seth's principles and morals. But honestly, whoever you are, if
you say the one thing Saturday and then the other
thing Monday, you are forcing us to circle back to
that other question of how much you have been drinking
and whether or not I need to calculate gallons into barrels.
(14:49):
Murkowski's probably a no, Collins is a who knows. McConnell
could vote no. Ernst was a no and might still
be one and four nos. And Hegseth is meat still
Trump thug. Mike Davis said he would be happy to
pay private investigators to dig dirt up on hesitant Republican senators,
(15:09):
And suddenly you had Ernst balancing on this tightrope sounding
like she was supporting Hegseeth or supporting the process or
supporting something without actually supporting him. Ernest is already being
attacked as a rhino, already having questions raised about her divorce,
and they've announced their primarying Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who
(15:31):
once voted to impeach Trump, and before FBI Director Chris
Ray said yesterday he would resign before the inauguration way
to obey in advance Chris. When Mike Rounds of South
Dakota said he had no complaints against Ray, Charlie Kirk
posted quote, Senator Rounds, you are up for reelection in
twenty twenty six. If you vote against any of Trump's nominees,
(15:53):
a primary challenge wouldn't be hard, just to remind her.
Also a reminder that in a dictatorship, there's only one fewer.
There are a lot of enforcers at a lot of
bobblehead dolls nodding yes, but there's just the one feurer.
And as he sets chances of confirmation seemingly increase. The
(16:14):
one I think is in the most trouble is Telsey Gabbard,
and not because, as a Republican Senate aide told the
news site The Hill, quote, behind closed doors, people think
she might be compromised. Like it's not hyperbole. There are
members of our conference who think she's a Russian asset unquote,
as published by the Hill. But Gabbard's got another problem,
(16:37):
which is there are Republicans who are worried that she
is not a Russian asset. The Wall Street Journal editorial
Board and honest to God, if they all turned out
to work in a bunker twenty eight feet under the
Reich Chancellory in Berlin, I wouldn't be the least goddamned surprised.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board writes quote the ugly
criticism of Telsey Gabbard as a quote likely Russian asset.
(17:00):
Representative W. Wasserman Schultz might convince Trump supporters that she's
been maligned as President Trump was because she's on board
with his agenda. The truth, which has Republican senators concerned
is the opposite. Miss Gabbart is on ample record as
a dogmatic opponent of the policies that made mister Trump's
first term foreign policy a success and that Democrats resisted.
(17:23):
The former Democrat would be a risky fit as Director
of National Intelligence. So the fascist right is trying to
sink Gabbard, and so are some Republican senators, and of course,
our friends at the Daily Coasts published a cartoon about her,
in which she is depicted as go and look at this.
(17:48):
Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle last had lines. Just because
his brains aren't leaking out his ears at a rally
every Saturday lin during the campaign doesn't mean they're not
still leaking out his ears. Trump posted this, The Democrats
(18:10):
are fighting hard to get rid of the popular vote
in future elections. They want all future presidential elections to
be based exclusively on the electoral college exclamation point. All
previous presidential elections have been based exclusively on the electoral college,
(18:34):
and six weeks ago, Trump's henchmen were working to get
around the popular vote if he lost in the swing states.
But now that he's won the popular vote by one
point four percent, he has to try to remain the victim.
And to remain the victim, he has to make the
popular vote the subject of some imaginary democratic conspiracy, which
(18:55):
brings us back to twenty twelve when Trump wanted to
eliminate the electoral college. And if he will get that
amendment passed, I might actually help him on that. Finally,
if you have not heard Junior's fiance or ex fiance
or whatever, screaming Kim Gilfoyle has been nominated as ambassador
(19:16):
to Greece gr e e Ce or time with Trump
Junior would have made her an ambassador to Greece gr
e a se. So the role of screaming Kim Gilfoyle
is now being played by a woman named Bettina Anderson
and now on with the show. Also of interest here,
(19:41):
a development in local politics in Fun City has just
made me realize something I had completely forgotten about and
not really tied together. But it just made me realize
that between us, one of my exes and I may
have inadvertently led to first Bill de Blasio and then
(20:01):
Eric Adams becoming Mayor of New York City. Firstly, to
everyone in the universe, I express my most sincere apologies. Secondly,
I know that the phrase one of my exes gives
you no clue as to who I am talking about.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
That's called a tease. And thirdly, that's next. This is countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Album stell Ahead Worse Persons. Elon Musk makes an appearance,
and there's a woman who went to Australia carrying a
three thousand dollars gold plated gun, but she swears she
wasn't planning to shoot anybody with it. She was just
(20:52):
taking it with her to Clown College. But now postscripts
to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snark. This
is the Countdown podcast and these are the places where
there's new Dateline Zurich. The Soccer World Cup for twenty
(21:12):
thirty was awarded to six nations, for most of them Spain,
but the twenty thirty four to one has been awarded
to the nation with the greatest soccer playing tradition in
the world, Saudi Arabia. Because everything is for sale, ask Trump.
The good news is by then climate change could be
(21:33):
bad enough for them to have to abandon the project
and maybe all of Saudi Arabia. Dateline New York rather
remarkable development here in fun City where Anthony Wiener, the
former congressman, and well he was RFK junior with the
phones and the sex before there was an RFK junior
(21:55):
with the phones and the sex. AnyWho, Anthony Wiener is
again running for office. This time it is the New
York City Council where he began his political career in
in nineteen ninety two. This is Wiener's second comeback attempt.
Eleven years ago, he was not only running for mayor
of New York, but he might have been the unlikely
favorite for the Democratic nomination and thus almost automatic election.
(22:18):
Then my girlfriend came home from her internship at the
Wiener campaign and described to me, with extraordinary frustration the
total chaos there, with Wiener saying he knew the names
of all the interns, and saying that all of the
girl interns were named Monica. He called the first one Monica,
the second one Monica. Then he called my girlfriend Monica,
(22:41):
and how most of the volunteers and many of the
staffers were only there just to get in good with
Wiener's wife, Juma Abadin, in hopes of getting onto Hillary
Clinton's upcoming presidential campaign. How did that workout for you? Anyway?
My girlfriend said she was going to write this up
as a guest post for the blog run by one
of her friends. I looked at her gently but patronized,
(23:05):
and said, you are a witness to the best political
New York story of the year, and you're going to
put it on a blog you should be putting it
in the Daily News or in the Post. Even She
then asked, hell on earth she could actually put it
in the Daily News or the Post? And I said,
I knew writers at the papers. Certainly they wouldn't mind
contacting their editors with a story like that, But you
(23:28):
have to write this up yourself first, so they don't
just try to take your story and write it themselves
and leave you out of it. You should use this
as a career lever. Next thing, she knew the New
York Daily News had bought her story written by her.
I helped a little, nothing more really than moving a
few paragraphs around and sharpening some of her already really sharp,
(23:52):
wonderfully bitter humor. But the editors insisted they needed a
photo of her to go with it and find She said,
just as long as you don't put it on the
front page of the paper. Well, of course, she glammed
up for the photo shoot, and after she got packed
from it, I said, did you get it in writing
that it won't be on the front page? Up at
four am to take our dog to the we wi pad.
(24:12):
I hopped onto my iPad and went to the Daily
News website that had just updated, and I promptly woke
my girlfriend up. Guess what's on the front page of
the Daily News. She responded to her photo with a
mixture of horror and almost maniacal egotism. That sounds bad,
It is, in fact the average response from the average
(24:35):
reporter about almost anything big that happens to them. It
is the fuel for all of them. Not long after
the story and the photo and the front page, she
got a job offer from the Daily Beast. Then it
was New York Magazine, then TV hits mostly on CNN,
and then a book with her fiance, and then well,
she kind of came full circle, didn't she, Because of course,
(24:57):
this is Olivia Newsy I'm talking about, whose career started
with a phone sex and explicit photos guy in Anthony
Weener and has stalled, if not ended, with another phone
sex and explicit photo guy in RFK Junior. Oh, by
the way, Anthony Wiener's twenty thirteen mayoral campaign, it didn't
implode just because I said to Olivia, you're gonna put
(25:18):
it in a blog. But we helped, and so the
Democratic nomination for mayor that year went instead to Bill Deblasio.
