August 21, 2024 • 55 mins
SERIES 3 EPISODE 13: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Did you HEAR Trump yesterday? Did you HEAR HIM TALK? He’s in Howell, Michigan, where it might as well be Alabama in the year 1855, where they marched chanting “We Love Hitler, We Love Trump” a MONTH ago, and he came out at the County Sheriff’s Office, and behind him with the cops as the props and if he had had ten times the energy and ten times the focus you would have said: what’s wrong with Trump? Is he DYING or something? I mean I don’t THINK he’s dying, I think there are intermediate stages between having every single thing in a presidential campaign turn against you in a matter of two weeks and actually dying, but look if this mumble thing continues, at this rate they’re going to have start putting live captions over him.
Trump responded to the overture from the RFK Junior camp about dropping out if Trump would give him a role in his cabinet. “I didn’t know he was thinking about getting out, but if he is thinking about getting out, certainly I’d be open to it.” RFK's running mate Nicole Shanahan appears to be doing the bargaining. Even she has figured it out: "We run the risk of a Kamala Harris and Walz presidency, as we draw votes from Trump. We draw, somehow, more votes from Trump. Or we walk away, right now, and join forces with Donald Trump…” Translation: bribe us and we’ll go away. Looks like what they want is Secretary of Health and Human Services.
THE SELF-DEFENESTRATION OF THE POLITICAL MEDIA: The Times really did it yesterday, with no sense of irony, no meta self-reflection: “Kamala Harris’s tan suit was a surprising choice, our fashion critic writes.” The Post, meantime, did a DNC factcheck and got half a dozen things wrong: the Post insisted that there was no evidence that Trump ever sent love letters to dictators with Kessler writing “we do not know what Trump wrote to Kim Jong Un,” Media Matters went appropriately nuts. Of course we know. Trump showed them to… Bob Woodward of the Post. The factcheck now has its own factcheck.
I recommend to you and will quote extensively from a masterpiece on this topic in The New Republic. Meredith Shiner writes: "after years of watching Morning Joe and searching for their birthdays in the Politico Playbook, they do not see their role as speaking to us, but rather speaking to themselves."
Ex-effing-actly.
B-Block (26:47) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Jesse Watters has rebirthed birtherism. He's sending "Johnny" to Hawaii to get the real story about Barack Obama's birth certificate because Harris. Amy Kremer, a GOP Committeewoman from Georgia, is the sucker born every minute. A liberal trolls the idiot Jack Posobiec by saying she'll have an abortion and a vasectomy onstage at the DNC and Kremer believes her. And Stephen L. Miller - the "other" Stephen Miller - uses the c-word about Mallory McMorrow with no self-awareness that it's used about him.
C-Block (37:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It was a lovely day in Fun City yesterday so I was out all day and I walked right past it: the bar out of which George Steinbrenner stepped one night in 1981 after I had spent the day trying to find... George Steinbrenner.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Is Trump dying or something? I mean the Obama's at
the DNC and the Washington Post unexpectedly fully imploding, and
Trump confirming he is ready to bribe RFK in order
to get him to drop out endorse him. And did
you hear Trump yesterday? Did you hear him talk? He's
in Howell, Michigan, where it might as well be Alabama
(00:35):
in the year eighteen fifty five, where they marched chanting,
we love Hitler, we love Trump a month ago, and
he came out at the County Sheriff's office and behind
him with the cops as the props, and in front
of him the local fascists all named jan an irv
irv with an E. And if he had had ten
(00:57):
times the energy and ten times the focus he actually had,
you would have said, what's wrong with Trump? Is he
dying or something?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Very very much appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Nice place, by the way, the incredible people outside. You said,
the crash, and we really feel good about to say,
and the area we're doing very well here. It's just
got a pall that was very good. Lot e withod
falls in the last couple of days. Thank you to
(01:29):
the Livingston County Shoff's department for walking us in such
a beautiful way.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
To get a roll of stamps and mail it. In
pal quarter century ago, my ex brother in law went
sudden on set by polar no previous diagnosis, then the
full thing all at once. He decided he was a
freeway cop in La. He was actually a minister. He
started pulling other drivers over. And this was when freeway
(01:56):
shootings were the rage in LA. And he spent twice
his annual South in travel bookings for Christmas. And they
hospitalized him and medicated him, and he was already in
there three days, and he still had not slept, He
still hadn't fully left the high end of the spectrum.
And he phoned me and pretended he was not in
(02:16):
the hospital, and he pretended he had not gone sleepless
for seventy two hours, and he pretended everything was just fine.
And he sounded like he had been gargling with battery acid.
And he sounded better in that phone call than Trump
sounded yesterday. In Ku Klux Klan City, Michigan.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
You know, interestingly like New York. When I left for Washington,
New York was we had a very bad mayor, Deblasio
but he wasn't there that long, and he couldn't ruin
what took place. But we had a city that was
so wonderful and so thriving, and just in a few
short years that change. New York State is doing terribly.
(03:03):
I heard the governor last night speaking so viciously and
violently about me, But she doesn't speak about what they've
done to destroy the state. The law enforcement has been decimated.
The judges. What's gone on with the judges in New York.
Nobody can There's no justice have They just have it
(03:26):
out for the police. Nobody knows why. I don't understand why.
From the common sense, I like to say the Republican
Party is now the party of common sense. Conservative, Yeah,
I guess conservative, It doesn't matter. It's the party of
common sense. We want to have borders, we want to
have strong police protection. We want a military they can
protect us.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
We want great look done. If you need a nap,
just curl up on the floor. It's better than this
sleepwalking stuff. Holy cow. By the way, Trump spokes bubblehead
Caroline Levitt explained that this new Trump, that one inaudible
Jay Trump, he is presenting a message of optimism to
(04:09):
contrast what the Democrats are doing at their convention. Look,
we can argue policy all you want, mis Levitt, but
one thing the Democrats are doing at their convention is
remaining audible and intelligible to people who are standing more
than five feet away. Have you ever heard Trump like this?
(04:30):
My god? I mean, I don't think he's dying dying.
I think there are intermediate stages between having every single
thing in your presidential campaign turn against you in a
matter of thirteen days two weeks and actually dying. But look,
if this mumbling stuff continues at this rate, they're going
to have to start putting live captions over him. Shaking
(04:55):
off his somnambulance for a second. Trump did respond to
the overture from the RFK Junior camp about dropping out
if Trump would give him a role in his cabinet.
I didn't know he was thinking about getting out, Trump said,
But if he is thinking about getting out, certainly I'd
be open to it. I would accuse Trump of lying
(05:16):
about this. Every poll for a month has been unmistakably
clear Kennedy's support has been cut by half, and that
half went to Kamala Harris. And what's left is almost
entirely coming at Trump's expense, and there had been talk
about this last week, but maybe Trump didn't know Kennedy
was thinking about it, because getting back to my original question,
is Trump dying or something? Of course, it's not Kennedy
(05:42):
who's thinking about doing any of this. He's too busy
knifing bear cubs on the parkways around fun City here
or something. It's this idiot Nicole Shanahan, whom he named
his quote running mate unquote because she was willing to
basically finance ninety percent of their nut job campaign, and
(06:03):
because every single conspiracy theory he does not believe in,
she does. And even Shanahan has figured this out, telling
a podcast called Impact Theory that there's a choice between
continuing which case, quote, we run the risk of a
Kamala Harris and Wall's presidency as we draw votes for Trump,
(06:24):
we draw somehow more votes from Trump, or we walk
away right now and join forces with Donald Trump. Translation,
bribe us and we will go away and endorse you.
Based on Shanahan's comments, again, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is
somewhere insisting that I don't know dangerous Wi Fi signals
(06:47):
caused putin to go into Ukraine or something. What they
apparently want for dropping out is Secretary of Health and
Human Services, for him Kennedy, or for somebody they approve.
Verifying as that thought is, I can answer only Secretary
of Education Betsy Debos. Whatever deal Shanahan brokers with Trump,
(07:10):
and she says she has been in contact with that
campaign and it's going well, she better do it damned fast.
A friend of Kennedy's has reportedly delivered boxes to election
officials in Arizona, boxes containing one hundred and ten thousand
ballot signatures. Only they had been gathered by a super
pack supporting Kennedy, and such coordination between the actual Kennedy
(07:33):
campaign and a super pack supporting Kennedy is wildly illegal.
On the other hand, at this point, what other option
does Kennedy have? The New York Times reports that the
campaign itself gathered nine thousand signatures in Arizona. The number
to get on the ballot in Arizona is forty two thousand.
So they better act quickly with Trump, or they might
(07:55):
have nothing to withdraw from and thus nothing to negotiate with.
On the other hand, I hope somebody from the Kennedy
campaign has also reached out directly to JV Vance because
you know, is is Trump dying or something? Now to
the self defenestration of the Washington Post and the New
(08:18):
York Times and Politico and CNN and all the other
news organizations that have disconnected their political coverage from reality
and insulated their decision makers from the fact that they
are burning themselves to the ground. And we'll skip for
a moment. The idea that suddenly where the leaked campaign
memos came from matters when eight years ago, when they
(08:42):
were Clinton campaign memos, it didn't matter. Oh, we can't
touch it. It's from Iran. The Times really did this yesterday,
really did this. I thought I was reading the onion.
They did it with no sense of irony, no of
meta self reflection that would make you go, all right,
(09:04):
I'll stick around for another day or two before I
canceled my subscription for the third time this year. They
actually printed this, you ready. Kamala Harris's tan suit was
a surprising choice. Our fashion critic rights, Holy effing Christ,
(09:25):
and they did it just as Maureen Daoud did it
on Sunday. The Dems are delighted, but a coup is
still a coup. That headline came exactly twenty nine days
after Maureen Dawd wrote Lord Almighty Joe, let it go.
And there's no meta there either. There's no second paragraph
in which Dowd writes a paragraph owning up to her
(09:46):
own mental faculties and their decline, and her own fitness
for office or her own age. The Post really did
it yesterday and very late Monday, as well, fact checking
Biden's speech and other elements of the Democratic National Convention
first night. Only it wasn't about getting the facts right.
