September 15, 2023 • 56 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 35: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT:
Congratulations, Kevin McCarthy on a unique feat: impeaching YOURSELF. McCarthy and the Republicans got their wish – the framework of a Joe Biden Impeachment and in less than 72 hours they have so COMPLETELY obscured it and overshadowed it and knocked it off the front pages that not even the right wing outlets are talking about IT, they’re talking about McCARTHY.
It’s going so well for Soon-To-Be-Former-House-Speaker Kevin McCarthy that a senior Republican lawmaker has now told Semafor News that this ends when quote, “The whole family kills each other. I think we’re close to that right now. We are in maybe the Godfather TWO stage.” McCarthy that he met with his House Conference, dared them to oust him as Speaker, and then swore at them. “Go ahead. I’m not (effing) scared of it… move the (effing) motion.” And a Republican Congressional aide says that the Freedom Caucus members are quote “hellbent on losing the majority” for the GOP in the House.
McCarthy, who was not smart enough to KNOW the story of Newt Gingrich's implosion under similar impeachment circumstances in 1998 (let alone use it as a template to avoid creating his current drama in which he is not only the hostage but the guy who showed the hostage takers how to TAKE the hostage) is probably not smart enough – when it comes to this - to quit. So the House will suspend while they hose down what’s left of him off the walls and then if we’re all real quiet, through our windows and doors will come the faint but unmistakable sound of President Biden laughing his ass off.
Meanwhile, the Kristen Welker “Big Splash” sitdown for her Meet The Press Debut was arguably WORSE than expected. They throw clips on Nightly News with Lester Holt and in one he says to her he could’ve pardoned himself and he makes up stories about legal authorities and she smiles vapidly at him and instead of saying “You do know we all know you’re lying” or even just “honey please” she says “even if you were re-elected?” as if she were asking some nitwit on Dateline whether or not he’d go to the prom with the murder victim again. And she asks him what he thinks about Hunter Biden which is like seeing “For my next question, President Trump, free topic! Say whatever you want!” And THEN HE says “You mean because I challenge an election, they want to put me in jail?” and instead of saying something like – well, anything – she stares vapidly and they cut to Lester and Lester stares vapidly and then says “He had a pretty interesting answer” and you are reminded that Lester reached the apogee of his journalistic career in his cameo at the end of the movie “The Fugitive” in 1993.
And as the GOP implodes, I sit here and I almost pray that somebody in the Democratic Party has the vision to say “the Republicans are in trouble, let’s make sure we make it far worse for them. THIS is the time: release the Comer," As the prospect looms that McCarthy will be ousted and somebody - maybe Oversight Chairman James Comer - will succeed him, now is the moment to push the 2015 allegations that surfaced when Comer ran for governor: He was credibly accused ago of physically and mentally abusing his college girlfriend from the early 1990’s, and credibly accused calling her mother and threatening the girlfriend’s life. And credibly accused of becoming “enraged” after finding that she had written-in his real name on the paperwork at the abortion clinic the quote “Pro-life” unquote Comer had driven her to, to end THEIR pregnancy oh and she still had that paperwork in a safe deposit box.
B-Block (24:28) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Lauren Boebert of the anti-drag party, is dating a bar owner who reportedly hosted a drag party. Drew Barrymore re-starts her talk show even though the writers are on strike. That makes her a SCAB. Bill Maher re-starts his "comedy" show even though the writers are on strike (and he insults the writers in the process) and he is a SCAB. (32:25) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I didn't know until 2009 that Maher and I met at Cornell in 1978 and in less than a minute he'd been so obnoxious I was ready to sock him. In a terrific irony considering his scabbing for his corporate masters, way back then he called me a "corporate sellout."
C-Block (47:45) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: The immortal short story "The Night The Bed Fell."
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Congratulations
Kevin McCarthy, you have now impeached yourself. It is going
(00:29):
so well for soon to be former House Speaker Kevin
McCarthy that a senior Republican lawmaker has now told Semaphore
News that this ends when quote the whole family kills
each other. I think we're close to that right now.
We are in maybe the Godfather to stage. That's right.
(00:52):
Kevin McCarthy and the Republicans got their wish, the framework
of a Joe Biden impeachment, and in less than seventy
two hours they have so completely obscured it and overshadowed
it and knocked it off the front page that not
even the right wing outlets are talking about it. They
are talking about Kevin McCarthy, and the Godfather imagery is
(01:15):
just the tip of it. It is going so well
for the soon to be former House Speaker McCarthy that
he met with his House conference. He dared them to
oust him as speaker, and then he swore at them,
go ahead, I'm not effing scared of it. Move the
effing motion. It's going so well for soon to be
(01:36):
former House Speaker McCarthy that a Republican Congressional Aid now
says that the Freedom Caucus members are quote hell bent
on losing the majority for the GOP in the House.
And this is only day three, only day three of
Kevin McCarthy's impeachment inquiry, which by late on day one
(01:58):
had become Kevin McCarthy's illegal impeachment inquiry, and which now
after day two has become Kevin McCarthy's imploding legal impeachment inquiry.
McCarthy's grand strategy appease Trump by dirtying up Hunter Biden,
so you can pretend to impeach Joe Biden, rip draconian
cuts through every limb of the federal budget, solidify your
(02:21):
own control of the House, position you were signed for
next year's election, and stage first a stunt shutdown of
the government and then ride in on a paper mache
whitehorse to resolve the stunt shutdown of the government. Has
all collapsed. McCarthy had to punch on the shutdown, then
(02:41):
he had to punch on the punt of the shutdown,
and he is now struggling to pass something to maybe
keep the government afloat just for a month, or shut
it down he is now under attacked by his right wing,
his left wing, and by Trump. And of course, the
forgotten keys to this whole spit storm McCarthy has brought
(03:03):
down on his own head are standing silently in the
back of the room. The Democrats. If a vote to
fire McCarthy technically called a motion to vacate the chair
actually comes to the floor, there are two hundred and
thirteen Democratic votes to destroy Kevin McCarthy. Minority Leader Hakeem
Jefferies is not saying this, of course, but strategically it's obvious.
(03:28):
Why wouldn't you want to see the majority stab its
own speaker in the back for the first time in
the history of the House of Representatives. I mean, the
strategy and the policy implications are one thing. The fact
that they'd be wasting their time on that and nothing
else is another. But two hundred and thirteen Democrats would
vote to oust Kevin McCarthy just for the sheer joy
(03:51):
of it. And if they do anti McCarthy, Republicans need
only five votes from their own side. It's hilarious, and
they never learn this would be the first ouster of
a serving speaker, only because when twenty five years ago
(04:11):
After the disastrous nineteen ninety eight midterms, Republican leadership got
Newt Gingrich in a room and explained to him he
was not leaving that room as Speaker. Newt had the
presence of mind to take the clean way out, and
he still does have that lucrative career in Fox News
guest hits and hosting infomercials. Anyway, McCarthy, who was not
(04:37):
smart enough to know the Gangrich nineteen ninety eight story,
let alone use it as a template to avoid creating
his current drama, in which he is not only the
hostage but also the guy who showed the hostage takers
how to take the hostage. Kevin McCarthy is probably not
smart enough when it comes to this to quit. So
(04:57):
the house will suspend while they hose down what's left
of him off the walls, and then, if we're all
real quiet, through our windows and doors will come the
faint but unmistakable sound of President Biden laughing his ass off.
(05:21):
Hunter Biden may be laughing by that time as well.
He has now in fact sued an ex Trump thug
over the laptop which now may turn out to really
be a hacked iPhone uploaded onto a laptop and suddenly
the repairman guy with the eyes going out of either
side of his head, and Rudy and everybody else, they
are all positioned for all kinds of exciting new criminal charges,
(05:43):
and Rudy, Rudy may experience an entirely different kind of
motion to vacate after yesterday's gun charges. Hunter Biden is
also in the unique position of being defended by Republicans
Second Amendment nut jobs, and the charges are dubious enough,
especially in the context of the previous plea deal, that
(06:05):
he may have a malicious prosecution case against his father's
Department of Justice. And I love Jack Smith, but seeing
Merrick Garland fired because he prosecuted the President's son in
a demented bid to seem balanced politically would be an
early Christmas present that I would always cherish. And best
(06:26):
of all, to quote Daffy and Bugs, duck season, wabbit season,
duck season, wabbit season, duck season, whistleblower season. The FBI
whistleblower who's whistle blowing about the anti Hunter Biden whistleblower
has confirmed his identity. He is Jonathan Boma, and he
(06:50):
says he went to his boss in the FBI in
Los Angeles in twenty nineteen, with uncorroborated but strong information
that dirtied up Hunter Biden and his boss was all ears,
But then Burma presented part two of this quote. When
I attempted to provide information that Rudy Giuliani may have
been compromised by individuals suspected of being involved in Russian
(07:13):
counter intelligence influence operations, he his boss shut me down,
and the meeting ended. I came to know that Giuliani
had received three hundred thousand dollars from Pabel Fuchs unquote,
and then Agent Buma goes on to explain Fuchs' ties
to corruption in Ukraine and his ties to Putin and
(07:35):
his ties to what's this name here, Trumum, and how
his bosses at the FBI did not want to know
anything about anybody except Hunter Biden. Oops. Maybe the best
part of this, apart from the clumsy but colorful analogy
(07:55):
to al Pacino killing off the heads of the rival
families in Godfather Too, is the fact that as this
has played out, the Orange Man behind the Orange Curtain
has not as much as posted one sentence of support
for his latest Renfield. All right, I got the Wizard
of Oz and Dracula working in the same sentence, It's
(08:16):
the end of the week and I've been sick. Shoot
me add Kevin McCarthy's name to the list of those
who have done Trump's bidding for him, and then turned
around to receive at least the grumbled thanks, only to
find an empty space where Trump used to be. Trump,
of course, was too busy yesterday, being interviewed by one
(08:38):
x NBC News wash out named Megan Kelly and by
one future x NBC News wash out named Kristin Welker.
The Welker Big Splash sit down for her meet the
Press debut was in fact, arguably worse than expected. They
threw clips of it on Nightly News with Lester Holt,
(08:59):
and in one Trump says to her that he could
have pardoned himself, and he makes up a bunch of
stories about that and legal authorities and how he would
never really do that, and she just smiles vapidly at him,
and instead of saying you do know, we all know
you're lying, or even just honey, please, she says, even
(09:21):
if you were reelected, as if she were asking some
nitwit in a dateline story, whether or not he would
go to the prom with the murder victim all over again.