And he was such a bad mayor that New York
voters didn't even recognize that the guy running to succeed
him as the Democratic nominee was even worse. And his
name is Eric Adams. And bluntly, we'd be better off
(25:38):
if New York's mayor were Anthony Wiener or any Wiener.
So I can assure you without fear of contradiction, and
for many different reasons, that is the last goddamn time
I tamper with Olivia's blog posts, or that I tamper
with who runs New York City.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Thank you, Nancy Faust. Still ahead.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
My favorite Christmas story how I once, unintentionally at Christmas
time mistook one of the stars of the greatest motion
picture ever made for some older fan of mine, even
though he was wearing a cape first. Believe it or not,
(27:29):
there's still more new idiots to talk about, the daily
roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects
specimens who constitute two days other worst persons in the world.
They're gonna get more than one lesson, and you're gonna
need more than one lesson. That's a line from Citizen
Kane that I just screwed up the Bronze worse Liliana Goodson,
(27:53):
who has been sentenced to a year in jail in
Australia Sydney. To be precise, only four months in full
time custody. But still, I'll just read the account of
this from the local papers. A US will who flew
to Australia with a gold plated pistol worth about three
thousand dollars in her luggage has been sentenced to a
year in jail, despite claiming that she brought it with
(28:16):
her for protection. When asked at the airport if she
was carrying any prohibited items with her, Goodson claimed she
was not. The court was told quote what about the
gun in your bag? She was asked by a customs officer.
Goodson replied, oh yeah, I forgot about that. A review
of Goodson's phone revealed she had searched online can I
(28:38):
have a gun in my suitcase? And set a calendar
injury with a note reminding her to quote put gun
in suitcase. This is not exactly Luigi in effect?
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Here is it.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Goodson told police she was actually scared of shooting the
gun and hoped simply producing it would be enough to
deter potential threats. If that didn't do it I would
probably just pistol whip. Goodson was quoted as having said,
when asked where she planned to store the gun while
she was in Australia, she indicated under a vehicle's passenger's seat.
(29:13):
The court was also told in recent years Goodson was
using psychedelic drugs, synthetic cannabis and methamphetamine. And we still
haven't gotten to the punchline here. Miss Goodson, the court
was previously told, had come to Australia to attend clown school. Well,
(29:35):
at least she got that part accomplished. Magna cum laude
the runners up worser Newsweek. Newsweek used to be a magazine,
second in influence and journalistic standards in this country, to
only like Time magazine among magazines. And well, it dawns
on me, I'm going to have to explain to you
what magazines were news magazines anyway. Later, Newsweek has gone
(30:01):
decidedly crappy over the last two decades, and it is
decidedly far right crappy, and it's mostly an aggregation site.
But it has accomplished something. It has beaten the Los
Angeles Times and its owner doctor bad Haircut, who said
he plans to install some kind of fairness grades to
all the articles on his screw up a two car funeral.
(30:22):
Newspaper Newsweek has now unveiled its own fairness grades with
a twist. We report, you decide the fairness meter. Newsweek
is committed to journalism that is actual and fair. Our
fairness meter allows readers to hold us accountable by rating
an article's fairness in one of five ways. Unfair left
(30:44):
cleaning the article presents a left cleaning perspective on the
issue and does not include an opposing view. Mostly fair
left leaning, which is the same thing, only it includes
an opposing view. Fair the article presents a nonpartisan perspective
on the issue and includes opposing views. By the way,
if any getting, any article anywhere is rated fair under
this grading system, it will be the first in human history.
(31:10):
So you're gonna let readers vote on. And by the way,
there are more possibilities. They said five. There's unfair right
leaning and mostly fair right leaning, which is an oxymoron.
But they're gonna let voters vote on. Readers become voters
who vote on, in essence, what's true or not, depending
(31:34):
on how much they agree with the political points of
view of the article. Well, if anything is going to
reflect America as we start twenty twenty five, that's pretty
much it isn't it? But our winner speaking of letting
them vote on it and leaning right. Elmo, somebody tweeted
a report on homelessness, and he, of course being a fascist.
(31:57):
Now who is involved in the trump Ocracy, the kleptocracy,
the trump kleptocracy. He lets milk everything out of this government.
I can get my grubby little fingers on because I
can't possibly have enough money, because the hole in my
soul is too big to ever fill with anything. Elon Musk.
(32:17):
That guy, he had to insist there is no such
thing as homelessness. Quote. In most cases, the word homeless
is a lie. It's usually a propaganda word for violent
drug addicts with severe mental illness. Actually, Elmo, the propaganda
(32:38):
words we use for quote, violent drug addicts with severe
mental illness, those propaganda words are members of the X
management team, Elmo Leon. It only recently dawned on me.
His skin is stretched so tight across his face. He
looks like Jim Carrey in the movie The Mask. Musk
(32:59):
two days other worse person at the world. Now to
(33:26):
the number one story on the countdown and my favorite
topic me and things I promised not to tell, and
I swear I thought I heard her say Carleton. This
was also December in nineteen eighty five in Los Angeles,
and if you've never spent Christmas in a warm metropolitan
area for the first time in your life, you do
not know what disorientation really is. I had just completed
(33:50):
three months in my new job as the sports director
of Channel five in LA. I had spent most of
November adjusting not only to it not getting cold, but
to the fact that almost nobody else noticed that it
was not getting cold, except one of our productions assistance
who sprinted through the parking lot and up the stairs
into the little bungalow on the KTLA lot in Hollywood,
(34:11):
then housed our sports department. He shivered like a dog,
shaking himself awake, and announced, my god, it's bitter out there.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Bitter.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
I checked it was forty nine degrees. So December nineteen
eighty five was already weird enough. I was doing well
in LA Being three thousand miles away from everyone and
everything I knew had been surprisingly helpful, and there was
no ramp up time for my work. I'd already won
a couple of best Sportscaster awards, and then the top
all news radio station was asking me to come over
(34:40):
every afternoon and split the afternoon drive sportscasting shift with
a guy who'd been on the air there literally for
thirty years, who's one of the voices in the background
and The Godfather Part two? And now somehow my producer,
Ron Grelnick, and I were headed to the Beverly Wilshire
Hotel to go interview Mickey Mantle. For the average LA sportscaster,
(35:04):
there really was and much reason to interview Mickey Mantle,
which is why all of them at the bigger three
network stations had turned down the offer of a sit
down interview. But I was a New Yorker and had
been three months earlier, and thus Mickey Mantle was my idol.
And moreover, when I became a baseball fan in nineteen
sixty seven, my folks bought tickets specifically behind first base
(35:27):
at Yankee Stadium because they had just moved Mantle there
from the outfield. And as my dad said, when you
are an old man, you will say the greatest thing
you ever saw in baseball was Mickey Mantle. So you
might as well see as much of him as you can. Well,
I'm an old man now, and my dad was exactly right.
Mantle was on a tour publicizing some kind of hitting
(35:48):
video and he would do one exclusive interview with an
LA station at like exactly five pm on that night
in December nineteen eighty five. And to get it you
had to agree to give the video exactly one plug
and ask him one question about it. But otherwise you
could ask whatever you want. Un he had fifteen minutes.
Then he was going out to dinner. Yeah, yeah, that
(36:11):
was it dinner. So Ron and I pulled up to
the Beverly Wilshire in his car, and I had never
been in, but I had walked past it a dozen
times and I knew there was a new wing and
an old wing. And as Ron tried to park, I
tried to find the room where Mantle would be waiting
for us, so I could be there to meet the
camera crew that was joining us from some other shoot somewhere.
(36:31):
And also because he was Mickey Mantle. I had met
him before, I had even interviewed him briefly for CNN,
but nothing like this, nothing like a sit down interview,
just me and him. The room number was something like
eight ninety seven, could have been five ninety seven, could
have been twelve ninety seven, but it was basically the
highest number there could be on a given hotel floor.