It was as if there were somebody from the Trump
(10:08):
campaigns standing over fact checker Glen Kessler's shoulder saying, if
you get this long and they've in, if you put
you in jail, well verse, if you make sure you
never get a dinner reservation in this town. Again, more
on the thing with fact checking and the Post in moment,
But first Politico did it again too, with their newsletters that,
(10:33):
at the present rate of deterioration will be by September
first or so forty percent news and sixty percent lists
of birthdays, who showed up to what book party, new
kids sightings of Tammy Haddad and other realizations of what
used to be the self policing joke of all political
reporters that the White House Correspondence Dinner was the Oscars
(10:56):
for ugly people. That joke. Only now these same reporters
who used to make that joke, they think the Oscars
is the White House Correspondence Dinner for unimportant people. I
was thinking that the Times, the Post, CNN, Politico, Axios,
and lots of others have become utterly self referential and
(11:17):
designed only to be read by the Times, Posts, CNN, Politico,
and Axios when Meredith Schiner published a piece yesterday in
the New Republic that makes this point beautifully. If I may,
the headline, beware the pundit brained version of the Democratic Convention. Yep,
(11:40):
the subheadline. As everyday Americans tune in to watch Kamala
Harris receive her party's nomination, they should trust what they
see with their own eyes, especially as DC's chattering class
tries to gaslight them. I have to read some of
what she wrote. It was as if she mined mind
my own mind for this information and then wrote it
(12:03):
better than I could quote. As this class of political
elites descends on Chicago this week for the Democratic National Convention.
The average consumer of news needs to know they are
not really coming here to workshop policy, interpret or execute
progressive politics, or even discuss electoral strategy. They're coming to
(12:24):
attend corporate sponsored happy hours, eat free meals together at
the CNN Grill, and maybe, if they're really lucky, snag
a selfie with John Legend. And now more than ever,
we should ask who all of this, this punditry, this hobnobbing,
(12:46):
this naval gazing, is really four to continue, Because if
this summer has revealed anything, it's that, just like the
scott Walkers of your we are watching the national meetia
short circuit before our very eyes. They are insular, they
are unprepared, and after years of watching Morning Joe and
(13:11):
searching for their birthdays in the Politico playbook, I feel
so seen. After years of watching Morning Joe and searching
for their birthdays in the Politico Playbook, they do not
see their role as speaking to us, but rather speaking
to themselves. While this may seem ancillary to the main
(13:34):
plotline of our national politics, the mainstream media own golding
themselves out of civic relevance is a net negative for
anyone who believes in the outcome of better, more representative,
good government. Of course, she continues, the Beltway media are conservative.
(13:54):
This is not a novel argument by any means. It's
an industry run by increasingly reac actionary plutocrats who reliably
summon their charges to lead a highly effective but how
will you pay for it? Pincer movement against anything resembling
liberal policy. Meanwhile, there is seemingly no sin grievous enough
to earn a Republican the same sort of nullifying skepticism.
(14:18):
The Trumpists who aided and abetted the former president's attempt
to overturn a lawful election remain in the good graces
of America's cable news bookers. Oh my god, I love this.
Can we make it into a series? Still, we need
to acknowledge that the media are conservative in the most traditional,
(14:38):
unideological sense of the word. They are clinging to a
status quo, their status quo that has not matched our reality.
Since Barack Obama was elected president in two thousand and
eight and the Tea Party emerged as the energized manifestation
of Ronald Reagan's nineteen eighties fevered their rules, their conventional wisdom,
(15:05):
their savvy takes, become more stale, more detached from normal life,
and more cartoonish with every passing day. End quote begin applause.
Tempting as it is, I have not read Miss Shiner's
piece in The New Republic allowed in its entirety. I
(15:26):
encourage you to do so, and to do so on
their website, and I don't know, buy something from their advertisers.
I will note I have been hitting this one point
for at least ten years now that the political cognizantee
have not covered Trump nor any of the consequences of
(15:48):
his raping and pillaging of America because they still haven't
figured out which reportorial template fits all of this or
which news cubby hole they can stuff the whole thing into.
Chuck Todd, Chris Solissa, Maggie Haberman, and Ryan Lizza don't
actually exist. They are just mediocre people doing bad impressions
(16:13):
of David Brinkley, Tom Wicker, Tim Russert, Woodward and Bernstein.
They read what was written or said before, and they think, only,
how can I now write that again? It had not
happened by the time Miss Shiner wrote her masterpiece. But
(16:36):
speaking of Woodward, The Washington Post actually had to be
pressured into fact checking it's timid, terrified fact checking of
the first nine of the convention. The Post still will
not fix its assertion claiming Trump wanted Americans to inject
bleach to fight COVID was quote exaggerated. It still says
(16:56):
because Trump later contradicted himself that he didn't really mean
it when he said that women who had abortions had
to be punished in some way when he said it
on videotape. The Post will not correct its inaccurate criticism
of Joe Biden for saying Trump answered the Charlottesville white
supremacist attack by saying, there are very fine people on
both sides. But the Post insisted that there was no
(17:18):
evidence that Trump ever sent love letters to dictators, with
mister Kessler writing, we do not know what Trump wrote
to Kim Jong un. Folks at Media Matters went appropriately not.
Of course, we know what Trump wrote to Kim Jong un.
Trump showed those letters to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post.
(17:41):
The Washington Post fact check now has its own fact
check about the Washington Post quote. Parts of the letters
were revealed in a twenty twenty book by Washington Post
Associate editor Bob Woodward after Trump permitted him to read
the letters into his tape recorder at the White House.
This article has been corrected. The problem is that's it
for the corrections. The Times, Post, Politico at al are
(18:05):
still reporting as Miss Shiner noted for each other. I
was flashed back to a day thirty five years ago
when I was the sports director of the CBS television
station in Los Angeles and our network got the baseball contract.
This is when people still wanted to watch baseball on television.
I was nominated to be the host of the pregame
(18:27):
show for the new CBS Game of the Week, a
role I would later fill at NBC and Fox and Turner.
The same job at four networks would have been pretty good,
you have to admit that. But the guy making the
call on this at CBS in nineteen eighty nine was
some dult named Rick Losovita las Avita. There's a coincidence,
and he and Brent Musburger interviewed me one Sunday morning
(18:49):
because Brent was supposed to be the CBS baseball play
by play man, but he did not know CBS was
about to fire him. The week before the season began. Anyway,
los Avita, who if I remember correctly, had been a
second baseman at Harvard, rather listlessly asked me whose point
of view CBS Baseball should take the batter important but myopic,
(19:15):
ultimately an irrelevancy, the pitcher, the truly uninvolved non athlete,
or perhaps the second basement at the center of all
the action, captain of the defense lynchpin in any play.
And I said, I think we should take the point
of view of the fan. Lsavita looked at me in
(19:40):
the eyes for the only time he would do so
during the interview, and he said, with genuine surprise, the
point of view of the fan? What's that? And why
on earth does that matter? Bluntly? Right now, our political
(20:03):
media is this CBS sports guy Rick Glarsovita. A couple
(20:28):
poll notes the UVA Center for Politics. This is the
Larry Sabato operation has, for the first time this cycle,
moved a state from Lean's Republican to toss up. The
state is North Carolina. This is in line with polling
that suggests she has closed the gap on Trump and
continues to improve there. Virginia Roanoke College polling a little
(20:52):
old closed last Friday. Harris forty seven, Trump forty four
in Virginia, swing state's focal data polling for I'm a
four News, also a little old. It closed last Friday.
Trump by two in Arizona and four in Georgia. They
are tied in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Harris by four
in Wisconsin, Harris by six in Michigan, Harris by eight
(21:14):
in Nevada. The electoral college map based on the Siena
polls Harris three hundred and thirteen, Trump two hundred and
twenty five ipsos, ABC unfavorables. Get a load of this.
Harris favorable opinion forty seven percent, unfavorable opinion forty seven percent,
(21:37):
less than most others, but still positive. But this is remarkable.
Trump favorable opinion thirty six percent, unfavorable sixty percent. That's
negative twenty four. No wonder he's m mean. I'm not
(22:06):
saying he's dying. I'm just saying, is he dying? It
looks sounds like he's anyway. Also of interest here the
right wing responds to all of this. It's almost unbelievable,
But they have gone back to blaming it all on
the mastermind behind the scenes pulling the strings. A foreigner
manipulating America and laying plans to continue to manipulate America
(22:30):
for the next quarter of a century. And that foreigner's
name is Barack Obama. Bertherism reborn. That's next. This is countdown.
This is countdown, with Keith Oberner still ahead of us
(23:09):
on this editionive Countdown. I walked past the bar yesterday
on a beautiful day in New York. It was forty
three years ago, like last month, when a bunch of
us wasted an entire day trying to find the owner
of the New York Yankees in hopes that for some
reason he would give us some vital information. We never
(23:29):
found him. After I gave up, I went home, I
got a pizza. I walked past this bar down the
street from my house, and who steps out the side
door but the owner of the New York Yankees. And
that's not even the most amazing parts ahead in things
I promised not to tell first, there are still more
new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the miscrants,
(23:51):
morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days
those persons persons in the world, world worse Eraser had
himself Jesse Waters of Fox News. This is what he
said yesterday. There's a weird vibe going on. I can't
(24:11):
figure it out. He could have stopped there and could
have summarized his entire career, but he went on, there's
a weird vibe going on. I can't figure it out.
Barack Obama is still the godfather of this machine. He
gave us Joe Biden as VP, he gave us Hillary
as Secretary of State. Then he coued Joe, put all
his boys with Kamala's team, and he had his wingman,
(24:33):
holder Vett Waltz. I don't know who Waltz is. I
presume he means Governor Walls, the vice presidential nominee. They've
given up trying to mispronounce Kamala Harris's name, and now
they've moved on to mispronouncing Walls's name. Now the guy's
a young sixty three. He's going to be doing this
the next twenty five years. He's definitely going to interfere
with this election. By that, Waters means Obama plans to
(24:56):
vote interfere. This is why we will be ending Johnny
to Hawaii to get the truth about the birth certificate.
This time we will dig deep and find out what
really happened. Yeah, okay, Number one Fox just re embraced
birtherism if you missed it. Number two Waters just confessed
(25:18):
the greatest fear at Fox. The ongoing obsession now in
its what seventeenth year? This idiot Waters speaking of seventeen years.
He's only seventeen years younger than is Barack Obama. They
really think that they will be living in a world
(25:38):
manipulated by Barack Obama until the year two thousand and
forty nine, to which I say, good, have a great time. Moron.
Number three, This Johnny that Eraser had Jesse ascending to Hawaii.
Johnny is a houseplant. Then again, so is Jesse Waters.