And then she asks him what he thinks about Hunter Biden,
which is like saying, for my next question, President Trump,
free topic, say whatever you want. And then he moves
(09:43):
on to say, you mean, because I challenge an election,
they want to put me in jail. And instead of
saying something like, well anything, literally say anything, she just
stares vapidly, and then they cut to Lester Holt, and
Lester stares vapidly, and then Lester says he had a
pretty interesting answer, and you are reminded that Lester Holt
(10:06):
reached the apogee of his journalistic career in his cameo
at the end of the movie The Fugitive In nineteen
ninety three, as an aside, I flashed back to the
week they moved MSNBC from New Jersey into thirty Rock,
and my office was set up next to the nightly
news writing area, and I was genuinely shocked, and I
(10:29):
was forty eight years old at the time. I was
genuinely shocked that while their newscast was on the air,
the producers and writers of Nightly News with Brian Williams
were sitting there and openly hissing and booing at the
TV monitors and mocking Brian Williams as he was on
camera in a studio down the hall, and one of
(10:52):
them was doing an impression of him. And I realize
now that if those same people could have seen what
Lester Holt and Kristin Welker would be doing on the
same newscast roughly sixx teen years to the day later,
they would have been rushing into the studio crying and
embracing Brian Williams as the burrow of his time. More
(11:16):
relevant to our story, however, was the other interview Trump
did with Megan Kelly. Meghan Kelly, who is marching rapidly
and inexorably towards being Carrie Lake two. As I noted
here yesterday, Judge Aileen Cannon slapped a gag order on
Trump publicly discussing the classified information he stole that is
(11:38):
at the center of the Florida trial. Trump does not
quite violate that gag order, but he once again, and
this is at least the twelfth time, does violate the
instructions from Judge Tanya Chutkin in Washington about obstructing justice
in that case, or threatening the witnesses, or jeopardizing or
slandering the prosecution. Let's count how long it takes him
(12:00):
to do any of that in this clip here? Okay, one, Well,
actually that's the answer. One.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
We have a deranged guy named Jack Smith who's been
overturned at the Supreme Court a number of times. And
he gets overturned, you know, it gets overturned because he
goes too far. They don't even mention the Presidential Records Act.
This is all about the Presidential Records Act. I'm allowed
to have these documents. I'm allowed to take these documents
classified or not classified, and frankly, when I have them,
(12:29):
they become unclassified.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
People think you have to go through a ritual. You don't.
Also all the stuff after he again attacked the special counsel,
and I keep thinking, that has got to be one
of the extra judicial statements that Smith and Chutkin and
Trump's lawyers are addressing under seal. All the other stuff
that followed that, all of it lies, all of it.
The Presidential Records Act says nothing like that. In fact,
(12:54):
it says the exact opposite of that. And if you
are expecting Megan Kelly to push back. Just because she's
a lawyer, then you're probably expecting this. Knitwit Welker pushed
back on a similar answer, but NBC decided to hold
the clip to play it on Sunday rather than run
a clip last night, a clip of what would have
(13:14):
been the biggest journalism story and one of the biggest
governmental stories of the year, in which an interviewer with
access to Trump actually challenged him about something by saying,
not even saying, you're a goddamned liar, but that's not true.
I happen to have the presidential record act here. I
(13:34):
will now read it aloud in its entirety. And then
you just sit there and wait until Trump storms off
the set or whatever he does. And that's how you
make a big splash in your first Meet the Press
interview with Trump. Rather than you know, asking the series
of questions, Kristin Welker asked that each had the exact
(13:55):
same journalistic atomic number, the same journalistic atomic number as quote,
how do you feel? Unquote Okay, So back to Washington
and Kevin, I send impeachment inquiry bomb into room where
our president and son who gets blown up? Me McCarthy delightfully,
(14:17):
the new questions reverberating around Washington now are not at
all about the President or his son, but about McCarthy
and who would be the next Speaker, and whether that
would be James Comer, who once again has lied about
(14:37):
just trying to see Hunter Biden's bank records when Hunter
Biden's attorneys offered to have their client meet with him
in February last February, and Comer ignored the offer because,
of course, a cooperative Hunter Biden is of no use
to Jamie Comer's political assassination. No Pants Party. And I
sit here and I almost pray that somebody in the
(15:01):
Democratic Party has the vision now to say, the Republicans
are in trouble, right now, real trouble. Let's make sure
they stay in trouble. In fact, let's make sure we
make it far, far worse for them. McCarthy is self destructing.
Let's take care of the guy behind McCarthy. This is
the time release the Comber. It was November of last
(15:26):
year when I first brought this up, and I just
hope the Democrats thought not yet, rather than we cannot
lower ourselves to addressing the lives of a Republican using
his committee chairmanship for political assassination by you know, going
out there and spreading truth. In twenty fifteen, James Comer
(15:47):
chairman of the House Obstruction of Justice Committee and possible
successor to Kevin McCarthy, though they insist on calling that
the Oversight Committee. He was credibly accused in twenty fifteen
of physically and mentally abusing his college girlfriend from the
early nineteen nineties, and credibly accused of calling her mother
(16:07):
and threatening the girlfriend's life to her mother, and credibly
accused of becoming enraged after finding out that his girlfriend
had written in his real name on the paperwork at
the abortion clinic that the quote pro life unquote James
Comber had driven her to to end their pregnancy ohen
she still had that paperwork in a safe deposit box.
(16:31):
Comer ran for governor of Kentucky in twenty fifteen, and
as the Republican primary came to an end that year,
he was hit with that double scandal. His girlfriend of
the early nineties, a woman named Marilyn Thomas, who was
still a Republican, accused him of hitting her, of threatening her,
of separating her from her family, of being quote toxic, abusive,
(16:51):
and caused me a lot of suffering. Everything I did,
everywhere I went, and everyone with whom I interacted had
to be approved. Consequences were violent and swift. Otherwise unquote well,
when that broke in twenty fifteen, a Republican state senator
in Kentucky promptly an angrily defended the girlfriend. He said
(17:12):
she'd known Marilyn Thomas since nineteen ninety five. Her college
roommate rushed to defend Marilynd Thomas, saying she'd seen all
that abuse in real time, and her mother said Comber
had called their home in the middle of the night
and threatened her daughter. All of this was front page
news in Kentucky in twenty fifteen, and then Jamie Comer
(17:35):
lost the primary for governor and he was not news anymore.
And because this is the other biggest thing wrong with
the news media, the Maryland Thomas story and the violence
allegation and the threat allegation and the abortion allegation, they
just vanished. If the Democrats are smart, they make and
they can put whatever distance they want to between it
(17:57):
and the party itself, they make James Comer and what
he did to Marilynd Thomas at Western Kentucky University in
nineteen ninety one. The story right now, pile it out
there on top of Kevin McCarthy. Right now, call a
news conference. Leak as story, leak a dozen stories. Give
Kristen Welker a ring. You want oversight, mister chairman, or
(18:20):
if she called you, Jamie Comber, you got it. What
about Marilyn Thomas, Jamie Comber. Why haven't you addressed Maryland Thomas?
Jamie Comber. I don't see any stories about Marilyn Thomas
in twenty nineteen, Jamie Comber, What did you do to
suppress the coverage of Maryland Thomas? Jamie Comber? What about
the abortion, Jamie Comber? What about the abortion paperwork? Jamie Comber?
Is any of it on your laptop? Jamie Comer? You
(18:47):
you don't like this. It makes you uncomfortable, even though
it has a quality peculiar to the American political scene
of twenty twenty three in that it happens to be true,
even though the Republican version of this is for Marjorie
Taylor Green to show, oh Hunter Biden revenge porn. Oh,
(19:08):
by the way, revenge porn that now appears to have
been stolen out of his phone or his phones backup
at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, Chairman,
But this him beating his college girlfriend. This makes you uncomfortable, tough.
(19:37):
Also of interest here, Hey, Bill Maher, who I now
know forty five years. He used to be just too
lazy or too stupid to understand the political stories. He's
so glibly screwed up every Friday night on HBO as
US guests who are out there for the publicity and
the free first class air travel, just noded our heads
and said it'll be over soon. And then there's a
(19:58):
room full of drinks. And once upon a time when
we were in college together, he was so annoying that
I have not started to fight since nineteen sixty seven.
I was ready to punch him in the face in
like thirty seconds. That used to be the definition of
Bill Maher. But now, in the middle of the writer's
strike and the actors strike, Bill Maher has decided he's
(20:22):
had enough of these annoying scribes and their need for
you know, food, So he's going to restart his show
on HBO every week. And you know what that makes
Bill Maher right a scab, a goddamned scab. I'll talk
about that for ten twenty minutes. Maybe Bill Maher scab scab,
(20:49):
scab scab. That's next. This is countdown, scab. This is
Countdown with Keith Elberman, still ahead on Countdown, A doubleheader
(21:14):
Fridays with Thurber and coming up on a very topical things.
I promised not to tell the day I met Bill
Maher asshole. Turned out that day was about twenty years
earlier than either of us had remembered, and he became
an asshole about forty years earlier than most of you understood.
(21:36):
First time for the daily roundup of the miss Grants,
morons and Dunning Kruger Effect specimens who constitute today's worst
persons in the world. Spoiler alert, the winner is Bill Maher.
But first the bronze to Congresswoman Lauren No, this dress fits,
I'll make it fit Bobert. You saw the video of
her being ejected from a Denver theater for vaping and
(22:00):
for singing along and for illegally recording the stage version
of Beetlejuice. The thirty six year old grandmother's date was
reportedly an Aspen bar owner named Quinn Gallagher and who cares.
I mean, who cares. Bobert is a nitwit. The nation
is full of nitwits. Her odds of meeting her end
(22:22):
because her mouth mysteriously seals shut and traps an unsurvivable
amount of hot air in her lungs, they're about two
to one in favor k Sarah live and let live.
But this tears it. Bobert and the rest of her
nihilist Nazi party are still pushing the drag queens and
(22:43):
LGBTQ perge stuff and this guy Gallagher, the bar owner.
