Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio, Day
five of the Kevin McCarthy Tucker Carlson January sixth video scandal.
(00:26):
And finally somebody has done something. The Department of Justice,
Homeland Security, the Capitol Police Board, Democrats in the House,
in the Senate, paw Patrol. Lindell TV is going after
Kevin McCarthy in Congress. We're going after them because they
(00:49):
did it. Rock. Yes, Mike Lindell has done something. Mike
Lindell is suing. Mike Lindell is the one actually doing
something about Kevin McCarthy and House Administration Chair Brian Style
lying to the Cattle Police in order to let Tucker
Carlson and Fox News Perlin forty four thousand hours of
(01:11):
security video and what Chuck Schumer called one of the
worst security risks since nine to eleven, skipping Lindell's mangled
attempt to explain how his Equal Protection Clause and First
Amendment rights have been violated. Of course, Mike Lindell is
entirely correct. Fox News will get to put out whatever
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they she said, and we're over here and we're not
putting out any information. But we don't even know, we
don't even know what they're filtering, Brandon, what's important Jar
News station? Here? Obviously I wish here. There's a lot
of things not important to Fox News. Right, Lindell is
looking at it from the other angle that McCarthy has
the right to unilaterally release this video. He just doesn't
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have the right to unilaterally release this video exclusively to
Tucker Carlson. To me, that's debatable, or at best the
secondary point. But while I want everybody arrested and the
access to the video halted and memories wiped, if that
is really a thing, Greg Sergeant from the Washington Post
takes a slightly more practical approach, the same one Lindel
(02:18):
just expressed. The easiest response from Democrats is not a
series of legal actions like I want, but to simply
do what McCarthy did, release the remaining January sixth video,
but release it to everybody, specifically to networks that could
answer what Fox will do with the video to gaslight
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the coup attempt by using the video to reinforce what
actually happened, and by using the video to show how
Carlson and Fox deceptively cherry picked the footage. But is
anybody looking at the larger, larger picture that you have
just turned video of the Trump Fox Republican Party conspiracy
to overthrow the government. You have just turned that video
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over too, the Trump Fox Republican Party conspirators. Well, yes,
somebody does see that. Lindell Fox is going to be
the filter to the world and give them the stuff
not gonna happen on my watch, I'll tell you that.
Thanks to Ron Philipkowski and his exceptional Twitter feed for
(03:24):
the audio from that noted liberal media outlet, Lindell TV,
Lindell Suz, everybody else four day workweek, Capitol Police Chief
Tom Manger's statement Monday, Schumer's statement Wednesday news that much
of the House Democrats internal meeting about McCarthy's criminal deviousness
and the risk he just subjected every member of Congress
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and the Senate and indeed the citizenry too, was led
by the chair of the desmanded January sixth Committee, Bennie Thompson.
And Bennie Thompson's concerns echo those of Schumer about putting
the people inside the Capitol at risk. A lot of statements, no,
you know, actions, and no putting the pieces together that
(04:09):
as egregious as this illegal collusion between Kevin McCarthy and
Tucker Carlson is in terms of security. It's not just
lives that are at risk. Tucker Carlson will pervert this
video in order to use it to support his lie
that January sixth was something else. Believe whatever you want
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as that something else, as long as you doubt the government,
as long as you salute the false flag. Whether or
not Tucker Carlson believes Antifa did it, or Biden or
the Trilateral Commission, or as the dominion text shows as usual,
He's not actually a psychotic conspiracy theorist. He just plays
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one on TV. The video is not there to provide sunshine,
as McCarthy and that nitwit Nancy Mace so moronically phrased it.
The video is there to provide a different kind of
illumination gaslight whatever does or does not happen out of
the Special Council's office. The point of the next twenty
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months for Trump and his insurrectionist mob is to make
the guilty look innocent and the innocent look guilty, and moreover,
to make the investigators look guilty, poison the prosecutorial well.
It has so far worked spectacularly for Donald Trump. In
almost any other era of American history, he would long
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ago have been imprisoned, or have fled the country or worse.
But in literally the days after the coup attempt, Trump
inspired and shaped Trump was suddenly being defended by vermin
like Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy went from suggesting Trump should resign
the presidency that night to fulsomely thanking him and groveling
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to him by name. Two years to that night later,
when his succession of deals with sundry devils got him elect,
did Speaker of the House. One of those devils was
Tucker Carlson. And now McCarthy has just paid him his due.
And the video will not just be used as part
of the grand excuse by Trump cultists when they believe
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or pretend to believe that January sixth was Pelosi's fault,
or the FBI's fault, or your fault. The video will
be used as yet another arm of an octopus of revenge,
threat and retaliation. And while the Tucker Carlson crime story
stalled yesterday, a new and nauseating story emerged. This one
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is about a dark money group called American Accountability Foundation. AAF,
and last night Politico reported that this AAF has sent
out a letter to hundreds of recipients on Capitol Hill,
mostly in government, some outside it. The letter designed to
wreak revenge on staffers who worked on the House January
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sixth Committee. Quoting this letter, AAF has put together a
cheat sheet outlining their new firms and the firm's clients,
so you can be sure you and your staff aren't
inadvertently taking a meeting with a company that hires staff
that hates your boss. It is important to remember that
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even one of these former J six investigators is not
listed as a lobbyist on this specific account. The billings
brought in by the clients listed below benefit all staff
at the J six Investigators new firm. Unquote translation, if
you dared to investigate Trump on behalf of the United
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States Congress, and you dared to investigate sedition, and you
dared to investigate treason, this AAF group will not merely
try to blacklist you. It will intend to blacklist your
new employer, and it hopes to blacklist or new employer's clients.
