December 2, 2022 • 38 mins
EPISODE 87: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: There is no such thing as being "slightly Nazi" and that is the reason, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, The House Judiciary Republicans, Tucker Carlson, Paul Gosar, Greg Gutfeld, Benny Johnson, Jeanine Pirro, Will Cain, and Jason Whitlock, you do not excuse and rationalize and defend somebody who had only said relatively minor antisemitic things. Because one day they will announce "I see good things about Hitler" and "I love Nazis." (12:44) As a gentile of largely German heritage I learned this lesson when I was a kid, the day my Dad came back having stormed out of a final interview for a great job because the directors really wanted to be reassured he wasn't Jewish. "It is always there," he said. "It is always beneath the surface. And often as we think we have gotten rid of it for good, still it is there. And I've had to fight it. And I had to fight it today. And YOU'LL have to fight it tomorrow." Because - there IS no such thing as being "slightly Nazi."
B-Block (18:46) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Jupiter in New York (19:39) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Senate abandons Rail Workers, Herschel Walker threatens and hallucinates again, and CNN fires Chris Cillizza - and why that's bad news for Joe Biden! (23:09) IN SPORTS: Chaos after Germany is eliminated at the World Cup, and the passing of baseball spitball - and NON-spitball - pitcher Gaylord Perry (24:55) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: New York City hiring a "Citywide Director of Rodent Mitigation" competes with Herschel, and ABC's Amy Robach for the honors.
C-Block (29:22) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: One of the very few times the great humorist dipped a toe in the world of the occult: how Thurber's imagination turns an accent into a man who "traffics with the devil" in "The Black Magic Of Barney Haller."
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
There is no such thing as being slightly Nazi. Donald
(00:28):
Trump quote, Kanye West was actually very sharp and very
very smart. I was impressed by a lot of what
he said. Elon Musk quote, welcome back to Twitter, my friend,
Kanye West. The House Judiciary Republicans quote Kanye Elon Trump.
Tucker Carlson quote, We've rarely heard a man speak so
(00:49):
honestly and so movingly about what he believes. Congressman Paul
goes Our quote, pray for Kanye West. They will throw
everything they have at him simply for speaking the truth.
Greg Gutfeld quote, very special intellectual renaissance. Benny Johnson quote,
(01:10):
Kanye West is a cultural icon. Janine Pierro quote. I
was blown away by Kanye West. Tim Poole quote, I
think you could actually win the presidency. Will Kine quote.
This was unvarnished authentic. There's such authenticity to that that
it just makes me want to hear more. Jason Whitlock quote,
(01:30):
Kanye is a very important voice. I'm going to make
an analogy. Kunta Kente in roots Kanye West quote, I
I see I see good things about Hitler, also that Jews.
I love everyone, and Jewish people are not gonna tell me.
You can love um, you know us, and you can
(01:53):
love what we're doing to you with the contracts, and
you can love what we're you know what we're pushing
with the pornography. But this guy that invented highways, invent
at the very mike her phone that I use as
a musician. You can't say out loud that this person
ever did anything good. And I'm done with that. I'm
done with the classifications. Every human being has something of
(02:16):
value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler. There
is no such thing as being slightly Nazi. I know
you've heard all of this by now, and I know
you know that all those quotes from the Fox News
idiots and the other right wing lunatics and the other
anti semites like Trump fawning over Kanye West were from
before the appearance in which Kanye West was so appalling,
(02:40):
so condescending, so worthless as a human being that it
shocked even Alex Jones. I gotta watch my accounts because
they've been frozen by the Jewish banks, so I need
to watch my mills. Why people are evil Nazi. So
I mean, I I disagree with both statements, but I
(03:00):
get I don't. I don't like the word evil next
to Nazis. I think we need to look at Oh
my goodness, just because you don't like one group doesn't
mean the other. Look. I love Jewish people, but I
also love Nazis. Oh man, Well, I had to disagree
with that. But listen, we're gonna go to Brake. There
(03:21):
was West in that nice Munich Olympics terrorists ski mask,
having already self defenestrated his career, now climbing back up
the side of the same building, crawling back in through
the same window and then throwing himself back out through
the same window. And the Nazis, in my view, war
thugs that shout people down to a lot of really
bad things, but they did good things too. We're gonna
(03:42):
stop dissing the Nazis all the time. Okay, We're We're
gonna get to that parst this word from Tesla. What
is amazing is not that Kanye West said all this,
not that it was so bad that after it was over,
even the House Judiciary gop the Jim Jordan's account that
(04:03):
tweeted Kanye lawn. Trump on October seven actually deleted that
tweet because apparently that's the line for Jim Jordan's announcing
you love Hitler and love Nazis, and not that hours later,
Kanye West tweeted a photo of the symbol from a
crackpot religion, which is a cross between a swastika and
a star of David. It is that, after this career
(04:27):
ender that should have offended everybody in the country, still
virtually none of the Republicans and right wingers who were
extolling West weeks or even days ago said anything. Still yet,
even though I must credit Tim Poole who did. And
(04:51):
then West tweeted some tribe about Jesus, and Elon Musk replied, quote,
Jesus taught love, kindness, and forgiveness. I used to think
that turning the other cheek was weak and foolish, but
I was the fool for not appreciating its profound wisdom.
And if Elon Musk was indeed suggesting forgiveness for West
after he praised Hitler and attacked the Jews, then Elon
(05:13):
Musk needs a CT scan and a team of neurologists immediately,
because there is no such thing as being slightly Nazi.
And it is all well and good to reference the
mental or emotional illnesses of people like Kanye West if
they are relevant to something like this the ultimate Meltdown.
(05:36):
But at some point the illness becomes almost irrelevant. If
the ill person refuses to seek treatment, the illness cannot
become an excuse for the words, these words, these horrible words,
become the person. Kanye West is not an entertainer or
(05:56):
musician anymore. He is not a cultural lightning rod anymore.
He is not a businessman anymore. He is simply the
creature who announced with pride and defiance that he loves
Hitler and the Nazis. And as a gentile of largely
German heritage, I feel this cannot be said often enough.
(06:20):
Those who praise the hatred and madness of Hitler and
Nazism must be metaphorically crushed, and if they get back
up and repeat their hatred, they must be metaphorically crushed again.
And if somebody else is inspired in the future by
Kanye West to repeat the hatred again, just as Kanye
(06:42):
West must have been inspired by some past anti Semite,
that somebody else in the future must in turn be
metaphorically crushed. Even after years in which we collectively as
a society lapsed, in which the vigilance against this kind
of glorification of racial and religious hate lessened just enough
(07:03):
that these creatures us, we're not metaphorically crushed. We left
the door just slightly open somewhere, and Kanye West came in,
and Nick Fluentes came in, and Marjorie Taylor Green came in,
and Tucker Carlson came in, and Donald Trump came in.