(36:55):
And I saw the elevator just pass the registration desk,
and up. I went to the eighth floor, and it
was a deserted labyrinth, turn after turn, and nobody there.
And then suddenly I turned a corner, and walking towards
me was the most elegantly dressed older couple I had
ever seen to that point or since. She was wearing
(37:16):
a mink stole atop a beautiful gown, and she had
a diamond necklace big enough to induce cramps. She had
a piercing, glistening set of deep brown eyes. She looked
to be in her mid to late fifties, but might
have been older. He was older, maybe eighty, but with
(37:37):
a full head of thick and wiry hair. He was tall, thin,
extraordinarily elegant in a perfect tuxedo. But all of this
was overwhelmed, almost erased, by one fact that startles me
still thirty seven years later. This man was wearing a cape.
(37:58):
I'm pretty confident that I had never seen a man
wearing a cape before, I know, I have not seen
one since I have been looking. And yet it looked
so good on him that I can recall briefly thinking, Keith,
maybe you should buy a cape. This couple was perfect.
We seem to be the only people on the floor.
(38:20):
The hallway wasn't all that wide. I said, good evening
as I passed. She said good evening, and in so
doing revealed a British accent, and he mumbled evening and
revealed what sounded like the lingering minor aftermaths of a
minor stroke. They walked their way, I walked mine, and
my focus returned to finding Mickey Mantle in room eight
ninety seven. The numbers of the rooms I was passing
(38:43):
were like eight eleven and eight fourteen, And after a
few more turns of the labyrinth, that dawned on me
that I must be in the old wing of the
Beverly Wilshire, and the high numbers like eight ninety seven
must have been in the new wing of the Beverly Wilshire.
I also noticed that I had not passed a doorway
or a vestibule or some kind of connecting bridge to
the new wing, so I had better make it back
(39:04):
to the elevator and the lobby before Ron or the
camera crew made the same mistake I had. Because Mickey
Mantle was waiting my reversed course, I began to trot.
After three or four more of these labyrinthine turns, I found,
to my shock that the perfectly elegant older couple he
was wearing a cape, was standing exactly where I had
(39:27):
left them.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
She laughed.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
She mentioned something about the higher numbers being in the
new wing, and everybody made that mistake. I thanked her,
and then she said, you're the young man who does
the spots on the television, aren't you. And I had
gotten pretty popular pretty fast there, but being recognized was
still very surprising and pleasantly so. And I said that,
and I introduced myself, so nice to meet you. She said,
I'm Patricia Carlton, and this she pointed to the guy
(39:52):
in the cape is my husband. He slowly extended a
hand but shook mine vigorously. And I'm Joseph Carlton. Missus
Carlton was very excited. I know Joe and I we
really are not fans of the sports, but whenever we're
at helme in Palm Springs. We make sure we stay
up until the end of the ten o'clock news so
we could watch you. Joe nodded and smiled in the cape.
(40:16):
You know, so clearly enjoying yourself that we find ourselves
enjoying it too. That's really quite remarkable. I was genuinely
touched and remain so I explained my dilemma. I treated
them as you were supposed to treat viewers, gratefully and solicitously,
and I asked them if they were going to the lobby,
and if I might walk with them so I didn't
get any further lost. We'd be delighted. I must ask you,
(40:38):
mister fishman, who does the news on your program? Is
that his real hair? She saw my shock at the question.
Joe and I have often worn wigs, and we can't
be certain. That means if it is a wig, it's
a good one. We reached the elevator bank and I
pushed down. He was walking slowly. He must have had
(40:58):
a stroke. Still, he was an imposing figure of a man,
and not just because he was wearing a cape. As
I steered them away from the subject of our anchorman's
to pay and talked instead about my Mickey Mantle interview.
I realized he looked extremely familiar, like I knew him.
Joseph Carleton kept rolling the name over in my mind.
(41:21):
And Patricia Carlton, who are they? The elevator light went
off and a very loud bell sounded. The doors opened,
and there was my producer, Ron and the two man
camera crew, and the reporter who had been with them
on the previous story, Sam chu Lynn, who had stayed
with him because he wanted to meet Mickey Mantle. And
(41:42):
as I joked to my new friends Joe and Patricia Carlton,
oh look, here's my camera crew, it's four members made
no motion to even leave the elevator. They all looked
dumb struck. Sam chu Lynn's eyes looked like they were
about to pop out of his head. I assumed this
was because my new friend Joe was wearing a cape.
(42:03):
Finally I got the crew to move. I held the
door open so Joe and Patricia could get into the elevator.
I actually said, such a pleasure to meet you, and
of course, thank you so much for watching Channel five
News at ten, and she smiled warmly, and he managed
a quick wave and the doors closed, and only at
that exact moment did it dawn on me where I
(42:24):
knew him from the blood now drained from my face.
As I turned to talk to the camera crew and
Ron and Sam, Uh, you guys knew who those two
people were, right, Sam laughed at me. Of course I did,
didn't you? And I sighed, oh my god. She said
her name was Patricia Carleton and that was her husband,
(42:47):
Joseph Carleton. And she said it that way because she's British,
and that's how if you're British, you would say the
name Cotton. She's Patricia Cotton and he's Joseph Cotton, who
was in Citizen Kane. I remember actually putting my hand
on the wall, on my face in my other hand,
(43:08):
I just met Joseph Cotton and I didn't recognize him.
And the cameraman, Martin Klancy, who also often said things
like this, said pretty stupid of you, huh? And I said,
you know you have no idea how stupid. I mean,
obviously I know who Joseph Cotton is. And Sam Chulin said,
are you sure about that? I gave him a dirty
(43:29):
look and I said, no, it's worse than this. In
nineteen forty eight. The president of the International Joseph Cotton
Fan Club was my mother. There is a picture of
that man with my mother from like thirty seven years
ago at the Stork Club.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
They all laughed.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Then Sam Chulin said, in that photo is he wearing
that cape?
Speaker 2 (43:57):
My gaff.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Did serve to relax me a little for the interview
with Mantle. Gaff. When I get over it, i'll let
you know. So anyway, we all reached room eight ninety
seven or whatever it was in the new Wing the
Beverly Wilshire, and as the crew set up, I managed
to tell the story of the Cottons to Mickey Mantle
and he said, yeah, I saw them in the lobby
(44:22):
a couple hours ago. He's a great actor. I met
him in New York, must be thirty years ago. Did
you say hi? Oh right, you just told me you
didn't recognize him. Mickey Mantle was busting my chops, as
I said. I had met him before, even interviewed him before,
but this was our first sit down and he was
in a good mood, even expansive and playful, and at
(44:42):
one point he stunned me. I said, I know you
only have a couple of minutes left, So forgive me
if I'm bringing up something that takes more than a
couple of minutes. And he interrupted, and he said, take
as much time as you need. I'm enjoying us talking.
So I asked him about this one subject, how he
felt about what he did in his career, considering how
injured he was. When he retired, Mickey Mantle was third
(45:03):
all time in home he hit three hundred and ten times.
He played in twelve World Series on one bad knee
and one worse knee. Mantle got very reflective and self critical.
We use this SoundBite at the end of his obituary
that I would do for ESPN a decade later if
I'd known I was going to live so long, he
(45:25):
told me, I would have taken better care of myself
and done better. I said, well, he'd done pretty good.
I could have done better.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
I thanked him.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Then, as the cameraman moved to get the shots of
me nodding and repeating a question or two, Mickey Mantle said,
that was really good.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
I flushed.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
I got to ask you something. Can you give me
some pointers? I suddenly had no idea what the word
pointers meant? Pointers? What are pointers? Mantle said he was
going to do some Yankee games the next year on
cable with Mel Allen. I'm doing interviews after games. I'm
no damn good at interviews. Just now, you were moving
from topics to topics, so smooth. How you keep all
(46:09):
the questions in your head? Now? I laughed, I didn't
keep them in my head. Didn't you see my cheat card?