The letter also invites recipients to let AAF know if
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AAF left anybody off the list. Political notes AF was
co founded by one Thomas Jones, a former Ted Cruz
presidential campaign staffer and thus obviously a man certainly embittered
enough to last the rest of his life. AAF has
also been linked, by reporting in The New Yorker, to
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the American Accountability Foundation and something called the Conservative Partnership Institute,
which is itself connected to Clita Mitchell and Mark Meadows.
It's the blacklist method of the nineteen fifties, except the
smearing can be done now not just by an elected McCarthy,
but also by a television channel that has completely untethered
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itself from the most elementary journalistic standards, yet is perceived
by its audience as not just accurate but principled. The
soul limitation on Fox News's effectiveness in turning the real
into the unbelievable and the unbelievable into the real is
the short attention span of its viewers. In order to
be able to pay attention to the propaganda, they need
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a constant churn of new outrages. On Fox Now, Kevin
McCarthy has given Tucker Carlson forty four thousand hours of
raw propaganda from which he can choose anything and which
he can alter to quote prove unquote anything. And as
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of this hour, with the Capitol Police Board and DOJ
and DHS and Schumer and Jeffreys and everybody else who
should be doing something but are in fact all a wall,
the only thing standing between McCarthy and Brian Style and
Carlson and this mother load of forty four thousand hours
of raw, unprocessed brainwash is the diligence and the proactivity
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of one lone gallant man, Mike Lindell. We are so screwed,
(10:32):
still ahead of us. In this edition of Countdown, George Santos'
is back co sponsoring legislation to honor a gun. Turns
out he's lying about that too. The Alaska legislator who
you heard here actually claiming it's better for society when
victims of child abuse in Alaska are killed, gets a
slap on the wrist. Should we retroactively edit the words
(10:56):
of a dead author to make it easier to sell
his books in the twenty first century? The author is
the creator of Willy Wonka. His name was Royal Dall.
And not only is this a huge issue, but when
I was a kid Royal Doll, and I corresponded and
on Fridays with Thurber his story that basically prophesied the
(11:18):
coming of Trump, the darkly comic the greatest man in
the world. That's next. This is countdown, you know, this
is countdown with you know, Keith Olberman ahead the Royal
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Doll controversy. Sixty years ago. Dall used words like fat
in his kid's book like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The publisher is now taking them out in hopes of
selling more copies of Willy Wonka. I actually have personal
experience with two parts of this story, and I've been
privileged to edit for taste the works of a truly
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great writer. And I actually used to correspond when I
was a kid with Royal Dahl ahead first time for
the daily rout of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruger
effect specimens who constitute today's Where's persons in the world.
The Bronze Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his press secretary
Brian Griffin, Yes, Brian Griffin, like the name of the
(12:25):
dog On Family Guy. Griffin and his boss are apparently
deep into an appendage swinging contest with NBC News, quoting Griffin,
to all the bookers and producers reaching out to our
office from NBC News and MSNBC for Governor Ron DeSantis
to join your shows. This will be the standard response
from our office until Andrew Mitchell apologizes and your track
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record improves. I think we need to take a step back.
There will be no consideration of anything related to NBC
Universal or its affiliates until and at least Andrea Mitchell kirt, Wait,
what does that mean? Until and at least did this
kid me? Until and unless, until and at least Andrea
Mitchell corrects the blatant lie she made about the Governor.
(13:12):
DeSantis says that slavery in the aftermath of slavery should
not be taught to Florida school children. Blah blah blah
blah blah. Please feel free to pass this up and
around the network. So Ron de Santis and his press
secretary of being snowflakes about Andrea Mitchell. Seventy six year
old Andrea Mitchell who fell asleep while live on MSNBC
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the other day. Governor's campaign for president's going to be
an awfully short one. If you have to keep drying
his tears about Andrea Mitchell. For God's sakes, our runners
up Alaska State Legislature, David Eastman, he has now been
censured for well you heard this. I played it the
other day. In the case where child muse is fatal,
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obviously it's not good for the child, but it's actually
a benefit to society because there aren't needed for government
services and whatnot over the whole course of that child's life.
