March 17, 2023 • 48 mins
EPISODE 156: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: It doesn't MATTER whether Marjorie Taylor Greene really is so stupid that when she insisted yesterday she's never seen any Putin plan to invade Europe, she doesn't know Ukraine is in Europe. All that matters is whether she makes sure that something like 51% of the COUNTRY is so stupid that IT doesn't know Ukraine is in Europe. It's MAKE AMERICA STUPID AGAIN.
And its weapon is a rapidly strengthening, rapidly escalating feedback loop centering around Fox "News" and we goddamned better do something about it soon. Because not only is it being used against Ukraine and for Russia, but it's now reached the equivalent to tertiary syphilis: McCarthy gives Carlson meaningless January 6 video which Carlson lies and says is 44,000 hours of the Zapruder film so that yesterday Rep. Barry The January 5th Tour Guide Loudermilk can lie and say "this means we need a new January 6 Committee to investigate the OLD January 6 Committee!"
The long-term solution would be a truth based liberal television network with a billion dollars behind it, but who's going to do THAT? The short-term solution is Senate hearings into Fox "News" and Murdoch and whether its interest in destroying the current form of government is funded in any way by a foreign power. It doesn't have to BE funded by a foreign power. Just at the moment, we just need something we can put on against the Barry Loudermilk Hearings To Clear Barry Loudermilk!
(10:20) IN SPORTS: Stop The World Baseball Classic before it kills again (18:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A bad day for Kellyanne Conway as she reveals Kushner was the only Trump family member to make billions during the Junta, and then shocks the world by confirming China is sending arms... to China! But she's no match for Marianne "Non Disclosure Disagreement" Williamson, and SHE'S no match for Ron "I Eat Pudding With My Fingers" DeSantis.
B-Block (24:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It was the greatest scoop of my career to that point, an exclusive told in pantomime by the athlete we were staking out, another gift handed to me without a moment's hesitation by a hockey and football owner and curmudgeon named Harry Ornest. And it would've upended the entire coverage of the 1991 National Football League draft. Except the cameraman forgot to roll tape. I'll be getting over it any day now.
C-Block (39:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Archie, a Missouri puppy, was shot in the leg (40:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Two of his stories of man not against others, but against life: "Nine Needles" and "The Mouse Who Went To The Country."
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. It
isn't that Marjorie Taylor Greene does not know that Ukraine
(00:24):
is in Europe. Maybe she does, Maybe she doesn't. Stupid,
a Russian asset, both whatever, we're paying for a war,
a proxy war with Russia. When I've never seen Putin
actually show in any detail his plans to invade Europe.
No one has shown me that, So I don't believe
(00:45):
the lies that I'm being told about this. That was
fourteen seconds in which Barney Rubble's body double crystallize the
international plank of the Keep America Stupid Party? Does she
not know Ukraine is in Europe? Irrelevant? She and the
Republicans want America to not know that Ukraine is in Europe.
Does she not know that nobody, not Putin, not Biden,
(01:08):
not anybody would ever show her Putin's plans? Irrelevant? She
and the Republicans want America to believe that getting to
see Putin's plans is like ordering from grub hub, so
that when the Biden administration saw the invasion coming before
even Zelenski did, anybody could have done that. Does she
(01:29):
not know that Putin has said he is intent on
rebuilding the Soviet Union, and that eventually, if allowed to,
he will attack Poland and wherever else we will let him,
and that he wants to destroy NATO irrelevant. She and
the Republicans want America to view these things and these
places as meaningless events in what she called faraway lands,
(01:51):
while the real threat is Mexicans, Mexicans who leave bombs
at the border that turn out to be bags of
sand tied up in duct tape. The goal of the
Marjorie Taylor Greens of this country and the people who
feed them their lines is not MAGA but massa. Make
(02:11):
America stupid again. Convince them the threat is not something
that takes three long sentences that they have to struggle
to try to understand, but something they can just point
at it grunt Mexicans, drugs, balmum. Second Amendment also slightly
more complicated but really visceral issues like quote, Christianity under
(02:36):
attack in Ukraine. Tucker Carlson, who on Wednesday, as we know,
platformed a retired US military colonel who lied and said
the war was not started by Russia, came back and
announced that President Zelenski had begun to close Christian churches
in Ukraine and was arresting priests and nuns, and using
that Martin short Jiminy Glick voice of his asked why
(02:59):
aren't Christian leaders in the United States not saying anything
about this, and then interviewing a blonde woman who had
no control over her own eyebrows, whom he describes as
a reporter. But she works for Ben Shapiro, so no,
she's not a reporter, and honestly, she needs to recuse
herself and focus on the important thing here, these eyebrow spasms.
And of course the answer to that question why is
(03:23):
contained in the details Carlson deliberately left out, namely that
the quote Christians unquote are members of the Russian Orthodox Church,
which long ago reached the pinnacle of where American evangelical
churches are heading, which is to drop all that annoying
spiritual and moral leadership and cutting straight to political indoctrination
(03:43):
on behalf of the regime. It's the leaders of the
Russian Orthodox Church who endorsed Putin's attack on Ukraine in
the first place. Even many of them in Ukraine did this,
and they rationalized it in large part because of the
fact that Ukraine holds pride parades and Pride nights and
Pride Days, and the Russian Orthodox churches ferociously homophobic, and
(04:06):
it is actively trying to subvert the Ukrainian government, and
Zelenski has been amazingly restrained towards it. That's too complicated
for Massa, and that in turn leads to the realization
that whatever becomes of the Dominion one billion, six hundred
million dollar defamation suit against Fox or the Smart Mattock
(04:26):
two billion, seven hundred million dollar defamation suit against Fox,
there is no oversight or control at Fox quote news unquote,
and talent there and producers and propaganda managers and executives
and anybody named Murdoch have not been chastened at all
by the humiliation that actually dented Fox's reputation among the right,
(04:49):
and the damage awards that actually could bankrupt that company
and perhaps the entire Murdoch empire. Yesterday, the rotting carcass
of former business broadcaster Maria Bartaromo interviewed Rand Paul's Tupay
as it sat perch perilously at top Grand Paul. The
concept here was about Anthony Fauci. This is Barteromo sued
(05:11):
by name in the smart matic suit and humiliated by
a Steve Bannon offer to put her into the Senate
from New York in the dominion suit. And she has
learned nothing. She is squirting lies all over the place.
She said, quote there were also these lies around the
emergency authorization. They needed the emergency authorization to get the
(05:32):
vaccines down everybody's throats. You may have taken it wrong, madam,
to get the vaccines down everybody's throats, but in order
to do that, they had to prove that there was
nothing else on the market that could actually treat COVID
when we all know ivermectin hydroxy chlora queen were effective,
weren't they. This is March twenty twenty three, and this
(05:56):
idiot is still playing this game with the lives of
her own viewers. And frankly, we had better do something
about Fox now this year, something decisive, because we are
now at the tertiary stage of the self fulfilling Fox
feedback loop. Kevin McCarthy hands Tucker Carlson January sixth video
(06:19):
that shows literally nothing of interest, so little they had
to reshow the same clip three nights, and they make
it sound like it's forty four thousand hours of the
Zapruder film, and now that having been accomplished, the House
turns around and uses the Carlson video and his bogus
(06:39):
claims as its rationale for appointing a new January sixth
committee to investigate the last January sixth committee and to
try to gaslight the country into believing that January sixth
was just sightseers and hooligans and Nancy Pelosi security failures.
And the chairman of this will be Barry fricking louder Milk.
(07:02):
Barry louder Milk last scene leading an unauthorized tour of
people through the rarely visited underground passages and security areas
of the Capitol on January fifth. Thus we have this
disinformation machine, this cable house of Tokyo roses pushed into
(07:23):
overdrive on COVID on Ukraine on January sixth, and we
have no effective means of shutting it down because somebody
in a Senate polling office somewhere said Chuck schumerch should
complain about Fox whenever possible, but he cannot possibly actually
convene a Senate investigation committee asking the questions you and
(07:45):
I would ask like if the obvious goal of Fox
and Murdoch and Carlson on all these other scums is
to destroy this nation and its form of government. Who
is benefiting financially? And are their foreign interests involved? And
even if there are no foreign interests involved, at least
(08:06):
at least Chuck Schumer, there'd be something to put on
TV to counter program the new Barry louder Milk Subcommittee
to clear Barry louder Milk. This is Sports Center. Wait,
(08:38):
check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman
in Sports slight format change in this episode, as I
continued to plow through what turns out to be a
stomach bug, I know, t Am. I sorry, Okay, I've
been saying this since the year two thousand and nine,
(08:58):
and now it's time to actually do something about it.
Stop the World Baseball Classic before or it kills again. Yesterday,
the relief pitcher closer Edwin Diaz, whom the New York
Mets re signed last winter for five years and one
hundred and two million dollars, underwent surgery to repair his
right fateller tendon, which he fully tore. That is what
(09:21):
keeps your kneecap in place. If Diaz is lucky, he
will be ready to pitch in November, which coincidentally is
when the World Baseball Classic should be played. If at all.
They're not saying this because why would you, but there
is no guarantee Diaz won, in fact, ever pitch again.
That tendon in the right knee basically anchors a right
(09:43):
handed pitcher like Diaz as he focuses all of his
energy and strength and as he starts to go into
his wind up to throw a pitch, if it is
not perfect or at least sound, his pitches could lose
their speed, or he could lose control of where it's going.