(07:28):
And it's not just that, obviously it is time for
all of them to go out again. It is that
we have to stand at this door all the time,
just as we have to stand at the door through
which the racists would sneak back in, just as we
have to stand at the door through which the homophobes
would sneak back in. We have to stand there all
(07:49):
the time, year after year, decade after decorated generation after generation,
and we have to keep the full weight of our
society pressed up against all of those doors. Because the
easiest thing for human beings is to blindly blame the others,
whoever the others are. It is the exact route Germany
(08:13):
took in the nineties and the nineteen thirties. It is
the root Kanye West and Nick Fuentes and Donald Trump
and the House Judiciary. GOP took just a little blind hatred,
just a little scapegoating, not a Holocaust, just a little
anti Semitism. There is no such thing as being slightly Nazi.
(08:37):
When I was a kid, I went to school with
other kids who had lost cousins and uncles and other
people with names and faces and memories they had created
within their family lost in the Holocaust. The most famous
person in our town was a sculptor named Jacques Lipschitz,
(08:59):
who had escaped the Nazis in France, and who was
so grateful for the haven he found among us that
he created a massive sculpture that sits in front of
the town library to this day. I knew because of
the story of Jacques Lipschitz, because of the stories of
the other kids who had lost members of their family,
(09:20):
I knew that the hatred was carried by many of us,
perhaps by all of us, like a dormant virus, that
if we did not control it, if we did not
condemn it, if we were not vigilant against it, it
would appear to us again as it now has, and
(09:46):
my father knew it far more practically. He was twelve
when the Nazis declared war on us. He lived in
a largely Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx, and with the
spelling of our family name, he and I were invariably
mistaken for being Jewish. My dad joked early on to
me we would get all the prejudice, but none of
(10:06):
the holidays. And then he would remind me that the name,
that the assumption about the name, meant that our responsibility
against anti Semitism was greater than that even of the
average American. And then one day, when I was about nine, ten,
(10:26):
maybe eleven, my dad had a big job interview scheduled.
He was going into New York for the last of
a series of conversations with J. C. Penny to become
the head architect for the entire J. C. Penny chain
of stores nationwide. This was a man from a family
so poor that though he was offered a full scholarship
(10:49):
to the Cornell Architecture College, he had to pass because
if he did not go to work at eighteen, it
would have meant his younger brother would have had to
drop out of high school and go to work at sixteen.
This job had architect at a company as large as J. C. Penny,
would have put him and us on Easy Street for life.
(11:13):
Dad told us he might be Lady didn't know how
long the interview would be. He would be meeting with
the full board of directors. My mom and I kissed
him goodbye, and we held our breaths. And so when
we heard his car in the driveway, and it was
not even noon and he had returned, we knew something
was very, very wrong. And I saw it the moment
I saw him step out of the car, he was
(11:35):
read read. My mother said I should go to my room. No,
he insisted, I want you to hear this. I want
you to know this exists. I want you to know this.
I want you to know it exists today, he said.
The interview had started normally enough, and my dad, who
(11:56):
could be as charming as anybody ever born, especially to strangers,
especially in a work setting, he was confident he was
winning them over. They were going to offer him this job.
And then one of them asked him how he spent
his weekends, and he didn't think much about the question.
He talked about it how he often worked seven days
a week, or if he had the day off, he
(12:18):
took his family to a ball game, or he played
with his son. And then one of them asked specifically
about how he spent Sunday morning. Where typically was he
on Sunday mornings. Somebody else in the meeting asked about
Saturday mornings. Where did he go on Saturday mornings? And
(12:43):
my dad said, to me and my mother, that's when
I understood, he said. He looked at them and said, gentlemen,
I now know what you're getting at. No, I am
not much of a churchgoer, but I don't think that's
what you want to hear. What you want me to
tell you is that despite my name, I am not Jewish.
And that's true. I am not Jewish, he said. One
(13:06):
of the j C. Penny board members laughed and leaned
back in his chair and said, boy, is that early.
We really want to offer you this job. You're perfect
for it. And then came the anti Semitic jokes, and
my dad said he stood up and said, I'll repeat,
I'm not Jewish, and I'm also never in my life
going to work for people for whom that question matters.
(13:28):
He then quoted himself to us, complete with F bombs
and m F bombs, and I went white as a sheet.
And my father looked at me and said, good, you
should be shocked. You should know that is when this
language is justified, it will leave an impression on you
as to how important this is. It is always there,
(13:49):
he said, It is always beneath the surface. And as
often as we think we have gotten rid of it
for good, still it's there, and I've had to fight it.
I just had to fight it today, and you will
have to fight it tomorrow. So Kanye West and those
(14:12):
who support him burn in hell, because there is no
such thing as being slightly Nazi still ahead, Baseball loses
(14:42):
one of its legends, a man who, in the days
before performance enhancing drugs was as controversial as it got. Boy,
I missed those days. It's Friday's with Thurber, and very
few of his stories leave the practical, mundane world of
his crazy family and friends. And then there is the
black magic of Barney Haller, where we go through the
garrick now and become Warbs. It is as weird as
(15:06):
that sounds. And CNN's layoffs. CNN fires Chris Salizza. Why
that's bad news for Joe Biden. That's next. This is Countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith Alberman still ahead on Countdown.
(15:30):
I said I did not like Chris Slizza. I did
not say CNN should fire him so that John Malone
could make another fifty dollars. Here's a job you don't
see posted off in New York City rat catcher memories
of the late spitball King gay Lord Perry, and one
of the greatest and the spookiest of all the James
(15:50):
Thurber stories, the Black Magic of Barney Holler, coming up first.
In each edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in
need you can help. Every dog has its day again.
I will keep pushing Elaine Boosler's offer to virtually underwrite
all standard expenses for anybody who adopts a dog off
the kill list at the New York City Pound. I'll
(16:11):
do so as long as she's kind enough to make
that offer. So meet Jupiter, a big, smiling tan pity
who loves dogs, loves people. Even though his last person
left him tied to a post. He just needs a
family to save him. With help from Elaine or your
pledge to help a rescue group do so Jupiter is
social suite loving. You can find them on my Twitter feeds,
(16:31):
and your retweet might be as valuable as your pledge.
I thank you, and Jupiter thanks you. Post Scripts to
the news some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions.
(16:53):
Dateline Washington, thanks a lot, Joe Manchion. Senate votes to
impose a settlement to avoid a nationwide rail strike. It
does not vote to give railroad employees any paid sick
days as part of the settlement. Have you ever been
on a train? These guys work with a dedication to
safety and to customer service, and Mansion voted against them.
(17:14):
Screw him, Dateline Dallas and other herschel walker x Cheryl
Parsa going on the record with The Daily Beast about
her five years with the nut job. The Republicans dug
up so he would do what he's told as the
senator from Georgia if elected. Quoting her, he's a pathological liar, absolutely,
but it's more than that. He knows how to manipulate
(17:35):
his dissociative disease in order to manipulate people while at
times being simultaneously completely out of control. She also said
he is unstable, that he threatened her when she caught
him cheating on her, and used his illness as an
alibi to quote justify lying, cheating, and ultimately destroying families.
Typical Republican dateline CNN. The layoffs that CNN Worldwide president
(17:59):
in charge of eating paste, Chris Licked promised would never
happen happened hundreds of them. The network has shuttered all
live programming on its second channel, Headline News h l
N as it's now styled, and it fired its morning
host Robin Mead, who's been on that network for twenty years.