In January, the bar hosted quote a Winter Wonderland burlesque
and drag show at the bar of Lauren Bobert's boyfriend,
starring Ken Dramatic. I mean, it's one thing to jeopardize
(23:06):
the lives of people because of how they behave or dress,
or that you don't like them. It's quite another to
jeopardize the lives of people because of how they behave,
or live or dress when you don't even care and
you are just doing it to stir outrage. Watch out
for those sealed lips. Bobert, the runner up, Drew barrymore Well,
(23:30):
it was a nice career. In May, the actress and
TV talk show host pulled out of her gig as
MC of the MTV Movie and TV Awards in solidarity
with the writers' strike, and that solidarity lasted a solid
three months. She says she's bringing her show back without writers.
And if you think, oh, it's a talk show, it
(23:50):
doesn't have to have writers, it just has to have talk.
It has writers. Trust me, I've done talk shows. I've
hosted talk shows. I've been on talk shows. It's more
writers than say Countdown had. Now her writers will be
scab writers, and she will also be a scab Drew
(24:10):
Scab Barrymore of the Drew Scab Barrymore Show. But our
winner is this is a surprise. It's Bill Maher. I
have a confession. Now. I don't think I've ever actually
said this before. I have been on his HBO show
several times, and I had him on my old MSNBC
show because the publicity was useful, and they would, by
(24:35):
the way, fly guests to Los Angeles first class on
their dime, so it was work and a free flight.
And to get it, all you had to do was
sort of pretend you didn't hate Bill Maher. I'm guilty.
I pretended I didn't hate Bill Maher in point of fact,
as you will hear today, I have hated Bill Maher
(24:57):
continuously since the spring of nineteen seventy Flipping eight and
went to college with him. For a long time. Mar's
show was a good venue to reach a liberal audience
until he began to turn into a complete fascist. So
I last went on the show the night Trump was inaugurated,
(25:19):
and in fact I canceled an appearance scheduled for later
in twenty seventeen. So I'm not just now bailing on
this useless idiot. I bailed six years ago because mar
now has announced that his HBO show is also like
Drew Barrymore's returning despite the writer's strike quote, it has
been five months and it is time to bring people
(25:41):
back to work. The writers have important issues that I
empathize with and hope they are addressed to their satisfaction.
But they are not the only people with issues, problems,
and concerns. Bill says he will quote honor the spirit
of the strike by not doing a monologue or other
written style pieces. Well as an aside, that's good news
(26:04):
because not one of his monologues or other pieces has
been funny. Since about in ten, twenty eleven. But listen
to this quote. But the heart of the show is
an off the cuff panel discussion that aims to cut
through the bullshit and predictable partisanship, and that will continue.
I've been in these panel discussions. A couple of them were. Okay, Frankly,
(26:28):
you know how I feel about Chris Matthews. Chris Matthews
did panel discussions better than Bill Maher does. I think
it was twenty fifteen when they finally invited me on
and I said, all right, I'll come out, I'll take
the free flight and I'll do the one on one interview.
But these panels, you know what they are. They're just
they're bullshit and predictable partisanship. And Bill doesn't understand the issues.
(26:53):
I'd like to be left out of those. And the
producer says, I understand, and you're right, Bill doesn't understand
any of it. Doesn't even try anymore. But you kind
of have to be on the panel, all right. It's
still a free flight and a free hotel room, okay, Finn.
The panels are terrible, The panel guests are terrible. They're
(27:13):
usually c list at best. When I was on the panels,
I was terrible to cut through. To use Bill's word,
the bullshit here. What Bill Maher is doing right now
is as always putting himself first and then finding some
rationalization to do so. This is about saving his boss,
(27:34):
Warner Bros. Discovery Chief HBO boss David Zaslab, the one
who says HBO is a bad name, so he changed
it to Max David'saz Lab is the evil villain at
the heart of this strike that the studio's forced and
the Hollywood media machine, much to his surprise, is drying
up and dying, and he is being blamed every day
(27:56):
of the week. The writers and the actors have been
amazingly solid and courageous except for Drew Barrymore and Bill Maher,
and the studios are losing these strikes. So Bill is
going to help the studios by being a scab, by
siding with the corporations over the writers and the actors
(28:18):
who are on a legal and justified strike. Which is
especially funny because, as I'll get to in a moment,
the day I met Bill Maher, he called me a
quote corporate sellout, which is what he is now, a
corporate sellout and a scab. And a reminder, by the way,
particularly to liberals, but to in fact anybody contemplating going
(28:40):
on Real Time now or when the writers and actors
win the strike. If you go on real Time on HBO,
you too will be a scab. This will be a
particularly bad look. Democrats and lists will be kept Bill.
By the way, without writers, the new Scab edition of
(29:01):
Real Time with Bill Maher will be about eighty three
seconds law, not counting all the time that mar leaves
so he can laugh at his own jokes in a
desperate attempt to make them seem funny rather than just stupid.
Mar scab two days. Worst person in the world, and
(29:23):
he's a scab. Sometime in nineteen eighty five or nineteen
eighty six I saw a movie on cable called DC Cab.
There was a character, and it clearly the actor portraying
(29:44):
him was talented and funny, but for some reason I
felt like I knew him from somewhere, and I really
didn't like him. I remember the feeling was so strong
that I stuck around to watch the credits to find
out who he was. His name was Bill Mayher mah
e er Well. I had a teacher named Bill Mayer,
(30:05):
but his name had a y in it. He was
my advisor in high school. Now it wasn't him, but
I knew three things. He was talented, I didn't like him,
and I knew him from somewhere. This is pre internet,
of course, so no way to find out where I
knew him from. Hallowell's annual film guide would be my
best bet. Maybe he'd be in the new one coming out.
(30:25):
Checked calendar just eight or nine months from now. Eventually
I found out Bill Maher was in the year ahead
of mine at Cornell University. He was not at my
radio station. He was not in my college. Maybe I
knew him from a class somewhere. I could never nail
it down. I like to say I have a photographic memory,
but it's all polaroids, and I haven't always bothered to
(30:47):
label them. Almost everything that ever happened he is stuck
inside this big empty head of mine. But often key
details like who, what, when and where are just missing.
Never wrote him down, and honestly, in this case, it
was not worth the effort. I knew I was was
the right word. The word was aware of him when
(31:09):
we were both in college. Occasionally, especially after I went
from ESPN to MSNBC in nineteen ninety seven. A writer
would note the coincidence of university and years and ask
me about it, and I would say just that I
don't remember if he was in a class with me
or I knew him somehow, but I was aware of
Bill Maher. And then twenty two years ago, this month,
(31:31):
November twenty third, two thousand, I went on his old show,
Politically Incorrect, used to be the late night show on ABC.
This was when I was doing sports for Fox in
LA and it was an all sports episode. Lennox Lewis,
the boxer, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks,
Todd Zeal the first basement of the New York Mets,
and me from Fox Sports. When I met Bill Maher
(31:53):
before the show, I asked him about Cornell and whether
or not we ran into each other. I didn't know
anybody there. I didn't see anybody. I didn't go comedy anywhere.
I didn't talk to anybody. I didn't meet you. Okay,
excuse me. That settles it. Except during the recording of
the show, when Mark contradicted me on some point. I
got angry at him, and there was no reason to
(32:14):
get angry at him, so I dismissed the anger, and
I dismissed the moment, except on the way home, I
kept thinking, I know him from school somehow, no matter
what he says, and I know I didn't like him
in school. In the next decade, Bill switched to his
(32:34):
weekly HBO political show, and I went back and turned
MSNBC into a political network. And the Internet happened so
that Cornell juxtaposition became easier for reporters to stumble over,
so I would tell them the same thing. I can't
remember the details, but for twenty nine years now I
have been convinced I was aware of Bill Maher at Cornell.
(32:55):
Finally came the day March twentieth, two thousand and nine,
when they asked me to go on Real Time and
Bill Maher Cornell University seventy eight asked me Cornell University
seventy nine something about colleges, and I said, well, as
you know, we overlapped at Cornell, and I don't know
if we met, but I was aware of you there,
and he intermrupted and said, no, you weren't, and I
(33:17):
just went back and answered his question. Now, after every
episode of his program, Mar has or at least had
a little party backstage, I mean catered with booze and
with more guests than there are people in the studio audience,
and usually a bunch of models having done that show
four times, where they will fly you in first class
(33:37):
and put you up for the weekend in LA just
to do their show, and there's a party. I began
to suspect that, like many of the guests, Bill Maher
does the show just so he can have the party. Anyway.
Not long after it started, it overcomes Mar and he's
mad at me, and mind you, even if his allegation
(33:58):
that he is five feet eight is correct, I'm just
under six ' four, so he's giving up a lot
of height during an art argument, and he starts yapping
about how I should stop saying I was a way
heir of him at Cornell and I'm just trying to
get publicity off something that never happened. And who could
remember that kind of crap anyway? And he never talked
to anybody in four years in college because quote except
for the Ethica high school students I sold drugs to unquote.
(34:22):
And I notice he's getting heated, and this is just
triggering that core belief of mine that I was aware
of him in college and I didn't like him, And
now it becomes clear to me he didn't like me either.
He's getting loud enough and he's swinging his arms around
(34:43):
now and it looks kind of funny, but apparently it
happens in the office sometimes. And this is when Scott Carter,
who was the executive producer whom I definitely did know
since like nineteen ninety two when he worked at Comedy
Central with my friend Alan Havy, Scott Carter comes over
to defuse the situation. Scott was a three piece suit
kind of guy with the thumbs tucking a vest, who
(35:05):
would call a group of men fellows, as in say fellows.
So Scott comes over and says, say fellows with your
Cornell alumni reunion here, And of course this makes Bill
Maher even angrier. Let me ask you something. I used
to drive down from Hobart to see concerts at Cornell.