When that happens, he can't get anybody out. It's bad
either way. And Diaz suffered this injury while celeb with
(10:05):
his teammates in a preliminary round victory in this World
Baseball Classic. Not in the title game, not in the
penultimate game, not in the quarterfinal, the last preliminary game
of the preliminary round. Oh and not his team, the
New York Mets, winning the World Series or the National
League Playoffs or the earlier rounds of the playoffs, or
(10:27):
clinching their division. The World Baseball Classic The World Baseball
Classic was created in two thousand and nine by Major
League Baseball so it could charge higher prices to televise
meaningless March preseason baseball and to sell replica baseball uniforms
and caps with Puerto Rico and Mexico and Japan and
(10:48):
Israel and the United States written on them. Baseball saw
international sports events like the Olympics, like soccer's World Cup,
and said we should do one of them, and poof,
there it was. National teams were assembled, hand picked whoever
would show up. This isn't soccer. There's no competition to
make the team, and most of them play all of
(11:11):
their games through the entirety of the tournament in the
United States. There's a couple of games in other countries.
There were some this year in Japan, but the quarterfinals,
the semis, the championship are in Miami. And as enthusiastic
as American fans of say Dominican heritage or Mexican or
Japanese have understandably become about this, most of the teams
on the fringes of this tournament, like Italy and Great Britain,
(11:33):
feature players who've never actually been to Italy or Great Britain.
There were thirty eight players on this year's Great Britain team,
and six of them were born in that country, and
then one of the letters fell off the uniforms of
one of those players during one of their games. They
were not the favorites. This is not to diminish the
pride these players can have in representing the nations of
(11:55):
their ancestors, although a little perspective would be nice. National
League Most Valuable Player Freddie Freeman is from Orange County, California.
His folks were from Canada. He was, in fact, honoring
his late mother, who died when he was ten, by
playing four Canada when he suffered a slight hamstring injury
his actual team, the Los Angeles Dodgers. They think he
(12:17):
will be ready to play an opening day, but it's
a hamstring, so who knows. Could be two weeks, could
be two years. But thank goodness, he was able to
honor his parents by getting injured in a meaningless exhibition game,
and thank goodness, Edwin Diaz was able to celebrate playing
for Puerto Rico and maybe never pitching again. Even though
baseball went through a crisis in twenty ten when a
(12:37):
player named Kendry's morales of the Angels broke his leg
and ruined his career by jumping up and down after
an early season game was decided on a walk off
and teams and players were warned never to let that
happen again. Oh sorry, we forgot Baseball's owners and players
(12:57):
and the TV propaganda network that Baseball owns. It makes
Fox quote news unquote look objective bent themselves into pretzel
shapes yesterday insisting the Diaz injury was just a freak accident.
It was a freak accident, could have happened anytime, And
how dare you criticize the World Baseball Classic and these
guys heritages. It's a freak accident, could have happened anywhere,
(13:18):
which assumes that in any year in which they did
not play the World Baseball Classic, that perhaps the best
relief pitcher in the game would be, you know, jumping
up and down uncontrollably in a crowd of ten or
twenty of his teammates also jumping up and down uncontrollably,
and somebody steps on his knee or knocks him to
the ground, and his career is over. On March fifteenth,
after the Mets beat the Washington Nationals in a game
(13:42):
in which Edwin Diaz would have pitched the fourth inning
to tune up, and by the time of the celebration
that wouldn't happen anyway, he would be in civilian clothes
on the way back to the hotel, or the idea
that he could have done this by jumping up and
down with ten or twenty of his Mets teammates in
the shower at dinner on a nearby trampoline. The hypocrisy
(14:06):
of Major League Baseball is, of course, that most of
the teams do whatever they can to keep their most
fragile players, the pitchers, mostly from appearing in the World
Baseball Classic, for fear of more conventional injuries. The pitching
staff of the American team is in fact made up
mostly of third level pitchers, because you can't run the
risk of injuring the star pitchers arms their knees. Well,
(14:30):
apparently that's a different story, since they first did this
in two thousand and nine, played these exhibition games that
interfere with the real team's preparations for the season ahead
and risk a devastating injury like Befell. Poor Diaz. I
have thought that my opinions on the World Baseball Classic A,
how do you get to call something you just invented
a classic? And B it's not a classic, it's a
(14:55):
career ending injury waiting to happen. Oh, it just happened.
I always thought my opinions would remain on the fringes
because sports fans are now taught from the womb to
make sure that as soon as they have any money,
they must buy the uniform of their favorite player, and
if his team wears twelve different uniforms in one season,
they need to buy all twelve uniforms of their favorite player,
(15:17):
and if he plays in the WBC, that would make thirteen.
But I've never understood how the obvious way to silence
the whiney old timers like me had not been used.
Play the damn thing after the major league season, not
before after, when an injured player at least has the
chance of recovering for the next actual baseball season. Of course,
(15:41):
I know the answer to that. Baseball will not play
the World Baseball Classic in November or December, because that's
football season and the pressure would be on to play
the championship somewhere other than here in the US, where
it would be warm in November or December. As it is,
barely anybody watches these games on TV. Here ratings have
(16:01):
been dropping since the first tournament in two thousand and nine,
and even the United States versus Canada the other night
had just seven twenty one thousand viewers, and bluntly, any
audience that I can approach in three weeks of this
podcast or less is kind of sad. One can only
imagine how bad the TV ratings would be in December,
(16:23):
and that, of course, is what counts that in making
sure a player who may have ended his career by
jumping up and down after winning the game that's only
four games away from the championship, making sure he was
wearing his uniform while he did it? Did I mention
you can buy those uniforms on the baseball website? Still ahead,
(16:57):
It was the greatest scoop of my professional career. And
then the cameraman told us he forgot to roll videotape.
Plus the Thurber version of that, a short story called
nine Needles coming up first time for the daily roundup
of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who
constitute today's worst persons in the world the bronze. Kelly
(17:18):
Ann con job, it'll be kind of amazing if she
ever appears on Fox Quote News again after a spectacular
two for yesterday, first admitting the kind of thing that
gets you banished from Fox and from Trump World forever
and ever. In a debate about the GOP's desperate, flailing,
eternal effort to make the Trumps look less like the
(17:39):
horrors they are by pinning something somewhere sometime on somebody
named Biden, commentator Juan Williams brought up Jared Kushner and
the two billion dollars he got from the Saudis while
his father in law led the American Junta. Kelly Ann
Conway replied, quote, Jared, of course is the only person
I think who has benefited in the billions with a
(18:00):
bee from the Trump presidency. That's for sure. Oh that's okay,
then if it's just the one family member who palmed
two billion dollars during the wife's father's reign of terror.
But then Conway went on with Hannity and announced last night, quote,
people should know the news today because the White House
(18:22):
is not going to tell them. Sean, it was revealed
that China is sending body armor and other weapons of
war to China. All the presses hot damn. Kelly Ann
has new alternative facts China sending body armor to China.
To the Chinese know about this call chairman me out
(18:48):
the runner up and it was close. Politico profiling Mary
Anne Williamson's twenty twenty four presidential campaign and wondering if
she would repeat her problems with the abuse of her
own staff that was seen during her twenty twenty campaign.
And oh, by the way, which is mentioned in a
People magazine profile from nineteen ninety two. Let me just
read this because I still can't believe I reddit quote.
(19:11):
Campaigns often use NDAs it's non disclosure agreements to protect
proprietary information from spilling out into the public, but former
aids say Williamson's use of NDAs went beyond just her
full time campaign staff. Those aids said that Williamson's personal
assistant traveled with NDA's readily available and would ask taxi
(19:33):
drivers and other service industry workers to sign them if
Williamson lost her temper in front of them. Williamson denied
this charge. Two However, two former staffers said they witnessed
this happen on separate occasions after Williamson started berating staff
in cabs to and from fundraising and media events in
New York. You know, I have to say, I've only
(19:57):
signed one of these in my life. But I always
thought you'd trying to get the person to sign the
non disclosure agreement before four the bad thing happened, not
after it happened. We tried to get that cabby to
sign an NDA. What happened? He said, No, dum, what
do we do now? Do you think that's bad? She
(20:18):
asked me out Once another bullet dodged by Ko but
our winner. And again, this is the only thing that
could beat that Ron De Santis. Mister, if it ain't woke,
don't fix it. He was profiled by The Daily Beast,
and let me just read this quote. Enshrined in De
santis lore is an episode from four years ago. During
(20:39):
a private plane trip from Tallahassee to Washington, d C.
In March of twenty nineteen, DeSantis enjoyed a chocolate pudding
dessert by eating it with three of his fingers. According
to two sources familiar with the incident, unquote, he ate
his own fingers. Oh no, I get it by eating
it and using three fingers to scoop the pudding into
(21:02):
his pie hole. Would be President of the United States.
He can putting with his bare hands on a private
jet class all the way. Ron No, it's three fingers
of Scotch pal descantist today's worst person. And this is
(21:31):
countdown with Keith Olberman. Now for my favorite topic, me
and some more things I promised not to tell. And
I can hear him saying it's still Keith. Who was
Carden Gillenwater thirty years ago? And more? I used to
get phone calls from a viewer named Harry Harry Ornest.
(21:54):
Harry had once been a training camp stickboy for the
long forgotten National Hockey League franchise, the New York Americans.