Licked also scaled back CNN International, among others, fired Martin Savage,
(18:22):
news correspondent for most of the time since with CNN
and political writer Chris Plizza, best known for always having
the worst take no matter what the topic, and having
said that, having made fun of him repeatedly here. My
complaint with Chris Plizza has always been professional, not personal,
especially since these layoffs coming even though CNN is still
(18:44):
making hundreds of millions a year in profits were made
by Chris Licht and John Malone with a plan to
kill off CNN because it platforms criticism of Republicans. This
(19:08):
is Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This is
countdown with Keith in sports. Japan beats Spain two to
one at the World Cup, thus eliminating Germany. The response
in Germany get rid of all of the current players
German team. Glad to see you're taking it well. Baseball,
(19:32):
Gaylord Perry has died. He was eighty four years old.
It is impossible to recreate this time in sports when
just about the biggest controversy on the field anywhere was
whether or not baseball pitchers were secretly loading up the
ball with saliva, vassoline, whatever. Gaylord Perry not only threw
a spitball, but he realized he could also succeed by
(19:53):
not throwing a spitball, but making batters believe maybe he
was throwing one eleven seasons in the top ten for
wins above replacement for pitchers, twelve years in the time
ten for strikeouts, one of only two pitchers to strike
out three thousand men and throw three hundred complete games.
Gaylord Perry won the Cy Young Awarding each league, the
(20:14):
second one with the nineteen seventy eight Padres when he
was thirty nine years old, and he had two of
the most extraordinary starts to season in baseball history. As
late as August twenty, nineteen sixty six, Gaylord Perry had
a record of twenty wins and two losses, then lost
six of his last seven decisions in Cleveland in nineteen
(20:35):
seventy four. He lost his first start, then year that year,
and then one fifteen decisions in a row. I know
the win isn't the stat anymore, but he was twenty
and two one year and fifteen and one the next.
He ultimately pitched for eight different teams and is a
legend with one of them, for whom he only made
fourteen appearances, the Kansas City Royals. Gaylord Perry was one
(20:57):
of the guys who tried to hide George Brett's bat
during the infamous Pine Tar Game of nine eighty three.
And when I was seventeen years old and just getting
started as a radio reporter and a photographer, I was
on the field at Yankee Stadium taking pictures when I
saw Gaylord Perry, then with the Texas Rangers, walking towards me.
He introduced himself like I didn't know who he was. Hey,
(21:18):
can you do me a favor. I've got some friends here.
Can you take some pictures? Of us. I'll give you
fifty bucks. Fifty bucks was fifty bucks. I said, thank you,
but it'll be my pleasure. Just reimbursed me for the
role of film thereafter. Anytime Gaylord Perry was in New
York and I was at a game, he came over
and said hello and said, do you need a new
(21:40):
picture of me? I got traded again. I had one
of James Thurber's rare stories in which he dips a
toe into the cult the Black Magic of Barney Haller
Coming up first, the daily roundup of the miscrants, morons,
(22:01):
and Donning Kruger Effect specimens who constitute two days were
persons in the world. The Bronze City of New York,
Eric Adams, our latest Nitwitt mayor. The city has posted
a job offering New York Citywide Director of rodent Mitigation. Quote,
do you have what it takes to do the impossible?
(22:22):
A virulent vehemence for vermin, a background in urban planning,
project management, or government, and most importantly, the drive, determination
and killer instinct needed to fight the real enemy, New
York City's relentless rat population. The ideal candidate is highly
motivated and somewhat bloodthirsty. Determined to look at all solutions
from various angles, including improving operational efficiency, data collection, technology, innovation,
(22:46):
trash management, and wholesale slaughter. Unquote. First of all, you're
not gonna beat the rats. This is their town. We
just live in it, and if you don't bother them,
they won't bother you. Secondly, how does the City of
New York simply just not hire the obvious choice for
(23:09):
the gig of rat Catcher, the Pied Piper of Hamlin
runner up herschel Walker. Yeah, I mentioned it the other
get girlfriend on the record, saying he threatened her. The
guy is a train wreck, but he does have an excuse.
He seems to have hallucinations about fifty of the time. Quote.
He also claimed, said Barack Obama at a Raphael Warnock
(23:32):
rally last night in Georgia, that he used to let
me beat him in basketball, But then he admitted that
we never actually met, so I guess said the former president.
This was more of an imaginary whooping, but our winner.
Amy Roebock of ABC News and MSNBC. Years ago, Amy
(23:52):
Roebock was briefly one of the backup hosts of Countdown,
but when she was offered the chance to take the
assignment full time and then maybe gets spun off into
her own show like we did with Matto and o'donald
and Heys. She passed, explaining to me that she was
embarrassed by Countdown and Politics and she needed to maintain
(24:12):
her dignity because quote I work for NBC News. Shortly
after that, Amy Robot dumped her husband and kids so
she could run off with the actor Andrew Shoe, And
now the tabloids are reporting that she has dumped Shoe
and this family and is having an affair with her
also married to somebody else. Good Morning America co anchor T. J. Holmes,
(24:35):
Britain's Daily Mail has a photo of Amy Roebok putting
something in the back of a car. Happily, Mr Holmes
is helping her by holding her butt to keep her steady.
I guess Amy way to maintain that dignity. Roebok two
Day's Worst Person and the World to the number one
(25:07):
story on The Countdown and It's Fridays with Thurber, and
only occasionally did the great American humorist bend towards the supernatural.
Lots of Thurber's characters, like his fictionalized version of his
own mother claimed to get messages from beyond the grave
and stuff like that, but rarely did Thurber ever go
ac cult in the first person. This is not true
(25:31):
in one of my all time favorites of his stories,
The Black Magic of Barney Holler, in which a slight
accent turns into something that is just right up against
the line of being actually a little scary, but still hilarious.
The Black Magic of Barney Haller by James Thurber. It
(25:54):
was one of those hunt days on which the earth
is uninhabitable, even as early as ten o'clock in the morning,
even on the hill where I live, under the dark maples.
The long porch is hot, and the wicker chair I
sat in complained hotly. My coffee was beginning to wear off,
and with it the momentary illusion it gives that things
are right and life is good. There were sultry mutterings
(26:18):
of thunder. I had a quick feeling that if I
looked up from my book, I would see Barney Holler.
I looked up, and then there he was, coming along
the road, lightning playing about his shoulders, thunder following him
like a dog. Barney is or was my hired man.