(26:01):
The runner up worser Amy Kramer, Georgia Republican Committee woman,
former TEA partier and January sixth speaker. You know this
not too bright, possibly brain damaged right wing troll Jack Posobic,
who's been thrown off everything. He went to the Democratic
National Convention and decided to interview protesters in hopes of
(26:25):
getting them to I don't know, I say that they
were being paid by mautseetungue or I don't know, say
that they have the real birth certificate for Barack Obama,
who knows. They just assume that what they would do,
how they would try to cheat, break the law, do
immoral things. They just assumed the Democrats and the Liberals
(26:47):
have done that, because the Democrats and the Liberals have
succeeded it and they've failed, so they must just be
doing more of it. That's the way they think when
they think this. Pasobic, of course, promptly got a hold
of two women who turned out to be Democrats who
showed up there deliberately to f with Jack Posobic, to
mess with his interviews. This didn't fool a lot of people.
(27:11):
There is evidence that Jack Pisobic has realized now that
the two women that he interviewed first at the Democratic
National Committee protests were in fact people there looking for him.
Pasobic disguised himself by wearing a facial covering, and everybody
went and said, oh, he looks even dumber wearing facial
clothing in any event. Amy Kramer, Georgia Republican Committee woman
(27:34):
who wore some sort of leopard print mink to the
January sixth insurrection and spoke nonsense and Gibberish played a
clip of Jack Pisobic interviewing these two women who were
effing with him, and she didn't realize it, and she wrote,
a woman admits she's going to have an abortion on
(27:54):
stage at the DNC. Everyone thought Laura Lumer was crazy
when she said it was going to happen. Lara was right.
This is sick. In no world is this okay? This
woman needs counseling and mental treatment. Number one. Laura Lumer
now claims that when she said that there was going
(28:15):
to be a live abortion on stage of the Democratic
National Committee, that she was being satirical. Republicans, by definition,
can't be satirical because they would have to have an
advanced sense of humor. And the only thing that Republicans
laugh at usually is pointing at somebody who's injured themselves,
(28:36):
or perhaps the video from the Simpsons man hit in
groin by football. But this woman, Kramer, part of the
January sixth Trump event, thought this was legit, that the
woman was going to have an on stage abortion. The
woman added, and her name was Anarchy princess with the
(28:58):
handles satire. I'm also having a visectomy on stage. I
forgot to mention that this did not deter Amy Kramer
in the slightest Who is satire ap who was interviewed
by Jack Pisobic and said she was going to have
an on stage abortion and then added and a vasectomy
(29:22):
satire ap Anarchy princess is no other person than the
woman who keeps appearing at all of the Peter Navarro events,
at his sentencing, at his hearings, the guy the woman
who's interrupting him and holding up placards and saying you're
going to jail, And this boneheaded insurrectionist Republican still cannot
(29:43):
process that this was a stunt designed to embarrass Posobic
and anybody who would take something this stupid seriously, people
like Amy Kramer, Republican Committee woman from Georgia fifth a
thick in nowhere out the fifth. Okay, this was a
tea party organizer. I told you about the Tea Party
(30:04):
when they started, we had to stop them. Then this
is what they've morphed into once again, more proof of
my theory that our attempts to preserve democracy do not
succeed as much as do their efforts, and the stupidity
of those who want to destroy democracy. They inadvertently protected.
Still none of these are our winner. Our winner. Stephen L. Miller,
(30:31):
formerly of The National Review Online, formerly of Fox News.
He's been fired from a lot of places. Apparently he
does a podcast now. Nothing against podcasts, but I looked
at the name here, and apparently nobody listens to it.
You will have seen from Monday night at the DNZ
that Mallory McMorrow, the Michigan State Senator, not only got
(30:51):
up and gave an excellent address, she brought props. She
brought a giant, like five times normal size book about
Project twenty twenty five and held it up so everybody
could see it and could identify what everybody from Project
twenty twenty five is insisting. Is there intimate connection with
the Trump plans for his next presidency. God help us
(31:15):
if there is anything resembling one. But the prop was
a giant, as I say, book that reads twenty twenty
five mandate for leadership. Stephen L. Miller writes, When it's
Friday class, and this is over a picture of Malory McMorrow.
When it's Friday class, and you think the substitute teacher
(31:37):
might be cool and she turns out to be a
massive And then there's a four letter word that begins
with C. He actually did this, Stephen L. Miller calling
somebody else that Stephen L. Miller. She turns out to
be a massive seaword. Hey, Stephen, do you have a mirror, because,
(32:02):
in a remarkable coincidence, you too are a massive conker
in today's competition for worst person in the world. Now
(32:29):
from the files of things I promised not to tell,
and I recently went past the building, my second professional home,
and I was flooded with my memories of a place
called the RKO Radio Network. This is nineteen eighty and
I'm nearing my twenty second birthday, and I'm working real
hard at one radio network run by the United pres
(32:49):
International Wire Service, in my second year and making around
well nearly twenty thousand dollars a year. And in September,
a drunken manager had tried to get me fired, tried
to fire me himself for being young. And I'll by
damned if I can remember getting consecutive days off there.
This was UPI in a nutshell for my first few
(33:11):
weeks there. I thought whoever had decorated the newsroom had
found the floor tiles with the ugliest design pattern in history.
And then finally I saw a colleague grind his lit
cigarette into that floor, and only then did I realize
that was what the ugly design pattern was. Hundreds of
ground out cigarettes, years and years of ground out cigarettes
(33:36):
in the tiles. Anyway, the main advantage to working at
UPI was that everybody in what was then a flourishing
radio business knew UPI, and thus they knew you, and
they knew you were underpaid. The top all news radio
station in the country, WCBS in New York, had already
asked if I might be a candidate for a coming
(33:57):
opening in their sports department the spring. I'd actually interviewed
with two vice presidents at this thing. The yachtsman Ted Turner,
who owned the Atlanta Braves, was going to try to
start something he called cable news Network, but they were
not initially interested in me, and after meeting with them,
I was certain they would never get it launched, let
alone get an audience for it. I was working there
(34:20):
literally fourteen months later. I'd also been flown to Boston,
like they spent fifty five dollars on me by a
radio station that really wanted me to do a morning
sports shift for them, and they were offering forty thousand
dollars a year, twice my salary, and I was ready
to do it. And I was sitting in the office
in Boston trying to figure out where I could live
(34:41):
and how late I could sleep and still get there
in the morning. And then the news director said, now,
except if there's a big story, you can do the
after noon sports cast from home over the phone, which
is when I realized I was supposed to do the
morning and the afternoon. I was essentially on the clock
from five am to six x pm. And the forty
thousand dollars would have had to go to my sister
(35:03):
because the schedule would have killed me within three months.
And then there was this RKO radio network. UPI was
in the unique position of having RKO as a client,
so RKO heard and used our stuff all the time.
And also they had from their beginning used our UPI
(35:24):
feed as a kind of twenty four to seven constantly
flowing turned on Spigot audition service. From the time I
got to UPI in July nineteen seventy nine, it seemed
like one radiopaerson from UPI per month was hired away
by RKO. Sometime in the early autumn of nineteen eighty,
I was covering a New York Rangers game at Madison
(35:46):
Square Garden, and the guy next to me, smoking a
cigar inside the garden, right in front of all the fans,
turned out to be the sports director of this RKO network.
In fact, he was the entirety of the RKO sports department.
But we're doubling in size. I'm going to start doing
weekend sports casts, and I get to hire a new
person to do the weekends. It's a union shop, so
(36:08):
it's fifty one dollars a sports cast. After there's ten
a weekend, so you get twenty two for eighty dollars
to reports for reports from the field, and you'd be
my backup. Twenty two bucks from the field and a
guarantee of five to ten weekend and you got to
come in one day a week to book the stringers
of the weekend games. That'd be free, but the guarantee
(36:28):
is twenty six thousand dollars plus those twenty two dollars
every time you have file a report from the field.
You interested, well, I did some quick math. This was
about forty percent more money for about forty percent less work,
and there were no five am to six pm schedules.
When the sports director called me back a few weeks
(36:49):
later to offer me the gig, I did not hesitate.
His name, by the way, was Charlie Steiner. Charlie would
later be a colleague of mine at Sports Center, and
then he did the Yankees games, and now he does
the Dodgers games, and he's been a friend for forty
two years. The network itself was also space age, shiny
and new, and it had carpets, whereas UPI had the
(37:13):
stubbed out cigarettes decorps. RKO was literally the first radio
network in this country to deliver all of its programs
to its stations via satellite. No more scratchy, hyper expensive
phone lines. RKO came through crystal clear, and that was
our pitch to the stations. All the newscasts, all the
sports casts, all the features ended with the same tagline
(37:35):
bya satellite, this is the RKO Radio Network. And then
a spot for Hubba Bubba gum. For my first few
weeks there. Part of the job also included doing two
sportscasts today for RKO's local station WOIR. The first time
I went up in the elevator to their studio. It
dawned on me that it was the exact same studio
(37:58):
where seven years before I had been invited by the
great comedians Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding along with my
dad to sit and watch in amazed appreciation as Bob
and Ray did their show on WR. So basically, as
of December nineteen eighty, I had accomplished all of my
childhood goals. The only problem with the place was the location.
(38:24):
RKO was on the southeast corner of Times Square, probably
the low watermark in the history of Times Square. It
was in fourteen forty Broadway at the corner of fortieth Street.
There was a back door at forty first Street and
sixth Avenue, right across from Bryant Park. On those occasions
when I filled in for Charlie Steiner on the weekdays
(38:45):
for his morning show, which they would tape overnight, I
would often be at the studios until two or three AM,
and my walk home was a little sketchy. In point
of fact, I would not walk home. I would run,
I mean run run from that back door at forty
first and sixth I'd pass Bryant Park on my right
as fast as I could passed all the drug dealers
(39:06):
and other folks, then dart on the north side of
forty second between sixth and fifth, and once you got
to that corner of fifth and forty second, you were
back in civilization, with good street lights and other people
on the streets, no matter how late the hour, or
as we called them in New York then witnesses. Occasionally
I might have to walk in Times Square itself, usually
(39:30):
when it was daylight. What surrounded me there was about
as far from today's Disneyland East Times Square as you
could imagine. In fact, you could not imagine. There were
porn theaters everywhere. And it wasn't just porn theaters. They
were spaced part and in between them. Other businesses existed,
(39:51):
porn peep shows, porn sex shops, and porn video rental stores.
I remember always making sure I was walking on the
ho outside edge of the street, nearest the gutter, on
the premise that in the event somebody tried to mug me,
I stood a much better chance by running right out
into automobile traffic. Besides which, I used to worry that
if I walked too close to the porn theaters and
(40:13):
the shows, and the shops and the video stores. One day,
I might just get stuck to the sidewalk. Time Square
was so different in nineteen eighty and nineteen eighty one
that I really can't imagine that the annual income made
there from anything but porn and the RKO radio network
(40:35):
was more than twenty dollars a year. In total. There
was nothing else, I mean nothing. On weekends, walking over
from my home on the East Side, I would decide
which fast food place I'd be getting lunch from, somewhere
on Fifth Avenue or Lex. I'd go to the nearest payphone.