Through the chair, can you sit at again to say
a benefit for society? Talking dollars, Now, you've got one
point five million dollar price tag here for victims of
(14:17):
fatal child abuse. It gets argued periodically that it's actually
a cost savings because that child is not going to
need any of those government services that they might otherwise,
you know, be entitled to receive and need based on
growing up in this type of environment. Through the chair, Representative,
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I guess that would be the idea if I can
use a really bad analogy when you hit somebody. Yeah,
he actually said that during I'm hearing at the Alaska
State Legislature, So he was centured. And that's two centers
now for Representative Eastman, who was also at a Trump
rally in DC on January six, twenty twenty one. The
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vote on this centure was thirty five in and one against,
and the one vote against was by Eastman. But our winners,
Congressman Barry Moore and George Santos More of Alabama introduced
and Santos is now signed on as co sponsor of
a bill to declare the AR fifteen the national gun
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of America. You know, the AR fifteen, the current slogan
for which is a thousand mass murderers. Can't be wrong.
Apart from the cynical death cult issue here, there's something
about the AR fifteen. More and Santos don't know. It
was designed and for decades sold exclusively by Colts Firearms.
Colts Firearms, which in twenty twenty one was sold to
(15:46):
a company based in Prague. So the gun More and
this pathetic Santos want to call the national gun of
America is check Congressman Barrymore and George Santos, and you
know what you can do with those AR fifteen lapel pins, Boys,
two days, Worst Parsons and the post scripts to the news.
(16:26):
Some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Well just
one headline this time. Please tell me where to send
my Royal Doll letters so they can be sanitized for
my protection. If the name Royal Doll does not immediately
ring a bell for you. He was the author of
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and thus the creator of
Willie Wonka, and he wrote James and the Giant Peach,
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and all of his kids books combined have sold about
a quarter of a billion copies dead since nineteen ninety.
Two years ago, Forbes placed Doll first on its list
of the top earning dead celebrities, ahead of Prince and
Michael Jackson. Royal Doll made about five hundred and thirteen
million dollars in twenty twenty one, compared to thirteen million
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by the late John Lennon. And that is where the
problems began. And if you have not heard about the problems,
the first is Royal Dall was often, as somebody on
Twitter put a succinctly, he was often the C word.
He was at times anti Semitic, racist, misogynistic, and cruel,
and his writing was at times anti Semitic, racist, misogynistic,
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and cruel. None of that has ever really slowed down
his book sales, though largely because first kids who read
books are actually smarter than nearly every adult thinks they are.
And second, it seemed then and now that the more
problematic a lot of Doll's characters were the smarter he
made them. The Umpa Lumpas of Willie Wonka are not
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Doll's finest moments. On the other hand, they do run
everything in the chocolate factory. They know everything about the
ticket winning kids and their foibles. And when Violet turns
into a giant blueberry, and when Vuca gets devoured by squirrels,
it is the umpa Oopas who know how to save them.
So apparently the umpaal Oopas are doctors, or at least paramedics. Anyway,
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the reason Royal Doll made thirteen million dollars thirty one
years after he died was that his estate sold the
rights to the books to Netflix. By then, the book
publishers had already brought in a company of so called
sensitivity readers to rewrite the more troublesome parts of Doll's work.
We're seeing the first results of this now, and it
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is literally what George Orwell described in his novel nineteen
eighty four, erasing the past, replacing it with a new
past and leaving no indication that any editing or changing
was done. While I'm assuming it still says that in
nineteen eighty four, presumably all of that could be edited
out of orwell, and we'd never know, right. But it's
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even worse than that, because the edits are being made
not because of some pure, if misguided desire to make
changes reflecting the changes in morays and respect changes even
the author might want to make. They're being done so
that the books, according to the publisher, can continue to
be enjoyed by all today, meaning they did this to
literally sell more books. This is not even about well
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intentioned censorship. It's about profit. And if all that were
not bad enough, the rewriting of Royal Dahl has from
a quality viewpoint, gone about as well as the so
called restoration of the painting of Jesus in Spain in
twenty twelve. The painting is now known as monkey Christ
or Potato Jesus. Apart from the wholesale elimination of words
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like fat and ugly, the publishers have decided to take
out references that no kid would ever notice. She went
to India with Rudyard Kipling becomes She went to ca
Fournia with John Steinbeck. Why in his story The Witches,
Raoul Dahl has the hero believe that all witches are
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bald and wear wigs and gloves, and that's a way
to check. Don't be foolish. My grandmother said, you can't
go around pulling the hair of every lady you meet,
even if she is wearing gloves. Just you try it
and see what happens. That would be an admonition not
to believe that everybody with a wig is a witch.
It has now been changed to don't be foolish, my
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grandmother said. Besides, there are plenty of other reasons why
women might wear wigs, and there's suddenly nothing wrong with that.
It's like Shakespeare. Now. Look, it is one thing if
you are giving a public reading of Tom Sawyer, and
you may want to drop a couple of words here
and there. I have performed James Thurber's stories since twenty
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ten on TV, on radio, on this podcast in person.
His epic story By the Way, Forecasting Trump the Greatest
Man in the World is coming up shortly. Thurber's daughter
Rosie offered me the right to edit anything I felt
I needed to edit for time or for taste and
said there was plenty in there. Her dad would be
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mortified by today that he wrote. Letting me edit it though,
was like saying, hey, you have a heart, so that
means you can perform heart surgery. But the goal in
doing that is to change as little as possible. There
are adjectives that were once perfectly normal and seemingly liberal,
and once thought even to be complimentary that you really
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need to just skip. So when you're reading them aloud,
just skip them, but erase them permanently forever from Thurber's books,
when maybe a note to new readers would be sufficient warning. Plus,
if I'm changing anything about Thurber while transforming his work
into a different medium like podcasts, I am necessarily going
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to edit things. A movie might leave out nine tenths
of any novel, but just reading a novel aloud might
change something as important as the emphasis on the way
certain words were said from the way the author intended
that emphasis to be. Besides which, all those changes are temporary.