(26:41):
He is strong and amiable, sweaty and dependable, slowly and
heavily confident, but he is also eerie. He traffics with
the devil. His ears twitched when he talks, but it
isn't so much that as the things he says. Once
(27:01):
in late June, when all of a moment, sabers began
to flat brightly in the heavens and bowling balls rumbled,
I took refuge in the barn. I always have a
feeling that I am going to be struck by lightning
and either riven like an old apple tree, or left
with a foot that aches in rainy weather and a
habit of fainting. These things happen. Barney came in not
(27:23):
to escape the storm to which he is or pretends
to be indifferent, but to put the side a way. Suddenly,
he said, the first of those things that made me
when I was with him faintly creepy. He pointed at
the house. Once I see this boat come down to rock,
he said, it is phenomena like that of which I
(27:45):
stand in constant dread, boats coming down rocks, people being teleported,
statues dripping blood, old regrets and dreams in the form
of lunum moths fluttering against the windows at midnight. Of course,
I finally figured out what Barney meant, or what I
comforted myself with believing he meant something about a bolt
(28:06):
coming down, the lightning rod on the house a commonplace,
an utterly natural thing. I should have dismissed it, but
it had its effect on me. Here was a stolid man,
smelling of hay and leather, who talked like somebody out
of Charles Fort's books, or like a traveler back from
(28:26):
oz and all the time the lightning was zigging and
zagging around him. On this hot morning, when I saw
Barney coming along with his faithful storm trudging behind him,
I went back frowningly to my copy of Swan's Way.
I hope that Barney, seeing me absorbed in a book,
would pass by without saying anything. I read. I myself
(28:50):
seemed actually to have become the subject of my book,
A Church, a quartet, the rivalry between Francis the First
and Charles the Fifth. I could feel Barney standing looking
at me, but I didn't look at him this morning.
By and bye, said Barney. I go hunt gratches indiviudes.
(29:10):
That's fine, I said, and turned to page and pretended
to be engrossed in what I was reading. Barney walked on.
He had wanted to talk some more, but he walked on.
After a paragraph or two his words began to come
between me and the words in the book by m By.
(29:31):
I go hunt grotches in de woods. If you are
susceptible such things, it is not difficult to visualize grotches.
They fluttered into my mind, ugly little creatures about the
size of whipper wills, only covered with blood and honey,
and the scrapings of church bells gratches. Who and what
(29:54):
I wondered, really was this thing in the form of
a hired man that kept anointing me ominously In passing
with abra cadabra. Barney didn't go toward the woods at once.
He weeded the corn, He picked apple boughs off off
the lawn. He knocked a yellow jacket's nest down out
(30:14):
of a plum tree. It was raining now, but he
didn't seem to notice it. He kept looking at me
out of the corner of his eye, and I kept
looking at him out of the corner of my eye.
What time is it, blease? He called to me. Finally,
I put down my book and sauntered out to him.
When you go for those gratches, I said, firmly, I'll
(30:34):
go with you. I was sure he wouldn't want me
to go. I was right. He protested that he could
get the gratches himself. I'll go with you, I said, stubbornly.
We stood looking at each other, and then, abruptly, just
to give him something to ponder over, I quoted, I'm
going out to clean the pasture spring. I'll only stop
(30:57):
to take the leaves away and wait to watch the
water clear. I may, I shan't be gone long. You
come two. It wasn't, I realized, very good abracadabra, but
it served. Barney looked at me in a puzzled way. Yes,
he said, vaguely, it's five minutes of twelve, I said,
(31:20):
remembering he had asked. Then we go, he said, And
we trudged through the rain over to the orchard fence
and climbed that and opened the gate and went out
into the meadow that slopes up to the woods. I
had a pre figuring of Barney at some proper spot
deep in the woods, prancing around like a goat, casting
off his false nature, shedding his hired man's garments, dropping
(31:43):
his teutonic accent, repeating diabolical phrases, conjuring up gratches. There
was a great slash of lightning and along bumping of thunder.
As we reached the edge of the woods. I turned
and fled. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Barney standing
and staring after me. It turned out, on the face
(32:07):
of it, to be as simple as the boat that
came down the rock. Grotches were crotches crotched saplings, which
he cut down to use as supports under the peach bows,
because in bearing time they become so heavy with fruit
that there was danger of the branches snapping off. I
saw Barney later putting the crotches in place. We didn't
(32:28):
have much to say to each other. I can see
now that he was beginning to suspect me too. About
six o'clock next evening, I was alone in the house
and sleeping upstairs. Barney rapped on the door of the
front porch. I knew it was Barney because he called
to me. I woke up slowly. It was dark for
(32:51):
six o'clock. I heard rumblings and soft flickerings. Barney was
standing at the front door, with his storm at heel.
I had the conviction that it wasn't storming anywhere except
around my how there couldn't, without the intervention of the
devil or one of his agents, be so many lightning
storms in one neighborhood. I had been dreaming of prost
(33:16):
and the church at Cambre, and meadowlands dipped in tea,
and the rivalry between Francis the First and Charles the fifth.
My head whirled and I didn't get up. Barney kept
on wrapping. He called out again. There was a flash
followed by a sharp splitting sound. Now I leaped up.
This time, I thought he is here to get me.
(33:38):
I had a notion that he was standing at the door,
bare footed, with a wreath of grape leaves around his
head and a wild animals skin slung over his shoulder.
I didn't want to go down, but I did. He
was as usual, solid, amiable, dressed like a hired man.
I went out onto the porch and looked at the
(33:58):
improbable storm now on in all of its fury. This
is getting pretty bad, I said meaningly. Barney looked at
the rain placidly well. I said, irritably, what's up? Barney
turned his little squinty blue eyes on me. We go
to the gardeck now and become Warbes? He said, the
(34:19):
hell we do, I thought to myself quickly. I was uneasy.
I was you might even say terrified, but I determined
not to show it. If he began to chant incantations,
or to make obscene signs, or if he attempted to
sling me over his shoulder, I resolved to plunge, ride
out into that storm, lightning it all, and run to
(34:39):
the nearest house. I didn't know what they would think
at the nearest house when I burst in upon them,
or what I would tell them, but I didn't intend
to accompany this amiable looking fiend to any garrick and
become a warb. I tried to persuade myself that there
was some simple explanation that warbes would turn out to
(35:00):
be as the innocuous as boats on rocks and gratches indivuds.
But the conviction gripped me in the growling of the
thunder that here, at last was the moment when Barney
Holler or whoever he was, had chosen to get me.
I walked towards the steps that led to the lawn
(35:21):
and turned and faced him grimly. Listen, I barked suddenly.
Did you know that even when it isn't brillig I
can produce slythy tobes? Did you happen to know that
the mome Wrath never lived that could outgrade me? Yeah?
And furthermore, I can become anything I want to. Even
if I were a warb I wouldn't have to keep
on being one if I didn't want to. I can
(35:42):
become a playing card at will too. Once I was
the jack of clubs, only I forgot to say my
glasses off and some guy recognized me. I. Barney was
backing slowly away towards the petunia box at one end
of the porch. His little blue eyes were wide. He
saw that I had him. I think I'll go now,
(36:03):
he said, and he walked out into the rain. The
rain followed him down the road. I have a new
hired man now. Barney never came back to work for
me after that day. Of course, I figured out finally
what he meant about the Garrick and the warves. He
had simply got horribly mixed up in trying to tell
me that he was going up to the garret and
(36:25):
clear out the wasps, of which I have thousands. The
new hired man is afraid of them. Barney could have
scooped them up in his hands and thrown them out
a window without getting stung. I am sure he trafficked
with the devil, but I am sorry I let him go.