And he laughed and he said no, and I showed
it to him. I said, it's just a business card
with like seven key words written on the back. If
I think I might freeze up because I'm nervous because
I'm interviewing Mickey Mantle, or I just met Joseph Cotton
and I didn't recognize him, I make one of these cards.
(46:31):
I hide it in the palm of my hand, and
if I get stuck, I could just look down quickly
and see one of the words and I've got the question.
I've got this card to remind me. Mickey Mantle's eyes glowed.
But wait, he said, we're using these mics, and he
pointed to the clip on on his shirt, so you
don't have to hold mike. What do you do if
you have to hold the mic like I'll have to
(46:53):
in an interview after a ballgame, what if the card
would fall out or you have to shake hands with
the player. And I said, well, just write the words
on your hand whichever hand is holding the mic, like
below the thumb. Mickey Mantle looked at me as if
I had just given him the secret of eternal life. Wow,
he said, that's great, I'm going to write this down. Thanks,
(47:15):
and we were packed up, and he actually walked me
to the hotel room door and gave me a double
handed handshake. So it had been a big day, even
if I didn't realize it was Joseph Cotton. Mickey Mantle
had asked me for advice about anything. Somehow I had
thought of something to tell him, and he was really
(47:35):
happy about the advice, and of course this provided a punchline.
The following spring, we were in the studios at KTLA,
watching on the satellite feed as the Yankees first cable
telecast of the nineteen eighty six season ended, and sure
enough they threw it down to Mickey Mantle on the
field interviewing some player, and one of my producers said, oh,
let's see if he remembers the lesson you gave him,
(47:55):
and another one said, here's your student, Mickey Mantle. And
sure enough, after the first answer, Mickey Mantle pauses, and
I know he can't remember what he wanted to ask that,
And sure enough I see him cheat his look down
slightly towards the hand holding the microphone. And the next
thing I see he's kind of tilted the microphone sideways
and he's asking the question. But you can barely hear
(48:17):
him because the mic is pointing off at a forty
five degree angle, because he has written his key reminder
words not below the thumb on the outside part of
his hand, but on the palm side of his hand,
and he's had to move the mic out of the
(48:37):
way to read the words on the palm of his hand.
And the producer says, ha ha, well, now Mickey Mantle
hates you. It sounded like Carlton to me. Also, I've
(49:06):
spent most of the last what now thirty nine years
wondering what happened to that cape. They'd like to have
it framed on my wall somewhere. I've done all the
damage I can do here. Thanks for listening. Ryan Ray
and John Phillip shaneil the musical directors of Countdown Arrange
produced and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled
(49:29):
orchestration in keyboards. Mister Ray was on guitars, bass and drums.
I don't believe they have warned capes. It was produced
by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust, who
may have worn a cape. The sports music is the
Oulderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis
(49:49):
courtesy of ESPN Inc. There are no capes Citty ESPN.
Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns allowed.
My announcer was my friend Larry David. No cape, no fur.
Everything else was as ever my fault. That' for today,
just fifteen hundred days until the scheduled end of the
lame duck presidency of Trump scheduled. The next scheduled countdown
(50:15):
is Monday. As always, boltins as the news warrants until
next time, I'm Keith Aldremman. Good Morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Oldreman is a production
(50:54):
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. Manhattan
District Attorney Alvin Bragg, one of only two American heroes
(00:28):
to actually convict Trump, has a novel legal argument about
how to handle sentencing him for his election interference hush
money crimes here, since Mershan seems to be convinced that
you can't act against Trump legally while he is the
sitting president, and more practically, there is literally no way
Trump's sentence could begin before he becomes sitting Dick. To President,
(00:52):
Bragg's novel argument, pretend Trump is dead Merry Christmas. This
is in Bragg's filing to Judge Wan Mershawan, who has
to figure out something to do other than vacate the
guilty verdict some way out of this legal morass. Mershan
(01:12):
himself helped to create a morass unique even for what
has proved to be a laughably useless American system of justice,
the envy of the world until it turned out you
can defeat its entire purpose if you can simply put
a dozen utterly corrupt alitos and canons and others in
just the right positions within that system. And the solution
(01:36):
boils down to pretend Trump is dead. Not trying to
make that happen, not wishing that happens, nothing like that.
Just pretending Trump is dead, and it's in legal papers
because bureaucracy abhors a vacuum. And if his conviction is
not overturned or vacated, or his sentence can't be pronounced,
(02:00):
or he can't be sent to Rikers Island, he's got
to be something. And that's some would be legally pretend dead.
The legalies itself actually isn't much more complicated than that.
This Court could adopt a remedy that some courts have
followed in the abatement by death context, to terminate proceedings
(02:23):
without vacating the jury verdict or dismissing indictment. Even if
this Court were to believe it the mere pendency of
the criminal proceeding we are somehow inconsistent with defenders' future
official duties as president, Dismissal and vacating would still not
be warranted under the abatement doctrine. Courts have considered an
(02:43):
analogous question of what to do with the jury verdict
and indictment when further criminal proceedings are no longer possible
because of the defendant's death, this court would likewise adopt
one of the alternatives to abatement ab initio here in
place of the extreme remedy of dismissal and vacatur that
(03:05):
defendant has proposed. Specifically, under the so called Alabama rule,
when a defendant dies after he is found guilty but
before the conviction becomes final through the appellate process, the
court places in the record of the case a notation
to the effect that the conviction removed the presumption of innocence,
but was neither affirmed nor reverse on appeal. Because the
(03:28):
defendant died, it makes sense to borrow from the manner
in which Court's address abatement, because many of defendant's arguments
here parallel the arguments made in favor of dismissal and vacatur.
Upon a defendant's death, he said it, I didn't. The
(03:53):
essence of that is that you essentially freeze the case
where it is trump convicted, appeal pending, and you let
future events soart it out. You don't overturn the verdant,
you don't expunge it. You don't wrongly clear this slimy
bastard elect. You simply stuff it over here in a
(04:14):
kind of legal purgatory, a suspended animation. You'll come back
to it if and when circumstances change and he stops
being legally dead. Bluntly, Wan mare Sean will go down
in American history if any more of it is written
or permitted in our schools, as one of our greatest
(04:35):
fools and greatest cowards, and greatest both sides. This enablers
the Merrick Garland of judges, if you will. So somebody
here has to do something other than saying, oh, well,
the corrupt Supreme Court says corrupt presidents are immune. So
I'll just go at the corrupt flow and overturn the
(04:55):
verdict of an American jury made up of American citizens
who sat there and stared at the devil in his fat,
orange makeuped face for weeks on end, and spoke for
the rest of us in this country and said, this
asshole paid off a porn star to keep her as
part of his extraordinary exertions to deceive the public and
(05:16):
get himself elected president of the United States. And we're
mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore.
Trump is corrupt. The jury was not the prosecution was not,
the system was not. The judge now has to decide
if he's corrupt or he's not. He can't do anything
(05:36):
about his own stupidity, and he can't do anything about
the million lies Trump has told to get elected again.
But he and we can do something legally meaningful and
culturally symbolic, something like sticking an asterisk on a sports
record obtained by cheating, something that Trump will always carry
with him. Freeze the case exactly where it is, and
(05:59):
do what Alvin Bragg suggests, Treat it like you would
if Trump We're dead. Merry Christmas. Not advocating for that, obviously,
(06:39):
as I am not and previously have stated, I was
not advocating for Luigi or any other guy sharing the
name of a famous video game character assassinating CEOs five
goddamned blocks from my home. I am an indictem convictim,
lock them up for life absolutist. On the other hand,
(07:02):
as I said Monday, nothing about the assassination of the
CEO of United Healthcare by Luigi McDreamy or whatever his
name is is more startling than wide swaths of the
media writing nearly hysterical pieces about how the support or
passive approval for what he did indicates some kind of
breakdown in American society and is inconceivable and cannot in
(07:25):
any way be tolerated for a minute longer. There was
a long magazine article yesterday blaming it on a communist
philosopher from one hundred years ago as CEOs and those
who worshiped them and cover them as if they were,
you know, superstar human beings recoil from this as if
(07:47):
it were another pope getting shot. I mean, sure, his
company has done some bad things over the centuries, and
millions have died as a result, but he's a good guy.
