October 7, 2024 • 47 mins
SERIES 3 EPISODE 43: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: It is time to cancel or suspend all of Elon Musk’s government contracts and subsidies. SpaceX, NASA, StarLink, Teslas, all of it. Musk and Trump are interfering in FEMA recovery efforts post-Hurricane Helene by spreading life-threatening disinformation, and are coordinating a political campaign with Trump which at its heart Trump advocates for the overthrow of the duly-elected government of the United States of America – by violence if necessary. And if all of that is insufficient to re-investigate and/or change his immigration status here in order to deport him back to South Africa or Canada, if it is insufficient to take ALL of his money from him, it is NOT insufficient to tie him up in court cases for the rest of his life.
He's also immorally transforming the Twitter-X platform he owns into a massive donation-in-kind to Trump’s campaign of lies, antisemitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, hatred, and fascism. A donation-in-kind which the government should value at 44 billion, not the current number Musk has driven it down to which I haven’t actually checked lately but is probably down to about 50, 60 bucks. Oh and President Biden? The Starlink equipment and the network behind it and the rockets and the satellite access and the actual platform hosting X or what’s left of it? Seize it. If he wants it back, let him go to court. If he tries to shut it off, arrest him for tampering with evidence in a criminal case. Remember: Presidential immuuuuuuuuuuuunity! By the way his buddy Trump? Trump doesn’t know what Starlink is.
TRUMP IS SO GONE EVEN THE NEW YORK TIMES NOTICED: "Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age." They gingerly refer to computer analyses and the uncertainties of others, but given the number of other news outlets that think the Times is infallible, this could open a floodgate of coverage.
NOT THAT EVERYBODY GETS IT: Andrea Mitchell stopped herself midway through finishing the word "miscegenation" while whining about Vice President Harris not doing enough interviews. Politico thinks 60 Minutes, an Univision Town Hall, Howard Stern, and especially the "Call Her Daddy" podcast aren't real interviews. It also implied Harris shouldn't be appearing on a podcast that has included sexual content. That's pretty funny given that the editor of Politico Playbook - once fired by The New Yorker over sexual misconduct, is now on leave, accused of trying to blackmail his fiancee into more sex and when she refused, hacking her phone and leaking her sex life. So Politico, does "Call Her Daddy" have too MUCH sex, or just not as much as "Politico Playbook"?
B-Block (26:16) SPECIAL COMMENT NUMBER 2: Did "working the refs" work with The New York Times? Did all our complaining finally pierce the walls of the paper? Let me tell you a story from my past in which years of complaining to the Los Angeles Times not only got my complaint listened to, but corrected - and with the admission that the editor in charge never read anything written by the guy I was complaining about.
C-Block (43:40) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.
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 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. It
is now time to cancel or suspend all of Elon
(00:25):
Musk's government contracts and subsidies, SpaceX, NASA, Starlink, Tesla's, all
of it. It was already fifteen billion dollars by just
April of last year. The number's not gone down since then.
The Department of Justice must also initiate efforts to get
that money back, because Musk is coordinating with Trump to
(00:47):
interfere in FEMA recovery efforts post Hurricane Helene by spreading
life threatening disinformation, and he's also coordinating a political campaign
with Trump which at its heart has Trump advocating for
the overthrow of the duly elected government of the United
States of America by violence if necessary. And if all
(01:07):
of that is somehow insufficient to reinvestigate and or change
Musk's immigration status here in order to deport him back
to South Africa or Canada or whereever, if that is
insufficient to take all of his money from him through
the courts, it certainly is not insufficient to tie him
up in court cases for the rest of his goddamned life.
(01:32):
After Musk's mincing defeat performance on stage, leaping and bouncing
behind Trump at Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday. I don't know
about you, but I have had enough of this idiot,
and more importantly, I have had enough of us underwriting
this idiot as he immorally transforms the Twitter X platform
(01:53):
he owns into a massive donation in kind to Trump's
campaign of lies, anti Semitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, Nazism, trid fascism,
and worst of all, stupidity. A donation in kind, by
the way, which the government must value at forty four
(02:14):
billion dollars, not the current number Musk has driven it
down to, which I haven't actually checked today, but it's
probably around fifty sixty bucks. Oh, and President Biden. The
starlink equipment and the network behind it, and the rockets
and the satellite access and the actual platform hosting X
(02:35):
or what's left of it. Seize it if Musk wants
it back, Let him go to court if he tries
to shut it off. Arrest him for tampering with evidence
in a criminal case. Remember per residential immunity. By the way,
Musk's new good buddy Trump, Trump doesn't know what the
hell starlink is.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
They said, could you do us a favor? Could you
help us? We're trying to get starlink and it's very
hard to get. Most people say you can't even get it.
Called up. Elana said, North Carolina's in big trouble. George's
in big trouble. They need communication. They have none because
their poles have been knocked down and their wires are
underwater and even dangerous, dangerously underwater. But they have no communication. Elon,
(03:19):
could you do something about starlink? Whatever the hell that is, Elond,
whatever starlink, That's all they want to hear is starlink.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Incidentally, numerous right wing social media accounts posted that photo
of Musk leaping like all the ketamin had kecked in
all at once, behind a clearly annoyed Trump. You know
that photo with musks belly flopping out, Lauded by the
far right, This wrote, the infamous hate manger behind Libs
(03:48):
of TikTok is going to go down in history is
one of the most consequential images of the twenty twenty
four election. You bet your ass, as the cliche goes,
I'm old enough to remember when Libs of TikTok stcastically
directed terroristic threats at men with bare middrifts and other
men wearing makeup who were on stage prancing together in
(04:10):
front of an audience. Oh and while we're at this,
charge Musk's mother too, for conspiracy to commit election fraud.
She retweeted her sons post about voting and added quote,
the Democrats have given us another option. You don't have
to register to vote an election day. Have ten fake names,
(04:32):
go to ten polling booths and vote ten times. That's
one hundred votes and it's not illegal. Maybe we should
work the system too well. First of all, madam, congratulations
on the math. You are correct. Ten fake names, ten
polling booths, ten times. By the way, shut up, you've
(04:52):
done enough to destroy the planet. Madam. You birth this
Jack and Apes. I mean, it sounds comical at first,
except it's true. All the James Bond and other spy
movies of the sixties and seventies begin with a psychopathic
billionaire who owns space rockets and communications systems. We used
to have places where people like Trump and his family
(05:14):
and Musk and his mother used to be able to
get the care that could benefit, even save anybody in
their condition. Now, instead we let them run for president.
By the way, if you don't think part of Musk
prostituting himself for Trump is some thought in that brain
of his fightings for space in there with all the hallucinogens,
(05:39):
that Trump will make it possible for naturalized American citizens
who were not born here to serve as president, even
though the Constitution says otherwise. You know it's in there.
Musk thinks Musk can succeed Trump, as they used to say,
(05:59):
depend upon it, sir quotes. Trump's speeches, increasingly angry and rambling,
(06:29):
reignite the question of age. With the passage of time,
the seventy eight year old former president's speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier,
less focused, more profane, and increasingly fixated on the past,
according to a review of his public appearances over the years. Yes,
(06:52):
that actually was in the New York Times, not the
Not the New York Times, not the Onion. This justin
Trump is rambling, breaking news from Peter Baker hot off
the presses. If you consider leading The Times first serious
story about Trump's dementia with an anecdote that is now
(07:12):
twenty eight days old, hot off the Presses, former President
Donald J. Trump vividly recounted how the audience had his
climactic debate with Vice President Kamala Harris was on his side,
except that there was no audience. The debate was held
in an empty hall. No one quote went crazy, as
mister Trump put it, because no one was there, even
(07:38):
to be generous. Trump's hallucination about there having been an
audience at that debate was from September eighteenth. The debate
itself was September tenth. These days, that is approximately nine
thousand election news cycles ago, and the Times piece, while
to be welcomed as a sign that the Times knows
it has fed up, knows it has damaged itself, knows
(08:00):
that it has showed both its ass and its arrogance,
knows that it's now October peace, only borders on the
reality of the Trump cognitive crisis for three paragraphs before
passing the buck quote. According to a computer analysis by
The New York Times, mister Trump's rally speeches now last
(08:23):
in average eighty two minutes compared to forty five minutes
in twenty sixteen. Proportionately, he uses thirteen percent more all
or nothing terms like always and never than he did
eight years ago, which some experts consider a sign of
advancing age. Oh my god, computer analysis. We're not saying this.
(08:46):
The computer is saying this quote. It was hardly the
only time mister Trump has seemed confused, forgetful, incoherent, or
disconnected from reality lately. In fact, it happens so often
these days that it no longer even generates much attention.