(37:00):
The Black Magic of Barney Haller by James Thurber. I've
done all the damage I can do here, and so
does Barney hall Er. Thanks for listening. If you're not
following or subscribed or whatever, please do so. If you
can stop a passer by on the street and get
them to follow it as well. Here are the credits.
Most of the music, including our theme here from Beethoven's Ninth,
was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
(37:23):
Philip Channel There the Countdown musical directors, All orchestration and
keyboards by John Philip Chanelle, guitarist, bass and drums by
Brian Ray, produced by T k O Brothers. Other Beethoven
selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN Too,
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis and it
appears courtesy of ESPN incorporated musical comments by Nancy Faust.
(37:47):
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was
Richard Lewis. Everything else pretty much my fault. So let's
countdown for this the six and ninety six day since
Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government
of the United States. Arrest him now, why al we
still can? The next new edition scheduled for Monday. Till then,
I'm Keith all Reman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
(38:10):
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
There is no such thing as being slightly Nazi. Donald
(00:28):
Trump quote, Kanye West was actually very sharp and very
very smart. I was impressed by a lot of what
he said. Elon Musk quote, welcome back to Twitter, my friend,
Kanye West. The House Judiciary Republicans quote Kanye Elon Trump.
Tucker Carlson quote, We've rarely heard a man speak so
(00:49):
honestly and so movingly about what he believes. Congressman Paul
goes Our quote, pray for Kanye West. They will throw
everything they have at him simply for speaking the truth.
Greg Gutfeld quote, very special intellectual renaissance. Benny Johnson quote,
(01:10):
Kanye West is a cultural icon. Janine Pierro quote. I
was blown away by Kanye West. Tim Poole quote, I
think you could actually win the presidency. Will Kine quote.
This was unvarnished authentic. There's such authenticity to that that
it just makes me want to hear more. Jason Whitlock quote,
(01:30):
Kanye is a very important voice. I'm going to make
an analogy. Kunta Kente in roots Kanye West quote, I
I see I see good things about Hitler, also that Jews.
I love everyone, and Jewish people are not gonna tell me.
You can love um, you know us, and you can
(01:53):
love what we're doing to you with the contracts, and
you can love what we're you know what we're pushing
with the pornography. But this guy that invented highways, invent
at the very mike her phone that I use as
a musician. You can't say out loud that this person
ever did anything good. And I'm done with that. I'm
done with the classifications. Every human being has something of
(02:16):
value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler. There
is no such thing as being slightly Nazi. I know
you've heard all of this by now, and I know
you know that all those quotes from the Fox News
idiots and the other right wing lunatics and the other
anti semites like Trump fawning over Kanye West were from
before the appearance in which Kanye West was so appalling,
(02:40):
so condescending, so worthless as a human being that it
shocked even Alex Jones. I gotta watch my accounts because
they've been frozen by the Jewish banks, so I need
to watch my mills. Why people are evil Nazi. So
I mean, I I disagree with both statements, but I
(03:00):
get I don't. I don't like the word evil next
to Nazis. I think we need to look at Oh
my goodness, just because you don't like one group doesn't
mean the other. Look. I love Jewish people, but I
also love Nazis. Oh man, Well, I had to disagree
with that. But listen, we're gonna go to Brake. There
(03:21):
was West in that nice Munich Olympics terrorists ski mask,
having already self defenestrated his career, now climbing back up
the side of the same building, crawling back in through
the same window and then throwing himself back out through
the same window. And the Nazis, in my view, war
thugs that shout people down to a lot of really
bad things, but they did good things too. We're gonna
(03:42):
stop dissing the Nazis all the time. Okay, We're We're
gonna get to that parst this word from Tesla. What
is amazing is not that Kanye West said all this,
not that it was so bad that after it was over,
even the House Judiciary gop the Jim Jordan's account that
(04:03):
tweeted Kanye lawn. Trump on October seven actually deleted that
tweet because apparently that's the line for Jim Jordan's announcing
you love Hitler and love Nazis, and not that hours later,
Kanye West tweeted a photo of the symbol from a
crackpot religion, which is a cross between a swastika and
a star of David. It is that, after this career
(04:27):
ender that should have offended everybody in the country, still
virtually none of the Republicans and right wingers who were
extolling West weeks or even days ago said anything. Still yet,
even though I must credit Tim Poole who did. And
(04:51):
then West tweeted some tribe about Jesus, and Elon Musk replied, quote,
Jesus taught love, kindness, and forgiveness. I used to think
that turning the other cheek was weak and foolish, but
I was the fool for not appreciating its profound wisdom.
And if Elon Musk was indeed suggesting forgiveness for West
after he praised Hitler and attacked the Jews, then Elon
(05:13):
Musk needs a CT scan and a team of neurologists immediately,
because there is no such thing as being slightly Nazi.
And it is all well and good to reference the
mental or emotional illnesses of people like Kanye West if
they are relevant to something like this the ultimate Meltdown.
(05:36):
But at some point the illness becomes almost irrelevant. If
the ill person refuses to seek treatment, the illness cannot
become an excuse for the words, these words, these horrible words,
become the person. Kanye West is not an entertainer or
(05:56):
musician anymore. He is not a cultural lightning rod anymore.
He is not a businessman anymore. He is simply the
creature who announced with pride and defiance that he loves
Hitler and the Nazis. And as a gentile of largely
German heritage, I feel this cannot be said often enough.
(06:20):
Those who praise the hatred and madness of Hitler and
Nazism must be metaphorically crushed, and if they get back
up and repeat their hatred, they must be metaphorically crushed again.
And if somebody else is inspired in the future by
Kanye West to repeat the hatred again, just as Kanye
(06:42):
West must have been inspired by some past anti Semite,
that somebody else in the future must in turn be
metaphorically crushed. Even after years in which we collectively as
a society lapsed, in which the vigilance against this kind
of glorification of racial and religious hate lessened just enough
(07:03):
that these creatures us, we're not metaphorically crushed. We left
the door just slightly open somewhere, and Kanye West came in,
and Nick Fluentes came in, and Marjorie Taylor Green came in,
and Tucker Carlson came in, and Donald Trump came in.
(07:28):
And it's not just that, obviously it is time for
all of them to go out again. It is that
we have to stand at this door all the time,
just as we have to stand at the door through
which the racists would sneak back in, just as we
have to stand at the door through which the homophobes
would sneak back in. We have to stand there all
(07:49):
the time, year after year, decade after decorated generation after generation,
and we have to keep the full weight of our
society pressed up against all of those doors. Because the
easiest thing for human beings is to blindly blame the others,
whoever the others are. It is the exact route Germany
(08:13):
took in the nineties and the nineteen thirties. It is
the root Kanye West and Nick Fuentes and Donald Trump
and the House Judiciary. GOP took just a little blind hatred,
just a little scapegoating, not a Holocaust, just a little
anti Semitism. There is no such thing as being slightly Nazi.