I'd call the RKO newsroom desk, and I would offer
to bring in food for everybody, for the simple reason
(40:56):
that in Time Square forty years ago, there were no
restaurants open on weekends. I'll say that again, in Times
Square forty years ago, on the weekends, all the restaurants
that existed there were closed during the day. And forget
(41:18):
public transportation to Times Square. I would finish my brisk,
twenty five minute walk to work one night in that
frigid winter of nineteen eighty eighty one and see my
colleagues looking unusually pasty and drawn. You didn't take the
subway in, did you, asked one of the editors, Tom Ryan.
I looked at him like it was crazy. Well good.
Some guy got stabbed by the stairs closest to our building.
(41:41):
I asked if he was okay. No, he's not okay.
He's dead. But they got the guys who did it.
They arrested fifty one people. One guy got stabbed to death,
fifty one people were arrested. I asked if they had
been restaging a reenactment of the assassination of Julius Caesar. Still,
the equipment was brand new and easy to use, and
(42:03):
the staff was all young. We all had fun, and
we had parties, and everybody lived in the city, and
for the most part, it was a pleasure to work there,
and it was way more lucrative even than Charlie Steiner
had suggested. Those twenty two dollars voice reports from the field,
they piled up fast. The baseball players went on strike
that June nineteen eighty one, and every time I covered
(42:25):
a bargaining session I could be certain of at least
another forty four dollars. And if that doesn't sound like much,
the rent on my very nice studio apartment never got
higher than four hundred and ninety eight dollars a month.
RKO's location also provided me with some wacky logistical problems.
I filled in for Charlie on most holidays, plus I
did the same thing at a local radio station WNW.
(42:49):
This made the actual Christmas into my metaphorical Christmas. If
I had to fill in for both of these operations
on the same day. My schedule went like this, get
into RKO in Times Square at maybe two am, tape
Charlie's morning show by four am, then walk cross town
very quickly to WNEW over on Third Avenue and do
(43:12):
those sportscasts live between five thirty and nine, and then
go home and maybe take a nap, but not a
long one because I would have to be back at
RKO by one pm to do Charlie's afternoon show, rinse
repeat a lot of work. On the other hand, just
one week of those days paid the rent for two months.
On a wet New Year's Eve nineteen eighty one, I
(43:34):
treated myself to a cab to go to RKO, which
put me in the bizarre position of getting into a
cab on the East Side at one thirty am New
year's morning and saying take me to Times Square and
the driver saying, you missed it, buddy, it's been nineteen
eighty two for an hour and a half. Nothing like
being the only person going into Times Square while one
(43:56):
million people are leaving it drunk. Most of the sportscasts
I did at Arkao or pretty textbook, But there did
come the day that I walked in to fill in
for Charlie who was at Wimbledon. So this is the
summer of nineteen eighty one, and the newswires were full
of this story of some unnamed American radio reporter getting
(44:17):
into a brawl with a London tabloid writer at a
Wimbledon press conference, and it slowly evolved that the reporter
was Charlie, my boss, and we were going to have
to figure out a way to cover this. At first,
Charlie wanted to do it in the third person and
say the reporter did this, and the reporter said that,
(44:38):
And I said, you know, I really don't think we're
going to get away with that, given how much wire
copy I'm seeing here, Charlie, this is probably going to
be on the front page of the New York Times
in the morning. Sure, enough, it was above the fold.
We're still unbeknownst to Charlie his fight took place in
a corner of the Wimbledon press room, right under the
camera that fed out a shot of that room twenty
(44:59):
four to seven to every television network in the world.
Sure enough. The last item on ABC's six thirty newscast
that night with Peter Jennings was a feature on Charlie
Steiner fighting with the British over how they broke up
the John McEnroe post match press conference, and he was
pissed off because that meant he wouldn't get any soundbites
(45:21):
from McEnroe. I managed to run home from RKO and
record the report by Dick Schapp, and when Charlie got
back from London, I loaned it to him. This was
in July nineteen eighty one. Charlie still hasn't given me
the tape back. Every time I see him, he swears
he's still looking for it. It's in a box somewhere.
(45:42):
But I'm beginning to think he may not be telling
me the whole truth about what happened to my video cassette.
But my favorite RKO story is about Charlie's sudden and
inexplicable obsession with the story. During that nineteen eighty one
baseball strike I mentioned in the middle of this thing
which stopped the season for fifty days and was really
(46:03):
really the beginning of the end of that time when
baseball truly mattered in this country. When every day in
that strike somebody on all the TV newscast set and
the baseball strike is in its twenty third day, a
story broke that George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees,
was going to meet with Baseball Commissioner Buye. Qune and
a couple of other owners who realized that the work
(46:24):
stoppage was financial madness. As George told me years later,
he was losing about a million dollars in revenue every
day so that the Milwaukee Brewers could save five thousand
dollars in salaries every year. Well, my boss, Charlie Steiner,
decided he was going to scoop the world about this
secret Steinbrenner Kune meeting. So he told me to come
(46:47):
into the office on one of my off days and
work the phones. Work the phone. Sun. Two of us,
me and the newly hired producer, my friend John Martin,
were supposed to call everybody we knew and find out
for Charlie when these guys were meeting and where and
who would be there, and to not go home until
we had nailed it down. Well, it was madness. I
(47:12):
didn't know anybody in baseball, let alone anybody who knew
where the owner of the Yankees was going to meet
in secret with the Commissioner of Baseball, let alone who
knew all that and would tell me. But I tried
everybody I could think of, and had already suggested to
John Martin that I was just going to start dialing
ten digits at random and asking whoever answered if they
(47:33):
knew when. After about eight hours of this, well past
my dinner time, I was on the phone with some
executive of some West Coast team when he said hold
on a minute. I got another call, and a moment
later from the adjoining room in my office, I heard
John Martin say, mister Smith, Hi, this is John Martin
from the RKO Radio network, and yes, RKO Radio Network, Yes,
(47:56):
I'll hold sir. Mister Smith picked up my call again
and I said, is this really two of you calling
me about this crap at the same time from the
same network? And I said yes, and I apologized, and
I told him I was going home. If Charlie doesn't
like it, I told John he can fire me, so
(48:16):
follow me on this because I had missed dinner. When
I got back to my street on the east side,
I was famished. I don't know nine o'clock, ten o'clock.
The last two blocks of my walk home was always identical.
I'd come up Third Avenue and then hang a right
at the southeast corner of Third Avenue and fifty fifth Street.
I lived at the other end of fifty fifth Street
and your second Avenue. But now I was going to
(48:38):
go pick up some pizza in a very nice place
on the northwest corner of this same block. I got
the slices. The lights changed. Now I was crossing towards
the northeast corner of fifty fifth and Third, which itself
was the home of a famous New York bar, PJ. Clarks.
Ordinarily I would never have been on that side of
(48:58):
the street at that hour, but there I was. And
as I slipped past the ancient front door, I saw
the side exit open in a burst of bright yellow light,
like in an Edward Hopper painting shoot out onto a
limo waiting on fifty fifth Street. Then, as I walked,
carrying my box of pizza and wearing my RKO Radio
(49:19):
Network black jacket, who emerges from that light of that
side door at PJ. Clark's, But George Steinbrenner in a tux.
Speaker 4 (49:31):
I gasped.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
I tried to summon the courage to approach Steinbrenner as
he walked towards his limo and ask him about his
planned meeting with Commissioner Kun And just before I admitted
to myself that No, at the age of twenty two,
I did not have such courage. I saw Steinbrenner stop
at the limo, and I heard him yell back towards
the light shining through the still open side door to
Clark's Eddie, Eddie. And with that Edward Bennett Williams, the
(49:57):
owner of the Baltimore Orioles, leaned out, also in a tux,
and said, with evident exasperation, what now. George Steinbrenner shouted,
what time are you and I and Chiles meeting with
Bowie tomorrow? Ah. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe
my luck. Williams had not seen me Steinbrenner had not
(50:19):
seen me. Williams sighed again for the tenth time. George
nine nine thirty in the morning, George nine thirty Booie's condo.
I now plastered myself against the wall of Clark's. I
hope they had not seen me at all, without so
much as asking the question. I had learned at the
Orioles owner and Chiles, Eddie Chiles, the owner of the
(50:40):
Texas Rangers. They would be accompanying Steinbrenner to the meeting,
and it would begin at nine thirty at the condominium
of Commissioner Buie Kun. And I was wondering if I
could try to fake Steinbrenner's voice and shout, Eddie, where's
Booie's condo again? When suddenly I heard Steinbrenner say, Eddie,
where's Booie's condo again? By now, Edward Bennett Williams had
(51:02):
re lit a cigar he was holding. George write it
down this time five seventy five Park five seven five.
I could barely breathe. Good God, they had handed me
everything but the cross street. Eddie, Eddie, what's the cross street?
(51:24):
Williams now swore, Oh, for f's sake, George sixty third
sixty third in Park, five seventy five Park at nine
thirty in the morning. Okay, Steinbrenner got into the limo.
It squealed off, the door closed. I wrote what I
had heard on the top of the pizza box and
took off at a dead run to my apartment at
the corner of fifty fifth and Second, pausing only to
(51:45):
take a quick bite of pizza. I called John Martin
back at the RCAO Radio Network. I got it, John said,
you got what I got everything about the meeting. John said,
I'll get the Boss soon. All three of us were
on the phone. Charlie did not bel leave I had
gotten him any information, so I laid it on thick.
(52:05):
You're writing this down, Boss, nine thirty tomorrow morning. It's
at Bowie Kune's condo at five seventy five Park. That's
the corner of sixty third, of course. Then there was
silence at Charlie's end of the phone. Oh and uh,
Edward Bennett Williams of the Orioles and Eddie Child's of
the Rangers. They'll be there too. I don't know, Charlie
(52:27):
if it's just them or there are others, but those
four will certainly be there. Booi's condo five seventy five
Cross Street is sixty third. Charlie started to make a kind.
Speaker 4 (52:40):
Of butt butt noise. But but, but how did you
find out? How on the hell did you actually find out?