He later became a linesman in the National Hockey League.
He stepped in as the owner of the nearly bankrupt St.
Louis Blues. He owned the minor league baseball team in Vancouver,
and most notably the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football
League until he sold them to Wayne Gretzky and Gretzky's boss,
(22:18):
the owner of the La Kings, Bruce McNall, and the
late John candy, and Harry was one of those guys
who knew everything going on with everyone in one sport.
And Harry was a fan of my sports guests, so
he would call me at KCBS in Los Angeles and
later at ESPN, and he would say, I am once
(22:40):
again your source, Keith, for a story about Bruce McNall,
you always misspronounced McNall McNall. But I will only give
you this story if you can tell me. And then
he'd asked me a baseball trivia question, Keith, who was
Carden gillen Water. This is pre internet. No chance I
(23:00):
could look cardon gillan Water up in a book and
have Harry not hear me doing so over the phone,
So I would have to give him my best answer.
And usually I got these right, cardon Gillenwater, and it
stuck in my head from somewhere who knows when was
an obscure outfielder from the nineteen forties Boston Braves mostly,
(23:21):
And one day April twentieth, nineteen ninety one, in fact,
when I got the trivier answer right, Harry said, would
you happen to be going to the Los Angeles King's
playoff game? Tonight, and I said, a matter of fact,
I was, And Harry said, excellent, my friend. If you
watch mister McNall's private box, you will see he will
have a visitor. I'm mister Rahib rocket Ismail from Notre
(23:46):
Dame University. He went on to say, mister mcnalls just
signed mister Ismail to a contract with the Toronto Argonauts,
formerly owned by your source. And he said, I'm led
to believe it is for four years and twenty six
million dollars. I am also led to believe a little
over half of it is guaranteed. I'm led to believe
mister mcnal will be announcing it tomorrow, just before the
(24:09):
National Football League conducts its college draft. He's really going
to piss them all off, isn't he. It would make
Cardon gillen Water shamed. Also, he would remind me, mister
McNall has yet to pay me what he owes me
for when I sold him the Toronto Argonauts. Rocket Ismail
(24:30):
was not the best player available in the nineteen ninety
one National Football League Draft, which was to start the
next morning, bright end early in New York, but he
was the most exciting, A dynamic receiver and kick returner
from Notre Dame, and while it was not certain that
he would be chosen first overall by the Dallas Cowboys,
it was likely surely possible, and instead he had signed
(24:52):
with Toronto of the Canadian League. It seemed very, very unlikely,
and on the other hand, Harry Ornest had never been
wrong once with one of these story tips. So my producer,
Ron Grownick, and I went to the Los Angeles Forum
we were going anyway as fans to the hockey playoff game,
and he asked our assignment desk at KCBS to send
(25:15):
us a camera crew because we were going to at
least get video of rocket Ismail at the forum or
leaving the forum or something. It was some kind of story.
And sure enough, from our seats we could easily see
into Bruce McNall's private box, and there, without a doubt,
totally unrecognized by any of the LA Hockey fans, was
(25:35):
this Notre Dame football player rocket Ismail. He and McNall
and the other executives seemed to be having a great time,
and there was a lot of backslapping and beer drinking
and whatnot. And I said to Ron, good God, We're
going to break a huge story here, but they won't
let us bring the cameraman in here to shoot video
of Ismail and McNall's box. We're gonna have to stake
(25:55):
him out. We're gonna have to get him after the
game ends, out in the parking lot somewhere. Ron smiled knowingly.
Ron had once been an usher at the Great Western Forum,
And I said, you know, I know all the secret
ways out of here, he said to me, And I
know all the limo drivers, And the limo drivers never
(26:17):
changed last time I was here. I said, hi to
half a dozen of them, let me go find out
which one is waiting for them. Within fifteen minutes, Ron
was back, Got it? You used to say that a lot.
He found a limo driver who was sent to take
rocket smail back to the hotel, and he found out
which side door out of about a thousand of them
in this old arena, the driver had been told to
(26:39):
wait next to. I would have been back sooner, Ron said,
but he wanted to show me pictures of his new baby.
So now we used my cell phone. Not a lot
of cell phones in use in nineteen ninety one, not
even in La to check on the camera crew, and
we were told the cameraman would meet us in the
parking lot at such and such an hour, and we
told the assignment desk to have him park near this
(27:00):
one side exit that we'd been told Smail was going
to use when the game was over. And then we waited,
and with the King's losing three to two to Edmonton
early in the third period, just as we were planning
to go out and meet up with the camera guy,
the King's tied the game up. And that's screwed up everything,
because now the game might go into overtime and end suddenly,
(27:21):
and it might end in five minutes, and it might
end in five hours, and we might get caught in
the crowd exiting the arena, and we might miss rocket Ismail,
or he might leave early, or who knows. And then
as the overtime period began, I looked up at Bruce
McNall's private box for like the three hundredth time that night,
and I saw it. I saw rocket Ismail yawning. Let's
(27:44):
get out of here, I said to Ron. We left,
We rendezvoused with the cameraman, and we rehearsed what we
planned to do pure obnoxious TV ambushing. We would hide
across the street from the side exit. The windows around
the door of that side exit would give us enough
time to see him coming, and as soon as the
(28:05):
door opened, I would step forward towards him. The cameraman
would turn on his light and press play and record
on his video deck, and I would essentially block rocket
Ismail if I could, from getting into his limo, and
I'd just start firing questions at him. The cameraman should
never stop rolling, keep rolling, I said, who knows what
we'll get and how well it all worked. Within minutes
(28:29):
of the start of the second overtime period, we saw
Smail and a Los Angeles King's executive named Roy Malauker
bound up the steps toward the side exit onto the street,
and I waited until they were obscured behind the door.
I shouted to the cameraman roll. The cameraman threw on
his light. We took a few steps from the parking
lot across the street onto the sidewalk. Rocket Keith Alderman
(28:53):
from Channel two Action News, have you signed with the
Toronto Argonauts? He said nothing, but he looked like I
had just stolen his wallet. We understand you're getting twenty
six million for four years, about a half of it aranteed?
Is that correct? He now looked like he was an
escaping prisoner who had just been identified Rocket. Why did
you sign with the CFL before the NFL Draft? Again,
(29:16):
he said nothing. He did not need to. The look
on his face confirmed everything I was asking him, Rocket,
Did you not want to play for the Dallas Cowboys?
Still silence. It suddenly dawned on me that this guy
might have finished second in the voting for college football's
Player of the Year award in the Heisman Trophy, but
he was having a lot of trouble getting around me
(29:38):
and my thirty two year old, unathletic, six foot three
and a half blubbery frame. Did Bruce mcdall give you
a part of the franchise? Rocket? At which point I
was finally gently and easily moved aside by somebody with
him Rocket. Ismail slipped into the limo, where pound my cameraman,
showing great perspicacity, dropped to his knees and pointed the camera.
(30:00):
Inside the limo, we could see Ismail thoroughly shaken getting
next to the King's executive Roy Malicker. I shouted in
one last perfect question to malicker Roy, is that a
rocket in your pocket? Are you just glad to see us?
At which point, as if on cue, the limo door
slammed and the driver pealed out of there with a
(30:21):
huge screeching sound. The cameraman now turned off his life
I light and my producer Ron and I started jumping
up and down in the parking lot. We had not
only gotten a terrific scoop and the video would be
on every CBS station in the country within hours, but
we had done it with an interview in which the
interviewee did not say a word, yet still gave away
(30:44):
the whole story just with facial expressions and body language.
Ron and I repeated these elements to each other and
high fived and celebrated until the cameraman suddenly said, hold on,
I may have forgotten to roll tape. I looked at
him and smiling. I said that it was fun to
play with us like that, but he just shortened our
lives by a year, and I didn't say play. I'm sorry, man,
(31:09):
I'm not joking. Yeah, I forgot to roll. I'm sorry, man,
too bad. You ask great questions. Rocket in your pocket
and looks on his face, damn sorry, Ron and I
made him double check and triple check and quadruple check,
(31:30):
and when there was no more doubt he had never
hit play and record. We stood forlorn, like a couple
of guys who had just seen the winning lottery ticket
blown out of their hands into the sewer or something.
The cameraman packed up and left, and as Ron and
I stood there silently, I wondered how it could possibly
(31:51):
get worse, which is when it started to rain. My
great scoop the interview in which the interview he said
nothing that through the National Football League draft into utter
chaos was now worthless. Bruce McNall, of course, would announce
the signing of rocket Ismail by his Toronto Argonauts. I
(32:14):
would be able to phone into the CBS Sports office
in New York and give them a warning about the signing.
Their overnight guy said thanks and hung up on me,
and I would phone into our all news radio station
KNX and I would do a live report from the
parking lot outside the LA Forum about rocket Ismail at
(32:36):
twelve fifteen on Sunday morning, as if anybody was listening,
and as if anybody who was listening could have possibly
cared about Canadian football. For weeks thereafter, Ron Grellnick and
I would be in conversation about something else when one
of us would pause and say, can you believe you
(32:58):
forgot to roll? The frequency of this dropped with time
to once a month, then once a year. At last,
saw Ron in twenty twenty one. He and I told
his wife the story, after which involuntarily the way a
casualty of a long forgotten battle will describe the shock
(33:19):
of his injury half a century earlier, Ron said, can
you believe you forgot to roll? And I know, I
know in my heart that whether I live another week
or another forty years, one of the last things I
will say to myself on this earth will take me
back to that damp Saturday night in nineteen ninety one
when I am bushed rocket ismail, but my cameraman ambushed me.