(08:37):
When I was a kid, I went to school with
other kids who had lost cousins and uncles and other
people with names and faces and memories they had created
within their family lost in the Holocaust. The most famous
person in our town was a sculptor named Jacques Lipschitz,
(08:59):
who had escaped the Nazis in France, and who was
so grateful for the haven he found among us that
he created a massive sculpture that sits in front of
the town library to this day. I knew because of
the story of Jacques Lipschitz, because of the stories of
the other kids who had lost members of their family,
(09:20):
I knew that the hatred was carried by many of us,
perhaps by all of us, like a dormant virus, that
if we did not control it, if we did not
condemn it, if we were not vigilant against it, it
would appear to us again as it now has, and
(09:46):
my father knew it far more practically. He was twelve
when the Nazis declared war on us. He lived in
a largely Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx, and with the
spelling of our family name, he and I were invariably
mistaken for being Jewish. My dad joked early on to
me we would get all the prejudice, but none of
(10:06):
the holidays. And then he would remind me that the name,
that the assumption about the name, meant that our responsibility
against anti Semitism was greater than that even of the
average American. And then one day, when I was about nine, ten,
(10:26):
maybe eleven, my dad had a big job interview scheduled.
He was going into New York for the last of
a series of conversations with J. C. Penny to become
the head architect for the entire J. C. Penny chain
of stores nationwide. This was a man from a family
so poor that though he was offered a full scholarship
(10:49):
to the Cornell Architecture College, he had to pass because
if he did not go to work at eighteen, it
would have meant his younger brother would have had to
drop out of high school and go to work at sixteen.
This job had architect at a company as large as J. C. Penny,
would have put him and us on Easy Street for life.
(11:13):
Dad told us he might be Lady didn't know how
long the interview would be. He would be meeting with
the full board of directors. My mom and I kissed
him goodbye, and we held our breaths. And so when
we heard his car in the driveway, and it was
not even noon and he had returned, we knew something
was very, very wrong. And I saw it the moment
I saw him step out of the car, he was
(11:35):
read read. My mother said I should go to my room. No,
he insisted, I want you to hear this. I want
you to know this exists. I want you to know this.
I want you to know it exists today, he said.
The interview had started normally enough, and my dad, who
(11:56):
could be as charming as anybody ever born, especially to strangers,
especially in a work setting, he was confident he was
winning them over. They were going to offer him this job.
And then one of them asked him how he spent
his weekends, and he didn't think much about the question.
He talked about it how he often worked seven days
a week, or if he had the day off, he
(12:18):
took his family to a ball game, or he played
with his son. And then one of them asked specifically
about how he spent Sunday morning. Where typically was he
on Sunday mornings. Somebody else in the meeting asked about
Saturday mornings. Where did he go on Saturday mornings? And
(12:43):
my dad said, to me and my mother, that's when
I understood, he said. He looked at them and said, gentlemen,
I now know what you're getting at. No, I am
not much of a churchgoer, but I don't think that's
what you want to hear. What you want me to
tell you is that despite my name, I am not Jewish.
And that's true. I am not Jewish, he said. One
(13:06):
of the j C. Penny board members laughed and leaned
back in his chair and said, boy, is that early.
We really want to offer you this job. You're perfect
for it. And then came the anti Semitic jokes, and
my dad said he stood up and said, I'll repeat,
I'm not Jewish, and I'm also never in my life
going to work for people for whom that question matters.
(13:28):
He then quoted himself to us, complete with F bombs
and m F bombs, and I went white as a sheet.
And my father looked at me and said, good, you
should be shocked. You should know that is when this
language is justified, it will leave an impression on you
as to how important this is. It is always there,
(13:49):
he said, It is always beneath the surface. And as
often as we think we have gotten rid of it
for good, still it's there, and I've had to fight it.
I just had to fight it today, and you will
have to fight it tomorrow. So Kanye West and those
(14:12):
who support him burn in hell, because there is no
such thing as being slightly Nazi still ahead, Baseball loses
(14:42):
one of its legends, a man who, in the days
before performance enhancing drugs was as controversial as it got. Boy,
I missed those days. It's Friday's with Thurber, and very
few of his stories leave the practical, mundane world of
his crazy family and friends. And then there is the
black magic of Barney Haller, where we go through the
garrick now and become Warbs. It is as weird as
(15:06):
that sounds. And CNN's layoffs. CNN fires Chris Salizza. Why
that's bad news for Joe Biden. That's next. This is Countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith Alberman still ahead on Countdown.
(15:30):
I said I did not like Chris Slizza. I did
not say CNN should fire him so that John Malone
could make another fifty dollars. Here's a job you don't
see posted off in New York City rat catcher memories
of the late spitball King gay Lord Perry, and one
of the greatest and the spookiest of all the James
(15:50):
Thurber stories, the Black Magic of Barney Holler, coming up first.
In each edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in
need you can help. Every dog has its day again.
I will keep pushing Elaine Boosler's offer to virtually underwrite
all standard expenses for anybody who adopts a dog off
the kill list at the New York City Pound. I'll
(16:11):
do so as long as she's kind enough to make
that offer. So meet Jupiter, a big, smiling tan pity
who loves dogs, loves people. Even though his last person
left him tied to a post. He just needs a
family to save him. With help from Elaine or your
pledge to help a rescue group do so Jupiter is
social suite loving. You can find them on my Twitter feeds,
(16:31):
and your retweet might be as valuable as your pledge.
I thank you, and Jupiter thanks you. Post Scripts to
the news some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions.
(16:53):
Dateline Washington, thanks a lot, Joe Manchion. Senate votes to
impose a settlement to avoid a nationwide rail strike. It
does not vote to give railroad employees any paid sick
days as part of the settlement. Have you ever been
on a train? These guys work with a dedication to
safety and to customer service, and Mansion voted against them.
(17:14):
Screw him, Dateline Dallas and other herschel walker x Cheryl
Parsa going on the record with The Daily Beast about
her five years with the nut job. The Republicans dug
up so he would do what he's told as the
senator from Georgia if elected. Quoting her, he's a pathological liar, absolutely,
but it's more than that. He knows how to manipulate
(17:35):
his dissociative disease in order to manipulate people while at
times being simultaneously completely out of control. She also said
he is unstable, that he threatened her when she caught
him cheating on her, and used his illness as an
alibi to quote justify lying, cheating, and ultimately destroying families.
Typical Republican dateline CNN. The layoffs that CNN Worldwide president
(17:59):
in charge of eating paste, Chris Licked promised would never
happen happened hundreds of them. The network has shuttered all
live programming on its second channel, Headline News h l
N as it's now styled, and it fired its morning
host Robin Mead, who's been on that network for twenty years.
Licked also scaled back CNN International, among others, fired Martin Savage,
(18:22):
news correspondent for most of the time since with CNN
and political writer Chris Plizza, best known for always having
the worst take no matter what the topic, and having
said that, having made fun of him repeatedly here. My
complaint with Chris Plizza has always been professional, not personal,
especially since these layoffs coming even though CNN is still
(18:44):
making hundreds of millions a year in profits were made
by Chris Licht and John Malone with a plan to
kill off CNN because it platforms criticism of Republicans. This
(19:08):
is Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This is
countdown with Keith in sports. Japan beats Spain two to
one at the World Cup, thus eliminating Germany. The response
in Germany get rid of all of the current players
German team. Glad to see you're taking it well. Baseball,
(19:32):
Gaylord Perry has died. He was eighty four years old.