It's not like that's all his fault. These glorifiers of
greed have so disconnected from reality that they have forgotten
the essence of the definition of a corporation of the
(08:07):
thing Brian Thompson was the CEO of of the thing
Luigi Mangione was shooting. A corporation exists so that a
group of people can spend their money without any of
them being liable for any real moral or legal responsibility.
When people get killed or hurt or ripped off. If
(08:28):
you are not at the Wall Street Journal or CNBC
or any of the news organizations led by and run
by and anchored by generations of people who have grown
up in the era when the media has worshiped money
and the people who make it for their own sake,
it is impossible to conceive how corporations are viewed by
(08:48):
people who don't own stocks. How many people have died
as the direct result of corporate criminality? And a second question,
how many corporate executives have been given the death penalty
in a court of law. The answer to the first
question is a whole lot. The answer to the second
(09:10):
question is none. Nobody even went to jail after the Titanic.
Nobody went to jail after the Johnstown flood. Nobody went
to jail after the Deep Water Horizon BP spill in
the Gulf. They charged two supervisors with manslaughter. End result,
one of them pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Water Act.
(09:34):
Corporations are designed to ensure irresponsibility. If, as a disastrous
Supreme Court misruling from the nineteenth century suggests, corporations are persons.
That person would be Trump, So please columnists, reporters, right wingers,
(09:55):
business editors celebrating the guy who slowly choked a crazy
man to death on the subway, spare me at least
your shock that what might be a majority of Americans
is not getting that worked up about Luigi. When the
legal system has failed, When in the case of the
concept of the corporation, it has been designed to fail
(10:19):
as badly as ours has failed, people are not only
going to cheer vigilantes, they will fear that they have
nobody else to cheer. Four And oh, by the way,
if you also can't figure out why the serial murderer
of women Ted Bundy got hundreds of marriage proposals while
(10:39):
on trial and probably while they were walking into the
electric chair in nineteen eighty nine, just read some of
the stuff online about Luigi. This is obviously lost on me, ladies,
But I'm not blaming you for our human biology. I
am confident that if Luigi was Louise and was as
apparently attractive, men of today would be writing the same things.
(11:04):
But please, ladies, let's dial this down just a little,
because anything you write that sounds like he's hot. I mean,
I know, he murdered a guy, but he's hot is
not as they say the flex that.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
You think it is.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, that construction sound you hear
is the Trump ists trying to move the Overton window
yet again. You heard Trump say Sunday that he thinks
everybody on the January sixth Committee and every elected official
who voted for the January sixth Committee should be in jail,
but that no, he wouldn't order anybody to prosecute him.
(11:50):
That would be decided by his FBI director. Prune face
from Dick Tracy? Am I remembering that correctly decided by
his FBI director and his Attorney general? Neon Noodle from
the bugs? Bunny VERSI, Dick Tracy, if I have that right?
This idea that he wouldn't order it is now being
(12:11):
painted as some sort of concession by Trump. He won't
order his law enforcement agencies to fabricate crimes and make
up evidence against elected members of the House of Representatives
who tried to expose his actual criminal and seditious attempt
to overthrow the government. He'll just let others do it.
(12:31):
Fox headlined this a kinder, gentler Trump president elect taking
a more moderate stance. Jason Miller says the reactions from
Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and others wasn't necessary because
the January sixth, Committee threat was taken out of context.
Quoting him, if you listen to the entire interview with
President Trump, he said he's going to leave that up
(12:54):
to the law enforcement agents in charge, including Pam Bondi
and Cash Patel. Translation by way of current events analogy,
Trump isn't going to shoot the CEO in the head.
Some sick event working for Trump is going to shoot
the CEO in the head, because that's all right. Then
Pam Bondi and Cash Battel would never do something they
(13:16):
thought would please the Furer just to please the Furer,
and Pam Bondi and Cash Pateel would never tell Trump
in advance which elected officials and former elected officials and
political opponents they were planning to jail like this was Syria.
Just to pick an example on the confirmations front, Pete
Hegseeth met with Senator Susan Collins for an hour. Shockingly enough,
(13:40):
she did not commit to anything. She says she wants
to see a full FBI betting hag Seth has also
gotten caught in a spectacular lie. Monday, he went on
Hannity's Fascist Fallatio Hour and insisted that his comments had
been misconstrued that quote, I somehow don't support women in
(14:00):
the military. Some of our best warriors out there are women.
That remark came literally forty eight hours after he'd gone
on somebody's podcast and said, quote, I am straight up
just saying we should not have women in combat roles.
There's a little wiggle room in between those two statements.
You could probably fit something tiny between them, like heg
(14:24):
Seth's principles and morals. But honestly, whoever you are, if
you say the one thing Saturday and then the other
thing Monday, you are forcing us to circle back to
that other question of how much you have been drinking
and whether or not I need to calculate gallons into barrels.
(14:49):
Murkowski's probably a no, Collins is a who knows. McConnell
could vote no. Ernst was a no and might still
be one and four nos. And Hegseth is meat still
Trump thug. Mike Davis said he would be happy to
pay private investigators to dig dirt up on hesitant Republican senators,
(15:09):
And suddenly you had Ernst balancing on this tightrope sounding
like she was supporting Hegseeth or supporting the process or
supporting something without actually supporting him. Ernest is already being
attacked as a rhino, already having questions raised about her divorce,
and they've announced their primarying Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who
(15:31):
once voted to impeach Trump, and before FBI Director Chris
Ray said yesterday he would resign before the inauguration way
to obey in advance Chris. When Mike Rounds of South
Dakota said he had no complaints against Ray, Charlie Kirk
posted quote, Senator Rounds, you are up for reelection in
twenty twenty six. If you vote against any of Trump's nominees,
(15:53):
a primary challenge wouldn't be hard, just to remind her.
Also a reminder that in a dictatorship, there's only one fewer.
There are a lot of enforcers at a lot of
bobblehead dolls nodding yes, but there's just the one feurer.
And as he sets chances of confirmation seemingly increase. The
(16:14):
one I think is in the most trouble is Telsey Gabbard,
and not because, as a Republican Senate aide told the
news site The Hill, quote, behind closed doors, people think
she might be compromised. Like it's not hyperbole. There are
members of our conference who think she's a Russian asset unquote,
as published by the Hill. But Gabbard's got another problem,
(16:37):
which is there are Republicans who are worried that she
is not a Russian asset. The Wall Street Journal editorial
Board and honest to God, if they all turned out
to work in a bunker twenty eight feet under the
Reich Chancellory in Berlin, I wouldn't be the least goddamned surprised.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board writes quote the ugly
criticism of Telsey Gabbard as a quote likely Russian asset.
(17:00):
Representative W. Wasserman Schultz might convince Trump supporters that she's
been maligned as President Trump was because she's on board
with his agenda. The truth, which has Republican senators concerned
is the opposite. Miss Gabbart is on ample record as
a dogmatic opponent of the policies that made mister Trump's
first term foreign policy a success and that Democrats resisted.
(17:23):
The former Democrat would be a risky fit as Director
of National Intelligence. So the fascist right is trying to
sink Gabbard, and so are some Republican senators, and of course,
our friends at the Daily Coasts published a cartoon about her,
in which she is depicted as go and look at this.
(17:48):
Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle last had lines. Just because
his brains aren't leaking out his ears at a rally
every Saturday lin during the campaign doesn't mean they're not
still leaking out his ears. Trump posted this, The Democrats
(18:10):
are fighting hard to get rid of the popular vote
in future elections. They want all future presidential elections to
be based exclusively on the electoral college exclamation point. All
previous presidential elections have been based exclusively on the electoral college,
(18:34):
and six weeks ago, Trump's henchmen were working to get
around the popular vote if he lost in the swing states.
But now that he's won the popular vote by one
point four percent, he has to try to remain the victim.