(09:07):
As the great journalist and historian Rick Pearlstein wrote, one
of the most abiding failures of agenda setting elite political
journalism is its denial of its own agency. Trump's manner
of speaking quote no longer generates much attention, as if
Trump himself generates what the Times decides to attend to.
Not the Times, Yes, sir, it's Trump no longer generating attention,
(09:37):
the way Hurricane Helene is no longer generating catastrophic wins.
Way down in paragraph seventeen, we finally get some human
assessment again, not by the Times. Oh, we're just reporting
with the help of computers. It's not us, it's not
Peter Baker. It's not anybody who could sue, it's not
(09:57):
anybody who could imprison. It's it's others. Quote how much
his rambling discourse, what some experts called tangentiality, can be
attributed to age. As the subject of some debate, mister
Trump has always had a distinctive speaking style, la la
(10:18):
la la la, that entertained and captivated supporters, even as
critics called him detached from reality. Indeed, questions have been
raised about mister Trump's mental fitness for years. John F. Kelly,
his second White House chief of staff, was so convinced
that mister Trump was psychologically unbalanced that he bought a
book called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, written by
(10:39):
twenty seven mental health professionals, to try to understand his
boss better. As it was, mister Kelly came to refer
to mister Trump's White House as quote crazy town unquote. That,
of course, is still no reason for us at the
Times to acknowledge that Trump is crazy or brain damaged,
(11:01):
or a madman or criminally effing insane. And it is
certainly not sufficient for us at the holy goddamn New
York Times to utilize four letter words with which to
describe his falsehoods and other inaccuracies, four letter words like lies. Okay,
(11:26):
I could literally go on for the length of the article,
but I think you get my point. Only The Times
could write a piece about Trump's mental self disqualification from
the presidency while managing to steal both sides the damn thing,
albeit with one of the sides being crazy and the
other side being senile. Maybe that's what took them so
(11:49):
long to write it. The point is they wrote it,
and it reflects two things. So many people inside this
country's newsrooms and outside this country's borders take their journalistic
cues from The New York Times and have taken and
then for so long that they don't even know anymore
that their response to The Times is virtually Pavlovian. That
(12:11):
article is likely to produce commentaries and pieces and just
openness to finally addressing this issue with results that will
settle everywhere from A to Z along the spectrum of
the Emperor has no brain. It's terrible The Times has
that influence, especially when they have used it so badly
(12:31):
for so long. But somebody at the BBC right now
is preparing his or her own version of that New
York Times piece. Same at the Times of India and
the Himalayan Times in Nepal. The second important part here
is that working the refs works. It works, It works,
(12:57):
it works. I mean, maybe if we keep kicking the
editor in the ass publicly, the New York Time will
correct his last mistake and put out a ten day
long page one upper left hand corners series analyzing Jack
Smith's evidence against Trump in a real sort of play
by play. This is what Jack Smith thinks happened on
(13:20):
January sixth, than the weeks before, analyzing the evidence that
was released last week. Something they could run every day
between now and the election. You know why Hillary's emails
because working the refs works a lot more on working
the refs in my own experience with it in a moment.
(13:40):
But first, happily, there remains countless numbers of media folks
here who still don't or won't get it. CBS Evening
News Saturday anchor Jureka Duncan throws to reporter Caitlin Huey
Burns in Butler, Pennsylvania for Trump's latest hateful fascist rally.
(14:02):
The one musk was at watch me bothes and the
last words of the anchor's introduction, the last words, Draka
Duncan says, our quote Trump began with a unifying message.
Unquote yeah, unifying you will bow down before me that
(14:24):
kind of unifying. Of course, our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying
media managed to both sides it again, it's not just
about miscovering Trump. Kamala Harris's interview schedule this week so
far sixty minutes last night, Howard Stern Tuesday, The View Tuesday,
Colbert Tuesday, Une Vision town Hall Thursday. The reaction from
(14:48):
Andrew Mitchell about this scheduling and about the Harris campaign
when she was on Meet the Press yesterday, I think
they've got to double down on more interviews and serious
interviews by serious Andrew means Harris should do an interview
with her on her little MSNBC. I'm just going to
stay here till they finally fire me show, or Andrea
(15:10):
is going to continue to go on NBC and whine
what I'm hearing from Democratic and Republican business people. She
means her husband, Alan Greenspan and a lot of men.
There's an undercount of the Trump vote. I think there
was missagenation. Missagenation. Yes, she said missagenation. She got about
to the she got to the missage it and then
(15:34):
she realized what she was saying, missgenette. Missagenation is race mixing.
Good point about Kamala Harris Andrea missagenation. Well done, Mitchell
hurriedly switched to quote misognation. Uh, in all of this,
there is no such word as misogenation. Did you mean
something about misogyny, Andrea? And then then you followed it
(15:57):
up with quote black and white men? Big problem? But
also the business world they don't think she's serious. They
don't think she's heavyweight. And I tell you what, I
don't think Andrew Mitchell slipped when she at first said missagenation.
She should be fired. Then there's Politico. Excuse me I
(16:18):
forgot to recognize its German ownership here dos Politico? Don't
call it a media blitz. After avoiding the media for
nigh on her whole campaign, VP, Kamala Harris is still
largely avoiding the media. Let's be real here. Most of
these are not the types of interviews that are going
to press her on issues she may not want to
(16:40):
talk about, even as voters want more specifics from Harris. Instead,
expect most of these sit downs to be a continuation
of the vibes campaign Harris has perfected. We're not saying
there's no value in these sixty minutes and the Univision
town Hall are sure to be substantive. Each of these
shows has millions of viewers or listeners, especially women and
(17:02):
young voters, key constituencies for Harris. Let me translate this,
Politico believes it's more substantive than sixty minutes and Univision
town Hall and also what else the view and my
old friend Howard and what else everything else in the world.
(17:25):
Politico is more important, and Politico will continue to accuse
Harris of avoiding interviews until she does an interview with
the news outlet that Politico considers the gold standard, namely
Politico Dos Politico mine Politico Happily Politico followed this childish
(17:50):
seven year old's diatribe with one of the greatest self
owns of the century. But forgive me, I'm going to
tease that in hopes that you will take the next
two and a half minutes to listen to the appearance
just a small part of it on a podcast by
Kamala Harris that Politico mocked and Politico self owned by
mocking it. The podcast is called call Her Daddy. It
(18:14):
is a giant in the field. Politico insulted, it insulted
its host Alex Cooper. The interview was forty five minutes
of actual questions, not attempts to play gotcha or grab
a headline that reads Harris tells Politico exclusively listen for
the substance, stay for the Politico face plant.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
I do want to clarify something in the debate, Former
President Trump claimed that some states are executing babies after birth.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Can you just clarify that is not happening anywhere in
the United States. It is not happening, And it's a lie.
Just it's a bold faced lie that he is suggesting that.
Can you imagine Can you imagine he is suggesting that
women in their ninth month of pregnancy are electing to
(19:15):
have an abortion? Are you kidding? That is so outrageously inaccurate,
And it's so insulting to suggest that that would be
happening and that women would be doing that. It's not
happening anywhere. This guy is full of lies. I mean,
(19:37):
I just have to be very candid with you. You know,
so in my career, from the time I got out
of law school through most of my career as a prosecutor,
I understood that the words that I spoke and what
I did with those words would be the difference between
whether somebody was charged with a crime or went to prison,
(19:59):
maybe prison for life. When I was Attorney General, I
was the top law enforcement officer of the biggest state
in this country. And I was acutely aware that the
words I spoke could be the difference between whether a
corporation was in business or out of business, that the
(20:20):
words I spoke could move markets. The idea that someone
is not only so careless and irresponsible and reckless, but
out and out lies to create fear and division in
our country and thinks he should be president of the
(20:43):
United States, standing behind the seal of the President of
the United States, using the microphone that comes with that,
and using that voice and those words in such an
irresponsible and that's mild way. And this is why this
(21:05):
selection matters.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I mean, that's the whole election in two and a
half minutes. The other forty two and a half minutes
are nearly as good. Wherever you podcast, Call Her Daddy,
This is what Politico wrote about Kamala Harris going on
the Call Her Daddy podcast. Quote. Recent episodes of Call
(21:29):
Her Daddy, just for a touch point were titled is
he the One? And blowjobs, hall passes, and frat daddies unquote.
So it's inappropriate or somehow a touch point that Call
Her Daddy has had sexual content lately, Politico. One quick question, Politico,
(21:54):
who is that political writer and editor and where did
he work again? Who was just accused by his ex
fiance of hacking her phone and leaking details of her
sex life to other news outlets and trying to blackmail
her into more sex and not leaving their relationship. Oh right,
(22:19):
that was Ryan Lizza who was accused of that of Politico,
editor of Politico Playbook, And you haven't fired him despite
his record of having been fired by The New Yorker
for something sexual. So Politico, one more question the Call
Her Daddy podcast you don't like Vice President Harris doing?