(33:45):
Can you believe he forgot to roll? Still a head
on Countdown Fridays with thurber and a double header two
(34:09):
of the great sagas of man versus life man versus
transportation in the fable of the Mouse who went to
the Country, and man versus clutter and the attempt to
cover it up nine needles. First, in each edition of Countdown,
we feature a dog in need. You can help. Every
dog has its day. Archie in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. How
(34:33):
do you shoot a dog? How do you shoot a
dog in the leg? How do you shoot a puppy
in the leg? Saving Saint Louis Pets has the details
of this little guy with the sad eyes. They pulled
him out of a rural animal control pound in Missouri
where he was suffering and beginning to get septic. They
think they can save the leg, but it's not certain.
(34:53):
It will take a little money, not all that much.
What they need is your donation. Look for Archie at
Cuddley dot com or look for Archie in my Twitter feeds,
and your retweets can help him as well. I thank you,
and Archie thanks you. She's a number one story on
(35:26):
the Countdown and it's Fridays with Thurber and a lot
of his work details the fundamental clash between people, husband
and wife, he and various relatives, a guy in a
bed and a seal, two animals representing any two humans
in conflict. But some of the most magical writing is
the stuff that is just about one person alone against life.
(35:51):
One of his stories ends with a great grandmother struggling
with a butter churn and screaming into the void, why
doesn't somebody take this goddamn thing away from me? A
line which I think could be the start of a
national anthem where such a story is Nine Needles. This
week's selection, as you will see, it is a little
short for our usual time frames here, so I'll give
(36:13):
you a bonus another man versus life story afterwards, in
the form of one of Thurber's fables for our time,
the mouse who went to the country. But first, it's
unlikely this event has ever happened to you, but the
anxiety that should be immediately familiar. Nine Needles by James Thurber.
(36:36):
One of the more spectacular minor happenings of the past
few years, which I am sorry that I missed, took
place in the Columbus, Ohio home of some friends of
a friend of mine. It seems that a mister Albatross,
while looking for something in his medicine cabinet one morning,
discovered a bottle of a kind of patent medicine which
his wife had been taking for a stomach element. Now,
(36:58):
mister Albatross is one of those apprehensive men who are
afraid of patent medicines and of almost everything else. Some
weeks before he had encountered a paragraph in a consumer's
research bulletin which announced that this particular medicine was bad
for you. He had thereupon ordered his wife to throw
out what was left of her supply of the stuff
(37:19):
and never buy anymore, she had promised. And here now
was another bottle of the perilous liquid. Mister Albatross, A
man given to quick rages, shouted the conclusion of the
story at my friend. I threw the bottle out the
bathroom window, and the medicine chest after it. It seems
(37:41):
to me that must have been a spectacle worth going
a long way to see. I am sure that many
a husband has wanted to wrench the family medicine cabinet
off the wall and throw it out the window, if
only because the average medicine cabinet is so filled with
mysterious bottles and unidentifiable objects of all kinds that it
(38:02):
is a source of constant b alderment and exasperation to
the American male. Surely, the British medicine cabinet and the
French medicine cabinet. All the other medicine cabinets must be
simpler and better ordered than ours. It may be that
the American habit of saving everything and never throwing anything away,
(38:23):
even empty bottles, causes the domestic medicine cabinet to become
as cluttered in its small way as the American attic
becomes cluttered in its major way. I have encountered few
medicine cabinets in this country which were not packed jammed
with something between a hundred and fifty and two hundred
different items, from dental floss to boracic acid, from razor
(38:47):
blades to sodium perborate, from adhesive tape to coconut oil.
Even the neatest wife will put off clearing out the
medicine cabinet on the ground that she has something else
to do that is more important at that moment, or
more diverting. It was in the arment of such a
wife and her husband that I became enormously involved with
(39:08):
a medicine cabinet. One morning, not long ago, I had
spent the weekend with this couple. They live on East
tenth Street near Fifth Avenue. Such a weekend as left
me reluctant to rise up on Monday morning with bright
and shining face and go to work. They got up
and went to work, but I didn't. I didn't get
(39:31):
up until about two to thirty in the afternoon. I
had my face all lathered for shaving, and the washbowl
was full of hot water, when suddenly I cut myself
with the razor. I cut my ear. Very few men
cut their ears with razors, but I do, possibly because
I was taught the old Spencerian free risk movements by
(39:51):
my writing teacher in the grammar grades. The ear bleeds
rather profusely when cut with a razor, and is difficult
to get at. More angry than hurt, I jerked open
the door of the medicine cabinet to see I could
find a stiptic pencil, and outfell from the top shelf
a little black paper packet containing nine needles. It seems
(40:15):
that his wife kept a little paper packet containing nine
needles on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. The
packet fell into the soapy water of the washbowl, where
the paper rapidly disintegrated, leaving nine needles at large in
the bowl. I was, naturally enough, not in the best condition,
either physical or mental to recover nine needles from a washbowl.
(40:40):
No gentleman who has lather on his face and whose
ear is bleeding is in the best condition for anything,
even something involving the handling of nine large blunt objects.
It did not seem wise to me to pull the
plug out of the washbowl and let the needles go
down the drain. I had visions of clogging up the
plumbing system of the house, and also a vague fear
(41:02):
of causing short circuits somehow or other. I know very
little about electricity, and I don't want to have it
explained to me. Finally, I groped very gently around the bowl,
and eventually had four of the needles in the palm
of one hand and three in the palm of the other.
Two I couldn't find. If I had thought quickly and clearly,
(41:26):
I wouldn't have done that. A lathered man whose ear
is bleeding and who has four wet needles in one
hand and three in the other may be said to
have reached the lowest known point of human efficiency. There
is nothing he can do but stand there. I tried
transferring the needles in my left hand to the palm
of my right hand, but I couldn't get them off
(41:48):
my left hand. Wet needles cling to you. In the end,
I wiped the needles off onto a bath towel which
was hanging on a rod above the bath tub. It
was the only towel that I could find. I had
to dry my hands afterward on the bath matt Then
I tried to find the needles in the towel. Hunting
(42:10):
for seven needles in a bath towel is the most
tedious occupation I have ever engaged in. I could find
only five of them with the two that had been
left in the bowl. That meant there were four needles
in all, missing, two in the washbowl and two others
lurking in the towel or lying in the bathtub under
the towel. Frightful thoughts came to me of what might
(42:33):
happen to anyone who used that towel or washed his
face in the bowl, or got into the tub if
I didn't find the missing needles. Well, I didn't find them.
I sat down on the edge of the tub to think,
and I decided finally that the only thing to do
was to wrap up the towel in a newspaper and
take it away with me. I also decided to leave
(42:55):
a note for my friends, explaining as clearly as I
could that I was afraid there were two needles in
the bathtub and two needles in the washbowl, and that
they be careful. I looked everywhere in the apartment, but
I could not find a pencil or a pen or
a typewriter. I could find pieces of paper, but nothing
(43:15):
with which to write on them. I don't know what
gave me the idea. A movie I had seen, perhaps,
or a story I had read, but I suddenly thought
of writing a message with lipstick. The wife might have
an extra lipstick lying around, and if so, I concluded
it would be in the medicine cabinet. I went back
(43:36):
to the medicine cabinet began poking around in it for
a lipstick. I saw what I thought looked like the
metal tip of one, and I got two fingers around
it began to pull gently. It was under a lot
of things. Every object in the medicine cabinet began to slide.
Bottles broke in the washbowl and on the floor, red
brown and white liquids, spurted nail files, scissors, razor blades
(44:00):
and miscellaneous objects sang and clattered and tinkled. I was
covered with perfume, peroxide, and called cream. It took me
half an hour to get all the debris all together
in the middle of the bathroom floor. I made no
attempt to put anything back in the medicine cabinet. I
(44:23):
knew it would take a steadier hand than mine and
a less shattered spirit. Before I went away, only partly
shaved and abandoned the shambles. I left a note saying
that I was afraid there were needles in the bathtub
and the washbowl, and that I had taken their towel,
and that I would call up and tell them everything.
I wrote it in I had dined with the end
(44:43):
of a toothbrush. I have not yet called up. I
am sorry to say I have neither found the courage
nor thought up the words to explain what happened. I
suppose my friends believe that I deliberately smashed up their
bathroom and stole their towel. I don't know for sure,
because they have yet called me up. Either. Nine Needles
(45:09):
by James Thurber, and as I suggested in a broad
sense on the same subject, from his Fables for Our
Time and famous poems illustrated The Mouse who Went to
the Country by James Thurber. Once upon a Sunday there
(45:32):
was a city mouse who went to visit a country mouse.
He hit away on a train the country mouse had
told him to take, only to find that on Sundays
it did not stop at Beddington. Hence the city mouse
could not get off at Beddington and catch a bus
for Cybert's Junction, where he was to be met by
the country mouse. The city mouse, in fact, was carried
(45:52):
on to Middleburgh, where he waited three hours for a
train to take him back. When he got back to Beddington,
he found out that the last bus for Siebert's Junction
had just left, so he ran, and he ran, and
he ran, and he finally caught the bus and crept aboard,
only to find that it was not the bus for
Seabirds Junction at all, but was going in the opposite
direction through Pell's Hollow and Grum to a place called Wimberbee.