Have to say, I think Cornell was the leading concert
(35:26):
school in the nation back in our day. And now
Scott starts to list who he saw in concert at Cornell,
Robert Palmer and the famous Grateful Dead concert at Cornell
at Barton Hall. He was there, and I say, I
went to Springsteen, and Mar mumbles something about Loggins and Messina,
and I know what Carter's doing here. He's diffusing. And
(35:47):
we do a couple of rounds of who saw which
Cornell concert? And finally I say, I can top both
of you comic geniuses. I saw Robert Klein in concert
at Cornell. Now it is criminal, but there's an excellent
chance you may not know who Robert Klin is, suffice
to say as prominent a comedian in the sixties seventies
(36:10):
eighties as George Carlin or Richard pryor HBO itself was
built on annual George Carlin concerts and annual Robert Klein
concerts and everybody else. And Robert Kline wasn't quite as
deep or eternal as George Carlin, but he was really
on the money during Watergate and during Reagan. So I say,
(36:30):
I saw Robert Klein in concert at Cornell, and Mar
looks at me funny and not angrily, and says quietly,
I was at that too. I saw Robert Klein too,
And I don't really register that Mar's mood has now
utterly changed. He's not angry, he's confused. Well, I say,
(36:51):
I can still top you, because after that concert I
interviewed Robert Klein. Now Bill Maher starts to squint, and
he looks at me, and he looks at Scott Carter,
and he looks back at me, and he says, wait,
I interviewed Kleine after that concert too. And I'm smiling
(37:11):
through all this, and smiling and smiling and smiling, and
then suddenly, simultaneously it hits Bill Maher and me at
the same moment, in the same fullness of detail, and
I stop smiling, and I shout at Bill Maher, you
and he pulls his arms in towards his stomach and
kind of bends forward at the waist and covers his
face with his hands, and he says, oh God, I'm
(37:31):
so sorry, Jesus, it can't be. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
And while the anger wells up inside me so powerfully,
I can almost see it in my own eyeballs. Bill
Maher's concert going producer Scott Carter is really confused. Say, fellows,
did I miss something or did I have a brief
stroke or episode? And I say, Bill, and I just
(37:55):
remembered how I happen to be aware of him in school,
and Mar still has got his hands over his face.
People are looking at us, and Bill is shouting apologies,
and I say you want to tell him or should I?
And mar just shakes his body no and mumbles, oh God,
you do it. I can't, I can't, I can't, And
(38:17):
it all came back to me. For years, I would
tell people the story of the Robert Klein concert at
Cornell University in nineteen seventy eight. Our radio station co
sponsored his appearance along with the Corneill Concert Commission, and
in the contract we specified that a couple of us
real comedy nerds at the radio station would get to
(38:38):
go backstage afterwards and tape a brief ten or fifteen
minute interview with Robert Klin. Basically, we paid him not much,
but we paid him to do an interview. And when
my pal Andy Grossman and I get backstage to talk
to Robert Klein, and we have our two microphones and
two mike stands and three tape recorders, there is this guy,
(38:58):
this short guy, and he's yelling at the chief of
the Cornaill Concert Commission. And he's yelling at Robert Clin's manager,
and he's demanding that he should get to interview Robert
Clin because, like Klein, this kid says he is a
stand up comedian and he publishes the Cornell Humor Magazine.
And he points at me and he says he should
get priority over these quote corporate sellouts from the Cornell
(39:21):
Radio station. I hated him on site. Oh wait, I
say to him in nineteen seventy eight. And he's small
and he's got dirty, stringy hair and he's loud, and
I say, you are the publisher of the Cornell Humor magazine,
the Cornell Widow. And he snorts and says, I wouldn't
(39:42):
get caught dead publishing that corporate sellout, Cornell Widow. And
so I say, oh so, then that means you're the
publisher of the Cornell Alternative Humor magazine, the Not So
Big Red or whatever it is they call it. He says,
no way, they are corporate sellouts. I publish this. And
he pulls out a stack of mimeographed pages stapled together
(40:03):
and there's like a drawing on the front of a
naked girl and handwritten it says it's his comedy magazine
and I look at Robert Klein's manager and I say, so,
it's ten o'clock and if you leave now while this
idiot is screwing this up, the limo can still get
mister Klein to Elaine's in the city before it closes, right,
(40:26):
And the manager is wildly impressed, you know of Elaine's.
And I said yes, and I felt like an adult.
And I also said, if we give this guy five
minutes of our time right now while we're setting up
our tape recorders, can we still have ten minutes with
mister Klein. And the manager says, good plan. I like
the way you think, and he points to the kid
and gestures for him to come along. No, the kid shouts,
(40:48):
I want half an hour. These corporate sellouts deserve nothing.
And now I'm getting angry. I say, buddy, so far
all the corporations in the world have paid me about
one hundred bucks. So I threatened him. Now, mind you,
I believe this is literally true. Since nineteen sixty seven,
when I was eight years old, I have started two
(41:10):
fistfights two in fifty five years. I am a man
of peace. I am loud, but I am a man
of peace. But I say to this guy. You now
have two choices, kid, five minutes with Robert Klein or
I hit you in the face. And he runs to
(41:32):
where client's manager is still gesturing towards him, and he screams, Carpred,
sell out, and he disappears to do his interview, and
behind him he leaves his little homemade mimiograph ten or
twelve page humor publication, and I pick it up and
I read it and register it and dismiss it before
I leave the building. And if I had only remembered
(41:54):
what it said on the cover, all the years of
mystery and I was aware of him, and all that
would never have happened, because the cover of the magazine
read Bill Maherr's Comedy mag Magazine by Bill maher And
now back in well technically this is correct, back in
real time, at the party in the Hollywood studio in
(42:16):
two thousand and nine, the producer Scott Carter says nothing,
and Bill maher is still doubled over in shame, and
I say, are you satisfied that I was aware of you?
And he mumbles yes, And I say, will you ever
question my memory again? And he mumbles no. And he says,
(42:36):
if I need him to do my show or a
charity benefit or something. Just call and he says he's ashamed,
and he offers me his hand to shake, and we shake,
and finally I say, and by the way, Bill Maher,
if Bill Maher's comedy magazine by Bill Maher, are you
a corporate sellout? And he says kind And that's how
(42:56):
I was aware of Bill Maher in college. I have
argued before that James Thurber is the greatest American humorist.
And it dawns on me that the argument is not
(43:17):
unlike the idea that shohe Otani of the Los Angeles
Angels is almost automatically the most valuable player in baseball
each year because he is an All Star hitter and
an All Star pitcher in the same body. James Thurber
was a brilliant writer, and in his spare time, he
was an equally brilliant, almost avant garde artist in the
(43:38):
same body. His simple drawings to pick the most complex
of emotions and comedic situations. His dogs are immortal. And
then there were his captions. Well, I can't do anything
with his drawings in a podcast, so I'll just read
and I will read you now in this episode what
is probably his most famous story from my life in
(43:59):
hard times, The Night the Bed Fell James Thurber. I
suppose that the high water mark of my youth in Columbus,
Ohio was the night the bed fell on my father.
It makes a better recitation unless, as some friends of
mine have said, one has heard it five or six times,
(44:20):
than it does a piece of writing. For it is
almost necessary to throw furniture around, shake doors, and bark
like a dog to lend the proper atmosphere and verisimilitude
to what is admittedly a somewhat incredible tale. Still it
did take place. It happened then that my father had
(44:41):
decided to sleep in the attic one night, to be
away where he could think. My mother opposed the notion
strongly because she said the old wooden bed up there
was unsafe, It was wobbly, and the heavy headboard would
crash down on father's head in case the bed fell
and kill him. There was no dissuading him, however, and
(45:02):
at a quarter past ten he closed the attic door
behind him. He went up the narrow, twisting stairs. We
later heard I'm in his creakings as he crawled into bed.
Grandfather who usually slept in the attic bed when he
was with us, had disappeared some days before. On those occasions,
he was usually gone six or eight days, and returned
growling and out of temper with the news that the
(45:24):
Federal Union was run by a passel of blockheads, and
that the Army of the Potomac didn't have any more
chance than a fiddler's bitch. We had visiting us at
the time, a nervous first cousin of mine named Briggs Beale,
who believed that he was likely to cease breathing when
he was asleep. It was his feeling that if he
were not awakened every hour during the night, he might
(45:46):
die of suffocation. He had been accustomed to setting an
alarm clock to ring at intervals until morning, but I
persuaded him to abandon this. He slept in my room,
and I told him that I was such a light
sleeper that if anybody quit breathing in the same room
with me, I would wake instantly. He tested me the
first night, which I had suspected he would, by holding
(46:09):
his breath after my regular breathing, had convinced him I
was asleep. I was not asleep, however, and called to him.
This seemed to allay his fears a little, but he
took the precaution of putting a glass of spirits of
camphor on a little table at the head of his
bed in case I didn't arouse him until he was
(46:31):
almost gone. He said he would sniff the camphor. A
powerful reviver, Briggs was not the only member of his
family who had his crotchets. Old Aunt Melissa Belle, who
could whistle like a man with two fingers in her mouth,
suffered under the premonition that she was destined to die
on South High Street because she had been born on
(46:52):
South High Street and married on South High Street. Then
there was Aunt Sarah Schauf, who never went to bed
at night without the fear that a burglar was going
to get in and blow chloroform on under her door
through a tube. To avert this calamity, for she was
in greater dread of anesthetics than of losing her household goods,
(47:12):
she always piled her money, silverware, and other valuables in
a neat stack just outside her bedroom, with a note
reading this is all I have. Please take it and
do not use your chloroform, as this is all I have.
Aunt Gracie's chauf also had a burglar phobia, but she
met it with more fortitude. She was confident that burglars
(47:33):
had been getting into her house every night for forty years.
The fact that she never missed anything was to her
no proof. To the contrary, she always claimed that she
scared them off before they could take anything by throwing
shoes down the hallway. When she went to bed, she
piled where she could get at them handily, all the
(47:53):
shoes there were about her house. Five minutes after she
had turned off the light, she would sit up in
bed and say hark. Her husband, who had learned to
ignore the whole situation as long ago as nineteen o three,
would either be sound asleep or pretend to be sound asleep.
In either case, he would not respond to her tugging
(48:15):
and pulling, so that presently she would arise, tiptoe to
the door, open it slightly, and heave a shoe down
the hall in one direction, and its mate down the
hall in the other direction. Some nights she threw them all,
some nights only a couple of pear. But I am
straying from the remarkable incidents that took place during the
(48:37):
night that the bed fell on father. By midnight we
were all in bed. The layout of the rooms and
the disposition of their occupants is important to an understanding
of what later occurred. In the front room upstairs, just
under father's attic bedroom, where my mother and my brother Hermann,
who sometimes sang in his sleep, usually marching through Georgia
(48:59):
or onward Christian soldiers, briggs Beale and myself were in
a room adjoining this one one. My brother Roy was
in a room across the hall from ours. Our bull
terrier Wrecks slept in the hall. My bed was an
army cot, one of those affairs which were made wide
enough to sleep on comfortably only by putting up flat
with the middle section the two sides, which ordinarily hang
(49:22):
down like the sideboards of a drop leaf table. When
these sides are up, it is perilous to roll too
far toward the edge, for then the cot is likely
to tip completely over, bringing the whole bed down on
top of one with a tremendous banging crash. This, in fact,
is precisely what happened about two o'clock in the morning.