(22:42):
Is the problem that it has too much sex or
that it has not as much sex as Politico Playbook does.
Also of interest here back to working the refs and
the startling truth lurking inside the disasters inside even the
(23:04):
biggest newspapers like the New York Times. I can tell
you from personal experience that sometimes it turns out the
editors of the biggest newspapers in the world do not
actually read what is in their own newspapers. That's next.
This is countdown. So, as I mentioned earlier, a little
(23:32):
bit more on working the refs and the New York
Times piece yesterday in which this just in. Trump apparently
hasn't been making a lot of sense recently in his speeches.
I know, one can envision a conversation somewhere where they
decide whether or not to devote reporters and resources and graphics,
(23:54):
especially graphics. The New York Times is enamored of graphics,
as if they were just invented, where they decide whether
or not to do this finally, and whether or not
perhaps some of the criticism that they might hear just
in the distance, coming in faintly from outside in the
real world, might be valid the theory of working the refs. Say,
(24:16):
Buffy was telling me the other night, the Trump hasn't
been sounding good. Is that right? Well, I haven't actually
heard him speak since. Let's see, when was that New
York Post Sports Breakfast nineteen eighty three? He sounded okay,
then that was forty one years ago. How time flies.
(24:38):
That's one theory of what happened at the New York Times.
The other theory is that after months and months and
months and months and months and months and years and
years and years of criticizing the New York Times were
how it handled first Hillary Clinton's emails, the entire issue
of the Trump candidacy in twenty sixteen, the entire Trump presidency,
especially the campaign of twenty twenty, and Joe Biden in
(24:59):
twenty twenty four, in which whatever claims they might have
thought they had proved about Joe Biden's public capacity or
willingness to do an interview, or willingness to put himself
at risk, as there was some kind of decline in
his ability to speak extemporaneously in public. Whatever they thought
they had, they thought they were justified in trying to
(25:22):
bury the President of the United States alive, even if
it meant getting Donald Trump elected again and ending democracy
and by the way, ending the free press and the
New York Times, and one of the things that I
probably alone thought of. No one else would have made
this analogy, because it's an experience from my own life
and nobody else's. There's one person to whom this might
(25:44):
have occurred, a man named Bob Costas, who I have
invoked here before, who I once told to shut the
f up on this very topic. Bob did not end
his friendship with me over that. We had a long
talk about it, and I tried to explain to Bob
why that was the wrong time to do what he
wanted to do, and that later was actually better. And
I think it will prove later was actually better. But
(26:05):
I'm straying off the topic here because the topic is
working the refs when it comes to the newspapers. This
is about working the refs in an entirely different context
and sincerely in an entirely different meaning level. If the
stuff in the New York Times finally getting around to
Trump's mental capacity or incapacity is a one thousand, my
(26:27):
story is a two. However, my story is a first
hand story. I can tell you the whole thing, and
it's a doozy. I got to Los Angeles as a
local TV sportscaster at the age of twenty six on
Labor Day nineteen eighty five. I just happened to hit
(26:47):
the clouds right with my Marjorie Taylor Green and you
know they can control the weather cloud seeding effort. I
in three months became the second or third most popular
sportscaster on television in Los Angeles. Quite a role reversal,
because I literally could not get employment the year before
(27:08):
after a very unfortunate series of experiences in Boston. So
I got the Associated Press Sportscaster of the Year award
for California, and I think also Nevada. So I wasn't
even working in Nevada, and I was the Sportscaster of
the Year in Nevada as well. And I got the
UPI Award for the same thing. And I won a
Golden Mic and all these accolades inside of three months,
(27:29):
and on Christmas Day. Back when LA had two daily metropolitan,
big scale newspapers, the Los Angeles Times and the Los
Angeles Herald Examiner, so big that even in nineteen eighty five,
they each had full time columns devoted just to TV
sports and principally devoted to TV local sports. The two
(27:51):
columnists both wrote their year end stories for nineteen eighty five.
Bob Kaiser in the LA Harex the Herald Examiner wrote
that I was the best sportscaster in town, a breath
of fresh air, and all the other things you would
say about me if you can envision me being twenty
six years old, and my style being almost brand new
and certainly brand new in Los Angeles. Larry Stewart, the
(28:12):
TV sports columnist of the Los Angeles Times, wrote on
the same day that I was the worst sportscaster who
had ever worked in LA And what was worse, somebody
had told me I was funny. These two pieces next
to each other define for me proof that the theory
that you can't be all things to all people at
(28:34):
the same time was wrong. He examiner, best sportscaster we've
ever had, best sportscaster we have right now, LA Times,
worst of all time. Mister Stewart continued on this vein
for quite some time. I don't remember how it was
(28:54):
that I personally ticked him off, but I did. I
may have said something to somebody at the Los Angeles
Times after the sixth or seventh or eighth article that
he wrote in nineteen eighty six, suggesting that I was
going to be fired by Channel five my employers, when
I had a three year contract and Channel five really
could not afford to fire me and pay me at
the same time. They didn't have that kind of money.
(29:16):
I may have complained and said, what are you guys doing?
Then I began to notice that he was saving Larry
Stewart was the worst of his insults towards me for
things like my birthday, major holidays, other stuff like that.
One day I reported that Wayne Gretzky had been traded
(29:37):
to the Los Angeles Kings. His take was that I
had guessed correctly and shouldn't get any credit for breaking
the story. This was the sort of thing I had
put up with through three years. Then I went to KCBS,
another station in Los Angeles, and I can't remember now
(29:57):
in retrospect what it was that finally ticked me off,
except perhaps a rumor that I had that another sportscaster
in Los Angeles was literally bribing Larry Stewart. Never proved it, tried,
didn't succeed. I heard it from more than one person,
then more than one person after I left local news
(30:20):
in Los Angeles at the end of nineteen ninety one.
I have heard it as recently as earlier this year.
I cannot swear that it's true. I mention it only
for the context of whatever it was that drove me
to write a note to Bill Dwyer, the I might say,
nationally respected sports editor of the Los Angeles Times, who
(30:43):
retired from that role several years later and continued to
contribute to The Times through the last decade. I believe
as a infrequent columnist, a good writer, a good man.
I had met him once, very briefly. He said he
was a viewer and in desperation at a time when
one did not take on the press face to face
if you were in radio or TV, because, as the
(31:03):
old saying goes, never pick a fight with a newspaperman.
He has much more ink than you do. And it's
one thing for somebody to be in that context critical
of a newspaperman on television. It's ephemeral. You say it,
and seven seconds later, most of the audience doesn't remember
what you say. If I went on there and said
Larry Stewart of the LA Times sucks, who's going to
(31:24):
remember Larry Stewart's going to remember? The Los Angeles Time's
going to remember. They're going to write an article about
me every week. That way, and that is the way
most of American newspaper dumb, especially on the fringes. I mean,
the TV sports columnist is not one of the top
five hundred employees in a newspaper, not even in those
halcyon days when they had them in almost all major
newspapers in the country. But the grudge will be then permanent.
(31:49):
It's how much punishment are you willing to take. If
it's not that much, you get out of the business.
At least that was the mindset in the nineteen eighties.
So I wrote Dwyer note saying this latest article, which
I believe prophesied that I would be fired when I
was six months into a no cut, three and a
(32:10):
half year contract that owed me something like two million dollars. So,
in other words, if they fired me, the CBS employers
that I was working for then would have had to
pay me two million dollars rather than spend the two
million dollars and have me kill off four minutes a
show on each of their newscasts. CBS then and now
is always going to choose that latter option unless you
(32:32):
are totally out of your mind, and they would be
in first place without you. They will pay you, but
only to keep working. When I finally did leave CBS,
when they finally did not pick up my option, they
gave me three months notice and said, of course, we
want you to continue to stay on here. And do
the newscast every night. Of course they did. They even
(32:52):
sent me to cover the Magic Johnson HIV announcement. They
trusted me with basically a full day live programming because
they were already paying me. In any event, I am
wandering away from this object again. I wrote Bill Dwyer
a note in desperation. It was polite. It was addressed
to mister Dwyer, and it said, look, this has been
going on long enough. He is making things up. To
(33:17):
my surprise, I got a phone call from Bill Dwyer
about a week later saying, hey, I got your note.
I didn't want you to think I'm neglecting it. I
don't think there's anything to it. But I watch you
every night and I have a totally different opinion of
you than Larry Stewart does. And I think I owe you,
as somebody who's been here for a few years now
and has not made a big deal about Larry's comments
(33:39):
about you, I think I owe you a quick review
of what he's doing. So I'm going to go back
and read all of his columns and I don't expect
to find anything. I'm not going to take any action
against him. I just wanted you to know I was
doing it well. Even then, it seemed to me that
this was an okay kind of show of respect. It
(34:01):
was not an admission of anything being wrong. It was
not saying, look we at the Los Angeles Times drop
the ball here, or I as the sports editor of
the Los Angeles Time drop It was just something rather
than ignoring it, rather than saying you're an idiot. Rather
than printing my letter in the paper, which was one
suggestion that somebody made write a letter to the editor.