(46:18):
When the bus finally stopped, the city mouse got out
into a heavy rain and found that there were no
more buses that night going anywhere. To the hell with
it said the city mouse, and he walked back to
the city moral stay where you are, you're sitting pretty.
The Mouse who Went to the Country by James Thurber.
(46:54):
I've done all the damage I can do here, much
of it to myself. Thank you for listening. Here are
the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced, and
performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel. You're Wire
the count musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John
Philip Channel. Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray. Produced
by t Ko Brothers. Our Beethoven. Selections have been arranged
(47:14):
and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music is
the Alderman theme from ESPN Too. It was written by
Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments from
Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer
today was my friend Kenny Maine, and everything else is
pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this, the
eight hundred and first day since Donald Trump's first attempted
(47:36):
coup against the democratically elected government at the United States.
Arrest him now while we still can. The next scheduled
countdown is Monday, hoping for a full new episode after
this non COVID bug. Thank you for bearing with me today.
This is about the best I can do under the
circumstances till Monday, I hope. I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning,
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alerman
(48:16):
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. It
isn't that Marjorie Taylor Greene does not know that Ukraine
(00:24):
is in Europe. Maybe she does, Maybe she doesn't. Stupid,
a Russian asset, both whatever, we're paying for a war,
a proxy war with Russia. When I've never seen Putin
actually show in any detail his plans to invade Europe.
No one has shown me that, So I don't believe
(00:45):
the lies that I'm being told about this. That was
fourteen seconds in which Barney Rubble's body double crystallize the
international plank of the Keep America Stupid Party? Does she
not know Ukraine is in Europe? Irrelevant? She and the
Republicans want America to not know that Ukraine is in Europe.
Does she not know that nobody, not Putin, not Biden,
(01:08):
not anybody would ever show her Putin's plans? Irrelevant? She
and the Republicans want America to believe that getting to
see Putin's plans is like ordering from grub hub, so
that when the Biden administration saw the invasion coming before
even Zelenski did, anybody could have done that. Does she
(01:29):
not know that Putin has said he is intent on
rebuilding the Soviet Union, and that eventually, if allowed to,
he will attack Poland and wherever else we will let him,
and that he wants to destroy NATO irrelevant. She and
the Republicans want America to view these things and these
places as meaningless events in what she called faraway lands,
(01:51):
while the real threat is Mexicans, Mexicans who leave bombs
at the border that turn out to be bags of
sand tied up in duct tape. The goal of the
Marjorie Taylor Greens of this country and the people who
feed them their lines is not MAGA but massa. Make
(02:11):
America stupid again. Convince them the threat is not something
that takes three long sentences that they have to struggle
to try to understand, but something they can just point
at it grunt Mexicans, drugs, balmum. Second Amendment also slightly
more complicated but really visceral issues like quote, Christianity under
(02:36):
attack in Ukraine. Tucker Carlson, who on Wednesday, as we know,
platformed a retired US military colonel who lied and said
the war was not started by Russia, came back and
announced that President Zelenski had begun to close Christian churches
in Ukraine and was arresting priests and nuns, and using
that Martin short Jiminy Glick voice of his asked why
(02:59):
aren't Christian leaders in the United States not saying anything
about this, and then interviewing a blonde woman who had
no control over her own eyebrows, whom he describes as
a reporter. But she works for Ben Shapiro, so no,
she's not a reporter, and honestly, she needs to recuse
herself and focus on the important thing here, these eyebrow spasms.
And of course the answer to that question why is
(03:23):
contained in the details Carlson deliberately left out, namely that
the quote Christians unquote are members of the Russian Orthodox Church,
which long ago reached the pinnacle of where American evangelical
churches are heading, which is to drop all that annoying
spiritual and moral leadership and cutting straight to political indoctrination
(03:43):
on behalf of the regime. It's the leaders of the
Russian Orthodox Church who endorsed Putin's attack on Ukraine in
the first place. Even many of them in Ukraine did this,
and they rationalized it in large part because of the
fact that Ukraine holds pride parades and Pride nights and
Pride Days, and the Russian Orthodox churches ferociously homophobic, and
(04:06):
it is actively trying to subvert the Ukrainian government, and
Zelenski has been amazingly restrained towards it. That's too complicated
for Massa, and that in turn leads to the realization
that whatever becomes of the Dominion one billion, six hundred
million dollar defamation suit against Fox or the Smart Mattock
(04:26):
two billion, seven hundred million dollar defamation suit against Fox,
there is no oversight or control at Fox quote news unquote,
and talent there and producers and propaganda managers and executives
and anybody named Murdoch have not been chastened at all
by the humiliation that actually dented Fox's reputation among the right,
(04:49):
and the damage awards that actually could bankrupt that company
and perhaps the entire Murdoch empire. Yesterday, the rotting carcass
of former business broadcaster Maria Bartaromo interviewed Rand Paul's Tupay
as it sat perch perilously at top Grand Paul. The
concept here was about Anthony Fauci. This is Barteromo sued
(05:11):
by name in the smart matic suit and humiliated by
a Steve Bannon offer to put her into the Senate
from New York in the dominion suit. And she has
learned nothing. She is squirting lies all over the place.
She said, quote there were also these lies around the
emergency authorization. They needed the emergency authorization to get the
(05:32):
vaccines down everybody's throats. You may have taken it wrong, madam,
to get the vaccines down everybody's throats, but in order
to do that, they had to prove that there was
nothing else on the market that could actually treat COVID
when we all know ivermectin hydroxy chlora queen were effective,
weren't they. This is March twenty twenty three, and this
(05:56):
idiot is still playing this game with the lives of
her own viewers. And frankly, we had better do something
about Fox now this year, something decisive, because we are
now at the tertiary stage of the self fulfilling Fox
feedback loop. Kevin McCarthy hands Tucker Carlson January sixth video
(06:19):
that shows literally nothing of interest, so little they had
to reshow the same clip three nights, and they make
it sound like it's forty four thousand hours of the
Zapruder film, and now that having been accomplished, the House
turns around and uses the Carlson video and his bogus
(06:39):
claims as its rationale for appointing a new January sixth
committee to investigate the last January sixth committee and to
try to gaslight the country into believing that January sixth
was just sightseers and hooligans and Nancy Pelosi security failures.
And the chairman of this will be Barry fricking louder Milk.
(07:02):
Barry louder Milk last scene leading an unauthorized tour of
people through the rarely visited underground passages and security areas
of the Capitol on January fifth. Thus we have this
disinformation machine, this cable house of Tokyo roses pushed into
(07:23):
overdrive on COVID on Ukraine on January sixth, and we
have no effective means of shutting it down because somebody
in a Senate polling office somewhere said Chuck schumerch should
complain about Fox whenever possible, but he cannot possibly actually
convene a Senate investigation committee asking the questions you and
(07:45):
I would ask like if the obvious goal of Fox
and Murdoch and Carlson on all these other scums is
to destroy this nation and its form of government. Who
is benefiting financially? And are their foreign interests involved? And
even if there are no foreign interests involved, at least
(08:06):
at least Chuck Schumer, there'd be something to put on
TV to counter program the new Barry louder Milk Subcommittee
to clear Barry louder Milk. This is Sports Center. Wait,
(08:38):
check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman
in Sports slight format change in this episode, as I
continued to plow through what turns out to be a
stomach bug, I know, t Am. I sorry, Okay, I've
been saying this since the year two thousand and nine,
(08:58):
and now it's time to actually do something about it.
Stop the World Baseball Classic before or it kills again. Yesterday,
the relief pitcher closer Edwin Diaz, whom the New York
Mets re signed last winter for five years and one
hundred and two million dollars, underwent surgery to repair his
right fateller tendon, which he fully tore. That is what
(09:21):
keeps your kneecap in place. If Diaz is lucky, he
will be ready to pitch in November, which coincidentally is
when the World Baseball Classic should be played. If at all.
They're not saying this because why would you, but there
is no guarantee Diaz won, in fact, ever pitch again.
That tendon in the right knee basically anchors a right
(09:43):
handed pitcher like Diaz as he focuses all of his
energy and strength and as he starts to go into
his wind up to throw a pitch, if it is
not perfect or at least sound, his pitches could lose
their speed, or he could lose control of where it's going.
When that happens, he can't get anybody out. It's bad
either way. And Diaz suffered this injury while celeb with
(10:05):
his teammates in a preliminary round victory in this World
Baseball Classic. Not in the title game, not in the
penultimate game, not in the quarterfinal, the last preliminary game
of the preliminary round. Oh and not his team, the
New York Mets, winning the World Series or the National
League Playoffs or the earlier rounds of the playoffs, or
(10:27):
clinching their division. The World Baseball Classic The World Baseball
Classic was created in two thousand and nine by Major
League Baseball so it could charge higher prices to televise
meaningless March preseason baseball and to sell replica baseball uniforms
and caps with Puerto Rico and Mexico and Japan and
(10:48):
Israel and the United States written on them. Baseball saw
international sports events like the Olympics, like soccer's World Cup,
and said we should do one of them, and poof,
there it was. National teams were assembled, hand picked whoever
would show up. This isn't soccer. There's no competition to
make the team, and most of them play all of
(11:11):
their games through the entirety of the tournament in the
United States. There's a couple of games in other countries.