It is impossible to recreate this time in sports when
just about the biggest controversy on the field anywhere was
whether or not baseball pitchers were secretly loading up the
ball with saliva, vassoline, whatever. Gaylord Perry not only threw
a spitball, but he realized he could also succeed by
(19:53):
not throwing a spitball, but making batters believe maybe he
was throwing one eleven seasons in the top ten for
wins above replacement for pitchers, twelve years in the time
ten for strikeouts, one of only two pitchers to strike
out three thousand men and throw three hundred complete games.
Gaylord Perry won the Cy Young Awarding each league, the
(20:14):
second one with the nineteen seventy eight Padres when he
was thirty nine years old, and he had two of
the most extraordinary starts to season in baseball history. As
late as August twenty, nineteen sixty six, Gaylord Perry had
a record of twenty wins and two losses, then lost
six of his last seven decisions in Cleveland in nineteen
(20:35):
seventy four. He lost his first start, then year that year,
and then one fifteen decisions in a row. I know
the win isn't the stat anymore, but he was twenty
and two one year and fifteen and one the next.
He ultimately pitched for eight different teams and is a
legend with one of them, for whom he only made
fourteen appearances, the Kansas City Royals. Gaylord Perry was one
(20:57):
of the guys who tried to hide George Brett's bat
during the infamous Pine Tar Game of nine eighty three.
And when I was seventeen years old and just getting
started as a radio reporter and a photographer, I was
on the field at Yankee Stadium taking pictures when I
saw Gaylord Perry, then with the Texas Rangers, walking towards me.
He introduced himself like I didn't know who he was. Hey,
(21:18):
can you do me a favor. I've got some friends here.
Can you take some pictures? Of us. I'll give you
fifty bucks. Fifty bucks was fifty bucks. I said, thank you,
but it'll be my pleasure. Just reimbursed me for the
role of film thereafter. Anytime Gaylord Perry was in New
York and I was at a game, he came over
and said hello and said, do you need a new
(21:40):
picture of me? I got traded again. I had one
of James Thurber's rare stories in which he dips a
toe into the cult the Black Magic of Barney Haller
Coming up first, the daily roundup of the miscrants, morons,
(22:01):
and Donning Kruger Effect specimens who constitute two days were
persons in the world. The Bronze City of New York,
Eric Adams, our latest Nitwitt mayor. The city has posted
a job offering New York Citywide Director of rodent Mitigation. Quote,
do you have what it takes to do the impossible?
(22:22):
A virulent vehemence for vermin, a background in urban planning,
project management, or government, and most importantly, the drive, determination
and killer instinct needed to fight the real enemy, New
York City's relentless rat population. The ideal candidate is highly
motivated and somewhat bloodthirsty. Determined to look at all solutions
from various angles, including improving operational efficiency, data collection, technology, innovation,
(22:46):
trash management, and wholesale slaughter. Unquote. First of all, you're
not gonna beat the rats. This is their town. We
just live in it, and if you don't bother them,
they won't bother you. Secondly, how does the City of
New York simply just not hire the obvious choice for
(23:09):
the gig of rat Catcher, the Pied Piper of Hamlin
runner up herschel Walker. Yeah, I mentioned it the other
get girlfriend on the record, saying he threatened her. The
guy is a train wreck, but he does have an excuse.
He seems to have hallucinations about fifty of the time. Quote.
He also claimed, said Barack Obama at a Raphael Warnock
(23:32):
rally last night in Georgia, that he used to let
me beat him in basketball, But then he admitted that
we never actually met, so I guess said the former president.
This was more of an imaginary whooping, but our winner.
Amy Roebock of ABC News and MSNBC. Years ago, Amy
(23:52):
Roebock was briefly one of the backup hosts of Countdown,
but when she was offered the chance to take the
assignment full time and then maybe gets spun off into
her own show like we did with Matto and o'donald
and Heys. She passed, explaining to me that she was
embarrassed by Countdown and Politics and she needed to maintain
(24:12):
her dignity because quote I work for NBC News. Shortly
after that, Amy Robot dumped her husband and kids so
she could run off with the actor Andrew Shoe, And
now the tabloids are reporting that she has dumped Shoe
and this family and is having an affair with her
also married to somebody else. Good Morning America co anchor T. J. Holmes,
(24:35):
Britain's Daily Mail has a photo of Amy Roebok putting
something in the back of a car. Happily, Mr Holmes
is helping her by holding her butt to keep her steady.
I guess Amy way to maintain that dignity. Roebok two
Day's Worst Person and the World to the number one
(25:07):
story on The Countdown and It's Fridays with Thurber, and
only occasionally did the great American humorist bend towards the supernatural.
Lots of Thurber's characters, like his fictionalized version of his
own mother claimed to get messages from beyond the grave
and stuff like that, but rarely did Thurber ever go
ac cult in the first person. This is not true
(25:31):
in one of my all time favorites of his stories,
The Black Magic of Barney Holler, in which a slight
accent turns into something that is just right up against
the line of being actually a little scary, but still hilarious.
The Black Magic of Barney Haller by James Thurber. It
(25:54):
was one of those hunt days on which the earth
is uninhabitable, even as early as ten o'clock in the morning,
even on the hill where I live, under the dark maples.
The long porch is hot, and the wicker chair I
sat in complained hotly. My coffee was beginning to wear off,
and with it the momentary illusion it gives that things
are right and life is good. There were sultry mutterings
(26:18):
of thunder. I had a quick feeling that if I
looked up from my book, I would see Barney Holler.
I looked up, and then there he was, coming along
the road, lightning playing about his shoulders, thunder following him
like a dog. Barney is or was my hired man.
(26:41):
He is strong and amiable, sweaty and dependable, slowly and
heavily confident, but he is also eerie. He traffics with
the devil. His ears twitched when he talks, but it
isn't so much that as the things he says. Once
(27:01):
in late June, when all of a moment, sabers began
to flat brightly in the heavens and bowling balls rumbled,
I took refuge in the barn. I always have a
feeling that I am going to be struck by lightning
and either riven like an old apple tree, or left
with a foot that aches in rainy weather and a
habit of fainting. These things happen. Barney came in not
(27:23):
to escape the storm to which he is or pretends
to be indifferent, but to put the side a way. Suddenly,
he said, the first of those things that made me
when I was with him faintly creepy. He pointed at
the house. Once I see this boat come down to rock,
he said, it is phenomena like that of which I
(27:45):
stand in constant dread, boats coming down rocks, people being teleported,
statues dripping blood, old regrets and dreams in the form
of lunum moths fluttering against the windows at midnight. Of course,
I finally figured out what Barney meant, or what I
comforted myself with believing he meant something about a bolt
(28:06):
coming down, the lightning rod on the house a commonplace,
an utterly natural thing. I should have dismissed it, but
it had its effect on me. Here was a stolid man,
smelling of hay and leather, who talked like somebody out
of Charles Fort's books, or like a traveler back from
(28:26):
oz and all the time the lightning was zigging and
zagging around him. On this hot morning, when I saw
Barney coming along with his faithful storm trudging behind him,
I went back frowningly to my copy of Swan's Way.