(34:23):
They we'll print publisher letter to the editor about Larry.
Just what I need. In any event, the phone call ended.
It didn't last very long, and about a week and
a half later the phone rang again and it was
Bill Dwyer and I did not recognize his voice. His
demeanor was utterly different Keith Bill Dwyer from the LA Times.
(34:47):
I finished my review of what Stuart has written of me.
I I'm very sorry. I'd like to take you to
dinner to talk about remedies. Can can you? Would you
be willing to sit down with me? I was so
(35:08):
startled by this, I just said, sure, how about tomorrow night.
I'll come to you. The restaurant across the street from
CBS the Columbia Grill. Sure what time's convenient. I'm thinking, well,
I'm gonna maybe I should play with him and say
eight am. I picked the time after the six o'clock
news was over. I said, seven seven it is. We'll
(35:29):
see you then the reservation will be in my name.
My apologies. The dinner the next night was one of
the rare ones in which I actually had time to
eat and digest my food. Bill Dwyer spent easily forty
five minutes apologizing on behalf of himself and his sports
department and the Los Angeles Times, and after years of
(35:54):
trying to work that ref nicely at a distance, he
said something that I believe is relevant to all those
who ever have a criticism of a new paper, sometimes
believe it or not. The people in charge know only
what the people who work for them say about what
(36:16):
is in the paper. They have not, despite the fact
that you would think this would be the first thing
they would do, read everything in the newspaper. They have not.
Even as Bill Dwyer explained, he did not read everything
that was in the Los Angeles Times between you and me.
Larry doesn't get paid for this. He works in the
(36:37):
makeup department. He helps us lay out the pages of
the sports section. We send them every once in a
while to cover some high school football games, and you know,
we throw them kind of a fee for that, but
his contract is as a layout person. Well, I stifled
my laughter because I wanted to hear where he was
going with this story. The rest of it was the
column that he wrote two or three times a week
(36:58):
about TV sports was basically done for free. I did
not even ask how they got this passed the newspaper man,
but they did somehow. He explained that he thought Larry
Stewart was probably the worst writer who had ever appeared
in the Los Angeles Times, and that they did this
just because for years, the LA Herald Examiner, before it
(37:19):
went out of business in I believe nineteen eighty seven
or eighty eight, had a very good TV sports columnist
named Bob Kaiser, and there was an excellent one at
the LA Daily News named Phil Rosenthal, and they were
ashamed that they didn't have their own TV sports columnist,
and there wasn't enough money in the budget for it.
They rather cover local high school sports, and then they
(37:41):
found this marvelous opportunity, and he said, I'm realizing now
we have gotten what we paid for, and I did.
At this point, having small responsibilities as the sports editor
or sports director of Channel two in Los Angeles, I
needed to talk to an actual sports editor about this.
(38:01):
I said, I don't understand. There are very few ma
your editorial decisions that I input myself into that are
not directly parts of the script right in front of me.
But every once in a while I have to be
involved in somebody else's work on a show I'm not
doing and issue either instructions or assignments or don't cover that,
or make sure you cover this, or emphasize that. I
(38:23):
don't think it happens every month, but maybe every six weeks.
I know you must have this daily. You're the sports editor.
How could you not know what's in the column. I
can't bear to read it. So I'm feeling a little
bit better about myself here. But he said, I read
everything he has written about you in the paper. I
(38:43):
went into our morgue the archives and read. In these
pre internet days, I read everything he wrote about you.
There is the same pattern that you described about him
attacking you on major holidays and your birthday, and always
finding some way to do something negative about you and
to predict he has reported twenty three different times that
you were about to be fired. This is not possible.
(39:06):
How many times were you about to be fired? I
went maybe once? He my God, he said, I made
a terrible mistake. I left that column and a couple
of others in the hands of two deputy sports editors
of the LA Times. Two of them were responsible for
Stuart's content. I have now demoted them both there now
(39:29):
I forget the title, but it was basically assistant copy
editor of the sports section of Los Angeles Times. And
I told Stuart that if he writes anything else about
you ever again, it must go to my desk. In fact,
I want him to come into my office and read
it to me aloud before he publishes. Stewart, of course,
(39:50):
worked around this by never mentioning me again for the
length of my time as a local sportscaster in Los Angeles.
Later on he had no choice but to mention me
because I was at ESPN and then in fact working
in Los ange to us on Fox Sports, and he
managed to find ways long after Bill Dwyer had retired
as sports editor to try to take shots at me.
(40:14):
The punchline to this was one of the many punchlines,
was that Bill Dwyer said that I was not only
totally correct, but that if I had made any mistakes,
it was not telling him sooner that this had happened.
Go to the boss in the situation in which you're
(40:35):
dealing with the newspaper that has decided or part of
it has decided to enact vengeance or bias against someone
or something or somebody particularly connected to us. You're not
in exactly the same business that we are, but we
all cover sports in Los Angeles. You deserve better respect
than that. You should have come to me sooner. The
(40:56):
only time he got anywhere near defensive about what had happened,
and I said, well, I'll remember to do that again.
Although I don't like to work the refs, and he shouted,
work the refs. It works. Two punchlines, I said, there
was just one. There are, in fact three. If the
(41:18):
name Greta Gerwig means anything to you, I believe the
Academy Award winning director of Barbie had an actress also
in her own right. Writer of Barbie and other film works,
Larry Stewart's niece. That was a surprise and the punchline
of all punchlines. I had assumed when I left local
news in Los Angeles at the end of nineteen ninety
(41:39):
one that Larry Stewart had no greater enemy in the
business than myself. Six years later, seven years later, I
guess I went to work at NBC Sports had the
privilege of working on baseball broadcasts with Bob Yucker and
Joe Morgan and Jim Gray and Bob Costas and me.
(41:59):
We were the World Series team in nineteen ninety seven.
Hannah Storm and I did the game show together as well,
and I was in the dugout for the Cleveland Indians
during that World Series. The nineteen ninety eight American League Playoffs,
I was in the dugout for Cleveland throughout that series
with the Yankees and did the pre and postgame shows
then too. As we left Cleveland for Newark, I believe
(42:21):
in the middle of the series, as we were taxing
down the runway, I was seated next to my friend
Bob Costas. This is I think October nineteen ninety eight,
and I said something as we began to lift off
the ground at the airport in Cleveland. I said, so
did you see what Larry Stewart wrote the other day?
(42:42):
And Bob looked at me as if he was going
to kill me and everybody connected to Larry Stewart. You
know Larry Stuart. There was a different voice, not the
Bob Costas voice that we've heard for many years. You
know Larry Stewart, I said, I was his victim for
many years. I've got a great story about him. Let
me tell you a story about him. First we landed
(43:07):
in Newark, New Jersey. I want to say about an
hour and a half later. Those who know that flight
could probably correct me and give me an exact time,
but it was about an hour and a half, maybe
a little more, maybe a little less. And as we
touched down, as we heard that little as your wheels
satisfactorily hit the runway and you have survived another flight,
(43:31):
Bob said, Okay, that's my story. Now you can tell
your Larry Stewart story. I've done all the damage I
(44:04):
can do here. Thank you for listening. That's absolutely true.
Greta Gerwig is the niece of the former TV sports
columnist of the Los Angeles Times, Larry Stewart, and I
didn't tell you half the stories about Larry Stewart. Any
who worked the refs, that's the lesson. I don't know
if that's what caused the New York Times take out
(44:25):
on Trump's insanity. I don't know if that's why we
will be now inundated with articles of that sort and
pieces of that sort by the news organizations from around
the world that treat The New York Times as if
it were the final authority on everything, rather than a
bunch of guys named Biff. In any event, thanks for listening.
(44:46):
We're now back to five episodes a week, posting nightly
just after midnight Eastern. Once again, there's a Monday Countdown.