Why do you think it's true? I had been waiting
for this for several moments, and my answer had been
rehearsed in my mind at least as far back as
my elevator ride up to my apartment. With the most
(53:02):
nonchalant I had ever mustered in my life, I answered
Charlie Steiner, Well, Charlie, I I ran into Steinbrenner at Clark's.
(53:27):
I told George Steinbrenner that story once, and he laughed,
like hell, I've done all the damage I can do here.
Thank you for listening. Please share this pod with somebody
who doesn't. If you can find somebody who doesn't, something happened.
I guess it's all the good news. More people listening
than ever before, up about twenty five percent.
Speaker 1 (53:45):
Thank you. Brian Ray and John Phillip Chanelle, the musical
directors have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of our music.
Mister Chanelle on orchestration and keyboards, mister ray On guitars,
bass and drums. That it was produced by Tea Brothers.
Our satirical and fifthy musical comments are by the best
baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is
(54:07):
the Olberman theme from ESPN two. It was written by
Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer
today was my friend Dennis Leary, and everything else was
pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the
seventy seventh day until the twenty twenty four presidential election
(54:27):
and the three hundred and twenty second day since convicted
felon dementia j Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Use the September eighteenth
sentencing hearing if it happens, use the mental health system.
You have this now, President Biden, use presidential immunity as
(54:48):
assigned by the Supreme Court. Use it all to stop
him from doing it again while we still can. And
anti Semitic, anti immigration, gun nut Republicans please stop shooting
at Trump. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins is
(55:09):
the news requires till the next one. I'm Keith Oldman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
Is Trump dying or something? I mean the Obama's at
the DNC and the Washington Post unexpectedly fully imploding, and
Trump confirming he is ready to bribe RFK in order
to get him to drop out endorse him. And did
you hear Trump yesterday? Did you hear him talk? He's
in Howell, Michigan, where it might as well be Alabama
(00:35):
in the year eighteen fifty five, where they marched chanting,
we love Hitler, we love Trump a month ago, and
he came out at the County Sheriff's office and behind
him with the cops as the props, and in front
of him the local fascists all named jan an irv
irv with an E. And if he had had ten
(00:57):
times the energy and ten times the focus he actually had,
you would have said, what's wrong with Trump? Is he
dying or something?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Very very much appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Nice place, by the way, the incredible people outside. You said,
the crash, and we really feel good about to say,
and the area we're doing very well here. It's just
got a pall that was very good. Lot e withod
falls in the last couple of days. Thank you to
(01:29):
the Livingston County Shoff's department for walking us in such
a beautiful way.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
To get a roll of stamps and mail it. In
pal quarter century ago, my ex brother in law went
sudden on set by polar no previous diagnosis, then the
full thing all at once. He decided he was a
freeway cop in La. He was actually a minister. He
started pulling other drivers over. And this was when freeway
(01:56):
shootings were the rage in LA. And he spent twice
his annual South in travel bookings for Christmas. And they
hospitalized him and medicated him, and he was already in
there three days, and he still had not slept, He
still hadn't fully left the high end of the spectrum.
And he phoned me and pretended he was not in
(02:16):
the hospital, and he pretended he had not gone sleepless
for seventy two hours, and he pretended everything was just fine.
And he sounded like he had been gargling with battery acid.
And he sounded better in that phone call than Trump
sounded yesterday. In Ku Klux Klan City, Michigan.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
You know, interestingly like New York. When I left for Washington,
New York was we had a very bad mayor, Deblasio
but he wasn't there that long, and he couldn't ruin
what took place. But we had a city that was
so wonderful and so thriving, and just in a few
short years that change. New York State is doing terribly.
(03:03):
I heard the governor last night speaking so viciously and
violently about me, But she doesn't speak about what they've
done to destroy the state. The law enforcement has been decimated.
The judges. What's gone on with the judges in New York.
Nobody can There's no justice have They just have it
(03:26):
out for the police. Nobody knows why. I don't understand why.
From the common sense, I like to say the Republican
Party is now the party of common sense. Conservative, Yeah,
I guess conservative, It doesn't matter. It's the party of
common sense. We want to have borders, we want to
have strong police protection. We want a military they can
protect us.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
We want great look done. If you need a nap,
just curl up on the floor. It's better than this
sleepwalking stuff. Holy cow. By the way, Trump spokes bubblehead
Caroline Levitt explained that this new Trump, that one inaudible
Jay Trump, he is presenting a message of optimism to
(04:09):
contrast what the Democrats are doing at their convention. Look,
we can argue policy all you want, mis Levitt, but
one thing the Democrats are doing at their convention is
remaining audible and intelligible to people who are standing more
than five feet away. Have you ever heard Trump like this?
(04:30):
My god? I mean, I don't think he's dying dying.
I think there are intermediate stages between having every single
thing in your presidential campaign turn against you in a
matter of thirteen days two weeks and actually dying. But look,
if this mumbling stuff continues at this rate, they're going
to have to start putting live captions over him. Shaking
(04:55):
off his somnambulance for a second. Trump did respond to
the overture from the RFK Junior camp about dropping out
if Trump would give him a role in his cabinet.
I didn't know he was thinking about getting out, Trump said,
But if he is thinking about getting out, certainly I'd
be open to it. I would accuse Trump of lying
(05:16):
about this. Every poll for a month has been unmistakably
clear Kennedy's support has been cut by half, and that
half went to Kamala Harris. And what's left is almost
entirely coming at Trump's expense, and there had been talk
about this last week, but maybe Trump didn't know Kennedy
was thinking about it, because getting back to my original question,
is Trump dying or something? Of course, it's not Kennedy
(05:42):
who's thinking about doing any of this. He's too busy
knifing bear cubs on the parkways around fun City here
or something. It's this idiot Nicole Shanahan, whom he named
his quote running mate unquote because she was willing to
basically finance ninety percent of their nut job campaign, and
(06:03):
because every single conspiracy theory he does not believe in,
she does. And even Shanahan has figured this out, telling
a podcast called Impact Theory that there's a choice between
continuing which case, quote, we run the risk of a
Kamala Harris and Wall's presidency as we draw votes for Trump,
(06:24):
we draw somehow more votes from Trump, or we walk
away right now and join forces with Donald Trump. Translation,
bribe us and we will go away and endorse you.
Based on Shanahan's comments, again, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is
somewhere insisting that I don't know dangerous Wi Fi signals
(06:47):
caused putin to go into Ukraine or something. What they
apparently want for dropping out is Secretary of Health and
Human Services, for him Kennedy, or for somebody they approve.
Verifying as that thought is, I can answer only Secretary
of Education Betsy Debos. Whatever deal Shanahan brokers with Trump,
(07:10):
and she says she has been in contact with that
campaign and it's going well, she better do it damned fast.
A friend of Kennedy's has reportedly delivered boxes to election
officials in Arizona, boxes containing one hundred and ten thousand
ballot signatures. Only they had been gathered by a super
pack supporting Kennedy, and such coordination between the actual Kennedy
(07:33):
campaign and a super pack supporting Kennedy is wildly illegal.
On the other hand, at this point, what other option
does Kennedy have? The New York Times reports that the
campaign itself gathered nine thousand signatures in Arizona. The number
to get on the ballot in Arizona is forty two thousand.
So they better act quickly with Trump, or they might
(07:55):
have nothing to withdraw from and thus nothing to negotiate with.
On the other hand, I hope somebody from the Kennedy
campaign has also reached out directly to JV Vance because
you know, is is Trump dying or something? Now to
the self defenestration of the Washington Post and the New
(08:18):
York Times and Politico and CNN and all the other
news organizations that have disconnected their political coverage from reality
and insulated their decision makers from the fact that they
are burning themselves to the ground. And we'll skip for
a moment. The idea that suddenly where the leaked campaign
memos came from matters when eight years ago, when they
(08:42):
were Clinton campaign memos, it didn't matter. Oh, we can't
touch it. It's from Iran. The Times really did this yesterday,
really did this. I thought I was reading the onion.
They did it with no sense of irony, no of
meta self reflection that would make you go, all right,
(09:04):
I'll stick around for another day or two before I
canceled my subscription for the third time this year. They
actually printed this, you ready. Kamala Harris's tan suit was
a surprising choice. Our fashion critic rights, Holy effing Christ,
(09:25):
and they did it just as Maureen Daoud did it
on Sunday. The Dems are delighted, but a coup is
still a coup. That headline came exactly twenty nine days
after Maureen Dawd wrote Lord Almighty Joe, let it go.
And there's no meta there either. There's no second paragraph
in which Dowd writes a paragraph owning up to her
(09:46):
own mental faculties and their decline, and her own fitness
for office or her own age. The Post really did
it yesterday and very late Monday, as well, fact checking
Biden's speech and other elements of the Democratic National Convention
first night. Only it wasn't about getting the facts right.
It was as if there were somebody from the Trump
(10:08):
campaigns standing over fact checker Glen Kessler's shoulder saying, if
you get this long and they've in, if you put
you in jail, well verse, if you make sure you
never get a dinner reservation in this town. Again, more
on the thing with fact checking and the Post in moment,
But first Politico did it again too, with their newsletters that,
(10:33):
at the present rate of deterioration will be by September
first or so forty percent news and sixty percent lists
of birthdays, who showed up to what book party, new
kids sightings of Tammy Haddad and other realizations of what
used to be the self policing joke of all political
reporters that the White House Correspondence Dinner was the Oscars
(10:56):
for ugly people. That joke. Only now these same reporters
who used to make that joke, they think the Oscars
is the White House Correspondence Dinner for unimportant people. I
was thinking that the Times, the Post, CNN, Politico, Axios,
and lots of others have become utterly self referential and
(11:17):
designed only to be read by the Times, Posts, CNN, Politico,
and Axios when Meredith Schiner published a piece yesterday in
the New Republic that makes this point beautifully. If I may,
the headline, beware the pundit brained version of the Democratic Convention. Yep,
(11:40):
the subheadline. As everyday Americans tune in to watch Kamala
Harris receive her party's nomination, they should trust what they
see with their own eyes, especially as DC's chattering class
tries to gaslight them. I have to read some of
what she wrote. It was as if she mined mind
my own mind for this information and then wrote it
(12:03):
better than I could quote. As this class of political
elites descends on Chicago this week for the Democratic National Convention.