There were some this year in Japan, but the quarterfinals,
the semis, the championship are in Miami. And as enthusiastic
as American fans of say Dominican heritage or Mexican or
Japanese have understandably become about this, most of the teams
on the fringes of this tournament, like Italy and Great Britain,
(11:33):
feature players who've never actually been to Italy or Great Britain.
There were thirty eight players on this year's Great Britain team,
and six of them were born in that country, and
then one of the letters fell off the uniforms of
one of those players during one of their games. They
were not the favorites. This is not to diminish the
pride these players can have in representing the nations of
(11:55):
their ancestors, although a little perspective would be nice. National
League Most Valuable Player Freddie Freeman is from Orange County, California.
His folks were from Canada. He was, in fact, honoring
his late mother, who died when he was ten, by
playing four Canada when he suffered a slight hamstring injury
his actual team, the Los Angeles Dodgers. They think he
(12:17):
will be ready to play an opening day, but it's
a hamstring, so who knows. Could be two weeks, could
be two years. But thank goodness, he was able to
honor his parents by getting injured in a meaningless exhibition game,
and thank goodness, Edwin Diaz was able to celebrate playing
for Puerto Rico and maybe never pitching again. Even though
baseball went through a crisis in twenty ten when a
(12:37):
player named Kendry's morales of the Angels broke his leg
and ruined his career by jumping up and down after
an early season game was decided on a walk off
and teams and players were warned never to let that
happen again. Oh sorry, we forgot Baseball's owners and players
(12:57):
and the TV propaganda network that Baseball owns. It makes
Fox quote news unquote look objective bent themselves into pretzel
shapes yesterday insisting the Diaz injury was just a freak accident.
It was a freak accident, could have happened anytime, And
how dare you criticize the World Baseball Classic and these
guys heritages. It's a freak accident, could have happened anywhere,
(13:18):
which assumes that in any year in which they did
not play the World Baseball Classic, that perhaps the best
relief pitcher in the game would be, you know, jumping
up and down uncontrollably in a crowd of ten or
twenty of his teammates also jumping up and down uncontrollably,
and somebody steps on his knee or knocks him to
the ground, and his career is over. On March fifteenth,
after the Mets beat the Washington Nationals in a game
(13:42):
in which Edwin Diaz would have pitched the fourth inning
to tune up, and by the time of the celebration
that wouldn't happen anyway, he would be in civilian clothes
on the way back to the hotel, or the idea
that he could have done this by jumping up and
down with ten or twenty of his Mets teammates in
the shower at dinner on a nearby trampoline. The hypocrisy
(14:06):
of Major League Baseball is, of course, that most of
the teams do whatever they can to keep their most
fragile players, the pitchers, mostly from appearing in the World
Baseball Classic, for fear of more conventional injuries. The pitching
staff of the American team is in fact made up
mostly of third level pitchers, because you can't run the
risk of injuring the star pitchers arms their knees. Well,
(14:30):
apparently that's a different story, since they first did this
in two thousand and nine, played these exhibition games that
interfere with the real team's preparations for the season ahead
and risk a devastating injury like Befell. Poor Diaz. I
have thought that my opinions on the World Baseball Classic A,
how do you get to call something you just invented
a classic? And B it's not a classic, it's a
(14:55):
career ending injury waiting to happen. Oh, it just happened.
I always thought my opinions would remain on the fringes
because sports fans are now taught from the womb to
make sure that as soon as they have any money,
they must buy the uniform of their favorite player, and
if his team wears twelve different uniforms in one season,
they need to buy all twelve uniforms of their favorite player,
(15:17):
and if he plays in the WBC, that would make thirteen.
But I've never understood how the obvious way to silence
the whiney old timers like me had not been used.
Play the damn thing after the major league season, not
before after, when an injured player at least has the
chance of recovering for the next actual baseball season. Of course,
(15:41):
I know the answer to that. Baseball will not play
the World Baseball Classic in November or December, because that's
football season and the pressure would be on to play
the championship somewhere other than here in the US, where
it would be warm in November or December. As it is,
barely anybody watches these games on TV. Here ratings have
(16:01):
been dropping since the first tournament in two thousand and nine,
and even the United States versus Canada the other night
had just seven twenty one thousand viewers, and bluntly, any
audience that I can approach in three weeks of this
podcast or less is kind of sad. One can only
imagine how bad the TV ratings would be in December,
(16:23):
and that, of course, is what counts that in making
sure a player who may have ended his career by
jumping up and down after winning the game that's only
four games away from the championship, making sure he was
wearing his uniform while he did it? Did I mention
you can buy those uniforms on the baseball website? Still ahead,
(16:57):
It was the greatest scoop of my professional career. And
then the cameraman told us he forgot to roll videotape.
Plus the Thurber version of that, a short story called
nine Needles coming up first time for the daily roundup
of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who
constitute today's worst persons in the world the bronze. Kelly
(17:18):
Ann con job, it'll be kind of amazing if she
ever appears on Fox Quote News again after a spectacular
two for yesterday, first admitting the kind of thing that
gets you banished from Fox and from Trump World forever
and ever. In a debate about the GOP's desperate, flailing,
eternal effort to make the Trumps look less like the
(17:39):
horrors they are by pinning something somewhere sometime on somebody
named Biden, commentator Juan Williams brought up Jared Kushner and
the two billion dollars he got from the Saudis while
his father in law led the American Junta. Kelly Ann
Conway replied, quote, Jared, of course is the only person
I think who has benefited in the billions with a
(18:00):
bee from the Trump presidency. That's for sure. Oh that's okay,
then if it's just the one family member who palmed
two billion dollars during the wife's father's reign of terror.
But then Conway went on with Hannity and announced last night, quote,
people should know the news today because the White House
(18:22):
is not going to tell them. Sean, it was revealed
that China is sending body armor and other weapons of
war to China. All the presses hot damn. Kelly Ann
has new alternative facts China sending body armor to China.
To the Chinese know about this call chairman me out
(18:48):
the runner up and it was close. Politico profiling Mary
Anne Williamson's twenty twenty four presidential campaign and wondering if
she would repeat her problems with the abuse of her
own staff that was seen during her twenty twenty campaign.
And oh, by the way, which is mentioned in a
People magazine profile from nineteen ninety two. Let me just
read this because I still can't believe I reddit quote.
(19:11):
Campaigns often use NDAs it's non disclosure agreements to protect
proprietary information from spilling out into the public, but former
aids say Williamson's use of NDAs went beyond just her
full time campaign staff. Those aids said that Williamson's personal
assistant traveled with NDA's readily available and would ask taxi
(19:33):
drivers and other service industry workers to sign them if
Williamson lost her temper in front of them. Williamson denied
this charge. Two However, two former staffers said they witnessed
this happen on separate occasions after Williamson started berating staff
in cabs to and from fundraising and media events in
New York. You know, I have to say, I've only
(19:57):
signed one of these in my life. But I always
thought you'd trying to get the person to sign the
non disclosure agreement before four the bad thing happened, not
after it happened. We tried to get that cabby to
sign an NDA. What happened? He said, No, dum, what
do we do now? Do you think that's bad? She
(20:18):
asked me out Once another bullet dodged by Ko but
our winner. And again, this is the only thing that
could beat that Ron De Santis. Mister, if it ain't woke,
don't fix it. He was profiled by The Daily Beast,
and let me just read this quote. Enshrined in De
santis lore is an episode from four years ago. During
(20:39):
a private plane trip from Tallahassee to Washington, d C.
In March of twenty nineteen, DeSantis enjoyed a chocolate pudding
dessert by eating it with three of his fingers. According
to two sources familiar with the incident, unquote, he ate
his own fingers. Oh no, I get it by eating
it and using three fingers to scoop the pudding into
(21:02):
his pie hole. Would be President of the United States.
He can putting with his bare hands on a private
jet class all the way. Ron No, it's three fingers
of Scotch pal descantist today's worst person. And this is
(21:31):
countdown with Keith Olberman. Now for my favorite topic, me
and some more things I promised not to tell. And
I can hear him saying it's still Keith. Who was
Carden Gillenwater thirty years ago? And more? I used to
get phone calls from a viewer named Harry Harry Ornest.
(21:54):
Harry had once been a training camp stickboy for the
long forgotten National Hockey League franchise, the New York Americans.
He later became a linesman in the National Hockey League.
He stepped in as the owner of the nearly bankrupt St.
Louis Blues. He owned the minor league baseball team in Vancouver,
and most notably the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football
League until he sold them to Wayne Gretzky and Gretzky's boss,
(22:18):
the owner of the La Kings, Bruce McNall, and the
late John candy, and Harry was one of those guys
who knew everything going on with everyone in one sport.
And Harry was a fan of my sports guests, so
he would call me at KCBS in Los Angeles and
later at ESPN, and he would say, I am once
(22:40):
again your source, Keith, for a story about Bruce McNall,
you always misspronounced McNall McNall. But I will only give
you this story if you can tell me. And then
he'd asked me a baseball trivia question, Keith, who was
Carden gillen Water. This is pre internet. No chance I
(23:00):
could look cardon gillan Water up in a book and
have Harry not hear me doing so over the phone,
So I would have to give him my best answer.