As you are listening to it now, you will have
noticed it's a little shorter than the other ones. Give
me a break. Please send this podcast to somebody who
does not know they need to listen, but should, especially
anybody who's not a fan of Larry Stewart. Brian Ray
and John Phillips Chanel, the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced,
(45:10):
and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration
and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass, and drums,
and it was produced by Tko Brothers. The story was
that at all press conferences mister Stewart would bring a
bag and take food home with him. Our satirical and
pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
(45:31):
Nancy Faust. I mean, I've walked out of a press
conference with a little extra sandwich or something while we're
talking about a three day supply. That was the story
I was told. The sports music is the Old Woman
theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy
of ESPN, Inc. I mean, if you want to say
I'm not funny or not good at it, you have
the right to do that. That's a columnist's job. You
(45:52):
can't make stories up. And that's what the guy who
edited the La Times sports section said. Larry did other
music arranged and performed by the group No horns allowed,
and everything else was as usual. Pretty much my fault,
ask Larry Stewart. Honest to goodness, I don't even remember
if I got my Bob Costas rebuttal in. There After
(46:15):
Bob finished his hour and a half long story about
Larry Stewart. He did not like Larry Stewart in a
way that made it look like Larry and I were
I don't know, attached twins. That's countdown for today, four
weeks and one day until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
the one three hundred and seventy first day since convicted
(46:38):
felon drooling Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States, and day two after
The Times realized something was wrong with Dawn. Use the election,
use the metal health system, use presidential immunity if we
have to, to keep Trump from doing it again while
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow, boltons
(47:03):
as the news requires. Till then, I'm Keith Alremman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(47:24):
Alreman 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
is now time to cancel or suspend all of Elon
(00:25):
Musk's government contracts and subsidies, SpaceX, NASA, Starlink, Tesla's, all
of it. It was already fifteen billion dollars by just
April of last year. The number's not gone down since then.
The Department of Justice must also initiate efforts to get
that money back, because Musk is coordinating with Trump to
(00:47):
interfere in FEMA recovery efforts post Hurricane Helene by spreading
life threatening disinformation, and he's also coordinating a political campaign
with Trump which at its heart has Trump advocating for
the overthrow of the duly elected government of the United
States of America by violence if necessary. And if all
(01:07):
of that is somehow insufficient to reinvestigate and or change
Musk's immigration status here in order to deport him back
to South Africa or Canada or whereever, if that is
insufficient to take all of his money from him through
the courts, it certainly is not insufficient to tie him
up in court cases for the rest of his goddamned life.
(01:32):
After Musk's mincing defeat performance on stage, leaping and bouncing
behind Trump at Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday. I don't know
about you, but I have had enough of this idiot,
and more importantly, I have had enough of us underwriting
this idiot as he immorally transforms the Twitter X platform
(01:53):
he owns into a massive donation in kind to Trump's
campaign of lies, anti Semitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, Nazism, trid fascism,
and worst of all, stupidity. A donation in kind, by
the way, which the government must value at forty four
(02:14):
billion dollars, not the current number Musk has driven it
down to, which I haven't actually checked today, but it's
probably around fifty sixty bucks. Oh, and President Biden. The
starlink equipment and the network behind it, and the rockets
and the satellite access and the actual platform hosting X
(02:35):
or what's left of it. Seize it if Musk wants
it back, Let him go to court if he tries
to shut it off. Arrest him for tampering with evidence
in a criminal case. Remember per residential immunity. By the way,
Musk's new good buddy Trump, Trump doesn't know what the
hell starlink is.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
They said, could you do us a favor? Could you
help us? We're trying to get starlink and it's very
hard to get. Most people say you can't even get it.
Called up. Elana said, North Carolina's in big trouble. George's
in big trouble. They need communication. They have none because
their poles have been knocked down and their wires are
underwater and even dangerous, dangerously underwater. But they have no communication. Elon,
(03:19):
could you do something about starlink? Whatever the hell that is, Elond,
whatever starlink, That's all they want to hear is starlink.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Incidentally, numerous right wing social media accounts posted that photo
of Musk leaping like all the ketamin had kecked in
all at once, behind a clearly annoyed Trump. You know
that photo with musks belly flopping out, Lauded by the
far right, This wrote, the infamous hate manger behind Libs
(03:48):
of TikTok is going to go down in history is
one of the most consequential images of the twenty twenty
four election. You bet your ass, as the cliche goes,
I'm old enough to remember when Libs of TikTok stcastically
directed terroristic threats at men with bare middrifts and other
men wearing makeup who were on stage prancing together in
(04:10):
front of an audience. Oh and while we're at this,
charge Musk's mother too, for conspiracy to commit election fraud.
She retweeted her sons post about voting and added quote,
the Democrats have given us another option. You don't have
to register to vote an election day. Have ten fake names,
(04:32):
go to ten polling booths and vote ten times. That's
one hundred votes and it's not illegal. Maybe we should
work the system too well. First of all, madam, congratulations
on the math. You are correct. Ten fake names, ten
polling booths, ten times. By the way, shut up, you've
(04:52):
done enough to destroy the planet. Madam. You birth this
Jack and Apes. I mean, it sounds comical at first,
except it's true. All the James Bond and other spy
movies of the sixties and seventies begin with a psychopathic
billionaire who owns space rockets and communications systems. We used
to have places where people like Trump and his family
(05:14):
and Musk and his mother used to be able to
get the care that could benefit, even save anybody in
their condition. Now, instead we let them run for president.
By the way, if you don't think part of Musk
prostituting himself for Trump is some thought in that brain
of his fightings for space in there with all the hallucinogens,
(05:39):
that Trump will make it possible for naturalized American citizens
who were not born here to serve as president, even
though the Constitution says otherwise. You know it's in there.
Musk thinks Musk can succeed Trump, as they used to say,
(05:59):
depend upon it, sir quotes. Trump's speeches, increasingly angry and rambling,
(06:29):
reignite the question of age. With the passage of time,
the seventy eight year old former president's speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier,
less focused, more profane, and increasingly fixated on the past,
according to a review of his public appearances over the years. Yes,
(06:52):
that actually was in the New York Times, not the
Not the New York Times, not the Onion. This justin
Trump is rambling, breaking news from Peter Baker hot off
the presses. If you consider leading The Times first serious
story about Trump's dementia with an anecdote that is now
(07:12):
twenty eight days old, hot off the Presses, former President
Donald J. Trump vividly recounted how the audience had his
climactic debate with Vice President Kamala Harris was on his side,
except that there was no audience. The debate was held
in an empty hall. No one quote went crazy, as
mister Trump put it, because no one was there, even
(07:38):
to be generous. Trump's hallucination about there having been an
audience at that debate was from September eighteenth. The debate
itself was September tenth. These days, that is approximately nine
thousand election news cycles ago, and the Times piece, while
to be welcomed as a sign that the Times knows
it has fed up, knows it has damaged itself, knows
(08:00):
that it has showed both its ass and its arrogance,
knows that it's now October peace, only borders on the
reality of the Trump cognitive crisis for three paragraphs before
passing the buck quote. According to a computer analysis by
The New York Times, mister Trump's rally speeches now last
(08:23):
in average eighty two minutes compared to forty five minutes
in twenty sixteen. Proportionately, he uses thirteen percent more all
or nothing terms like always and never than he did
eight years ago, which some experts consider a sign of
advancing age. Oh my god, computer analysis. We're not saying this.
(08:46):
The computer is saying this quote. It was hardly the
only time mister Trump has seemed confused, forgetful, incoherent, or
disconnected from reality lately. In fact, it happens so often
these days that it no longer even generates much attention.
(09:07):
As the great journalist and historian Rick Pearlstein wrote, one
of the most abiding failures of agenda setting elite political
journalism is its denial of its own agency. Trump's manner
of speaking quote no longer generates much attention, as if
Trump himself generates what the Times decides to attend to.
Not the Times, Yes, sir, it's Trump no longer generating attention,
(09:37):
the way Hurricane Helene is no longer generating catastrophic wins.
Way down in paragraph seventeen, we finally get some human
assessment again, not by the Times. Oh, we're just reporting
with the help of computers. It's not us, it's not
Peter Baker. It's not anybody who could sue, it's not
(09:57):
anybody who could imprison. It's it's others. Quote how much
his rambling discourse, what some experts called tangentiality, can be
attributed to age. As the subject of some debate, mister
Trump has always had a distinctive speaking style, la la
(10:18):
la la la, that entertained and captivated supporters, even as
critics called him detached from reality. Indeed, questions have been
raised about mister Trump's mental fitness for years. John F. Kelly,
his second White House chief of staff, was so convinced
that mister Trump was psychologically unbalanced that he bought a
book called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, written by
(10:39):
twenty seven mental health professionals, to try to understand his
boss better. As it was, mister Kelly came to refer
to mister Trump's White House as quote crazy town unquote. That,
of course, is still no reason for us at the
Times to acknowledge that Trump is crazy or brain damaged,
(11:01):
or a madman or criminally effing insane. And it is
certainly not sufficient for us at the holy goddamn New
York Times to utilize four letter words with which to
describe his falsehoods and other inaccuracies, four letter words like lies. Okay,
(11:26):
I could literally go on for the length of the article,
but I think you get my point. Only The Times
could write a piece about Trump's mental self disqualification from
the presidency while managing to steal both sides the damn thing,
albeit with one of the sides being crazy and the
other side being senile. Maybe that's what took them so
(11:49):
long to write it. The point is they wrote it,
and it reflects two things. So many people inside this
country's newsrooms and outside this country's borders take their journalistic
cues from The New York Times and have taken and
then for so long that they don't even know anymore
that their response to The Times is virtually Pavlovian. That
(12:11):
article is likely to produce commentaries and pieces and just
openness to finally addressing this issue with results that will
settle everywhere from A to Z along the spectrum of
the Emperor has no brain. It's terrible The Times has
that influence, especially when they have used it so badly
(12:31):
for so long. But somebody at the BBC right now
is preparing his or her own version of that New
York Times piece. Same at the Times of India and
the Himalayan Times in Nepal. The second important part here
is that working the refs works. It works, It works,
(12:57):
it works. I mean, maybe if we keep kicking the
editor in the ass publicly, the New York Time will
correct his last mistake and put out a ten day
long page one upper left hand corners series analyzing Jack
Smith's evidence against Trump in a real sort of play
by play. This is what Jack Smith thinks happened on
(13:20):
January sixth, than the weeks before, analyzing the evidence that
was released last week. Something they could run every day
between now and the election. You know why Hillary's emails
because working the refs works a lot more on working
the refs in my own experience with it in a moment.