I'm not altering Thurber's text. I'm altering my reading of
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his text. And the same goes for Royal doll And
a lot of people saying this are people who do
not like Royal Doll. Sir Salomon Rushti wrote he was
a self confessed anti Semite with pronounced racist leanings, and
he joined in the attack on me back in nineteen
eighty nine. Royal Doll was no angel. But this is
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absurd censorship, puffin books, and the Doll estate should be ashamed,
because that's the point. If we're going to edit or
otherwise circumscribe every book or author, or film or producer
with a significant problem, we're going to wind up with
a world library of about fifty books and ten films.
I mean, this is in Florida, and artists, like people,
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are rarely all good or all bad, and often they
have huge disturbing flaws which can, in their own way,
teach you what not to do or be in life.
The publishers defended doing this on the premise that Roal
Doll's works have always been edited and modified, that he
permanently changed the description of those umpa loompas several times
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to make it less offensive, And again that misses the point.
He made those changes, not his publishers, not his literary estate,
not you, not me, him. And if you're wondering why
I'm going on so long, about this. It's because this
is personal for me. I think I learned that truth
that almost everybody is a mix of good and bad,
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often in big, bright, ugly letters, often with extraordinary self contradictions.
I learned all that from Royal Doll. Sometime in the
second half of March nineteen sixty six, a letter unlike
any other I had seen before arrived at our little
house in the suburbs of New York City, where my
parents packed me off each morning to the third grade.
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The words par Avian were printed in the upper left,
and the postmark was from somewhere called Great Missenden, and
the addressee was me. It was a letter from Royal Doll.
I had a number of very special teachers in my life,
but the first of them was Missus Marjorie Plant, who
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survived an entire school year of me in nineteen sixty
five and nineteen sixty six. We sidled down the hallway
to miss Ritz for an hour or so of math
every day, but the rest of the time we were
Missus Plant's class, and when she was not leading us
out to the glorious natural meadow in the pond just
behind the elementary school and teaching us the name of
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every plant and every tree, every bird. She was reading
to us, or getting us to read to her, or
one day asking each of us to name our favorite author. Well,
I didn't hesitate. My dad read to me each night,
and it's probable somebody else's book was first. And I
know he later read me Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by
Ian Fleming. But the first books for me were Charlie
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and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach
by Royal Dahl. And I don't know how many times
Dad read each of them to me, but I do
know that somehow those books conveyed to me that books
didn't just happen, that a grown up like my dad
had written them deliberately for kids to read and to
listen to. And this man had clearly included jokes that
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the kids would get, but the grown ups didn't seem
to notice. And this was this man's job, the way
being a draftsman and later an architect was my dad's job.
That you could do this and people would pay you.
This is how I understood about this. A thousand other
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writers and broadcasters flashed out the details and the specifics
for me, But the man who opened the first door
into the world in which perhaps I could write for
a living was Roaldall. So Keith, who's your favorite author,
Missus Plant asked Roaldall missus Plant, knowing her and knowing me,
she probably said I knew it, And soon after she
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explained that we had an assignment that day. We were
all going to write. Great I thought, I'll write another book.
I had already written something like forty books in missus
Plant's class, two or three pages with illustrations, with construction paper, covers,
with staples, with titles. I wasn't just going to be
a writer like Roal Doll. I already was one. Not
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a book today, Keith, she said, I want you all
to write a letter to your favorite author. I know
how to get your letters to your author, so you
don't have to worry about that part. You can ask
them anything you want in the letter. You can tell
them anything about yourself, but I especially want you to
tell them why you like their books, and who you
are and how old you are. And on that day,
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in March nineteen sixty six, my favorite author had written
me back. I had a sense immediately of it being
a special occasion. I believe only one author besides Royal
Dall replied to anybody in our class. I do know
the school thought it was a big enough deal to
call the town newspaper to do a story on it.
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It's not as if I forgot the story, or the
letter or the sense of wonder at its arrival either.
But despite the coverage and the weekly Hastings News, it
still seemed like a very private family kind of thing.