And usually I got these right, cardon Gillenwater, and it
stuck in my head from somewhere who knows when was
an obscure outfielder from the nineteen forties Boston Braves mostly,
(23:21):
And one day April twentieth, nineteen ninety one, in fact,
when I got the trivier answer right, Harry said, would
you happen to be going to the Los Angeles King's
playoff game? Tonight, and I said, a matter of fact,
I was, And Harry said, excellent, my friend. If you
watch mister McNall's private box, you will see he will
have a visitor. I'm mister Rahib rocket Ismail from Notre
(23:46):
Dame University. He went on to say, mister mcnalls just
signed mister Ismail to a contract with the Toronto Argonauts,
formerly owned by your source. And he said, I'm led
to believe it is for four years and twenty six
million dollars. I am also led to believe a little
over half of it is guaranteed. I'm led to believe
mister mcnal will be announcing it tomorrow, just before the
(24:09):
National Football League conducts its college draft. He's really going
to piss them all off, isn't he. It would make
Cardon gillen Water shamed. Also, he would remind me, mister
McNall has yet to pay me what he owes me
for when I sold him the Toronto Argonauts. Rocket Ismail
(24:30):
was not the best player available in the nineteen ninety
one National Football League Draft, which was to start the
next morning, bright end early in New York, but he
was the most exciting, A dynamic receiver and kick returner
from Notre Dame, and while it was not certain that
he would be chosen first overall by the Dallas Cowboys,
it was likely surely possible, and instead he had signed
(24:52):
with Toronto of the Canadian League. It seemed very, very unlikely,
and on the other hand, Harry Ornest had never been
wrong once with one of these story tips. So my producer,
Ron Grownick, and I went to the Los Angeles Forum
we were going anyway as fans to the hockey playoff game,
and he asked our assignment desk at KCBS to send
(25:15):
us a camera crew because we were going to at
least get video of rocket Ismail at the forum or
leaving the forum or something. It was some kind of story.
And sure enough, from our seats we could easily see
into Bruce McNall's private box, and there, without a doubt,
totally unrecognized by any of the LA Hockey fans, was
(25:35):
this Notre Dame football player rocket Ismail. He and McNall
and the other executives seemed to be having a great time,
and there was a lot of backslapping and beer drinking
and whatnot. And I said to Ron, good God, We're
going to break a huge story here, but they won't
let us bring the cameraman in here to shoot video
of Ismail and McNall's box. We're gonna have to stake
(25:55):
him out. We're gonna have to get him after the
game ends, out in the parking lot somewhere. Ron smiled knowingly.
Ron had once been an usher at the Great Western Forum,
And I said, you know, I know all the secret
ways out of here, he said to me, And I
know all the limo drivers, And the limo drivers never
(26:17):
changed last time I was here. I said, hi to
half a dozen of them, let me go find out
which one is waiting for them. Within fifteen minutes, Ron
was back, Got it? You used to say that a lot.
He found a limo driver who was sent to take
rocket smail back to the hotel, and he found out
which side door out of about a thousand of them
in this old arena, the driver had been told to
(26:39):
wait next to. I would have been back sooner, Ron said,
but he wanted to show me pictures of his new baby.
So now we used my cell phone. Not a lot
of cell phones in use in nineteen ninety one, not
even in La to check on the camera crew, and
we were told the cameraman would meet us in the
parking lot at such and such an hour, and we
told the assignment desk to have him park near this
(27:00):
one side exit that we'd been told Smail was going
to use when the game was over. And then we waited,
and with the King's losing three to two to Edmonton
early in the third period, just as we were planning
to go out and meet up with the camera guy,
the King's tied the game up. And that's screwed up everything,
because now the game might go into overtime and end suddenly,
(27:21):
and it might end in five minutes, and it might
end in five hours, and we might get caught in
the crowd exiting the arena, and we might miss rocket Ismail,
or he might leave early, or who knows. And then
as the overtime period began, I looked up at Bruce
McNall's private box for like the three hundredth time that night,
and I saw it. I saw rocket Ismail yawning. Let's
(27:44):
get out of here, I said to Ron. We left,
We rendezvoused with the cameraman, and we rehearsed what we
planned to do pure obnoxious TV ambushing. We would hide
across the street from the side exit. The windows around
the door of that side exit would give us enough
time to see him coming, and as soon as the
(28:05):
door opened, I would step forward towards him. The cameraman
would turn on his light and press play and record
on his video deck, and I would essentially block rocket
Ismail if I could, from getting into his limo, and
I'd just start firing questions at him. The cameraman should
never stop rolling, keep rolling, I said, who knows what
we'll get and how well it all worked. Within minutes
(28:29):
of the start of the second overtime period, we saw
Smail and a Los Angeles King's executive named Roy Malauker
bound up the steps toward the side exit onto the street,
and I waited until they were obscured behind the door.
I shouted to the cameraman roll. The cameraman threw on
his light. We took a few steps from the parking
lot across the street onto the sidewalk. Rocket Keith Alderman
(28:53):
from Channel two Action News, have you signed with the
Toronto Argonauts? He said nothing, but he looked like I
had just stolen his wallet. We understand you're getting twenty
six million for four years, about a half of it aranteed?
Is that correct? He now looked like he was an
escaping prisoner who had just been identified Rocket. Why did
you sign with the CFL before the NFL Draft? Again,
(29:16):
he said nothing. He did not need to. The look
on his face confirmed everything I was asking him, Rocket,
Did you not want to play for the Dallas Cowboys?
Still silence. It suddenly dawned on me that this guy
might have finished second in the voting for college football's
Player of the Year award in the Heisman Trophy, but
he was having a lot of trouble getting around me
(29:38):
and my thirty two year old, unathletic, six foot three
and a half blubbery frame. Did Bruce mcdall give you
a part of the franchise? Rocket? At which point I
was finally gently and easily moved aside by somebody with
him Rocket. Ismail slipped into the limo, where pound my cameraman,
showing great perspicacity, dropped to his knees and pointed the camera.
(30:00):
Inside the limo, we could see Ismail thoroughly shaken getting
next to the King's executive Roy Malicker. I shouted in
one last perfect question to malicker Roy, is that a
rocket in your pocket? Are you just glad to see us?
At which point, as if on cue, the limo door
slammed and the driver pealed out of there with a
(30:21):
huge screeching sound. The cameraman now turned off his life
I light and my producer Ron and I started jumping
up and down in the parking lot. We had not
only gotten a terrific scoop and the video would be
on every CBS station in the country within hours, but
we had done it with an interview in which the
interviewee did not say a word, yet still gave away
(30:44):
the whole story just with facial expressions and body language.
Ron and I repeated these elements to each other and
high fived and celebrated until the cameraman suddenly said, hold on,
I may have forgotten to roll tape. I looked at
him and smiling. I said that it was fun to
play with us like that, but he just shortened our
lives by a year, and I didn't say play. I'm sorry, man,
(31:09):
I'm not joking. Yeah, I forgot to roll. I'm sorry, man,
too bad. You ask great questions. Rocket in your pocket
and looks on his face, damn sorry, Ron and I
made him double check and triple check and quadruple check,
(31:30):
and when there was no more doubt he had never
hit play and record. We stood forlorn, like a couple
of guys who had just seen the winning lottery ticket
blown out of their hands into the sewer or something.
The cameraman packed up and left, and as Ron and
I stood there silently, I wondered how it could possibly
(31:51):
get worse, which is when it started to rain. My
great scoop the interview in which the interview he said
nothing that through the National Football League draft into utter
chaos was now worthless. Bruce McNall, of course, would announce
the signing of rocket Ismail by his Toronto Argonauts. I
(32:14):
would be able to phone into the CBS Sports office
in New York and give them a warning about the signing.
Their overnight guy said thanks and hung up on me,
and I would phone into our all news radio station
KNX and I would do a live report from the
parking lot outside the LA Forum about rocket Ismail at
(32:36):
twelve fifteen on Sunday morning, as if anybody was listening,
and as if anybody who was listening could have possibly
cared about Canadian football. For weeks thereafter, Ron Grellnick and
I would be in conversation about something else when one
of us would pause and say, can you believe you
(32:58):
forgot to roll? The frequency of this dropped with time
to once a month, then once a year. At last,
saw Ron in twenty twenty one. He and I told
his wife the story, after which involuntarily the way a
casualty of a long forgotten battle will describe the shock
(33:19):
of his injury half a century earlier, Ron said, can
you believe you forgot to roll? And I know, I
know in my heart that whether I live another week
or another forty years, one of the last things I
will say to myself on this earth will take me
back to that damp Saturday night in nineteen ninety one
when I am bushed rocket ismail, but my cameraman ambushed me.
(33:45):
Can you believe he forgot to roll? Still a head
on Countdown Fridays with thurber and a double header two
(34:09):
of the great sagas of man versus life man versus
transportation in the fable of the Mouse who went to
the Country, and man versus clutter and the attempt to
cover it up nine needles. First, in each edition of Countdown,
we feature a dog in need. You can help. Every
dog has its day. Archie in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. How
(34:33):
do you shoot a dog? How do you shoot a
dog in the leg? How do you shoot a puppy
in the leg? Saving Saint Louis Pets has the details
of this little guy with the sad eyes. They pulled
him out of a rural animal control pound in Missouri
where he was suffering and beginning to get septic. They
think they can save the leg, but it's not certain.
(34:53):
It will take a little money, not all that much.