(13:40):
But first, happily, there remains countless numbers of media folks
here who still don't or won't get it. CBS Evening
News Saturday anchor Jureka Duncan throws to reporter Caitlin Huey
Burns in Butler, Pennsylvania for Trump's latest hateful fascist rally.
(14:02):
The one musk was at watch me bothes and the
last words of the anchor's introduction, the last words, Draka
Duncan says, our quote Trump began with a unifying message.
Unquote yeah, unifying you will bow down before me that
(14:24):
kind of unifying. Of course, our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying
media managed to both sides it again, it's not just
about miscovering Trump. Kamala Harris's interview schedule this week so
far sixty minutes last night, Howard Stern Tuesday, The View Tuesday,
Colbert Tuesday, Une Vision town Hall Thursday. The reaction from
(14:48):
Andrew Mitchell about this scheduling and about the Harris campaign
when she was on Meet the Press yesterday, I think
they've got to double down on more interviews and serious
interviews by serious Andrew means Harris should do an interview
with her on her little MSNBC. I'm just going to
stay here till they finally fire me show, or Andrea
(15:10):
is going to continue to go on NBC and whine
what I'm hearing from Democratic and Republican business people. She
means her husband, Alan Greenspan and a lot of men.
There's an undercount of the Trump vote. I think there
was missagenation. Missagenation. Yes, she said missagenation. She got about
to the she got to the missage it and then
(15:34):
she realized what she was saying, missgenette. Missagenation is race mixing.
Good point about Kamala Harris Andrea missagenation. Well done, Mitchell
hurriedly switched to quote misognation. Uh, in all of this,
there is no such word as misogenation. Did you mean
something about misogyny, Andrea? And then then you followed it
(15:57):
up with quote black and white men? Big problem? But
also the business world they don't think she's serious. They
don't think she's heavyweight. And I tell you what, I
don't think Andrew Mitchell slipped when she at first said missagenation.
She should be fired. Then there's Politico. Excuse me I
(16:18):
forgot to recognize its German ownership here dos Politico? Don't
call it a media blitz. After avoiding the media for
nigh on her whole campaign, VP, Kamala Harris is still
largely avoiding the media. Let's be real here. Most of
these are not the types of interviews that are going
to press her on issues she may not want to
(16:40):
talk about, even as voters want more specifics from Harris. Instead,
expect most of these sit downs to be a continuation
of the vibes campaign Harris has perfected. We're not saying
there's no value in these sixty minutes and the Univision
town Hall are sure to be substantive. Each of these
shows has millions of viewers or listeners, especially women and
(17:02):
young voters, key constituencies for Harris. Let me translate this,
Politico believes it's more substantive than sixty minutes and Univision
town Hall and also what else the view and my
old friend Howard and what else everything else in the world.
(17:25):
Politico is more important, and Politico will continue to accuse
Harris of avoiding interviews until she does an interview with
the news outlet that Politico considers the gold standard, namely
Politico Dos Politico mine Politico Happily Politico followed this childish
(17:50):
seven year old's diatribe with one of the greatest self
owns of the century. But forgive me, I'm going to
tease that in hopes that you will take the next
two and a half minutes to listen to the appearance
just a small part of it on a podcast by
Kamala Harris that Politico mocked and Politico self owned by
mocking it. The podcast is called call Her Daddy. It
(18:14):
is a giant in the field. Politico insulted, it insulted
its host Alex Cooper. The interview was forty five minutes
of actual questions, not attempts to play gotcha or grab
a headline that reads Harris tells Politico exclusively listen for
the substance, stay for the Politico face plant.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
I do want to clarify something in the debate, Former
President Trump claimed that some states are executing babies after birth.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Can you just clarify that is not happening anywhere in
the United States. It is not happening, And it's a lie.
Just it's a bold faced lie that he is suggesting that.
Can you imagine Can you imagine he is suggesting that
women in their ninth month of pregnancy are electing to
(19:15):
have an abortion? Are you kidding? That is so outrageously inaccurate,
And it's so insulting to suggest that that would be
happening and that women would be doing that. It's not
happening anywhere. This guy is full of lies. I mean,
(19:37):
I just have to be very candid with you. You know,
so in my career, from the time I got out
of law school through most of my career as a prosecutor,
I understood that the words that I spoke and what
I did with those words would be the difference between
whether somebody was charged with a crime or went to prison,
(19:59):
maybe prison for life. When I was Attorney General, I
was the top law enforcement officer of the biggest state
in this country. And I was acutely aware that the
words I spoke could be the difference between whether a
corporation was in business or out of business, that the
(20:20):
words I spoke could move markets. The idea that someone
is not only so careless and irresponsible and reckless, but
out and out lies to create fear and division in
our country and thinks he should be president of the
(20:43):
United States, standing behind the seal of the President of
the United States, using the microphone that comes with that,
and using that voice and those words in such an
irresponsible and that's mild way. And this is why this
(21:05):
selection matters.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I mean, that's the whole election in two and a
half minutes. The other forty two and a half minutes
are nearly as good. Wherever you podcast, Call Her Daddy,
This is what Politico wrote about Kamala Harris going on
the Call Her Daddy podcast. Quote. Recent episodes of Call
(21:29):
Her Daddy, just for a touch point were titled is
he the One? And blowjobs, hall passes, and frat daddies unquote.
So it's inappropriate or somehow a touch point that Call
Her Daddy has had sexual content lately, Politico. One quick question, Politico,
(21:54):
who is that political writer and editor and where did
he work again? Who was just accused by his ex
fiance of hacking her phone and leaking details of her
sex life to other news outlets and trying to blackmail
her into more sex and not leaving their relationship. Oh right,
(22:19):
that was Ryan Lizza who was accused of that of Politico,
editor of Politico Playbook, And you haven't fired him despite
his record of having been fired by The New Yorker
for something sexual. So Politico, one more question the Call
Her Daddy podcast you don't like Vice President Harris doing?
(22:42):
Is the problem that it has too much sex or
that it has not as much sex as Politico Playbook does.
Also of interest here back to working the refs and
the startling truth lurking inside the disasters inside even the
(23:04):
biggest newspapers like the New York Times. I can tell
you from personal experience that sometimes it turns out the
editors of the biggest newspapers in the world do not
actually read what is in their own newspapers. That's next.
This is countdown. So, as I mentioned earlier, a little
(23:32):
bit more on working the refs and the New York
Times piece yesterday in which this just in. Trump apparently
hasn't been making a lot of sense recently in his speeches.
I know, one can envision a conversation somewhere where they
decide whether or not to devote reporters and resources and graphics,
(23:54):
especially graphics. The New York Times is enamored of graphics,
as if they were just invented, where they decide whether
or not to do this finally, and whether or not
perhaps some of the criticism that they might hear just
in the distance, coming in faintly from outside in the
real world, might be valid the theory of working the refs. Say,
(24:16):
Buffy was telling me the other night, the Trump hasn't
been sounding good. Is that right? Well, I haven't actually
heard him speak since. Let's see, when was that New
York Post Sports Breakfast nineteen eighty three? He sounded okay,
then that was forty one years ago. How time flies.
(24:38):
That's one theory of what happened at the New York Times.