The average consumer of news needs to know they are
not really coming here to workshop policy, interpret or execute
progressive politics, or even discuss electoral strategy. They're coming to
(12:24):
attend corporate sponsored happy hours, eat free meals together at
the CNN Grill, and maybe, if they're really lucky, snag
a selfie with John Legend. And now more than ever,
we should ask who all of this, this punditry, this hobnobbing,
(12:46):
this naval gazing, is really four to continue, Because if
this summer has revealed anything, it's that, just like the
scott Walkers of your we are watching the national meetia
short circuit before our very eyes. They are insular, they
are unprepared, and after years of watching Morning Joe and
(13:11):
searching for their birthdays in the Politico playbook, I feel
so seen. After years of watching Morning Joe and searching
for their birthdays in the Politico Playbook, they do not
see their role as speaking to us, but rather speaking
to themselves. While this may seem ancillary to the main
(13:34):
plotline of our national politics, the mainstream media own golding
themselves out of civic relevance is a net negative for
anyone who believes in the outcome of better, more representative,
good government. Of course, she continues, the Beltway media are conservative.
(13:54):
This is not a novel argument by any means. It's
an industry run by increasingly reac actionary plutocrats who reliably
summon their charges to lead a highly effective but how
will you pay for it? Pincer movement against anything resembling
liberal policy. Meanwhile, there is seemingly no sin grievous enough
to earn a Republican the same sort of nullifying skepticism.
(14:18):
The Trumpists who aided and abetted the former president's attempt
to overturn a lawful election remain in the good graces
of America's cable news bookers. Oh my god, I love this.
Can we make it into a series? Still, we need
to acknowledge that the media are conservative in the most traditional,
(14:38):
unideological sense of the word. They are clinging to a
status quo, their status quo that has not matched our reality.
Since Barack Obama was elected president in two thousand and
eight and the Tea Party emerged as the energized manifestation
of Ronald Reagan's nineteen eighties fevered their rules, their conventional wisdom,
(15:05):
their savvy takes, become more stale, more detached from normal life,
and more cartoonish with every passing day. End quote begin applause.
Tempting as it is, I have not read Miss Shiner's
piece in The New Republic allowed in its entirety. I
(15:26):
encourage you to do so, and to do so on
their website, and I don't know, buy something from their advertisers.
I will note I have been hitting this one point
for at least ten years now that the political cognizantee
have not covered Trump nor any of the consequences of
(15:48):
his raping and pillaging of America because they still haven't
figured out which reportorial template fits all of this or
which news cubby hole they can stuff the whole thing into.
Chuck Todd, Chris Solissa, Maggie Haberman, and Ryan Lizza don't
actually exist. They are just mediocre people doing bad impressions
(16:13):
of David Brinkley, Tom Wicker, Tim Russert, Woodward and Bernstein.
They read what was written or said before, and they think, only,
how can I now write that again? It had not
happened by the time Miss Shiner wrote her masterpiece. But
(16:36):
speaking of Woodward, The Washington Post actually had to be
pressured into fact checking it's timid, terrified fact checking of
the first nine of the convention. The Post still will
not fix its assertion claiming Trump wanted Americans to inject
bleach to fight COVID was quote exaggerated. It still says
(16:56):
because Trump later contradicted himself that he didn't really mean
it when he said that women who had abortions had
to be punished in some way when he said it
on videotape. The Post will not correct its inaccurate criticism
of Joe Biden for saying Trump answered the Charlottesville white
supremacist attack by saying, there are very fine people on
both sides. But the Post insisted that there was no
(17:18):
evidence that Trump ever sent love letters to dictators, with
mister Kessler writing, we do not know what Trump wrote
to Kim Jong un. Folks at Media Matters went appropriately not.
Of course, we know what Trump wrote to Kim Jong un.
Trump showed those letters to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post.
(17:41):
The Washington Post fact check now has its own fact
check about the Washington Post quote. Parts of the letters
were revealed in a twenty twenty book by Washington Post
Associate editor Bob Woodward after Trump permitted him to read
the letters into his tape recorder at the White House.
This article has been corrected. The problem is that's it
for the corrections. The Times, Post, Politico at al are
(18:05):
still reporting as Miss Shiner noted for each other. I
was flashed back to a day thirty five years ago
when I was the sports director of the CBS television
station in Los Angeles and our network got the baseball contract.
This is when people still wanted to watch baseball on television.
I was nominated to be the host of the pregame
(18:27):
show for the new CBS Game of the Week, a
role I would later fill at NBC and Fox and Turner.
The same job at four networks would have been pretty good,
you have to admit that. But the guy making the
call on this at CBS in nineteen eighty nine was
some dult named Rick Losovita las Avita. There's a coincidence,
and he and Brent Musburger interviewed me one Sunday morning
(18:49):
because Brent was supposed to be the CBS baseball play
by play man, but he did not know CBS was
about to fire him. The week before the season began. Anyway,
los Avita, who if I remember correctly, had been a
second baseman at Harvard, rather listlessly asked me whose point
of view CBS Baseball should take the batter important but myopic,
(19:15):
ultimately an irrelevancy, the pitcher, the truly uninvolved non athlete,
or perhaps the second basement at the center of all
the action, captain of the defense lynchpin in any play.
And I said, I think we should take the point
of view of the fan. Lsavita looked at me in
(19:40):
the eyes for the only time he would do so
during the interview, and he said, with genuine surprise, the
point of view of the fan? What's that? And why
on earth does that matter? Bluntly? Right now, our political
(20:03):
media is this CBS sports guy Rick Glarsovita. A couple
(20:28):
poll notes the UVA Center for Politics. This is the
Larry Sabato operation has, for the first time this cycle,
moved a state from Lean's Republican to toss up. The
state is North Carolina. This is in line with polling
that suggests she has closed the gap on Trump and
continues to improve there. Virginia Roanoke College polling a little
(20:52):
old closed last Friday. Harris forty seven, Trump forty four
in Virginia, swing state's focal data polling for I'm a
four News, also a little old. It closed last Friday.
Trump by two in Arizona and four in Georgia. They
are tied in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Harris by four
in Wisconsin, Harris by six in Michigan, Harris by eight
(21:14):
in Nevada. The electoral college map based on the Siena
polls Harris three hundred and thirteen, Trump two hundred and
twenty five ipsos, ABC unfavorables. Get a load of this.
Harris favorable opinion forty seven percent, unfavorable opinion forty seven percent,
(21:37):
less than most others, but still positive. But this is remarkable.
Trump favorable opinion thirty six percent, unfavorable sixty percent. That's
negative twenty four. No wonder he's m mean. I'm not
(22:06):
saying he's dying. I'm just saying, is he dying? It
looks sounds like he's anyway. Also of interest here the
right wing responds to all of this. It's almost unbelievable,
But they have gone back to blaming it all on
the mastermind behind the scenes pulling the strings. A foreigner
manipulating America and laying plans to continue to manipulate America
(22:30):
for the next quarter of a century. And that foreigner's
name is Barack Obama. Bertherism reborn. That's next. This is countdown.
This is countdown, with Keith Oberner still ahead of us
(23:09):
on this editionive Countdown. I walked past the bar yesterday
on a beautiful day in New York. It was forty
three years ago, like last month, when a bunch of
us wasted an entire day trying to find the owner
of the New York Yankees in hopes that for some
reason he would give us some vital information. We never
(23:29):
found him. After I gave up, I went home, I
got a pizza. I walked past this bar down the
street from my house, and who steps out the side
door but the owner of the New York Yankees. And
that's not even the most amazing parts ahead in things
I promised not to tell first, there are still more
new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the miscrants,
(23:51):
morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days
those persons persons in the world, world worse Eraser had
himself Jesse Waters of Fox News. This is what he
said yesterday. There's a weird vibe going on. I can't
(24:11):
figure it out. He could have stopped there and could
have summarized his entire career, but he went on, there's
a weird vibe going on. I can't figure it out.
Barack Obama is still the godfather of this machine. He
gave us Joe Biden as VP, he gave us Hillary
as Secretary of State. Then he coued Joe, put all
his boys with Kamala's team, and he had his wingman,
(24:33):
holder Vett Waltz. I don't know who Waltz is. I
presume he means Governor Walls, the vice presidential nominee. They've
given up trying to mispronounce Kamala Harris's name, and now
they've moved on to mispronouncing Walls's name. Now the guy's
a young sixty three. He's going to be doing this
the next twenty five years. He's definitely going to interfere
with this election. By that, Waters means Obama plans to
(24:56):
vote interfere. This is why we will be ending Johnny
to Hawaii to get the truth about the birth certificate.
This time we will dig deep and find out what
really happened. Yeah, okay, Number one Fox just re embraced
birtherism if you missed it. Number two Waters just confessed
(25:18):
the greatest fear at Fox. The ongoing obsession now in
its what seventeenth year? This idiot Waters speaking of seventeen years.
He's only seventeen years younger than is Barack Obama. They
really think that they will be living in a world
(25:38):
manipulated by Barack Obama until the year two thousand and
forty nine, to which I say, good, have a great time. Moron.
Number three, This Johnny that Eraser had Jesse ascending to Hawaii.
Johnny is a houseplant. Then again, so is Jesse Waters.
(26:01):
The runner up worser Amy Kramer, Georgia Republican Committee woman,
former TEA partier and January sixth speaker. You know this
not too bright, possibly brain damaged right wing troll Jack Posobic,
who's been thrown off everything. He went to the Democratic
National Convention and decided to interview protesters in hopes of
(26:25):
getting them to I don't know, I say that they
were being paid by mautseetungue or I don't know, say
that they have the real birth certificate for Barack Obama,
who knows. They just assume that what they would do,
how they would try to cheat, break the law, do
immoral things. They just assumed the Democrats and the Liberals
(26:47):
have done that, because the Democrats and the Liberals have
succeeded it and they've failed, so they must just be
doing more of it. That's the way they think when
they think this. Pasobic, of course, promptly got a hold
of two women who turned out to be Democrats who
showed up there deliberately to f with Jack Posobic, to
mess with his interviews. This didn't fool a lot of people.
(27:11):
There is evidence that Jack Pisobic has realized now that
the two women that he interviewed first at the Democratic
National Committee protests were in fact people there looking for him.
Pasobic disguised himself by wearing a facial covering, and everybody
went and said, oh, he looks even dumber wearing facial
clothing in any event. Amy Kramer, Georgia Republican Committee woman
(27:34):
who wore some sort of leopard print mink to the
January sixth insurrection and spoke nonsense and Gibberish played a
clip of Jack Pisobic interviewing these two women who were
effing with him, and she didn't realize it, and she wrote,
a woman admits she's going to have an abortion on
(27:54):
stage at the DNC. Everyone thought Laura Lumer was crazy
when she said it was going to happen. Lara was right.