And then in twenty ten somebody told me maybe it
was the publisher, that the private family thing had made
it into the authorized biography of Royal Dall, a book
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called Storyteller by Donald Sturrock. He this next part I
did not. I think it's okay for me to bother
it here, quoting mister Sturrock, his stories were encouraging children
the world over to read books, and that many of
them loved his stories so much that they felt impelled
to write and tell him so. The current rate of
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letters from children in the US is between fifty and
sixty a week. He had written to Mike Watkins in
nineteen sixty six. I try to answer them all with
a postcard. Roald was always a diligent and engaging correspondent,
and if he was in the right mood and thought
a child's letter particularly imaginative, he or she would receive
a fuller and more memorable response. When the sports journalist
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and television anchorman Keith Ullerman was seven years old and
head of maps in his class at school, he wrote
to Dahl from Hastings on Hudson in New York and
told him at some length about his own writing ambitions
and successes. Roald's reply was thoughtful, generous, and full of
gentle ironic humor. My dear Keith, he began, it was
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wonderful to receive a letter from a fellow author. It
meant so much more than the usual ordinary message from
a mere reader. As head of maps, you will be
able to calculate very easily what a long way your
letter had to travel in order to reach me in
this little village, thousands of miles. The postman, an elderly
fellow who comes on foot, knocked on the door this
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morning and said, I have a letter from you, from
k Ulderman of Hastings, USA. I said, how do you know?
He said, it says so on the envelope. He is
a very inquisitive postman, and he likes to know who
is writing to me. Who is Ulderman asked the postman.
I opened the letter and read it. He is a writer,
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I said, He has written more books than me. Ulderman's
parents later told the local newspaper that the letter had
given the boy the kick of his young life. Missus
Ulderman added that it just about proves that there are
still some very nice people left in this old, beat
up world. If all adults acted with such loving attention
to children, would it not be wonderful? Dall was quite
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sincere when he argued that he thought children alone were
decent judges of whether a book written for them was
any good or not. In nineteen sixty two, he had
written to a child critic of James and the Giant
Peach to tell him that up to now, a whole
lot of grown ups have written reviews, but none of
them have really known what they were talking about, because
a grown up talking about a children's book is like
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a man talking about a woman's hat. The author mister
Sturrock not only put me in the Authorized Biography of
Royal Doll, he also put me in the index there.
I am right between David Ogilvie, the advertising legend, and
Sir Lawrence Olivier. Left out of Sturrock's account and the
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quotes from my mother was the fact that Mom was
a fan of the actress Patricia Neil, Roal Dall's wife,
and she had read horror stories about their marriage and
about Neil's stroke and Doll's tough love during her recovery.
As I began to appreciate her point of view and
Doll's books at the same time and his letter to me,
I began to formulate a theory that not everybody was
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just one thing, that you could be good and bad
and shouldn't be judged on just half of yourself. Naturally,
I wrote my new penpal back he had mentioned having
a son about my age. In fact, Theo Doll had
been born in New York, just like I was, but
at the age of four months in his baby carriage,
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Theo was hit by a cab and his injuries were
so profound that for a while he was blind, and
Royal Doll himself had helped to develop a shunt used
to drain swelling in Theo's brain to make his life
better and more worth While I did not know any
of this when I mentioned among the mundane details that
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a seven year old was likely to tell an adult
in a letter that my middle name was Theodore. Or
I also apparently included some poems I had written. And
I know this because sure enough, Royal Dahl wrote back again.
This next letter did not come for nearly a year.
My dear Keith. It begins dated February second, nineteen sixty seven.
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Your last letter was a very good one, so were
the poems. Imagine the impact of that from your favorite
writer right after your eighth birthday. But Dahl went on,
I hope you will not become a poet when you
grow up, because poets have a terribly hard time earning
a living. I am writing a musical film, he went on,
(32:45):
for Dick van Dyke, based roughly on Chitty Chitty Bang
Bang the Flying Motor Car. Could I have mentioned liking
this book by a different author in my letter to him,
or did he just decide to announce it to me.
We'll be making it here in England next summer and
you can go and see it in nineteen sixty eight
when you are nine years old. You will be impressed
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at the things this car is going to do. With
love from Royal Doll I'm sure I wrote again. I
can almost remember he did not write back. I do
not recall holding it against him, nor do I now.
I do recall that when I followed his instructions and
went to see his movie, I think, in fact it
(33:26):
was my tenth birthday party in early nineteen sixty nine.
I was disappointed. Too much girl chasing, not enough car flying.
Still almost no one is all good or all bad,
and every new reissue of every Royal Doll book could
include a twenty page treatise about what was bad about
him and the negativities in that book and his other writings,
(33:48):
just so long as it is included instead of rather
than in addition to the nonsensical rewrites that Puffin Publishing
is produced. Also, I think it might be appropriate to
mention that though the letters from kids just in the
US just in nineteen sixty six totaled around what twenty
(34:10):
five hundred, he'd tried to answer them all with a
postcard or if you were very lucky, a letter, or
if you were very very lucky two letters, And to
mention forty three years later in his official biography, still
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Ahead on Countdown Friday's with Thurber and Somebody once described
the work of James Thurber as optimistic cynicism. This week's
story ain't that optimistic. Maybe his darkest and certainly his
most prescient piece, The Greatest Man in the World. First,
in each tradition of countdown, we feature a dog in need.
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You can help. Every dog has its day to Brooklyn
and Ben. Ben was astray, picked up and brought to
the New York Pound a week ago today, one week
and they are already ready to kill him. He's a
two year old Shepherd mix. He was starving. He has
a heart murmur. He's terrified, and surprisingly enough, he was
growling and starling. But he was also taking treats gently,
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and he clearly knows his commands model citizen. Maybe not
should he die because he was astray after one week?