The other theory is that after months and months and
months and months and months and months and years and
years and years of criticizing the New York Times were
how it handled first Hillary Clinton's emails, the entire issue
of the Trump candidacy in twenty sixteen, the entire Trump presidency,
especially the campaign of twenty twenty, and Joe Biden in
(24:59):
twenty twenty four, in which whatever claims they might have
thought they had proved about Joe Biden's public capacity or
willingness to do an interview, or willingness to put himself
at risk, as there was some kind of decline in
his ability to speak extemporaneously in public. Whatever they thought
they had, they thought they were justified in trying to
(25:22):
bury the President of the United States alive, even if
it meant getting Donald Trump elected again and ending democracy
and by the way, ending the free press and the
New York Times, and one of the things that I
probably alone thought of. No one else would have made
this analogy, because it's an experience from my own life
and nobody else's. There's one person to whom this might
(25:44):
have occurred, a man named Bob Costas, who I have
invoked here before, who I once told to shut the
f up on this very topic. Bob did not end
his friendship with me over that. We had a long
talk about it, and I tried to explain to Bob
why that was the wrong time to do what he
wanted to do, and that later was actually better. And
I think it will prove later was actually better. But
(26:05):
I'm straying off the topic here because the topic is
working the refs when it comes to the newspapers. This
is about working the refs in an entirely different context
and sincerely in an entirely different meaning level. If the
stuff in the New York Times finally getting around to
Trump's mental capacity or incapacity is a one thousand, my
(26:27):
story is a two. However, my story is a first
hand story. I can tell you the whole thing, and
it's a doozy. I got to Los Angeles as a
local TV sportscaster at the age of twenty six on
Labor Day nineteen eighty five. I just happened to hit
(26:47):
the clouds right with my Marjorie Taylor Green and you
know they can control the weather cloud seeding effort. I
in three months became the second or third most popular
sportscaster on television in Los Angeles. Quite a role reversal,
because I literally could not get employment the year before
(27:08):
after a very unfortunate series of experiences in Boston. So
I got the Associated Press Sportscaster of the Year award
for California, and I think also Nevada. So I wasn't
even working in Nevada, and I was the Sportscaster of
the Year in Nevada as well. And I got the
UPI Award for the same thing. And I won a
Golden Mic and all these accolades inside of three months,
(27:29):
and on Christmas Day. Back when LA had two daily metropolitan,
big scale newspapers, the Los Angeles Times and the Los
Angeles Herald Examiner, so big that even in nineteen eighty five,
they each had full time columns devoted just to TV
sports and principally devoted to TV local sports. The two
(27:51):
columnists both wrote their year end stories for nineteen eighty five.
Bob Kaiser in the LA Harex the Herald Examiner wrote
that I was the best sportscaster in town, a breath
of fresh air, and all the other things you would
say about me if you can envision me being twenty
six years old, and my style being almost brand new
and certainly brand new in Los Angeles. Larry Stewart, the
(28:12):
TV sports columnist of the Los Angeles Times, wrote on
the same day that I was the worst sportscaster who
had ever worked in LA And what was worse, somebody
had told me I was funny. These two pieces next
to each other define for me proof that the theory
that you can't be all things to all people at
(28:34):
the same time was wrong. He examiner, best sportscaster we've
ever had, best sportscaster we have right now, LA Times,
worst of all time. Mister Stewart continued on this vein
for quite some time. I don't remember how it was
(28:54):
that I personally ticked him off, but I did. I
may have said something to somebody at the Los Angeles
Times after the sixth or seventh or eighth article that
he wrote in nineteen eighty six, suggesting that I was
going to be fired by Channel five my employers, when
I had a three year contract and Channel five really
could not afford to fire me and pay me at
the same time. They didn't have that kind of money.
(29:16):
I may have complained and said, what are you guys doing?
Then I began to notice that he was saving Larry
Stewart was the worst of his insults towards me for
things like my birthday, major holidays, other stuff like that.
One day I reported that Wayne Gretzky had been traded
(29:37):
to the Los Angeles Kings. His take was that I
had guessed correctly and shouldn't get any credit for breaking
the story. This was the sort of thing I had
put up with through three years. Then I went to KCBS,
another station in Los Angeles, and I can't remember now
(29:57):
in retrospect what it was that finally ticked me off,
except perhaps a rumor that I had that another sportscaster
in Los Angeles was literally bribing Larry Stewart. Never proved it, tried,
didn't succeed. I heard it from more than one person,
then more than one person after I left local news
(30:20):
in Los Angeles at the end of nineteen ninety one.
I have heard it as recently as earlier this year.
I cannot swear that it's true. I mention it only
for the context of whatever it was that drove me
to write a note to Bill Dwyer, the I might say,
nationally respected sports editor of the Los Angeles Times, who
(30:43):
retired from that role several years later and continued to
contribute to The Times through the last decade. I believe
as a infrequent columnist, a good writer, a good man.
I had met him once, very briefly. He said he
was a viewer and in desperation at a time when
one did not take on the press face to face
if you were in radio or TV, because, as the
(31:03):
old saying goes, never pick a fight with a newspaperman.
He has much more ink than you do. And it's
one thing for somebody to be in that context critical
of a newspaperman on television. It's ephemeral. You say it,
and seven seconds later, most of the audience doesn't remember
what you say. If I went on there and said
Larry Stewart of the LA Times sucks, who's going to
(31:24):
remember Larry Stewart's going to remember? The Los Angeles Time's
going to remember. They're going to write an article about
me every week. That way, and that is the way
most of American newspaper dumb, especially on the fringes. I mean,
the TV sports columnist is not one of the top
five hundred employees in a newspaper, not even in those
halcyon days when they had them in almost all major
newspapers in the country. But the grudge will be then permanent.
(31:49):
It's how much punishment are you willing to take. If
it's not that much, you get out of the business.
At least that was the mindset in the nineteen eighties.
So I wrote Dwyer note saying this latest article, which
I believe prophesied that I would be fired when I
was six months into a no cut, three and a
(32:10):
half year contract that owed me something like two million dollars. So,
in other words, if they fired me, the CBS employers
that I was working for then would have had to
pay me two million dollars rather than spend the two
million dollars and have me kill off four minutes a
show on each of their newscasts. CBS then and now
is always going to choose that latter option unless you
(32:32):
are totally out of your mind, and they would be
in first place without you. They will pay you, but
only to keep working. When I finally did leave CBS,
when they finally did not pick up my option, they
gave me three months notice and said, of course, we
want you to continue to stay on here. And do
the newscast every night. Of course they did. They even
(32:52):
sent me to cover the Magic Johnson HIV announcement. They
trusted me with basically a full day live programming because
they were already paying me. In any event, I am
wandering away from this object again. I wrote Bill Dwyer
a note in desperation. It was polite. It was addressed
to mister Dwyer, and it said, look, this has been
going on long enough. He is making things up. To
(33:17):
my surprise, I got a phone call from Bill Dwyer
about a week later saying, hey, I got your note.
I didn't want you to think I'm neglecting it. I
don't think there's anything to it. But I watch you
every night and I have a totally different opinion of
you than Larry Stewart does. And I think I owe you,
as somebody who's been here for a few years now
and has not made a big deal about Larry's comments
(33:39):
about you, I think I owe you a quick review
of what he's doing. So I'm going to go back
and read all of his columns and I don't expect
to find anything. I'm not going to take any action
against him. I just wanted you to know I was
doing it well. Even then, it seemed to me that
this was an okay kind of show of respect. It
(34:01):
was not an admission of anything being wrong. It was
not saying, look we at the Los Angeles Times drop
the ball here, or I as the sports editor of
the Los Angeles Time drop It was just something rather
than ignoring it, rather than saying you're an idiot. Rather
than printing my letter in the paper, which was one
suggestion that somebody made write a letter to the editor.
(34:23):
They we'll print publisher letter to the editor about Larry.
Just what I need. In any event, the phone call ended.
It didn't last very long, and about a week and
a half later the phone rang again and it was
Bill Dwyer and I did not recognize his voice. His
demeanor was utterly different Keith Bill Dwyer from the LA Times.
(34:47):
I finished my review of what Stuart has written of me.
I I'm very sorry. I'd like to take you to
dinner to talk about remedies. Can can you? Would you
be willing to sit down with me? I was so
(35:08):
startled by this, I just said, sure, how about tomorrow night.
I'll come to you. The restaurant across the street from
CBS the Columbia Grill. Sure what time's convenient. I'm thinking, well,
I'm gonna maybe I should play with him and say
eight am. I picked the time after the six o'clock
news was over. I said, seven seven it is. We'll
(35:29):
see you then the reservation will be in my name.
My apologies. The dinner the next night was one of
the rare ones in which I actually had time to
eat and digest my food. Bill Dwyer spent easily forty
five minutes apologizing on behalf of himself and his sports
department and the Los Angeles Times, and after years of
(35:54):
trying to work that ref nicely at a distance, he
said something that I believe is relevant to all those
who ever have a criticism of a new paper, sometimes
believe it or not. The people in charge know only
what the people who work for them say about what
(36:16):
is in the paper. They have not, despite the fact
that you would think this would be the first thing
they would do, read everything in the newspaper. They have not.