This is sick. In no world is this okay? This
woman needs counseling and mental treatment. Number one. Laura Lumer
now claims that when she said that there was going
(28:15):
to be a live abortion on stage of the Democratic
National Committee, that she was being satirical. Republicans, by definition,
can't be satirical because they would have to have an
advanced sense of humor. And the only thing that Republicans
laugh at usually is pointing at somebody who's injured themselves,
(28:36):
or perhaps the video from the Simpsons man hit in
groin by football. But this woman, Kramer, part of the
January sixth Trump event, thought this was legit, that the
woman was going to have an on stage abortion. The
woman added, and her name was Anarchy princess with the
(28:58):
handles satire. I'm also having a visectomy on stage. I
forgot to mention that this did not deter Amy Kramer
in the slightest Who is satire ap who was interviewed
by Jack Pisobic and said she was going to have
an on stage abortion and then added and a vasectomy
(29:22):
satire ap Anarchy princess is no other person than the
woman who keeps appearing at all of the Peter Navarro events,
at his sentencing, at his hearings, the guy the woman
who's interrupting him and holding up placards and saying you're
going to jail, And this boneheaded insurrectionist Republican still cannot
(29:43):
process that this was a stunt designed to embarrass Posobic
and anybody who would take something this stupid seriously, people
like Amy Kramer, Republican Committee woman from Georgia fifth a
thick in nowhere out the fifth. Okay, this was a
tea party organizer. I told you about the Tea Party
(30:04):
when they started, we had to stop them. Then this
is what they've morphed into once again, more proof of
my theory that our attempts to preserve democracy do not
succeed as much as do their efforts, and the stupidity
of those who want to destroy democracy. They inadvertently protected.
Still none of these are our winner. Our winner. Stephen L. Miller,
(30:31):
formerly of The National Review Online, formerly of Fox News.
He's been fired from a lot of places. Apparently he
does a podcast now. Nothing against podcasts, but I looked
at the name here, and apparently nobody listens to it.
You will have seen from Monday night at the DNZ
that Mallory McMorrow, the Michigan State Senator, not only got
(30:51):
up and gave an excellent address, she brought props. She
brought a giant, like five times normal size book about
Project twenty twenty five and held it up so everybody
could see it and could identify what everybody from Project
twenty twenty five is insisting. Is there intimate connection with
the Trump plans for his next presidency. God help us
(31:15):
if there is anything resembling one. But the prop was
a giant, as I say, book that reads twenty twenty
five mandate for leadership. Stephen L. Miller writes, When it's
Friday class, and this is over a picture of Malory McMorrow.
When it's Friday class, and you think the substitute teacher
(31:37):
might be cool and she turns out to be a
massive And then there's a four letter word that begins
with C. He actually did this, Stephen L. Miller calling
somebody else that Stephen L. Miller. She turns out to
be a massive seaword. Hey, Stephen, do you have a mirror, because,
(32:02):
in a remarkable coincidence, you too are a massive conker
in today's competition for worst person in the world. Now
(32:29):
from the files of things I promised not to tell,
and I recently went past the building, my second professional home,
and I was flooded with my memories of a place
called the RKO Radio Network. This is nineteen eighty and
I'm nearing my twenty second birthday, and I'm working real
hard at one radio network run by the United pres
(32:49):
International Wire Service, in my second year and making around
well nearly twenty thousand dollars a year. And in September,
a drunken manager had tried to get me fired, tried
to fire me himself for being young. And I'll by
damned if I can remember getting consecutive days off there.
This was UPI in a nutshell for my first few
(33:11):
weeks there. I thought whoever had decorated the newsroom had
found the floor tiles with the ugliest design pattern in history.
And then finally I saw a colleague grind his lit
cigarette into that floor, and only then did I realize
that was what the ugly design pattern was. Hundreds of
ground out cigarettes, years and years of ground out cigarettes
(33:36):
in the tiles. Anyway, the main advantage to working at
UPI was that everybody in what was then a flourishing
radio business knew UPI, and thus they knew you, and
they knew you were underpaid. The top all news radio
station in the country, WCBS in New York, had already
asked if I might be a candidate for a coming
(33:57):
opening in their sports department the spring. I'd actually interviewed
with two vice presidents at this thing. The yachtsman Ted Turner,
who owned the Atlanta Braves, was going to try to
start something he called cable news Network, but they were
not initially interested in me, and after meeting with them,
I was certain they would never get it launched, let
alone get an audience for it. I was working there
(34:20):
literally fourteen months later. I'd also been flown to Boston,
like they spent fifty five dollars on me by a
radio station that really wanted me to do a morning
sports shift for them, and they were offering forty thousand
dollars a year, twice my salary, and I was ready
to do it. And I was sitting in the office
in Boston trying to figure out where I could live
(34:41):
and how late I could sleep and still get there
in the morning. And then the news director said, now,
except if there's a big story, you can do the
after noon sports cast from home over the phone, which
is when I realized I was supposed to do the
morning and the afternoon. I was essentially on the clock
from five am to six x pm. And the forty
thousand dollars would have had to go to my sister
(35:03):
because the schedule would have killed me within three months.
And then there was this RKO radio network. UPI was
in the unique position of having RKO as a client,
so RKO heard and used our stuff all the time.
And also they had from their beginning used our UPI
(35:24):
feed as a kind of twenty four to seven constantly
flowing turned on Spigot audition service. From the time I
got to UPI in July nineteen seventy nine, it seemed
like one radiopaerson from UPI per month was hired away
by RKO. Sometime in the early autumn of nineteen eighty,
I was covering a New York Rangers game at Madison
(35:46):
Square Garden, and the guy next to me, smoking a
cigar inside the garden, right in front of all the fans,
turned out to be the sports director of this RKO network.
In fact, he was the entirety of the RKO sports department.
But we're doubling in size. I'm going to start doing
weekend sports casts, and I get to hire a new
person to do the weekends. It's a union shop, so
(36:08):
it's fifty one dollars a sports cast. After there's ten
a weekend, so you get twenty two for eighty dollars
to reports for reports from the field, and you'd be
my backup. Twenty two bucks from the field and a
guarantee of five to ten weekend and you got to
come in one day a week to book the stringers
of the weekend games. That'd be free, but the guarantee
(36:28):
is twenty six thousand dollars plus those twenty two dollars
every time you have file a report from the field.
You interested, well, I did some quick math. This was
about forty percent more money for about forty percent less work,
and there were no five am to six pm schedules.
When the sports director called me back a few weeks
(36:49):
later to offer me the gig, I did not hesitate.
His name, by the way, was Charlie Steiner. Charlie would
later be a colleague of mine at Sports Center, and
then he did the Yankees games, and now he does
the Dodgers games, and he's been a friend for forty
two years. The network itself was also space age, shiny
and new, and it had carpets, whereas UPI had the
(37:13):
stubbed out cigarettes decorps. RKO was literally the first radio
network in this country to deliver all of its programs
to its stations via satellite. No more scratchy, hyper expensive
phone lines. RKO came through crystal clear, and that was
our pitch to the stations. All the newscasts, all the
sports casts, all the features ended with the same tagline
(37:35):
bya satellite, this is the RKO Radio Network. And then
a spot for Hubba Bubba gum. For my first few
weeks there. Part of the job also included doing two
sportscasts today for RKO's local station WOIR. The first time
I went up in the elevator to their studio. It
dawned on me that it was the exact same studio
(37:58):
where seven years before I had been invited by the
great comedians Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding along with my
dad to sit and watch in amazed appreciation as Bob
and Ray did their show on WR. So basically, as
of December nineteen eighty, I had accomplished all of my
childhood goals. The only problem with the place was the location.
(38:24):
RKO was on the southeast corner of Times Square, probably
the low watermark in the history of Times Square. It
was in fourteen forty Broadway at the corner of fortieth Street.
There was a back door at forty first Street and
sixth Avenue, right across from Bryant Park. On those occasions
when I filled in for Charlie Steiner on the weekdays
(38:45):
for his morning show, which they would tape overnight, I
would often be at the studios until two or three AM,
and my walk home was a little sketchy. In point
of fact, I would not walk home. I would run,
I mean run run from that back door at forty
first and sixth I'd pass Bryant Park on my right
as fast as I could passed all the drug dealers
(39:06):
and other folks, then dart on the north side of
forty second between sixth and fifth, and once you got
to that corner of fifth and forty second, you were
back in civilization, with good street lights and other people
on the streets, no matter how late the hour, or
as we called them in New York then witnesses. Occasionally
I might have to walk in Times Square itself, usually
(39:30):
when it was daylight. What surrounded me there was about
as far from today's Disneyland East Times Square as you
could imagine. In fact, you could not imagine. There were
porn theaters everywhere. And it wasn't just porn theaters. They
were spaced part and in between them. Other businesses existed,
(39:51):
porn peep shows, porn sex shops, and porn video rental stores.
I remember always making sure I was walking on the
ho outside edge of the street, nearest the gutter, on
the premise that in the event somebody tried to mug me,
I stood a much better chance by running right out
into automobile traffic. Besides which, I used to worry that
if I walked too close to the porn theaters and
(40:13):
the shows, and the shops and the video stores. One day,
I might just get stuck to the sidewalk. Time Square
was so different in nineteen eighty and nineteen eighty one
that I really can't imagine that the annual income made
there from anything but porn and the RKO radio network
(40:35):
was more than twenty dollars a year. In total. There
was nothing else, I mean nothing. On weekends, walking over
from my home on the East Side, I would decide
which fast food place I'd be getting lunch from, somewhere
on Fifth Avenue or Lex. I'd go to the nearest payphone.
I'd call the RKO newsroom desk, and I would offer
to bring in food for everybody, for the simple reason
(40:56):
that in Time Square forty years ago, there were no
restaurants open on weekends. I'll say that again, in Times
Square forty years ago, on the weekends, all the restaurants
that existed there were closed during the day. And forget
(41:18):
public transportation to Times Square. I would finish my brisk,
twenty five minute walk to work one night in that
frigid winter of nineteen eighty eighty one and see my
colleagues looking unusually pasty and drawn. You didn't take the
subway in, did you, asked one of the editors, Tom Ryan.
I looked at him like it was crazy. Well good.
Some guy got stabbed by the stairs closest to our building.
(41:41):
I asked if he was okay. No, he's not okay.
He's dead. But they got the guys who did it.