No where you can help defray the costs for a
rescue to get Ben out and train him. If you
can pledge some money, you will find Ben on my
Twitter feeds. Your retweets will also help. I thank you,
and Ben thanks you. To the master work of James Thurber.
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There is a short film of this story. I don't
think it really does it justice. I don't think anything
does it justice. Occasionally real life does do it justice.
I've thought, I've seen this story playing out in real
time in this country almost every day for about seven years.
Sit back and relax, if relaxes the right word for it.
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For the Greatest Man in the World by James Thurber.
Looking back on it now from the vantage point of
nineteen forty, one can only marvel that it had not happened.
Long before it did. The United States of America had
been ever since Kitty Hawk blindly constructing the elaborate petard
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by which, sooner or later it must be hoist. It
was inevitable that someday there would come, roaring out of
the skies a national hero of insufficient intelligence, background, and
character successfully to endure the mounting orgies of glory prepared
for aviators who stayed up for a long time or
flew a great distance. Both Lindberg and Bird, fortunately for
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national decorum and international amity, had been gentlemen, So had
our other famous aviators. They wore their laurels, gracefully, withstood
the awful weather of publicity, married excellent women, usually fine family,
and quietly retired to private life and the enjoyment of
their varying fortunes. No untoward incidents on a worldwide scale
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marred the perfection of their conduct on the perilous heights
of fame. The exception to the rule was, however, bound
to occur, and it did in July nineteen thirty seven,
when Jack Pal Smirch erstwhile mechanics helper in a small
garage in Westfield, Iowa, flew a second hand single Breasthaven
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Dragonfly three monoplane all the way around the world without stopping.
Never before in the history of aviation had such a
flight as Smirch has even been dreamed of. No one
had even taken seriously the weird floating auxiliary gas tanks
invention of the mad New Hampshire professor of astronomy, doctor
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Charles Lewis Gresham, upon which Smirch placed full reliance. When
the garage worker, a slightly built, surly unprepossessing young men
of twenty two, appeared at Roosevelt Field early in July
nineteen thirty seven, slowly chewing a great quid of scrap tobacco,
and announced nobody ain't seen no flying yet. The newspapers
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touched briefly and satirically upon his projected twenty five thousand
mile flight. Aeronauticle and automotive experts dismissed the idea, curtly
implying that it was a hoax of publicity stunt. The rusty,
battered second hand plane wouldn't go, the Gresham auxiliary tanks
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wouldn't work. It was simply a cheap joke smirch. However,
after calling on a girl in Brooklyn who worked in
the flap folding department of a large paper box factory,
a girl whom he later described as his sweet but
duty climbed nonchalantly into his ridiculous plane at dawn the
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memorable seventh of July nineteen thirty seven, spit a curve
of tobacco juice into the still air, and took off,
carrying with him only a gallon of bootleg gin and
six pounds of salami. When the garage boy thundered out
over the ocean, the papers were forced to record in
all seriousness that a mad, unknown young man his name
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was variously misspelled, had actually set out upon a preposterous
atta to span the world in a rickety one engine contraption,
trusting to the long distance refueling device of a crazy schoolmaster,
when nine days later, without having stopped once, the tiny
plane appeared above San Francisco Bay, headed for New York,
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spluttering and choking, to be sure, but still magnificently and
miraculously aloft the headlines, which long since had crowded everything
else off the front page. Even the shooting of the
governor of Illinois by the Valetti Gang swelled to unprecedented size,
and the news stories began to run to twenty five
and thirty columns. It was noticeable, however, that the accounts
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of the epoch making flight touched rather lightly upon the
aviator himself. This was not because the facts about the
hero as a man were too meager, but because they
were too complete. Reporters who had been rushed out to
Iowa when Smirch's plane was first sighted over the little
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French coast town of Sara Lee Lemaire to dig up
the story of the great man's life, had promptly discovered
that the story of his life could not be printed.
His mother, a sullen short order cook in a shack
restaurant on the edge of a tourist's camping ground near Westfield,
met all inquiries as to her son with an angry
and the hell with him Helpie drowns. His father appeared
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to be in jail somewhere for stealing spotlights and lap
robes from tourists automobiles. His young brother, a weak minded lad,
had but recently escaped from the Preston, Iowa Reformatory and
was already wanted in several Western towns where the theft
of money order blanks from post offices. These alarming discoveries
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were still piling up at the very time that pal Smirch,
the greatest hero of the twentieth century, blear eyed, dead
for sleep, half starved, was piloting his crazy junk heap
high above the region which the lamentable story of his
private life was being unearthed, headed for New York and
a greater glory than any man of his time had
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ever known. The necessity for printing some account in the
papers of the young man's career and personality had led
to a remarkable predicament. It was, of course, impossible to
reveal the facts, for a tremendous popular feeling in favor
of the young hero had sprung up like a grass
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fire when he was halfway across Europe. On his flight
around the Globe. He was therefore described as a modest,
chap taciturn blonde, popular with his friends, popular with girls.