Even as Bill Dwyer explained, he did not read everything
that was in the Los Angeles Times between you and me.
Larry doesn't get paid for this. He works in the
(36:37):
makeup department. He helps us lay out the pages of
the sports section. We send them every once in a
while to cover some high school football games, and you know,
we throw them kind of a fee for that, but
his contract is as a layout person. Well, I stifled
my laughter because I wanted to hear where he was
going with this story. The rest of it was the
column that he wrote two or three times a week
(36:58):
about TV sports was basically done for free. I did
not even ask how they got this passed the newspaper man,
but they did somehow. He explained that he thought Larry
Stewart was probably the worst writer who had ever appeared
in the Los Angeles Times, and that they did this
just because for years, the LA Herald Examiner, before it
(37:19):
went out of business in I believe nineteen eighty seven
or eighty eight, had a very good TV sports columnist
named Bob Kaiser, and there was an excellent one at
the LA Daily News named Phil Rosenthal, and they were
ashamed that they didn't have their own TV sports columnist,
and there wasn't enough money in the budget for it.
They rather cover local high school sports, and then they
(37:41):
found this marvelous opportunity, and he said, I'm realizing now
we have gotten what we paid for, and I did.
At this point, having small responsibilities as the sports editor
or sports director of Channel two in Los Angeles, I
needed to talk to an actual sports editor about this.
(38:01):
I said, I don't understand. There are very few ma
your editorial decisions that I input myself into that are
not directly parts of the script right in front of me.
But every once in a while I have to be
involved in somebody else's work on a show I'm not
doing and issue either instructions or assignments or don't cover that,
or make sure you cover this, or emphasize that. I
(38:23):
don't think it happens every month, but maybe every six weeks.
I know you must have this daily. You're the sports editor.
How could you not know what's in the column. I
can't bear to read it. So I'm feeling a little
bit better about myself here. But he said, I read
everything he has written about you in the paper. I
(38:43):
went into our morgue the archives and read. In these
pre internet days, I read everything he wrote about you.
There is the same pattern that you described about him
attacking you on major holidays and your birthday, and always
finding some way to do something negative about you and
to predict he has reported twenty three different times that
you were about to be fired. This is not possible.
(39:06):
How many times were you about to be fired? I
went maybe once? He my God, he said, I made
a terrible mistake. I left that column and a couple
of others in the hands of two deputy sports editors
of the LA Times. Two of them were responsible for
Stuart's content. I have now demoted them both there now
(39:29):
I forget the title, but it was basically assistant copy
editor of the sports section of Los Angeles Times. And
I told Stuart that if he writes anything else about
you ever again, it must go to my desk. In fact,
I want him to come into my office and read
it to me aloud before he publishes. Stewart, of course,
(39:50):
worked around this by never mentioning me again for the
length of my time as a local sportscaster in Los Angeles.
Later on he had no choice but to mention me
because I was at ESPN and then in fact working
in Los ange to us on Fox Sports, and he
managed to find ways long after Bill Dwyer had retired
as sports editor to try to take shots at me.
(40:14):
The punchline to this was one of the many punchlines,
was that Bill Dwyer said that I was not only
totally correct, but that if I had made any mistakes,
it was not telling him sooner that this had happened.
Go to the boss in the situation in which you're
(40:35):
dealing with the newspaper that has decided or part of
it has decided to enact vengeance or bias against someone
or something or somebody particularly connected to us. You're not
in exactly the same business that we are, but we
all cover sports in Los Angeles. You deserve better respect
than that. You should have come to me sooner. The
(40:56):
only time he got anywhere near defensive about what had happened,
and I said, well, I'll remember to do that again.
Although I don't like to work the refs, and he shouted,
work the refs. It works. Two punchlines, I said, there
was just one. There are, in fact three. If the
(41:18):
name Greta Gerwig means anything to you, I believe the
Academy Award winning director of Barbie had an actress also
in her own right. Writer of Barbie and other film works,
Larry Stewart's niece. That was a surprise and the punchline
of all punchlines. I had assumed when I left local
news in Los Angeles at the end of nineteen ninety
(41:39):
one that Larry Stewart had no greater enemy in the
business than myself. Six years later, seven years later, I
guess I went to work at NBC Sports had the
privilege of working on baseball broadcasts with Bob Yucker and
Joe Morgan and Jim Gray and Bob Costas and me.
(41:59):
We were the World Series team in nineteen ninety seven.
Hannah Storm and I did the game show together as well,
and I was in the dugout for the Cleveland Indians
during that World Series. The nineteen ninety eight American League Playoffs,
I was in the dugout for Cleveland throughout that series
with the Yankees and did the pre and postgame shows
then too. As we left Cleveland for Newark, I believe
(42:21):
in the middle of the series, as we were taxing
down the runway, I was seated next to my friend
Bob Costas. This is I think October nineteen ninety eight,
and I said something as we began to lift off
the ground at the airport in Cleveland. I said, so
did you see what Larry Stewart wrote the other day?
(42:42):
And Bob looked at me as if he was going
to kill me and everybody connected to Larry Stewart. You
know Larry Stuart. There was a different voice, not the
Bob Costas voice that we've heard for many years. You
know Larry Stewart, I said, I was his victim for
many years. I've got a great story about him. Let
me tell you a story about him. First we landed
(43:07):
in Newark, New Jersey. I want to say about an
hour and a half later. Those who know that flight
could probably correct me and give me an exact time,
but it was about an hour and a half, maybe
a little more, maybe a little less. And as we
touched down, as we heard that little as your wheels
satisfactorily hit the runway and you have survived another flight,
(43:31):
Bob said, Okay, that's my story. Now you can tell
your Larry Stewart story. I've done all the damage I
(44:04):
can do here. Thank you for listening. That's absolutely true.
Greta Gerwig is the niece of the former TV sports
columnist of the Los Angeles Times, Larry Stewart, and I
didn't tell you half the stories about Larry Stewart. Any
who worked the refs, that's the lesson. I don't know
if that's what caused the New York Times take out
(44:25):
on Trump's insanity. I don't know if that's why we
will be now inundated with articles of that sort and
pieces of that sort by the news organizations from around
the world that treat The New York Times as if
it were the final authority on everything, rather than a
bunch of guys named Biff. In any event, thanks for listening.
(44:46):
We're now back to five episodes a week, posting nightly
just after midnight Eastern. Once again, there's a Monday Countdown.
As you are listening to it now, you will have
noticed it's a little shorter than the other ones. Give
me a break. Please send this podcast to somebody who
does not know they need to listen, but should, especially
anybody who's not a fan of Larry Stewart. Brian Ray
and John Phillips Chanel, the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced,
(45:10):
and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration
and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass, and drums,
and it was produced by Tko Brothers. The story was
that at all press conferences mister Stewart would bring a
bag and take food home with him. Our satirical and
pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
(45:31):
Nancy Faust. I mean, I've walked out of a press
conference with a little extra sandwich or something while we're
talking about a three day supply. That was the story
I was told. The sports music is the Old Woman
theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy
of ESPN, Inc. I mean, if you want to say
I'm not funny or not good at it, you have
the right to do that. That's a columnist's job. You
(45:52):
can't make stories up. And that's what the guy who
edited the La Times sports section said. Larry did other
music arranged and performed by the group No horns allowed,
and everything else was as usual. Pretty much my fault,
ask Larry Stewart. Honest to goodness, I don't even remember
if I got my Bob Costas rebuttal in. There After
(46:15):
Bob finished his hour and a half long story about
Larry Stewart. He did not like Larry Stewart in a
way that made it look like Larry and I were
I don't know, attached twins. That's countdown for today, four
weeks and one day until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
the one three hundred and seventy first day since convicted
(46:38):
felon drooling Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States, and day two after
The Times realized something was wrong with Dawn. Use the election,
use the metal health system, use presidential immunity if we
have to, to keep Trump from doing it again while
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow, boltons
(47:03):
as the news requires. Till then, I'm Keith Alremman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(47:24):
Alreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
True Crime Tonight
If you eat, sleep, and breathe true crime, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT is serving up your nightly fix. Five nights a week, KT STUDIOS & iHEART RADIO invite listeners to pull up a seat for an unfiltered look at the biggest cases making headlines, celebrity scandals, and the trials everyone is watching. With a mix of expert analysis, hot takes, and listener call-ins, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT goes beyond the headlines to uncover the twists, turns, and unanswered questions that keep us all obsessed—because, at TRUE CRIME TONIGHT, there’s a seat for everyone. Whether breaking down crime scene forensics, scrutinizing serial killers, or debating the most binge-worthy true crime docs, True Crime Tonight is the fresh, fast-paced, and slightly addictive home for true crime lovers.
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