(49:45):
It was my mother who, in recalling the scene, later
first referred to it as the night the bed fell
on your father, Always a deep sleeper and slow to arouse,
I had lied to Briggs. I was at first unconscious
of what had happened when the ironcot rolled me onto
the floor and toppled over on it left me still
(50:06):
warmly bundled up and unheard, for the bed rested above
me like a canopy. Hence I did not wake up,
only reached the edge of consciousness and went back. The racket, however,
instantly awakened my mother in the next room, who came
to the immediate conclusion that her worst dread was realized.
The big wooden bed upstairs had fallen on father. She
(50:27):
therefore screamed, let's go to your poor father. It was
this shout, rather than the noise of my cot falling,
that awakened Herman in the same room with her, He
thought that mother had become, for no apparent reason, hysterical.
You're all right, Mama, he shouted, trying to calm her.
They exchanged shout for shout for perhaps ten seconds. Let's
(50:50):
go to your poor father, and you're all right. That
woke up Briggs. By this time I was conscious of
what was going on in a vague way, but did
not yet realize that I was under my bed instead
of on it. Briggs, awakening in the midst of loud
shouts of fear and apprehension, came to the quick conclusion
(51:11):
that he was suffocating, and that we were all trying
to bring him out. With a low moan, he grasped
the glass of camphor at the head of his bed,
and instead of sniffing it, he poured it over himself.
The room reeked of camphor ugh ah choked Briggs like
a drowning man, for he had almost succeeded in stopping
(51:34):
his breath under the deluge of pungent spirits. He leaped
out of bed and groped toward the open window, but
he came up against one that was closed. With his hand,
he beat out the glass, and I could hear it
crash and tinkle on the alleyway below. It was at
this juncture that I, in trying to get up, had
the uncanny sensation of feeling my bed above me foggy
(51:58):
with sleep. I now suspected, in my turn that the
whole uproar was being made in a frantic endeavor to
extricate me from what must be an unheard of and
perilous situation. Get me out of this, I bawled, Get
me out. I think I had the night marrish belief
that I was entombed in a mine. Oh gasp, Briggs
floundering in his camphor. By this time, my mother, still shouting,
(52:23):
pursued by Hermann, still shouting, was trying to open the
door to the attic in order to go up and
get my father's body out of the wreckage. The door
was stuck, however, and would not yield. Her frantic pulls
on it only added to the general banging and confusion.
Roy and the dog were now up, the one shouting questions,
(52:44):
the other barking. Father, farthest away and soundest sleeper of all,
had by this time been awakened by the battering on
the attic door. He decided that the house was on fire.
Oh coming, okaming, he wailed in a slow, sleepy voice.
It took him many minutes to regain full consciousness. My mother,
(53:06):
still believing he was caught under the bed, detected in
his I'm coming, the mournful resigned note of one who
was preparing to meet his maker. He's dying, She shouted,
I'm all right. Briggs yelled to reassure her, I'm all right.
He still believed that it was his own closeness to
death that was worrying Mother. I found at last the
(53:28):
light switch in my room, unlocked the door, and Briggs
and I joined the others at the attic door. The dog,
who never did like Briggs, jumped for him, assuming that
he was the culprit in whatever was going on, and
Roy had to throw Rex and hold him. We could
hear Father crawling out of the bed upstairs. Roy pulled
the attic door open with a mighty jerk, and Father
(53:49):
came down the stairs, sleepy and irritable, but safe and sound.
My mother began to weep when she saw him. Rex
began to howl. What in the name of God is
going on here? Asked father. The situation was finally put
together like a giant gigsaw puzzle. Father caught a cold
(54:13):
from prowling around in his bare feet, but there were
no other bad results. I'm glad, said Mother, who always
looked on the bright side of things, that your grandfather
wasn't here. I've done all the damage I can do here.
(54:40):
Thank you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of
the music arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and
John Phillip Shanel, who are the Countdown musical directors. All
orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanel, Guitars, bass and
drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven's
selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,
(55:03):
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of
the ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best
baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend
John Dean. Everything else was pretty much my fault. So
that's countdown for this, the nine and eighty third day
since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
government of the United States. Convict him now while we
(55:26):
still can. The next scheduled countdown is Monday or Tuesday.
I gotta tell you, I gotta shake this throat thing.
So if there's no real news over the weekend, I'm
just gonna take Monday off. Okay, one way or the other.
Your subscription will notify you and bulletins as the news
(55:47):
warrants anyway, because me, I'm your local neighborhood masochist till
then I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Bill maher is a Scab Countdown with
(56:17):
Keith Olreman 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. Congratulations
Kevin McCarthy, you have now impeached yourself. It is going
(00:29):
so well for soon to be former House Speaker Kevin
McCarthy that a senior Republican lawmaker has now told Semaphore
News that this ends when quote the whole family kills
each other. I think we're close to that right now.
We are in maybe the Godfather to stage. That's right.
(00:52):
Kevin McCarthy and the Republicans got their wish, the framework
of a Joe Biden impeachment, and in less than seventy
two hours they have so completely obscured it and overshadowed
it and knocked it off the front page that not
even the right wing outlets are talking about it. They
are talking about Kevin McCarthy, and the Godfather imagery is
(01:15):
just the tip of it. It is going so well
for the soon to be former House Speaker McCarthy that
he met with his House conference. He dared them to
oust him as speaker, and then he swore at them,
go ahead, I'm not effing scared of it. Move the
effing motion. It's going so well for soon to be
(01:36):
former House Speaker McCarthy that a Republican Congressional Aid now
says that the Freedom Caucus members are quote hell bent
on losing the majority for the GOP in the House.
And this is only day three, only day three of
Kevin McCarthy's impeachment inquiry, which by late on day one
(01:58):
had become Kevin McCarthy's illegal impeachment inquiry, and which now
after day two has become Kevin McCarthy's imploding legal impeachment inquiry.
McCarthy's grand strategy appease Trump by dirtying up Hunter Biden,
so you can pretend to impeach Joe Biden, rip draconian
cuts through every limb of the federal budget, solidify your
(02:21):
own control of the House, position you were signed for
next year's election, and stage first a stunt shutdown of
the government and then ride in on a paper mache
whitehorse to resolve the stunt shutdown of the government. Has
all collapsed. McCarthy had to punch on the shutdown, then
(02:41):
he had to punch on the punt of the shutdown,
and he is now struggling to pass something to maybe
keep the government afloat just for a month, or shut
it down he is now under attacked by his right wing,
his left wing, and by Trump. And of course, the
forgotten keys to this whole spit storm McCarthy has brought
(03:03):
down on his own head are standing silently in the
back of the room. The Democrats. If a vote to
fire McCarthy technically called a motion to vacate the chair
actually comes to the floor, there are two hundred and
thirteen Democratic votes to destroy Kevin McCarthy. Minority Leader Hakeem
Jefferies is not saying this, of course, but strategically it's obvious.
(03:28):
Why wouldn't you want to see the majority stab its
own speaker in the back for the first time in
the history of the House of Representatives. I mean, the
strategy and the policy implications are one thing. The fact
that they'd be wasting their time on that and nothing
else is another. But two hundred and thirteen Democrats would
vote to oust Kevin McCarthy just for the sheer joy
(03:51):
of it. And if they do anti McCarthy, Republicans need
only five votes from their own side. It's hilarious, and
they never learn this would be the first ouster of
a serving speaker, only because when twenty five years ago
(04:11):
After the disastrous nineteen ninety eight midterms, Republican leadership got
Newt Gingrich in a room and explained to him he
was not leaving that room as Speaker. Newt had the
presence of mind to take the clean way out, and
he still does have that lucrative career in Fox News
guest hits and hosting infomercials. Anyway, McCarthy, who was not
(04:37):
smart enough to know the Gangrich nineteen ninety eight story,
let alone use it as a template to avoid creating
his current drama, in which he is not only the
hostage but also the guy who showed the hostage takers
how to take the hostage. Kevin McCarthy is probably not
smart enough when it comes to this to quit. So
(04:57):
the house will suspend while they hose down what's left
of him off the walls, and then, if we're all
real quiet, through our windows and doors will come the
faint but unmistakable sound of President Biden laughing his ass off.
(05:21):
Hunter Biden may be laughing by that time as well.
He has now in fact sued an ex Trump thug
over the laptop which now may turn out to really
be a hacked iPhone uploaded onto a laptop and suddenly
the repairman guy with the eyes going out of either
side of his head, and Rudy and everybody else, they
are all positioned for all kinds of exciting new criminal charges,
(05:43):
and Rudy, Rudy may experience an entirely different kind of
motion to vacate after yesterday's gun charges. Hunter Biden is
also in the unique position of being defended by Republicans
Second Amendment nut jobs, and the charges are dubious enough,
especially in the context of the previous plea deal, that
(06:05):
he may have a malicious prosecution case against his father's
Department of Justice. And I love Jack Smith, but seeing
Merrick Garland fired because he prosecuted the President's son in
a demented bid to seem balanced politically would be an
early Christmas present that I would always cherish. And best
(06:26):
of all, to quote Daffy and Bugs, duck season, wabbit season,
duck season, wabbit season, duck season, whistleblower season. The FBI
whistleblower who's whistle blowing about the anti Hunter Biden whistleblower
has confirmed his identity. He is Jonathan Boma, and he
(06:50):
says he went to his boss in the FBI in
Los Angeles in twenty nineteen, with uncorroborated but strong information
that dirtied up Hunter Biden and his boss was all ears,
But then Burma presented part two of this quote. When
I attempted to provide information that Rudy Giuliani may have
been compromised by individuals suspected of being involved in Russian
(07:13):
counter intelligence influence operations, he his boss shut me down,
and the meeting ended. I came to know that Giuliani
had received three hundred thousand dollars from Pabel Fuchs unquote,
and then Agent Buma goes on to explain Fuchs' ties
to corruption in Ukraine and his ties to Putin and
(07:35):
his ties to what's this name here, Trumum, and how
his bosses at the FBI did not want to know
anything about anybody except Hunter Biden. Oops. Maybe the best
part of this, apart from the clumsy but colorful analogy
(07:55):
to al Pacino killing off the heads of the rival
families in Godfather Too, is the fact that as this
has played out, the Orange Man behind the Orange Curtain
has not as much as posted one sentence of support
for his latest Renfield. All right, I got the Wizard
of Oz and Dracula working in the same sentence, It's
(08:16):
the end of the week and I've been sick. Shoot
me add Kevin McCarthy's name to the list of those
who have done Trump's bidding for him, and then turned
around to receive at least the grumbled thanks, only to
find an empty space where Trump used to be. Trump,
of course, was too busy yesterday, being interviewed by one
(08:38):
x NBC News wash out named Megan Kelly and by
one future x NBC News wash out named Kristin Welker.