And to remain the victim, he has to make the
popular vote the subject of some imaginary democratic conspiracy, which
(18:55):
brings us back to twenty twelve when Trump wanted to
eliminate the electoral college. And if he will get that
amendment passed, I might actually help him on that. Finally,
if you have not heard Junior's fiance or ex fiance
or whatever, screaming Kim Gilfoyle has been nominated as ambassador
(19:16):
to Greece gr e e Ce or time with Trump
Junior would have made her an ambassador to Greece gr
e a se. So the role of screaming Kim Gilfoyle
is now being played by a woman named Bettina Anderson
and now on with the show. Also of interest here,
(19:41):
a development in local politics in Fun City has just
made me realize something I had completely forgotten about and
not really tied together. But it just made me realize
that between us, one of my exes and I may
have inadvertently led to first Bill de Blasio and then
(20:01):
Eric Adams becoming Mayor of New York City. Firstly, to
everyone in the universe, I express my most sincere apologies. Secondly,
I know that the phrase one of my exes gives
you no clue as to who I am talking about.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
That's called a tease. And thirdly, that's next. This is countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Album stell Ahead Worse Persons. Elon Musk makes an appearance,
and there's a woman who went to Australia carrying a
three thousand dollars gold plated gun, but she swears she
wasn't planning to shoot anybody with it. She was just
(20:52):
taking it with her to Clown College. But now postscripts
to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snark. This
is the Countdown podcast and these are the places where
there's new Dateline Zurich. The Soccer World Cup for twenty
(21:12):
thirty was awarded to six nations, for most of them Spain,
but the twenty thirty four to one has been awarded
to the nation with the greatest soccer playing tradition in
the world, Saudi Arabia. Because everything is for sale, ask Trump.
The good news is by then climate change could be
(21:33):
bad enough for them to have to abandon the project
and maybe all of Saudi Arabia. Dateline New York rather
remarkable development here in fun City where Anthony Wiener, the
former congressman, and well he was RFK junior with the
phones and the sex before there was an RFK junior
(21:55):
with the phones and the sex. AnyWho, Anthony Wiener is
again running for office. This time it is the New
York City Council where he began his political career in
in nineteen ninety two. This is Wiener's second comeback attempt.
Eleven years ago, he was not only running for mayor
of New York, but he might have been the unlikely
favorite for the Democratic nomination and thus almost automatic election.
(22:18):
Then my girlfriend came home from her internship at the
Wiener campaign and described to me, with extraordinary frustration the
total chaos there, with Wiener saying he knew the names
of all the interns, and saying that all of the
girl interns were named Monica. He called the first one Monica,
the second one Monica. Then he called my girlfriend Monica,
(22:41):
and how most of the volunteers and many of the
staffers were only there just to get in good with
Wiener's wife, Juma Abadin, in hopes of getting onto Hillary
Clinton's upcoming presidential campaign. How did that workout for you? Anyway?
My girlfriend said she was going to write this up
as a guest post for the blog run by one
of her friends. I looked at her gently but patronized,
(23:05):
and said, you are a witness to the best political
New York story of the year, and you're going to
put it on a blog you should be putting it
in the Daily News or in the Post. Even She
then asked, hell on earth she could actually put it
in the Daily News or the Post? And I said,
I knew writers at the papers. Certainly they wouldn't mind
contacting their editors with a story like that, But you
(23:28):
have to write this up yourself first, so they don't
just try to take your story and write it themselves
and leave you out of it. You should use this
as a career lever. Next thing, she knew the New
York Daily News had bought her story written by her.
I helped a little, nothing more really than moving a
few paragraphs around and sharpening some of her already really sharp,
(23:52):
wonderfully bitter humor. But the editors insisted they needed a
photo of her to go with it and find She said,
just as long as you don't put it on the
front page of the paper. Well, of course, she glammed
up for the photo shoot, and after she got packed
from it, I said, did you get it in writing
that it won't be on the front page? Up at
four am to take our dog to the we wi pad.
(24:12):
I hopped onto my iPad and went to the Daily
News website that had just updated, and I promptly woke
my girlfriend up. Guess what's on the front page of
the Daily News. She responded to her photo with a
mixture of horror and almost maniacal egotism. That sounds bad,
It is, in fact the average response from the average
(24:35):
reporter about almost anything big that happens to them. It
is the fuel for all of them. Not long after
the story and the photo and the front page, she
got a job offer from the Daily Beast. Then it
was New York Magazine, then TV hits mostly on CNN,
and then a book with her fiance, and then well,
she kind of came full circle, didn't she, Because of course,
(24:57):
this is Olivia Newsy I'm talking about, whose career started
with a phone sex and explicit photos guy in Anthony
Weener and has stalled, if not ended, with another phone
sex and explicit photo guy in RFK Junior. Oh, by
the way, Anthony Wiener's twenty thirteen mayoral campaign, it didn't
implode just because I said to Olivia, you're gonna put
(25:18):
it in a blog. But we helped, and so the
Democratic nomination for mayor that year went instead to Bill Deblasio.
And he was such a bad mayor that New York
voters didn't even recognize that the guy running to succeed
him as the Democratic nominee was even worse. And his
name is Eric Adams. And bluntly, we'd be better off
(25:38):
if New York's mayor were Anthony Wiener or any Wiener.
So I can assure you without fear of contradiction, and
for many different reasons, that is the last goddamn time
I tamper with Olivia's blog posts, or that I tamper
with who runs New York City.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Thank you, Nancy Faust. Still ahead.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
My favorite Christmas story how I once, unintentionally at Christmas
time mistook one of the stars of the greatest motion
picture ever made for some older fan of mine, even
though he was wearing a cape first. Believe it or not,
(27:29):
there's still more new idiots to talk about, the daily
roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects
specimens who constitute two days other worst persons in the world.
They're gonna get more than one lesson, and you're gonna
need more than one lesson. That's a line from Citizen
Kane that I just screwed up the Bronze worse Liliana Goodson,
(27:53):
who has been sentenced to a year in jail in
Australia Sydney. To be precise, only four months in full
time custody. But still, I'll just read the account of
this from the local papers. A US will who flew
to Australia with a gold plated pistol worth about three
thousand dollars in her luggage has been sentenced to a
year in jail, despite claiming that she brought it with
(28:16):
her for protection. When asked at the airport if she
was carrying any prohibited items with her, Goodson claimed she
was not. The court was told quote what about the
gun in your bag? She was asked by a customs officer.
Goodson replied, oh yeah, I forgot about that. A review
of Goodson's phone revealed she had searched online can I
(28:38):
have a gun in my suitcase? And set a calendar
injury with a note reminding her to quote put gun
in suitcase. This is not exactly Luigi in effect?
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Here is it.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Goodson told police she was actually scared of shooting the
gun and hoped simply producing it would be enough to
deter potential threats. If that didn't do it I would
probably just pistol whip. Goodson was quoted as having said,
when asked where she planned to store the gun while
she was in Australia, she indicated under a vehicle's passenger's seat.
(29:13):
The court was also told in recent years Goodson was
using psychedelic drugs, synthetic cannabis and methamphetamine. And we still
haven't gotten to the punchline here. Miss Goodson, the court
was previously told, had come to Australia to attend clown school. Well,
(29:35):
at least she got that part accomplished. Magna cum laude
the runners up worser Newsweek. Newsweek used to be a magazine,
second in influence and journalistic standards in this country, to
only like Time magazine among magazines. And well, it dawns
on me, I'm going to have to explain to you
what magazines were news magazines anyway. Later, Newsweek has gone
(30:01):
decidedly crappy over the last two decades, and it is
decidedly far right crappy, and it's mostly an aggregation site.
But it has accomplished something. It has beaten the Los
Angeles Times and its owner doctor bad Haircut, who said
he plans to install some kind of fairness grades to
all the articles on his screw up a two car funeral.