What they need is your donation. Look for Archie at
Cuddley dot com or look for Archie in my Twitter feeds,
and your retweets can help him as well. I thank you,
and Archie thanks you. She's a number one story on
(35:26):
the Countdown and it's Fridays with Thurber and a lot
of his work details the fundamental clash between people, husband
and wife, he and various relatives, a guy in a
bed and a seal, two animals representing any two humans
in conflict. But some of the most magical writing is
the stuff that is just about one person alone against life.
(35:51):
One of his stories ends with a great grandmother struggling
with a butter churn and screaming into the void, why
doesn't somebody take this goddamn thing away from me? A
line which I think could be the start of a
national anthem where such a story is Nine Needles. This
week's selection, as you will see, it is a little
short for our usual time frames here, so I'll give
(36:13):
you a bonus another man versus life story afterwards, in
the form of one of Thurber's fables for our time,
the mouse who went to the country. But first, it's
unlikely this event has ever happened to you, but the
anxiety that should be immediately familiar. Nine Needles by James Thurber.
(36:36):
One of the more spectacular minor happenings of the past
few years, which I am sorry that I missed, took
place in the Columbus, Ohio home of some friends of
a friend of mine. It seems that a mister Albatross,
while looking for something in his medicine cabinet one morning,
discovered a bottle of a kind of patent medicine which
his wife had been taking for a stomach element. Now,
(36:58):
mister Albatross is one of those apprehensive men who are
afraid of patent medicines and of almost everything else. Some
weeks before he had encountered a paragraph in a consumer's
research bulletin which announced that this particular medicine was bad
for you. He had thereupon ordered his wife to throw
out what was left of her supply of the stuff
(37:19):
and never buy anymore, she had promised. And here now
was another bottle of the perilous liquid. Mister Albatross, A
man given to quick rages, shouted the conclusion of the
story at my friend. I threw the bottle out the
bathroom window, and the medicine chest after it. It seems
(37:41):
to me that must have been a spectacle worth going
a long way to see. I am sure that many
a husband has wanted to wrench the family medicine cabinet
off the wall and throw it out the window, if
only because the average medicine cabinet is so filled with
mysterious bottles and unidentifiable objects of all kinds that it
(38:02):
is a source of constant b alderment and exasperation to
the American male. Surely, the British medicine cabinet and the
French medicine cabinet. All the other medicine cabinets must be
simpler and better ordered than ours. It may be that
the American habit of saving everything and never throwing anything away,
(38:23):
even empty bottles, causes the domestic medicine cabinet to become
as cluttered in its small way as the American attic
becomes cluttered in its major way. I have encountered few
medicine cabinets in this country which were not packed jammed
with something between a hundred and fifty and two hundred
different items, from dental floss to boracic acid, from razor
(38:47):
blades to sodium perborate, from adhesive tape to coconut oil.
Even the neatest wife will put off clearing out the
medicine cabinet on the ground that she has something else
to do that is more important at that moment, or
more diverting. It was in the arment of such a
wife and her husband that I became enormously involved with
(39:08):
a medicine cabinet. One morning, not long ago, I had
spent the weekend with this couple. They live on East
tenth Street near Fifth Avenue. Such a weekend as left
me reluctant to rise up on Monday morning with bright
and shining face and go to work. They got up
and went to work, but I didn't. I didn't get
(39:31):
up until about two to thirty in the afternoon. I
had my face all lathered for shaving, and the washbowl
was full of hot water, when suddenly I cut myself
with the razor. I cut my ear. Very few men
cut their ears with razors, but I do, possibly because
I was taught the old Spencerian free risk movements by
(39:51):
my writing teacher in the grammar grades. The ear bleeds
rather profusely when cut with a razor, and is difficult
to get at. More angry than hurt, I jerked open
the door of the medicine cabinet to see I could
find a stiptic pencil, and outfell from the top shelf
a little black paper packet containing nine needles. It seems
(40:15):
that his wife kept a little paper packet containing nine
needles on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. The
packet fell into the soapy water of the washbowl, where
the paper rapidly disintegrated, leaving nine needles at large in
the bowl. I was, naturally enough, not in the best condition,
either physical or mental to recover nine needles from a washbowl.
(40:40):
No gentleman who has lather on his face and whose
ear is bleeding is in the best condition for anything,
even something involving the handling of nine large blunt objects.
It did not seem wise to me to pull the
plug out of the washbowl and let the needles go
down the drain. I had visions of clogging up the
plumbing system of the house, and also a vague fear
(41:02):
of causing short circuits somehow or other. I know very
little about electricity, and I don't want to have it
explained to me. Finally, I groped very gently around the bowl,
and eventually had four of the needles in the palm
of one hand and three in the palm of the other.
Two I couldn't find. If I had thought quickly and clearly,
(41:26):
I wouldn't have done that. A lathered man whose ear
is bleeding and who has four wet needles in one
hand and three in the other may be said to
have reached the lowest known point of human efficiency. There
is nothing he can do but stand there. I tried
transferring the needles in my left hand to the palm
of my right hand, but I couldn't get them off
(41:48):
my left hand. Wet needles cling to you. In the end,
I wiped the needles off onto a bath towel which
was hanging on a rod above the bath tub. It
was the only towel that I could find. I had
to dry my hands afterward on the bath matt Then
I tried to find the needles in the towel. Hunting
(42:10):
for seven needles in a bath towel is the most
tedious occupation I have ever engaged in. I could find
only five of them with the two that had been
left in the bowl. That meant there were four needles
in all, missing, two in the washbowl and two others
lurking in the towel or lying in the bathtub under
the towel. Frightful thoughts came to me of what might
(42:33):
happen to anyone who used that towel or washed his
face in the bowl, or got into the tub if
I didn't find the missing needles. Well, I didn't find them.
I sat down on the edge of the tub to think,
and I decided finally that the only thing to do
was to wrap up the towel in a newspaper and
take it away with me. I also decided to leave
(42:55):
a note for my friends, explaining as clearly as I
could that I was afraid there were two needles in
the bathtub and two needles in the washbowl, and that
they be careful. I looked everywhere in the apartment, but
I could not find a pencil or a pen or
a typewriter. I could find pieces of paper, but nothing
(43:15):
with which to write on them. I don't know what
gave me the idea. A movie I had seen, perhaps,
or a story I had read, but I suddenly thought
of writing a message with lipstick. The wife might have
an extra lipstick lying around, and if so, I concluded
it would be in the medicine cabinet. I went back
(43:36):
to the medicine cabinet began poking around in it for
a lipstick. I saw what I thought looked like the
metal tip of one, and I got two fingers around
it began to pull gently. It was under a lot
of things. Every object in the medicine cabinet began to slide.
Bottles broke in the washbowl and on the floor, red
brown and white liquids, spurted nail files, scissors, razor blades
(44:00):
and miscellaneous objects sang and clattered and tinkled. I was
covered with perfume, peroxide, and called cream. It took me
half an hour to get all the debris all together
in the middle of the bathroom floor. I made no
attempt to put anything back in the medicine cabinet. I
(44:23):
knew it would take a steadier hand than mine and
a less shattered spirit. Before I went away, only partly
shaved and abandoned the shambles. I left a note saying
that I was afraid there were needles in the bathtub
and the washbowl, and that I had taken their towel,
and that I would call up and tell them everything.
I wrote it in I had dined with the end
(44:43):
of a toothbrush. I have not yet called up. I
am sorry to say I have neither found the courage
nor thought up the words to explain what happened. I
suppose my friends believe that I deliberately smashed up their
bathroom and stole their towel. I don't know for sure,
because they have yet called me up. Either. Nine Needles
(45:09):
by James Thurber, and as I suggested in a broad
sense on the same subject, from his Fables for Our
Time and famous poems illustrated The Mouse who Went to
the Country by James Thurber. Once upon a Sunday there
(45:32):
was a city mouse who went to visit a country mouse.
He hit away on a train the country mouse had
told him to take, only to find that on Sundays
it did not stop at Beddington. Hence the city mouse
could not get off at Beddington and catch a bus
for Cybert's Junction, where he was to be met by
the country mouse. The city mouse, in fact, was carried
(45:52):
on to Middleburgh, where he waited three hours for a
train to take him back. When he got back to Beddington,
he found out that the last bus for Siebert's Junction
had just left, so he ran, and he ran, and
he ran, and he finally caught the bus and crept aboard,
only to find that it was not the bus for
Seabirds Junction at all, but was going in the opposite
direction through Pell's Hollow and Grum to a place called Wimberbee.
(46:18):
When the bus finally stopped, the city mouse got out
into a heavy rain and found that there were no
more buses that night going anywhere. To the hell with
it said the city mouse, and he walked back to
the city moral stay where you are, you're sitting pretty.
The Mouse who Went to the Country by James Thurber.
(46:54):
I've done all the damage I can do here, much
of it to myself. Thank you for listening. Here are
the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced, and
performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel. You're Wire
the count musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John
Philip Channel. Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray. Produced
by t Ko Brothers. Our Beethoven. Selections have been arranged
(47:14):
and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music is
the Alderman theme from ESPN Too. It was written by
Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments from
Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer
today was my friend Kenny Maine, and everything else is
pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this, the
eight hundred and first day since Donald Trump's first attempted
(47:36):
coup against the democratically elected government at the United States.
Arrest him now while we still can. The next scheduled
countdown is Monday, hoping for a full new episode after
this non COVID bug. Thank you for bearing with me today.
This is about the best I can do under the
circumstances till Monday, I hope. I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning,
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alerman
(48:16):
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
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