The only available snapshot of Smirch, taken at the wheel
of a phony automobile in a cheap photo studio at
an amusement park, was touched up so that the little
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vulgarian looked quite handsome. His twisted leer was smoothed into
a pleasant smile. The truth was in this way kept
from the youth's ecstatic compatriots. They did not dream that
the Smirch family was despised and feared by its neighbors
in the obscure Iowa town, nor that the hero himself
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because if numerous unsavory exploits had come to be regarded
in Westfield as a nuisance and a menace, Pal Smirch had,
the reporters discovered, once knife the principle of his high school,
not mortally, to be sure, but he had knifed him,
and on another occasion, surprised in the act of an
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stealing altarcloth from a church, he had bashed the sexton
over the head with a pot of Easter lilies. For
each of these offenses he had served a sentence in
the reformatory. Inwardly, the authorities, both in New York and
in Washington, prayed that an understanding providence might, however awful,
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such a thing seemed, bring disaster to the rusty, battered
plane and its illustrious pilot, whose un heard of flight
had aroused the civilized world to hosannas of hysterical praise.
The authorities were convinced that the character of the renowned
aviator was such that the limelight of adulation was bound
to reveal him to all the world as a congenital hooligan,
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mentally and morally unequipped to cope with his own prodigious fame.
A trust, said the Secretary of State, at one of
the many secret cabinet meetings called to consider the national dilemma,
A trust that his mother's prayer will be answered, by
which he referred to missus Emma's Smirch's wish that her
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son might be drowned. Was, however, too late, for that
Smirch had leaped the Atlantic and then the Pacific as
if they were mill ponds. At three minutes after two
o'clock on the afternoon of July seventeenth, nineteen thirty seven,
the garage boy brought his idiotic plane into Roosevelt Field
for a perfect three point landing. It had, of course
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been out of the question to arrange a modest little
reception for the greatest flyer in the history of the world.
He was received at Roosevelt Field with such elaborate and
pretentious ceremonies as rocked the world. Fortunately, however, the warren
and spent hero promptly swooned, had to be removed bodily
from his plane, and was spirited from the field without
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having opened his mouth once. Thus he did not jeopardize
the dignity of his first reception, a reception illumined by
the presence of the Secretaries of War and the Navy,
Mayor Michael J. Moriarty of New York, the Premier of Canada,
Governor's Panamon Groves, McFeeley and Critchfield, and a brilliant array
of European diplomats. Smirch did not, in fact come two
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in time to take part in the gigantic hullabaloo arranged
at City Hall for the next day. He was rushed
to a secluded nursing home and confined in bed. It
was nine days before he was able to get up, or,
to be more exact, before he was permitted to get up. Meanwhile,
the greatest minds in the country, in solemn assembly, had
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arranged a secret conference of city, state, and government officials,
which Smirch was to attend for the purpose of being
instructed in the ethics and behavior of heroism. On the
day that the little mechanic was finally allowed to get
up and dress, and for the first time in two weeks,
took a great chew of tobacco, he was permitted to
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receive the newspaper men this by way of testing him out.
Smirch did not wait for questions. Use guys, he said,
and the Times Man winced. Use guys can tell a
cock eyed world that I put it over on Lindbergh.
See yeah, man, an, I said, I'm two frogs. The
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two frogs. It was a reference to a pair of
gallant French flyers, who, in attempting to flight only halfway
round the world, had two weeks before unhappily been lost
at sea. The Times Man was bold enough at this
point to sketch out for Smirch the accepted formula for
interviews in cases of this kind He explained that there
should be no arrogant statements belittling the achievements of other heroes,
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particularly heroes of foreign nations. To hell with that, said Smirch,
I did it. See I did it, and I'm talking
about it, and he did talk about it. None of
this extraordinary interview was, of course printed. On the contrary,
the newspapers, already under the discipline direction of a secret
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directorate created for the occasion and composed of statesmen and editors,
gave out to a panting and restless world that Jackie,
as he had been arbitrarily nicknamed, would consent to say
only that he was very happy, and that anyone could
have done what he did. My achievement has been I
fear slightly exaggerated. The Times Man's article had him protest
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with a modest smile. These newspapers stories were kept from
the hero, a restriction which did not serve to abate
the rising malevolence of his temper. The situation was indeed
extremely grave for Powell. Smirch was, as he kept insisting,
raring to go. He could not much longer be kept
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from a nation clamorous to lionize him. It was the
most desperate crisis the United States of America had faced
since the sinking of Lusitania. On the afternoon of the
twenty seventh of July, Smirch was spirited away to a
conference room in which were gathered mayors, governors, government officials, behaviorist, psychologists,
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and editors. He gave them each a limp moist paw,
and a brief, unlovely grin hi, he said. When Smirch
was seated, the Mayor of New York arose, and, with
obvious pessimism, attempted to explain what he must say and
how he must act when presented to the world, ending
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his talk with a high tribute to the hero's courage
and integrity. The Mayor was followed by Governor Fannaman of
New York, who, after a touching declaration of faith, introduced
Cameron Spottiswood, second Secretary of the American Embassy in Paris,
the gentleman selected to coach Smirch in the amenities of
public ceremonies. Sitting in a chair with a soiled yellow
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tie in his hand and his shirt open at the throat, unshaved,
smoking a rolled cigarette, Jack Smirch listened with a leer
on his lips. I get you, I get you, he
cut in nastily. You want me to act like a
softy huh, you want me to act like that memony
memedy baby faced Lindberg Huh, well, nuts to that. See.