(30:22):
Newspaper Newsweek has now unveiled its own fairness grades with
a twist. We report, you decide the fairness meter. Newsweek
is committed to journalism that is actual and fair. Our
fairness meter allows readers to hold us accountable by rating
an article's fairness in one of five ways. Unfair left
(30:44):
cleaning the article presents a left cleaning perspective on the
issue and does not include an opposing view. Mostly fair
left leaning, which is the same thing, only it includes
an opposing view. Fair the article presents a nonpartisan perspective
on the issue and includes opposing views. By the way,
if any getting, any article anywhere is rated fair under
this grading system, it will be the first in human history.
(31:10):
So you're gonna let readers vote on. And by the way,
there are more possibilities. They said five. There's unfair right
leaning and mostly fair right leaning, which is an oxymoron.
But they're gonna let voters vote on. Readers become voters
who vote on, in essence, what's true or not, depending
(31:34):
on how much they agree with the political points of
view of the article. Well, if anything is going to
reflect America as we start twenty twenty five, that's pretty
much it isn't it? But our winner speaking of letting
them vote on it and leaning right. Elmo, somebody tweeted
a report on homelessness, and he, of course being a fascist.
(31:57):
Now who is involved in the trump Ocracy, the kleptocracy,
the trump kleptocracy. He lets milk everything out of this government.
I can get my grubby little fingers on because I
can't possibly have enough money, because the hole in my
soul is too big to ever fill with anything. Elon Musk.
(32:17):
That guy, he had to insist there is no such
thing as homelessness. Quote. In most cases, the word homeless
is a lie. It's usually a propaganda word for violent
drug addicts with severe mental illness. Actually, Elmo, the propaganda
(32:38):
words we use for quote, violent drug addicts with severe
mental illness, those propaganda words are members of the X
management team, Elmo Leon. It only recently dawned on me.
His skin is stretched so tight across his face. He
looks like Jim Carrey in the movie The Mask. Musk
(32:59):
two days other worse person at the world. Now to
(33:26):
the number one story on the countdown and my favorite
topic me and things I promised not to tell, and
I swear I thought I heard her say Carleton. This
was also December in nineteen eighty five in Los Angeles,
and if you've never spent Christmas in a warm metropolitan
area for the first time in your life, you do
not know what disorientation really is. I had just completed
(33:50):
three months in my new job as the sports director
of Channel five in LA. I had spent most of
November adjusting not only to it not getting cold, but
to the fact that almost nobody else noticed that it
was not getting cold, except one of our productions assistance
who sprinted through the parking lot and up the stairs
into the little bungalow on the KTLA lot in Hollywood,
(34:11):
then housed our sports department. He shivered like a dog,
shaking himself awake, and announced, my god, it's bitter out there.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Bitter.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
I checked it was forty nine degrees. So December nineteen
eighty five was already weird enough. I was doing well
in LA Being three thousand miles away from everyone and
everything I knew had been surprisingly helpful, and there was
no ramp up time for my work. I'd already won
a couple of best Sportscaster awards, and then the top
all news radio station was asking me to come over
(34:40):
every afternoon and split the afternoon drive sportscasting shift with
a guy who'd been on the air there literally for
thirty years, who's one of the voices in the background
and The Godfather Part two? And now somehow my producer,
Ron Grelnick, and I were headed to the Beverly Wilshire
Hotel to go interview Mickey Mantle. For the average LA sportscaster,
(35:04):
there really was and much reason to interview Mickey Mantle,
which is why all of them at the bigger three
network stations had turned down the offer of a sit
down interview. But I was a New Yorker and had
been three months earlier, and thus Mickey Mantle was my idol.
And moreover, when I became a baseball fan in nineteen
sixty seven, my folks bought tickets specifically behind first base
(35:27):
at Yankee Stadium because they had just moved Mantle there
from the outfield. And as my dad said, when you
are an old man, you will say the greatest thing
you ever saw in baseball was Mickey Mantle. So you
might as well see as much of him as you can. Well,
I'm an old man now, and my dad was exactly right.
Mantle was on a tour publicizing some kind of hitting
(35:48):
video and he would do one exclusive interview with an
LA station at like exactly five pm on that night
in December nineteen eighty five. And to get it you
had to agree to give the video exactly one plug
and ask him one question about it. But otherwise you
could ask whatever you want. Un he had fifteen minutes.
Then he was going out to dinner. Yeah, yeah, that
(36:11):
was it dinner. So Ron and I pulled up to
the Beverly Wilshire in his car, and I had never
been in, but I had walked past it a dozen
times and I knew there was a new wing and
an old wing. And as Ron tried to park, I
tried to find the room where Mantle would be waiting
for us, so I could be there to meet the
camera crew that was joining us from some other shoot somewhere.
(36:31):
And also because he was Mickey Mantle. I had met
him before, I had even interviewed him briefly for CNN,
but nothing like this, nothing like a sit down interview,
just me and him. The room number was something like
eight ninety seven, could have been five ninety seven, could
have been twelve ninety seven, but it was basically the
highest number there could be on a given hotel floor.
(36:55):
And I saw the elevator just pass the registration desk,
and up. I went to the eighth floor, and it
was a deserted labyrinth, turn after turn, and nobody there.
And then suddenly I turned a corner, and walking towards
me was the most elegantly dressed older couple I had
ever seen to that point or since. She was wearing
(37:16):
a mink stole atop a beautiful gown, and she had
a diamond necklace big enough to induce cramps. She had
a piercing, glistening set of deep brown eyes. She looked
to be in her mid to late fifties, but might
have been older. He was older, maybe eighty, but with
(37:37):
a full head of thick and wiry hair. He was tall, thin,
extraordinarily elegant in a perfect tuxedo. But all of this
was overwhelmed, almost erased, by one fact that startles me
still thirty seven years later. This man was wearing a cape.
(37:58):
I'm pretty confident that I had never seen a man
wearing a cape before, I know, I have not seen
one since I have been looking. And yet it looked
so good on him that I can recall briefly thinking, Keith,
maybe you should buy a cape. This couple was perfect.
We seem to be the only people on the floor.
(38:20):
The hallway wasn't all that wide. I said, good evening
as I passed. She said good evening, and in so
doing revealed a British accent, and he mumbled evening and
revealed what sounded like the lingering minor aftermaths of a
minor stroke. They walked their way, I walked mine, and
my focus returned to finding Mickey Mantle in room eight
ninety seven. The numbers of the rooms I was passing
(38:43):
were like eight eleven and eight fourteen, And after a
few more turns of the labyrinth, that dawned on me
that I must be in the old wing of the
Beverly Wilshire, and the high numbers like eight ninety seven
must have been in the new wing of the Beverly Wilshire.
I also noticed that I had not passed a doorway
or a vestibule or some kind of connecting bridge to
the new wing, so I had better make it back
(39:04):
to the elevator and the lobby before Ron or the
camera crew made the same mistake I had. Because Mickey
Mantle was waiting my reversed course, I began to trot.
After three or four more of these labyrinthine turns, I found,
to my shock that the perfectly elegant older couple he
was wearing a cape, was standing exactly where I had
(39:27):
left them.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
She laughed.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
She mentioned something about the higher numbers being in the
new wing, and everybody made that mistake. I thanked her,
and then she said, you're the young man who does
the spots on the television, aren't you. And I had
gotten pretty popular pretty fast there, but being recognized was
still very surprising and pleasantly so. And I said that,
and I introduced myself, so nice to meet you. She said,
I'm Patricia Carlton, and this she pointed to the guy
(39:52):
in the cape is my husband. He slowly extended a
hand but shook mine vigorously. And I'm Joseph Carlton. Missus
Carlton was very excited. I know Joe and I we
really are not fans of the sports, but whenever we're
at helme in Palm Springs. We make sure we stay
up until the end of the ten o'clock news so
we could watch you. Joe nodded and smiled in the cape.
(40:16):
You know, so clearly enjoying yourself that we find ourselves
enjoying it too. That's really quite remarkable. I was genuinely
touched and remain so I explained my dilemma. I treated
them as you were supposed to treat viewers, gratefully and solicitously,
and I asked them if they were going to the lobby,
and if I might walk with them so I didn't
get any further lost. We'd be delighted. I must ask you,
(40:38):
mister fishman, who does the news on your program? Is
that his real hair? She saw my shock at the question.