The Welker Big Splash sit down for her meet the
Press debut was in fact, arguably worse than expected. They
threw clips of it on Nightly News with Lester Holt,
(08:59):
and in one Trump says to her that he could
have pardoned himself, and he makes up a bunch of
stories about that and legal authorities and how he would
never really do that, and she just smiles vapidly at him,
and instead of saying you do know, we all know
you're lying, or even just honey, please, she says, even
(09:21):
if you were reelected, as if she were asking some
nitwit in a dateline story, whether or not he would
go to the prom with the murder victim all over again.
And then she asks him what he thinks about Hunter Biden,
which is like saying, for my next question, President Trump,
free topic, say whatever you want. And then he moves
(09:43):
on to say, you mean, because I challenge an election,
they want to put me in jail. And instead of
saying something like, well anything, literally say anything, she just
stares vapidly, and then they cut to Lester Holt, and
Lester stares vapidly, and then Lester says he had a
pretty interesting answer, and you are reminded that Lester Holt
(10:06):
reached the apogee of his journalistic career in his cameo
at the end of the movie The Fugitive In nineteen
ninety three, as an aside, I flashed back to the
week they moved MSNBC from New Jersey into thirty Rock,
and my office was set up next to the nightly
news writing area, and I was genuinely shocked, and I
(10:29):
was forty eight years old at the time. I was
genuinely shocked that while their newscast was on the air,
the producers and writers of Nightly News with Brian Williams
were sitting there and openly hissing and booing at the
TV monitors and mocking Brian Williams as he was on
camera in a studio down the hall, and one of
(10:52):
them was doing an impression of him. And I realize
now that if those same people could have seen what
Lester Holt and Kristin Welker would be doing on the
same newscast roughly sixx teen years to the day later,
they would have been rushing into the studio crying and
embracing Brian Williams as the burrow of his time. More
(11:16):
relevant to our story, however, was the other interview Trump
did with Megan Kelly. Meghan Kelly, who is marching rapidly
and inexorably towards being Carrie Lake two. As I noted
here yesterday, Judge Aileen Cannon slapped a gag order on
Trump publicly discussing the classified information he stole that is
(11:38):
at the center of the Florida trial. Trump does not
quite violate that gag order, but he once again, and
this is at least the twelfth time, does violate the
instructions from Judge Tanya Chutkin in Washington about obstructing justice
in that case, or threatening the witnesses, or jeopardizing or
slandering the prosecution. Let's count how long it takes him
(12:00):
to do any of that in this clip here? Okay, one, Well,
actually that's the answer. One.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
We have a deranged guy named Jack Smith who's been
overturned at the Supreme Court a number of times. And
he gets overturned, you know, it gets overturned because he
goes too far. They don't even mention the Presidential Records Act.
This is all about the Presidential Records Act. I'm allowed
to have these documents. I'm allowed to take these documents
classified or not classified, and frankly, when I have them,
(12:29):
they become unclassified.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
People think you have to go through a ritual. You don't.
Also all the stuff after he again attacked the special counsel,
and I keep thinking, that has got to be one
of the extra judicial statements that Smith and Chutkin and
Trump's lawyers are addressing under seal. All the other stuff
that followed that, all of it lies, all of it.
The Presidential Records Act says nothing like that. In fact,
(12:54):
it says the exact opposite of that. And if you
are expecting Megan Kelly to push back. Just because she's
a lawyer, then you're probably expecting this. Knitwit Welker pushed
back on a similar answer, but NBC decided to hold
the clip to play it on Sunday rather than run
a clip last night, a clip of what would have
(13:14):
been the biggest journalism story and one of the biggest
governmental stories of the year, in which an interviewer with
access to Trump actually challenged him about something by saying,
not even saying, you're a goddamned liar, but that's not true.
I happen to have the presidential record act here. I
(13:34):
will now read it aloud in its entirety. And then
you just sit there and wait until Trump storms off
the set or whatever he does. And that's how you
make a big splash in your first Meet the Press
interview with Trump. Rather than you know, asking the series
of questions, Kristin Welker asked that each had the exact
(13:55):
same journalistic atomic number, the same journalistic atomic number as quote,
how do you feel? Unquote Okay, So back to Washington
and Kevin, I send impeachment inquiry bomb into room where
our president and son who gets blown up? Me McCarthy delightfully,
(14:17):
the new questions reverberating around Washington now are not at
all about the President or his son, but about McCarthy
and who would be the next Speaker, and whether that
would be James Comer, who once again has lied about
(14:37):
just trying to see Hunter Biden's bank records when Hunter
Biden's attorneys offered to have their client meet with him
in February last February, and Comer ignored the offer because,
of course, a cooperative Hunter Biden is of no use
to Jamie Comer's political assassination. No Pants Party. And I
sit here and I almost pray that somebody in the
(15:01):
Democratic Party has the vision now to say, the Republicans
are in trouble, right now, real trouble. Let's make sure
they stay in trouble. In fact, let's make sure we
make it far, far worse for them. McCarthy is self destructing.
Let's take care of the guy behind McCarthy. This is
the time release the Comber. It was November of last
(15:26):
year when I first brought this up, and I just
hope the Democrats thought not yet, rather than we cannot
lower ourselves to addressing the lives of a Republican using
his committee chairmanship for political assassination by you know, going
out there and spreading truth. In twenty fifteen, James Comer
(15:47):
chairman of the House Obstruction of Justice Committee and possible
successor to Kevin McCarthy, though they insist on calling that
the Oversight Committee. He was credibly accused in twenty fifteen
of physically and mentally abusing his college girlfriend from the
early nineteen nineties, and credibly accused of calling her mother
(16:07):
and threatening the girlfriend's life to her mother, and credibly
accused of becoming enraged after finding out that his girlfriend
had written in his real name on the paperwork at
the abortion clinic that the quote pro life unquote James
Comber had driven her to to end their pregnancy ohen
she still had that paperwork in a safe deposit box.
(16:31):
Comer ran for governor of Kentucky in twenty fifteen, and
as the Republican primary came to an end that year,
he was hit with that double scandal. His girlfriend of
the early nineties, a woman named Marilyn Thomas, who was
still a Republican, accused him of hitting her, of threatening her,
of separating her from her family, of being quote toxic, abusive,
(16:51):
and caused me a lot of suffering. Everything I did,
everywhere I went, and everyone with whom I interacted had
to be approved. Consequences were violent and swift. Otherwise unquote well,
when that broke in twenty fifteen, a Republican state senator
in Kentucky promptly an angrily defended the girlfriend. He said
(17:12):
she'd known Marilyn Thomas since nineteen ninety five. Her college
roommate rushed to defend Marilynd Thomas, saying she'd seen all
that abuse in real time, and her mother said Comber
had called their home in the middle of the night
and threatened her daughter. All of this was front page
news in Kentucky in twenty fifteen, and then Jamie Comer
(17:35):
lost the primary for governor and he was not news anymore.
And because this is the other biggest thing wrong with
the news media, the Maryland Thomas story and the violence
allegation and the threat allegation and the abortion allegation, they
just vanished. If the Democrats are smart, they make and
they can put whatever distance they want to between it
(17:57):
and the party itself, they make James Comer and what
he did to Marilynd Thomas at Western Kentucky University in
nineteen ninety one. The story right now, pile it out
there on top of Kevin McCarthy. Right now, call a
news conference. Leak as story, leak a dozen stories. Give
Kristen Welker a ring. You want oversight, mister chairman, or
(18:20):
if she called you, Jamie Comber, you got it. What
about Marilyn Thomas, Jamie Comber. Why haven't you addressed Maryland Thomas?
Jamie Comber. I don't see any stories about Marilyn Thomas
in twenty nineteen, Jamie Comber, What did you do to
suppress the coverage of Maryland Thomas? Jamie Comber? What about
the abortion, Jamie Comber? What about the abortion paperwork? Jamie Comber?
Is any of it on your laptop? Jamie Comer? You
(18:47):
you don't like this. It makes you uncomfortable, even though
it has a quality peculiar to the American political scene
of twenty twenty three in that it happens to be true,
even though the Republican version of this is for Marjorie
Taylor Green to show, oh Hunter Biden revenge porn. Oh,
(19:08):
by the way, revenge porn that now appears to have
been stolen out of his phone or his phones backup
at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, Chairman,
But this him beating his college girlfriend. This makes you uncomfortable, tough.
(19:37):
Also of interest here, Hey, Bill Maher, who I now
know forty five years. He used to be just too
lazy or too stupid to understand the political stories. He's
so glibly screwed up every Friday night on HBO as
US guests who are out there for the publicity and
the free first class air travel, just noded our heads
and said it'll be over soon. And then there's a
(19:58):
room full of drinks. And once upon a time when
we were in college together, he was so annoying that
I have not started to fight since nineteen sixty seven.
I was ready to punch him in the face in
like thirty seconds. That used to be the definition of
Bill Maher. But now, in the middle of the writer's
strike and the actors strike, Bill Maher has decided he's
(20:22):
had enough of these annoying scribes and their need for
you know, food, So he's going to restart his show
on HBO every week. And you know what that makes
Bill Maher right a scab, a goddamned scab. I'll talk
about that for ten twenty minutes. Maybe Bill Maher scab scab,
(20:49):
scab scab. That's next. This is countdown, scab. This is
Countdown with Keith Elberman, still ahead on Countdown, A doubleheader
(21:14):
Fridays with Thurber and coming up on a very topical things.