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Everyone took in his breath sharply. It was a sigh
and a hiss. Mister Lindbergh began a United States Senator
purple with rage, and mister bird Smirch, who was pairing
his nails with a jackknife, cut in again. Boyd, He exclaimed, Oh,
for God's sake, that pick. Somebody shut off the blasphemies
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with a sharp word. A newcomer had entered the word
the room. Everyone stood up, except Smirch, who was still
busy with his nails, and he did not even glance up.
Mister Smirch, said someone sternly. The President of the United States.
It had been thought that the presence of the Chief
Executive might have a chastening effect on the young hero,
and the former had been, thanks to the remarkable cooperation
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of the press, secretly brought to the obscure conference room.
A great painful silence fell. Smirch looked up, waved a
hand at the President. How are you coming, he asked,
and began rolling a fresh cigarette. The silence deepened. Someone
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coughed in a strained way. Jees, it's hot, ain't it,
said smirch. He loosened two more shirt buttons, revealing a
hairy chest and the tattooed word sadie enclosed in a
stenciled heart. The great and important men in the room,
faced by the most serious crisis in American history, exchanged
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worried frowns. Nobody seemed to know how to proceed. Come on,
come on, said smirch. Let's get the hell out of here.
Why do I start cutting in on the parties? Eh?
And when is there gonna be this in it? He
rubbed a thumb and forefinger together meaningly. Money, exclaimed a
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state senator, shocked Pale. Yeah, money, said pal, flipping his
cigarette out of the window. And big money. He began
rolling a fresh cigarette. Big money, he repeated, Frowning over
the rice paper. He tilted back in his chair and
leered at each gentleman separately, the leer of an animal
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that knows its power, the leer of a leopard loose
in a bird and dog shop. Ah, for God's sake,
let's get someplace where it's cool, he said, I've been
cooped up plenty for three weeks. Smirch stood up and
walked over to an open window, where he stood staring
down into the street nine floors below. The faint shouting
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of newsboys floated up to him. He made out his name,
hot Dog, he cried, grinning ecstatic. He leaned out over
the sill Yo, tell of babies. He shouted down, hot
Diggity Dog. In the tense little knot of men standing
behind him, a quick, mad impulse flared up. An unspoken
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word of appeal of command seemed to ring through the room,
yet it was deadly silent. Charles K. L Brand, secretary
to the Mayor of New York City, happened to be
standing nearest Smirch. He looked inquiringly at the President of
the United States. The President, pale Grimm, nodded shortly. Brand,
a tall, powerfully built man wants to tackle at Rutgers University,
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stepped forward, seized the greatest man in the world by
his left shoulder and the seat of his pants, and
pushed him out the window. My god, he's fallen out
the window, cried a quick witted editor. Get me out
of here, cried the President. Several men sprang to his side,
and he was hurriedly escorted out of a door toward
a side entrance of the building. The editor of the
Associated Press took charge, being used to such things crisply,
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he ordered certain men to leave, others to stay quickly.
He outlined a story which all the papers were to
agree on, sent two men to the street to handle
that end of the tragedy, commanded a senator to Saab
and two congressmen to go to pieces nervously word he
skillfully set the stage for the gigantic task that was
to follow, the task of breaking to a grief stricken
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world the sad story of the untimely accidental death of
its most illustrious and spectacular figure. The funeral was, as
you know, the most elaborate, the finest, the solemnest, and
the saddest ever held in the United States of America.
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The monument in Arlington Cemetery, with its clean white shaft
of marble, than the simple device of a tiny plane
carved on its base, is a place for pilgrims in
deep reverence to visit. The nations of the world paid
lofty tributes to little Jackie Smirch, America's greatest hero. At
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a given hour, there were two minutes of silence throughout
the nation. Even the inhabitants of the small, bewind ordered
town of Westfield, Iowa, observed this touching ceremony. Agents of
the Department of Justice sought to that one of them
was especially assigned to stand grimly in the doorway of
a little shack restaurant on the edge of the tourist's
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camping ground just outside the town. There, under his stern scrutiny,
Missus Emma Smirch bowed her head over to Hamburger stakes
sizzling on her grill. Bowed her head and turned away
so that the secret service man could not see the twisted,
strangely familiar leer on her lips. The Greatest Man in
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the World by James Thurber Countdown has come to you
from the studios of Alderman Broadcasting Empire World Headquarters in
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the Sports Capsule Building in New York. Thank you for listening.
Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel.
They are the Countdown Musical Directors, produced by Tko Brothers.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel guitarist, bass
and drums by Brian Ray. Other Beethoven selections have been
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arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The
sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and
it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Musical comments from Nancy Fauss The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Richard Lewis, and everything
else was pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for
this the seven hundred and eightieth day since Donald Trump's
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first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Arrest him now while we still can. The
next schedule countdown is Monday. Until then, I'm Keith Olderman.
Good Morning, gonna have to noon, goodnight, and good luck.
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Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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