They arrested fifty one people. One guy got stabbed to death,
fifty one people were arrested. I asked if they had
been restaging a reenactment of the assassination of Julius Caesar. Still,
the equipment was brand new and easy to use, and
(42:03):
the staff was all young. We all had fun, and
we had parties, and everybody lived in the city, and
for the most part, it was a pleasure to work there,
and it was way more lucrative even than Charlie Steiner
had suggested. Those twenty two dollars voice reports from the field,
they piled up fast. The baseball players went on strike
that June nineteen eighty one, and every time I covered
(42:25):
a bargaining session I could be certain of at least
another forty four dollars. And if that doesn't sound like much,
the rent on my very nice studio apartment never got
higher than four hundred and ninety eight dollars a month.
RKO's location also provided me with some wacky logistical problems.
I filled in for Charlie on most holidays, plus I
did the same thing at a local radio station WNW.
(42:49):
This made the actual Christmas into my metaphorical Christmas. If
I had to fill in for both of these operations
on the same day. My schedule went like this, get
into RKO in Times Square at maybe two am, tape
Charlie's morning show by four am, then walk cross town
very quickly to WNEW over on Third Avenue and do
(43:12):
those sportscasts live between five thirty and nine, and then
go home and maybe take a nap, but not a
long one because I would have to be back at
RKO by one pm to do Charlie's afternoon show, rinse
repeat a lot of work. On the other hand, just
one week of those days paid the rent for two months.
On a wet New Year's Eve nineteen eighty one, I
(43:34):
treated myself to a cab to go to RKO, which
put me in the bizarre position of getting into a
cab on the East Side at one thirty am New
year's morning and saying take me to Times Square and
the driver saying, you missed it, buddy, it's been nineteen
eighty two for an hour and a half. Nothing like
being the only person going into Times Square while one
(43:56):
million people are leaving it drunk. Most of the sportscasts
I did at Arkao or pretty textbook, But there did
come the day that I walked in to fill in
for Charlie who was at Wimbledon. So this is the
summer of nineteen eighty one, and the newswires were full
of this story of some unnamed American radio reporter getting
(44:17):
into a brawl with a London tabloid writer at a
Wimbledon press conference, and it slowly evolved that the reporter
was Charlie, my boss, and we were going to have
to figure out a way to cover this. At first,
Charlie wanted to do it in the third person and
say the reporter did this, and the reporter said that,
(44:38):
And I said, you know, I really don't think we're
going to get away with that, given how much wire
copy I'm seeing here, Charlie, this is probably going to
be on the front page of the New York Times
in the morning. Sure, enough, it was above the fold.
We're still unbeknownst to Charlie his fight took place in
a corner of the Wimbledon press room, right under the
camera that fed out a shot of that room twenty
(44:59):
four to seven to every television network in the world.
Sure enough. The last item on ABC's six thirty newscast
that night with Peter Jennings was a feature on Charlie
Steiner fighting with the British over how they broke up
the John McEnroe post match press conference, and he was
pissed off because that meant he wouldn't get any soundbites
(45:21):
from McEnroe. I managed to run home from RKO and
record the report by Dick Schapp, and when Charlie got
back from London, I loaned it to him. This was
in July nineteen eighty one. Charlie still hasn't given me
the tape back. Every time I see him, he swears
he's still looking for it. It's in a box somewhere.
(45:42):
But I'm beginning to think he may not be telling
me the whole truth about what happened to my video cassette.
But my favorite RKO story is about Charlie's sudden and
inexplicable obsession with the story. During that nineteen eighty one
baseball strike I mentioned in the middle of this thing
which stopped the season for fifty days and was really
(46:03):
really the beginning of the end of that time when
baseball truly mattered in this country. When every day in
that strike somebody on all the TV newscast set and
the baseball strike is in its twenty third day, a
story broke that George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees,
was going to meet with Baseball Commissioner Buye. Qune and
a couple of other owners who realized that the work
(46:24):
stoppage was financial madness. As George told me years later,
he was losing about a million dollars in revenue every
day so that the Milwaukee Brewers could save five thousand
dollars in salaries every year. Well, my boss, Charlie Steiner,
decided he was going to scoop the world about this
secret Steinbrenner Kune meeting. So he told me to come
(46:47):
into the office on one of my off days and
work the phones. Work the phone. Sun. Two of us,
me and the newly hired producer, my friend John Martin,
were supposed to call everybody we knew and find out
for Charlie when these guys were meeting and where and
who would be there, and to not go home until
we had nailed it down. Well, it was madness. I
(47:12):
didn't know anybody in baseball, let alone anybody who knew
where the owner of the Yankees was going to meet
in secret with the Commissioner of Baseball, let alone who
knew all that and would tell me. But I tried
everybody I could think of, and had already suggested to
John Martin that I was just going to start dialing
ten digits at random and asking whoever answered if they
(47:33):
knew when. After about eight hours of this, well past
my dinner time, I was on the phone with some
executive of some West Coast team when he said hold
on a minute. I got another call, and a moment
later from the adjoining room in my office, I heard
John Martin say, mister Smith, Hi, this is John Martin
from the RKO Radio network, and yes, RKO Radio Network, Yes,
(47:56):
I'll hold sir. Mister Smith picked up my call again
and I said, is this really two of you calling
me about this crap at the same time from the
same network? And I said yes, and I apologized, and
I told him I was going home. If Charlie doesn't
like it, I told John he can fire me, so
(48:16):
follow me on this because I had missed dinner. When
I got back to my street on the east side,
I was famished. I don't know nine o'clock, ten o'clock.
The last two blocks of my walk home was always identical.
I'd come up Third Avenue and then hang a right
at the southeast corner of Third Avenue and fifty fifth Street.
I lived at the other end of fifty fifth Street
and your second Avenue. But now I was going to
(48:38):
go pick up some pizza in a very nice place
on the northwest corner of this same block. I got
the slices. The lights changed. Now I was crossing towards
the northeast corner of fifty fifth and Third, which itself
was the home of a famous New York bar, PJ. Clarks.
Ordinarily I would never have been on that side of
(48:58):
the street at that hour, but there I was. And
as I slipped past the ancient front door, I saw
the side exit open in a burst of bright yellow light,
like in an Edward Hopper painting shoot out onto a
limo waiting on fifty fifth Street. Then, as I walked,
carrying my box of pizza and wearing my RKO Radio
(49:19):
Network black jacket, who emerges from that light of that
side door at PJ. Clark's, But George Steinbrenner in a tux.
Speaker 4 (49:31):
I gasped.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
I tried to summon the courage to approach Steinbrenner as
he walked towards his limo and ask him about his
planned meeting with Commissioner Kun And just before I admitted
to myself that No, at the age of twenty two,
I did not have such courage. I saw Steinbrenner stop
at the limo, and I heard him yell back towards
the light shining through the still open side door to
Clark's Eddie, Eddie. And with that Edward Bennett Williams, the
(49:57):
owner of the Baltimore Orioles, leaned out, also in a tux,
and said, with evident exasperation, what now. George Steinbrenner shouted,
what time are you and I and Chiles meeting with
Bowie tomorrow? Ah. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe
my luck. Williams had not seen me Steinbrenner had not
(50:19):
seen me. Williams sighed again for the tenth time. George
nine nine thirty in the morning, George nine thirty Booie's condo.
I now plastered myself against the wall of Clark's. I
hope they had not seen me at all, without so
much as asking the question. I had learned at the
Orioles owner and Chiles, Eddie Chiles, the owner of the
(50:40):
Texas Rangers. They would be accompanying Steinbrenner to the meeting,
and it would begin at nine thirty at the condominium
of Commissioner Buie Kun. And I was wondering if I
could try to fake Steinbrenner's voice and shout, Eddie, where's
Booie's condo again? When suddenly I heard Steinbrenner say, Eddie,
where's Booie's condo again? By now, Edward Bennett Williams had
(51:02):
re lit a cigar he was holding. George write it
down this time five seventy five Park five seven five.
I could barely breathe. Good God, they had handed me
everything but the cross street. Eddie, Eddie, what's the cross street?
(51:24):
Williams now swore, Oh, for f's sake, George sixty third
sixty third in Park, five seventy five Park at nine
thirty in the morning. Okay, Steinbrenner got into the limo.
It squealed off, the door closed. I wrote what I
had heard on the top of the pizza box and
took off at a dead run to my apartment at
the corner of fifty fifth and Second, pausing only to
(51:45):
take a quick bite of pizza. I called John Martin
back at the RCAO Radio Network. I got it, John said,
you got what I got everything about the meeting. John said,
I'll get the Boss soon. All three of us were
on the phone. Charlie did not bel leave I had
gotten him any information, so I laid it on thick.
(52:05):
You're writing this down, Boss, nine thirty tomorrow morning. It's
at Bowie Kune's condo at five seventy five Park. That's
the corner of sixty third, of course. Then there was
silence at Charlie's end of the phone. Oh and uh,
Edward Bennett Williams of the Orioles and Eddie Child's of
the Rangers. They'll be there too. I don't know, Charlie
(52:27):
if it's just them or there are others, but those
four will certainly be there. Booi's condo five seventy five
Cross Street is sixty third. Charlie started to make a kind.
Speaker 4 (52:40):
Of butt butt noise. But but, but how did you
find out? How on the hell did you actually find out?
Why do you think it's true? I had been waiting
for this for several moments, and my answer had been
rehearsed in my mind at least as far back as
my elevator ride up to my apartment. With the most
(53:02):
nonchalant I had ever mustered in my life, I answered
Charlie Steiner, Well, Charlie, I I ran into Steinbrenner at Clark's.
(53:27):
I told George Steinbrenner that story once, and he laughed,
like hell, I've done all the damage I can do here.
Thank you for listening. Please share this pod with somebody
who doesn't. If you can find somebody who doesn't, something happened.
I guess it's all the good news. More people listening
than ever before, up about twenty five percent.
Speaker 1 (53:45):
Thank you. Brian Ray and John Phillip Chanelle, the musical
directors have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of our music.
Mister Chanelle on orchestration and keyboards, mister ray On guitars,
bass and drums. That it was produced by Tea Brothers.
Our satirical and fifthy musical comments are by the best
baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is
(54:07):
the Olberman theme from ESPN two. It was written by
Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer
today was my friend Dennis Leary, and everything else was
pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the
seventy seventh day until the twenty twenty four presidential election
(54:27):
and the three hundred and twenty second day since convicted
felon dementia j Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Use the September eighteenth
sentencing hearing if it happens, use the mental health system.
You have this now, President Biden, use presidential immunity as
(54:48):
assigned by the Supreme Court. Use it all to stop
him from doing it again while we still can. And
anti Semitic, anti immigration, gun nut Republicans please stop shooting
at Trump. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins is
(55:09):
the news requires till the next one. I'm Keith Oldman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
Host
Keith Olbermann
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com