I hope that Barney, seeing me absorbed in a book,
would pass by without saying anything. I read. I myself
(28:50):
seemed actually to have become the subject of my book,
A Church, a quartet, the rivalry between Francis the First
and Charles the Fifth. I could feel Barney standing looking
at me, but I didn't look at him this morning.
By and bye, said Barney. I go hunt gratches indiviudes.
(29:10):
That's fine, I said, and turned to page and pretended
to be engrossed in what I was reading. Barney walked on.
He had wanted to talk some more, but he walked on.
After a paragraph or two his words began to come
between me and the words in the book by m By.
(29:31):
I go hunt grotches in de woods. If you are
susceptible such things, it is not difficult to visualize grotches.
They fluttered into my mind, ugly little creatures about the
size of whipper wills, only covered with blood and honey,
and the scrapings of church bells gratches. Who and what
(29:54):
I wondered, really was this thing in the form of
a hired man that kept anointing me ominously In passing
with abra cadabra. Barney didn't go toward the woods at once.
He weeded the corn, He picked apple boughs off off
the lawn. He knocked a yellow jacket's nest down out
(30:14):
of a plum tree. It was raining now, but he
didn't seem to notice it. He kept looking at me
out of the corner of his eye, and I kept
looking at him out of the corner of my eye.
What time is it, blease? He called to me. Finally,
I put down my book and sauntered out to him.
When you go for those gratches, I said, firmly, I'll
(30:34):
go with you. I was sure he wouldn't want me
to go. I was right. He protested that he could
get the gratches himself. I'll go with you, I said, stubbornly.
We stood looking at each other, and then, abruptly, just
to give him something to ponder over, I quoted, I'm
going out to clean the pasture spring. I'll only stop
(30:57):
to take the leaves away and wait to watch the
water clear. I may, I shan't be gone long. You
come two. It wasn't, I realized, very good abracadabra, but
it served. Barney looked at me in a puzzled way. Yes,
he said, vaguely, it's five minutes of twelve, I said,
(31:20):
remembering he had asked. Then we go, he said, And
we trudged through the rain over to the orchard fence
and climbed that and opened the gate and went out
into the meadow that slopes up to the woods. I
had a pre figuring of Barney at some proper spot
deep in the woods, prancing around like a goat, casting
off his false nature, shedding his hired man's garments, dropping
(31:43):
his teutonic accent, repeating diabolical phrases, conjuring up gratches. There
was a great slash of lightning and along bumping of thunder.
As we reached the edge of the woods. I turned
and fled. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Barney standing
and staring after me. It turned out, on the face
(32:07):
of it, to be as simple as the boat that
came down the rock. Grotches were crotches crotched saplings, which
he cut down to use as supports under the peach bows,
because in bearing time they become so heavy with fruit
that there was danger of the branches snapping off. I
saw Barney later putting the crotches in place. We didn't
(32:28):
have much to say to each other. I can see
now that he was beginning to suspect me too. About
six o'clock next evening, I was alone in the house
and sleeping upstairs. Barney rapped on the door of the
front porch. I knew it was Barney because he called
to me. I woke up slowly. It was dark for
(32:51):
six o'clock. I heard rumblings and soft flickerings. Barney was
standing at the front door, with his storm at heel.
I had the conviction that it wasn't storming anywhere except
around my how there couldn't, without the intervention of the
devil or one of his agents, be so many lightning
storms in one neighborhood. I had been dreaming of prost
(33:16):
and the church at Cambre, and meadowlands dipped in tea,
and the rivalry between Francis the First and Charles the fifth.
My head whirled and I didn't get up. Barney kept
on wrapping. He called out again. There was a flash
followed by a sharp splitting sound. Now I leaped up.
This time, I thought he is here to get me.
(33:38):
I had a notion that he was standing at the door,
bare footed, with a wreath of grape leaves around his
head and a wild animals skin slung over his shoulder.
I didn't want to go down, but I did. He
was as usual, solid, amiable, dressed like a hired man.
I went out onto the porch and looked at the
(33:58):
improbable storm now on in all of its fury. This
is getting pretty bad, I said meaningly. Barney looked at
the rain placidly well. I said, irritably, what's up? Barney
turned his little squinty blue eyes on me. We go
to the gardeck now and become Warbes? He said, the
(34:19):
hell we do, I thought to myself quickly. I was uneasy.
I was you might even say terrified, but I determined
not to show it. If he began to chant incantations,
or to make obscene signs, or if he attempted to
sling me over his shoulder, I resolved to plunge, ride
out into that storm, lightning it all, and run to
(34:39):
the nearest house. I didn't know what they would think
at the nearest house when I burst in upon them,
or what I would tell them, but I didn't intend
to accompany this amiable looking fiend to any garrick and
become a warb. I tried to persuade myself that there
was some simple explanation that warbes would turn out to
(35:00):
be as the innocuous as boats on rocks and gratches indivuds.
But the conviction gripped me in the growling of the
thunder that here, at last was the moment when Barney
Holler or whoever he was, had chosen to get me.
I walked towards the steps that led to the lawn
(35:21):
and turned and faced him grimly. Listen, I barked suddenly.
Did you know that even when it isn't brillig I
can produce slythy tobes? Did you happen to know that
the mome Wrath never lived that could outgrade me? Yeah?
And furthermore, I can become anything I want to. Even
if I were a warb I wouldn't have to keep
on being one if I didn't want to. I can
(35:42):
become a playing card at will too. Once I was
the jack of clubs, only I forgot to say my
glasses off and some guy recognized me. I. Barney was
backing slowly away towards the petunia box at one end
of the porch. His little blue eyes were wide. He
saw that I had him. I think I'll go now,
(36:03):
he said, and he walked out into the rain. The
rain followed him down the road. I have a new
hired man now. Barney never came back to work for
me after that day. Of course, I figured out finally
what he meant about the Garrick and the warves. He
had simply got horribly mixed up in trying to tell
me that he was going up to the garret and
(36:25):
clear out the wasps, of which I have thousands. The
new hired man is afraid of them. Barney could have
scooped them up in his hands and thrown them out
a window without getting stung. I am sure he trafficked
with the devil, but I am sorry I let him go.
(37:00):
The Black Magic of Barney Haller by James Thurber. I've
done all the damage I can do here, and so
does Barney hall Er. Thanks for listening. If you're not
following or subscribed or whatever, please do so. If you
can stop a passer by on the street and get
them to follow it as well. Here are the credits.
Most of the music, including our theme here from Beethoven's Ninth,
was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
(37:23):
Philip Channel There the Countdown musical directors, All orchestration and
keyboards by John Philip Chanelle, guitarist, bass and drums by
Brian Ray, produced by T k O Brothers. Other Beethoven
selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN Too,
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis and it
appears courtesy of ESPN incorporated musical comments by Nancy Faust.
(37:47):
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was
Richard Lewis. Everything else pretty much my fault. So let's
countdown for this the six and ninety six day since
Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government
of the United States. Arrest him now, why al we
still can? The next new edition scheduled for Monday. Till then,
I'm Keith all Reman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
(38:10):
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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