I promised not to tell the day I met Bill
Maher asshole. Turned out that day was about twenty years
earlier than either of us had remembered, and he became
an asshole about forty years earlier than most of you understood.
(21:36):
First time for the daily roundup of the miss Grants,
morons and Dunning Kruger Effect specimens who constitute today's worst
persons in the world. Spoiler alert, the winner is Bill Maher.
But first the bronze to Congresswoman Lauren No, this dress fits,
I'll make it fit Bobert. You saw the video of
her being ejected from a Denver theater for vaping and
(22:00):
for singing along and for illegally recording the stage version
of Beetlejuice. The thirty six year old grandmother's date was
reportedly an Aspen bar owner named Quinn Gallagher and who cares.
I mean, who cares. Bobert is a nitwit. The nation
is full of nitwits. Her odds of meeting her end
(22:22):
because her mouth mysteriously seals shut and traps an unsurvivable
amount of hot air in her lungs, they're about two
to one in favor k Sarah live and let live.
But this tears it. Bobert and the rest of her
nihilist Nazi party are still pushing the drag queens and
(22:43):
LGBTQ perge stuff and this guy Gallagher, the bar owner.
In January, the bar hosted quote a Winter Wonderland burlesque
and drag show at the bar of Lauren Bobert's boyfriend,
starring Ken Dramatic. I mean, it's one thing to jeopardize
(23:06):
the lives of people because of how they behave or dress,
or that you don't like them. It's quite another to
jeopardize the lives of people because of how they behave,
or live or dress when you don't even care and
you are just doing it to stir outrage. Watch out
for those sealed lips. Bobert, the runner up, Drew barrymore Well,
(23:30):
it was a nice career. In May, the actress and
TV talk show host pulled out of her gig as
MC of the MTV Movie and TV Awards in solidarity
with the writers' strike, and that solidarity lasted a solid
three months. She says she's bringing her show back without writers.
And if you think, oh, it's a talk show, it
(23:50):
doesn't have to have writers, it just has to have talk.
It has writers. Trust me, I've done talk shows. I've
hosted talk shows. I've been on talk shows. It's more
writers than say Countdown had. Now her writers will be
scab writers, and she will also be a scab Drew
(24:10):
Scab Barrymore of the Drew Scab Barrymore Show. But our
winner is this is a surprise. It's Bill Maher. I
have a confession. Now. I don't think I've ever actually
said this before. I have been on his HBO show
several times, and I had him on my old MSNBC
show because the publicity was useful, and they would, by
(24:35):
the way, fly guests to Los Angeles first class on
their dime, so it was work and a free flight.
And to get it, all you had to do was
sort of pretend you didn't hate Bill Maher. I'm guilty.
I pretended I didn't hate Bill Maher in point of fact,
as you will hear today, I have hated Bill Maher
(24:57):
continuously since the spring of nineteen seventy Flipping eight and
went to college with him. For a long time. Mar's
show was a good venue to reach a liberal audience
until he began to turn into a complete fascist. So
I last went on the show the night Trump was inaugurated,
(25:19):
and in fact I canceled an appearance scheduled for later
in twenty seventeen. So I'm not just now bailing on
this useless idiot. I bailed six years ago because mar
now has announced that his HBO show is also like
Drew Barrymore's returning despite the writer's strike quote, it has
been five months and it is time to bring people
(25:41):
back to work. The writers have important issues that I
empathize with and hope they are addressed to their satisfaction.
But they are not the only people with issues, problems,
and concerns. Bill says he will quote honor the spirit
of the strike by not doing a monologue or other
written style pieces. Well as an aside, that's good news
(26:04):
because not one of his monologues or other pieces has
been funny. Since about in ten, twenty eleven. But listen
to this quote. But the heart of the show is
an off the cuff panel discussion that aims to cut
through the bullshit and predictable partisanship, and that will continue.
I've been in these panel discussions. A couple of them were. Okay, Frankly,
(26:28):
you know how I feel about Chris Matthews. Chris Matthews
did panel discussions better than Bill Maher does. I think
it was twenty fifteen when they finally invited me on
and I said, all right, I'll come out, I'll take
the free flight and I'll do the one on one interview.
But these panels, you know what they are. They're just
they're bullshit and predictable partisanship. And Bill doesn't understand the issues.
(26:53):
I'd like to be left out of those. And the
producer says, I understand, and you're right, Bill doesn't understand
any of it. Doesn't even try anymore. But you kind
of have to be on the panel, all right. It's
still a free flight and a free hotel room, okay, Finn.
The panels are terrible, The panel guests are terrible. They're
(27:13):
usually c list at best. When I was on the panels,
I was terrible to cut through. To use Bill's word,
the bullshit here. What Bill Maher is doing right now
is as always putting himself first and then finding some
rationalization to do so. This is about saving his boss,
(27:34):
Warner Bros. Discovery Chief HBO boss David Zaslab, the one
who says HBO is a bad name, so he changed
it to Max David'saz Lab is the evil villain at
the heart of this strike that the studio's forced and
the Hollywood media machine, much to his surprise, is drying
up and dying, and he is being blamed every day
(27:56):
of the week. The writers and the actors have been
amazingly solid and courageous except for Drew Barrymore and Bill Maher,
and the studios are losing these strikes. So Bill is
going to help the studios by being a scab, by
siding with the corporations over the writers and the actors
(28:18):
who are on a legal and justified strike. Which is
especially funny because, as I'll get to in a moment,
the day I met Bill Maher, he called me a
quote corporate sellout, which is what he is now, a
corporate sellout and a scab. And a reminder, by the way,
particularly to liberals, but to in fact anybody contemplating going
(28:40):
on Real Time now or when the writers and actors
win the strike. If you go on real Time on HBO,
you too will be a scab. This will be a
particularly bad look. Democrats and lists will be kept Bill.
By the way, without writers, the new Scab edition of
(29:01):
Real Time with Bill Maher will be about eighty three
seconds law, not counting all the time that mar leaves
so he can laugh at his own jokes in a
desperate attempt to make them seem funny rather than just stupid.
Mar scab two days. Worst person in the world, and
(29:23):
he's a scab. Sometime in nineteen eighty five or nineteen
eighty six I saw a movie on cable called DC Cab.
There was a character, and it clearly the actor portraying
(29:44):
him was talented and funny, but for some reason I
felt like I knew him from somewhere, and I really
didn't like him. I remember the feeling was so strong
that I stuck around to watch the credits to find
out who he was. His name was Bill Mayher mah
e er Well. I had a teacher named Bill Mayer,
(30:05):
but his name had a y in it. He was
my advisor in high school. Now it wasn't him, but
I knew three things. He was talented, I didn't like him,
and I knew him from somewhere. This is pre internet,
of course, so no way to find out where I
knew him from. Hallowell's annual film guide would be my
best bet. Maybe he'd be in the new one coming out.
(30:25):
Checked calendar just eight or nine months from now. Eventually
I found out Bill Maher was in the year ahead
of mine at Cornell University. He was not at my
radio station. He was not in my college. Maybe I
knew him from a class somewhere. I could never nail
it down. I like to say I have a photographic memory,
but it's all polaroids, and I haven't always bothered to
(30:47):
label them. Almost everything that ever happened he is stuck
inside this big empty head of mine. But often key
details like who, what, when and where are just missing.
Never wrote him down, and honestly, in this case, it
was not worth the effort. I knew I was was
the right word. The word was aware of him when
(31:09):
we were both in college. Occasionally, especially after I went
from ESPN to MSNBC in nineteen ninety seven. A writer
would note the coincidence of university and years and ask
me about it, and I would say just that I
don't remember if he was in a class with me
or I knew him somehow, but I was aware of
Bill Maher. And then twenty two years ago, this month,
(31:31):
November twenty third, two thousand, I went on his old show,
Politically Incorrect, used to be the late night show on ABC.
This was when I was doing sports for Fox in
LA and it was an all sports episode. Lennox Lewis,
the boxer, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks,
Todd Zeal the first basement of the New York Mets,
and me from Fox Sports. When I met Bill Maher
(31:53):
before the show, I asked him about Cornell and whether
or not we ran into each other. I didn't know
anybody there. I didn't see anybody. I didn't go comedy anywhere.
I didn't talk to anybody. I didn't meet you. Okay,
excuse me. That settles it. Except during the recording of
the show, when Mark contradicted me on some point. I
got angry at him, and there was no reason to
(32:14):
get angry at him, so I dismissed the anger, and
I dismissed the moment, except on the way home, I
kept thinking, I know him from school somehow, no matter
what he says, and I know I didn't like him
in school. In the next decade, Bill switched to his
(32:34):
weekly HBO political show, and I went back and turned
MSNBC into a political network. And the Internet happened so
that Cornell juxtaposition became easier for reporters to stumble over,
so I would tell them the same thing. I can't
remember the details, but for twenty nine years now I
have been convinced I was aware of Bill Maher at Cornell.
(32:55):
Finally came the day March twentieth, two thousand and nine,
when they asked me to go on Real Time and
Bill Maher Cornell University seventy eight asked me Cornell University
seventy nine something about colleges, and I said, well, as
you know, we overlapped at Cornell, and I don't know
if we met, but I was aware of you there,
and he intermrupted and said, no, you weren't, and I
(33:17):
just went back and answered his question. Now, after every
episode of his program, Mar has or at least had
a little party backstage, I mean catered with booze and
with more guests than there are people in the studio audience,
and usually a bunch of models having done that show
four times, where they will fly you in first class
(33:37):
and put you up for the weekend in LA just
to do their show, and there's a party. I began
to suspect that, like many of the guests, Bill Maher
does the show just so he can have the party. Anyway.
Not long after it started, it overcomes Mar and he's
mad at me, and mind you, even if his allegation
(33:58):
that he is five feet eight is correct, I'm just
under six ' four, so he's giving up a lot
of height during an art argument, and he starts yapping
about how I should stop saying I was a way
heir of him at Cornell and I'm just trying to
get publicity off something that never happened. And who could
remember that kind of crap anyway? And he never talked
to anybody in four years in college because quote except
for the Ethica high school students I sold drugs to unquote.
(34:22):
And I notice he's getting heated, and this is just
triggering that core belief of mine that I was aware
of him in college and I didn't like him, And
now it becomes clear to me he didn't like me either.