Joe and I have often worn wigs, and we can't
be certain. That means if it is a wig, it's
a good one. We reached the elevator bank and I
pushed down. He was walking slowly. He must have had
(40:58):
a stroke. Still, he was an imposing figure of a man,
and not just because he was wearing a cape. As
I steered them away from the subject of our anchorman's
to pay and talked instead about my Mickey Mantle interview.
I realized he looked extremely familiar, like I knew him.
Joseph Carleton kept rolling the name over in my mind.
(41:21):
And Patricia Carlton, who are they? The elevator light went
off and a very loud bell sounded. The doors opened,
and there was my producer, Ron and the two man
camera crew, and the reporter who had been with them
on the previous story, Sam chu Lynn, who had stayed
with him because he wanted to meet Mickey Mantle. And
(41:42):
as I joked to my new friends Joe and Patricia Carlton,
oh look, here's my camera crew, it's four members made
no motion to even leave the elevator. They all looked
dumb struck. Sam chu Lynn's eyes looked like they were
about to pop out of his head. I assumed this
was because my new friend Joe was wearing a cape.
(42:03):
Finally I got the crew to move. I held the
door open so Joe and Patricia could get into the elevator.
I actually said, such a pleasure to meet you, and
of course, thank you so much for watching Channel five
News at ten, and she smiled warmly, and he managed
a quick wave and the doors closed, and only at
that exact moment did it dawn on me where I
(42:24):
knew him from the blood now drained from my face.
As I turned to talk to the camera crew and
Ron and Sam, Uh, you guys knew who those two
people were, right, Sam laughed at me. Of course I did,
didn't you? And I sighed, oh my god. She said
her name was Patricia Carleton and that was her husband,
(42:47):
Joseph Carleton. And she said it that way because she's British,
and that's how if you're British, you would say the
name Cotton. She's Patricia Cotton and he's Joseph Cotton, who
was in Citizen Kane. I remember actually putting my hand
on the wall, on my face in my other hand,
(43:08):
I just met Joseph Cotton and I didn't recognize him.
And the cameraman, Martin Klancy, who also often said things
like this, said pretty stupid of you, huh? And I said,
you know you have no idea how stupid. I mean,
obviously I know who Joseph Cotton is. And Sam Chulin said,
are you sure about that? I gave him a dirty
(43:29):
look and I said, no, it's worse than this. In
nineteen forty eight. The president of the International Joseph Cotton
Fan Club was my mother. There is a picture of
that man with my mother from like thirty seven years
ago at the Stork Club.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
They all laughed.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Then Sam Chulin said, in that photo is he wearing
that cape?
Speaker 2 (43:57):
My gaff.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Did serve to relax me a little for the interview
with Mantle. Gaff. When I get over it, i'll let
you know. So anyway, we all reached room eight ninety
seven or whatever it was in the new Wing the
Beverly Wilshire, and as the crew set up, I managed
to tell the story of the Cottons to Mickey Mantle
and he said, yeah, I saw them in the lobby
(44:22):
a couple hours ago. He's a great actor. I met
him in New York, must be thirty years ago. Did
you say hi? Oh right, you just told me you
didn't recognize him. Mickey Mantle was busting my chops, as
I said. I had met him before, even interviewed him before,
but this was our first sit down and he was
in a good mood, even expansive and playful, and at
(44:42):
one point he stunned me. I said, I know you
only have a couple of minutes left, So forgive me
if I'm bringing up something that takes more than a
couple of minutes. And he interrupted, and he said, take
as much time as you need. I'm enjoying us talking.
So I asked him about this one subject, how he
felt about what he did in his career, considering how
injured he was. When he retired, Mickey Mantle was third
(45:03):
all time in home he hit three hundred and ten times.
He played in twelve World Series on one bad knee
and one worse knee. Mantle got very reflective and self critical.
We use this SoundBite at the end of his obituary
that I would do for ESPN a decade later if
I'd known I was going to live so long, he
(45:25):
told me, I would have taken better care of myself
and done better. I said, well, he'd done pretty good.
I could have done better.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
I thanked him.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Then, as the cameraman moved to get the shots of
me nodding and repeating a question or two, Mickey Mantle said,
that was really good.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
I flushed.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
I got to ask you something. Can you give me
some pointers? I suddenly had no idea what the word
pointers meant? Pointers? What are pointers? Mantle said he was
going to do some Yankee games the next year on
cable with Mel Allen. I'm doing interviews after games. I'm
no damn good at interviews. Just now, you were moving
from topics to topics, so smooth. How you keep all
(46:09):
the questions in your head? Now? I laughed, I didn't
keep them in my head. Didn't you see my cheat card?
And he laughed and he said no, and I showed
it to him. I said, it's just a business card
with like seven key words written on the back. If
I think I might freeze up because I'm nervous because
I'm interviewing Mickey Mantle, or I just met Joseph Cotton
and I didn't recognize him, I make one of these cards.
(46:31):
I hide it in the palm of my hand, and
if I get stuck, I could just look down quickly
and see one of the words and I've got the question.
I've got this card to remind me. Mickey Mantle's eyes glowed.
But wait, he said, we're using these mics, and he
pointed to the clip on on his shirt, so you
don't have to hold mike. What do you do if
you have to hold the mic like I'll have to
(46:53):
in an interview after a ballgame, what if the card
would fall out or you have to shake hands with
the player. And I said, well, just write the words
on your hand whichever hand is holding the mic, like
below the thumb. Mickey Mantle looked at me as if
I had just given him the secret of eternal life. Wow,
he said, that's great, I'm going to write this down. Thanks,
(47:15):
and we were packed up, and he actually walked me
to the hotel room door and gave me a double
handed handshake. So it had been a big day, even
if I didn't realize it was Joseph Cotton. Mickey Mantle
had asked me for advice about anything. Somehow I had
thought of something to tell him, and he was really
(47:35):
happy about the advice, and of course this provided a punchline.
The following spring, we were in the studios at KTLA,
watching on the satellite feed as the Yankees first cable
telecast of the nineteen eighty six season ended, and sure
enough they threw it down to Mickey Mantle on the
field interviewing some player, and one of my producers said, oh,
let's see if he remembers the lesson you gave him,
(47:55):
and another one said, here's your student, Mickey Mantle. And
sure enough, after the first answer, Mickey Mantle pauses, and
I know he can't remember what he wanted to ask that,
And sure enough I see him cheat his look down
slightly towards the hand holding the microphone. And the next
thing I see he's kind of tilted the microphone sideways
and he's asking the question. But you can barely hear
(48:17):
him because the mic is pointing off at a forty
five degree angle, because he has written his key reminder
words not below the thumb on the outside part of
his hand, but on the palm side of his hand,
and he's had to move the mic out of the
(48:37):
way to read the words on the palm of his hand.
And the producer says, ha ha, well, now Mickey Mantle
hates you. It sounded like Carlton to me. Also, I've
(49:06):
spent most of the last what now thirty nine years
wondering what happened to that cape. They'd like to have
it framed on my wall somewhere. I've done all the
damage I can do here. Thanks for listening. Ryan Ray
and John Phillip shaneil the musical directors of Countdown Arrange
produced and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled
(49:29):
orchestration in keyboards. Mister Ray was on guitars, bass and drums.
I don't believe they have warned capes. It was produced
by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust, who
may have worn a cape. The sports music is the
Oulderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis
(49:49):
courtesy of ESPN Inc. There are no capes Citty ESPN.
Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns allowed.
My announcer was my friend Larry David. No cape, no fur.
Everything else was as ever my fault. That' for today,
just fifteen hundred days until the scheduled end of the
lame duck presidency of Trump scheduled. The next scheduled countdown
(50:15):
is Monday. As always, boltins as the news warrants until
next time, I'm Keith Aldremman. Good Morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Oldreman is a production
(50:54):
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Keith Olbermann
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