He's getting loud enough and he's swinging his arms around
(34:43):
now and it looks kind of funny, but apparently it
happens in the office sometimes. And this is when Scott Carter,
who was the executive producer whom I definitely did know
since like nineteen ninety two when he worked at Comedy
Central with my friend Alan Havy, Scott Carter comes over
to defuse the situation. Scott was a three piece suit
kind of guy with the thumbs tucking a vest, who
(35:05):
would call a group of men fellows, as in say fellows.
So Scott comes over and says, say fellows with your
Cornell alumni reunion here, And of course this makes Bill
Maher even angrier. Let me ask you something. I used
to drive down from Hobart to see concerts at Cornell.
Have to say, I think Cornell was the leading concert
(35:26):
school in the nation back in our day. And now
Scott starts to list who he saw in concert at Cornell,
Robert Palmer and the famous Grateful Dead concert at Cornell
at Barton Hall. He was there, and I say, I
went to Springsteen, and Mar mumbles something about Loggins and Messina,
and I know what Carter's doing here. He's diffusing. And
(35:47):
we do a couple of rounds of who saw which
Cornell concert? And finally I say, I can top both
of you comic geniuses. I saw Robert Klein in concert
at Cornell. Now it is criminal, but there's an excellent
chance you may not know who Robert Klin is, suffice
to say as prominent a comedian in the sixties seventies
(36:10):
eighties as George Carlin or Richard pryor HBO itself was
built on annual George Carlin concerts and annual Robert Klein
concerts and everybody else. And Robert Kline wasn't quite as
deep or eternal as George Carlin, but he was really
on the money during Watergate and during Reagan. So I say,
(36:30):
I saw Robert Klein in concert at Cornell, and Mar
looks at me funny and not angrily, and says quietly,
I was at that too. I saw Robert Klein too,
And I don't really register that Mar's mood has now
utterly changed. He's not angry, he's confused. Well, I say,
(36:51):
I can still top you, because after that concert I
interviewed Robert Klein. Now Bill Maher starts to squint, and
he looks at me, and he looks at Scott Carter,
and he looks back at me, and he says, wait,
I interviewed Kleine after that concert too. And I'm smiling
(37:11):
through all this, and smiling and smiling and smiling, and
then suddenly, simultaneously it hits Bill Maher and me at
the same moment, in the same fullness of detail, and
I stop smiling, and I shout at Bill Maher, you
and he pulls his arms in towards his stomach and
kind of bends forward at the waist and covers his
face with his hands, and he says, oh God, I'm
(37:31):
so sorry, Jesus, it can't be. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
And while the anger wells up inside me so powerfully,
I can almost see it in my own eyeballs. Bill
Maher's concert going producer Scott Carter is really confused. Say, fellows,
did I miss something or did I have a brief
stroke or episode? And I say, Bill, and I just
(37:55):
remembered how I happen to be aware of him in school,
and Mar still has got his hands over his face.
People are looking at us, and Bill is shouting apologies,
and I say you want to tell him or should I?
And mar just shakes his body no and mumbles, oh God,
you do it. I can't, I can't, I can't, And
(38:17):
it all came back to me. For years, I would
tell people the story of the Robert Klein concert at
Cornell University in nineteen seventy eight. Our radio station co
sponsored his appearance along with the Corneill Concert Commission, and
in the contract we specified that a couple of us
real comedy nerds at the radio station would get to
(38:38):
go backstage afterwards and tape a brief ten or fifteen
minute interview with Robert Klin. Basically, we paid him not much,
but we paid him to do an interview. And when
my pal Andy Grossman and I get backstage to talk
to Robert Klein, and we have our two microphones and
two mike stands and three tape recorders, there is this guy,
(38:58):
this short guy, and he's yelling at the chief of
the Cornaill Concert Commission. And he's yelling at Robert Clin's manager,
and he's demanding that he should get to interview Robert
Clin because, like Klein, this kid says he is a
stand up comedian and he publishes the Cornell Humor Magazine.
And he points at me and he says he should
get priority over these quote corporate sellouts from the Cornell
(39:21):
Radio station. I hated him on site. Oh wait, I
say to him in nineteen seventy eight. And he's small
and he's got dirty, stringy hair and he's loud, and
I say, you are the publisher of the Cornell Humor magazine,
the Cornell Widow. And he snorts and says, I wouldn't
(39:42):
get caught dead publishing that corporate sellout, Cornell Widow. And
so I say, oh so, then that means you're the
publisher of the Cornell Alternative Humor magazine, the Not So
Big Red or whatever it is they call it. He says,
no way, they are corporate sellouts. I publish this. And
he pulls out a stack of mimeographed pages stapled together
(40:03):
and there's like a drawing on the front of a
naked girl and handwritten it says it's his comedy magazine
and I look at Robert Klein's manager and I say, so,
it's ten o'clock and if you leave now while this
idiot is screwing this up, the limo can still get
mister Klein to Elaine's in the city before it closes, right,
(40:26):
And the manager is wildly impressed, you know of Elaine's.
And I said yes, and I felt like an adult.
And I also said, if we give this guy five
minutes of our time right now while we're setting up
our tape recorders, can we still have ten minutes with
mister Klein. And the manager says, good plan. I like
the way you think, and he points to the kid
and gestures for him to come along. No, the kid shouts,
(40:48):
I want half an hour. These corporate sellouts deserve nothing.
And now I'm getting angry. I say, buddy, so far
all the corporations in the world have paid me about
one hundred bucks. So I threatened him. Now, mind you,
I believe this is literally true. Since nineteen sixty seven,
when I was eight years old, I have started two
(41:10):
fistfights two in fifty five years. I am a man
of peace. I am loud, but I am a man
of peace. But I say to this guy. You now
have two choices, kid, five minutes with Robert Klein or
I hit you in the face. And he runs to
(41:32):
where client's manager is still gesturing towards him, and he screams, Carpred,
sell out, and he disappears to do his interview, and
behind him he leaves his little homemade mimiograph ten or
twelve page humor publication, and I pick it up and
I read it and register it and dismiss it before
I leave the building. And if I had only remembered
(41:54):
what it said on the cover, all the years of
mystery and I was aware of him, and all that
would never have happened, because the cover of the magazine
read Bill Maherr's Comedy mag Magazine by Bill maher And
now back in well technically this is correct, back in
real time, at the party in the Hollywood studio in
(42:16):
two thousand and nine, the producer Scott Carter says nothing,
and Bill maher is still doubled over in shame, and
I say, are you satisfied that I was aware of you?
And he mumbles yes, And I say, will you ever
question my memory again? And he mumbles no. And he says,
(42:36):
if I need him to do my show or a
charity benefit or something. Just call and he says he's ashamed,
and he offers me his hand to shake, and we shake,
and finally I say, and by the way, Bill Maher,
if Bill Maher's comedy magazine by Bill Maher, are you
a corporate sellout? And he says kind And that's how
(42:56):
I was aware of Bill Maher in college. I have
argued before that James Thurber is the greatest American humorist.
And it dawns on me that the argument is not
(43:17):
unlike the idea that shohe Otani of the Los Angeles
Angels is almost automatically the most valuable player in baseball
each year because he is an All Star hitter and
an All Star pitcher in the same body. James Thurber
was a brilliant writer, and in his spare time, he
was an equally brilliant, almost avant garde artist in the
(43:38):
same body. His simple drawings to pick the most complex
of emotions and comedic situations. His dogs are immortal. And
then there were his captions. Well, I can't do anything
with his drawings in a podcast, so I'll just read
and I will read you now in this episode what
is probably his most famous story from my life in
(43:59):
hard times, The Night the Bed Fell James Thurber. I
suppose that the high water mark of my youth in Columbus,
Ohio was the night the bed fell on my father.
It makes a better recitation unless, as some friends of
mine have said, one has heard it five or six times,
(44:20):
than it does a piece of writing. For it is
almost necessary to throw furniture around, shake doors, and bark
like a dog to lend the proper atmosphere and verisimilitude
to what is admittedly a somewhat incredible tale. Still it
did take place. It happened then that my father had
(44:41):
decided to sleep in the attic one night, to be
away where he could think. My mother opposed the notion
strongly because she said the old wooden bed up there
was unsafe, It was wobbly, and the heavy headboard would
crash down on father's head in case the bed fell
and kill him. There was no dissuading him, however, and
(45:02):
at a quarter past ten he closed the attic door
behind him. He went up the narrow, twisting stairs. We
later heard I'm in his creakings as he crawled into bed.
Grandfather who usually slept in the attic bed when he
was with us, had disappeared some days before. On those occasions,
he was usually gone six or eight days, and returned
growling and out of temper with the news that the
(45:24):
Federal Union was run by a passel of blockheads, and
that the Army of the Potomac didn't have any more
chance than a fiddler's bitch. We had visiting us at
the time, a nervous first cousin of mine named Briggs Beale,
who believed that he was likely to cease breathing when
he was asleep. It was his feeling that if he
were not awakened every hour during the night, he might
(45:46):
die of suffocation. He had been accustomed to setting an
alarm clock to ring at intervals until morning, but I
persuaded him to abandon this. He slept in my room,
and I told him that I was such a light
sleeper that if anybody quit breathing in the same room
with me, I would wake instantly. He tested me the
first night, which I had suspected he would, by holding
(46:09):
his breath after my regular breathing, had convinced him I
was asleep. I was not asleep, however, and called to him.
This seemed to allay his fears a little, but he
took the precaution of putting a glass of spirits of
camphor on a little table at the head of his
bed in case I didn't arouse him until he was
(46:31):
almost gone. He said he would sniff the camphor. A
powerful reviver, Briggs was not the only member of his
family who had his crotchets. Old Aunt Melissa Belle, who
could whistle like a man with two fingers in her mouth,
suffered under the premonition that she was destined to die
on South High Street because she had been born on
(46:52):
South High Street and married on South High Street. Then
there was Aunt Sarah Schauf, who never went to bed
at night without the fear that a burglar was going
to get in and blow chloroform on under her door
through a tube. To avert this calamity, for she was
in greater dread of anesthetics than of losing her household goods,
(47:12):
she always piled her money, silverware, and other valuables in
a neat stack just outside her bedroom, with a note
reading this is all I have. Please take it and
do not use your chloroform, as this is all I have.
Aunt Gracie's chauf also had a burglar phobia, but she
met it with more fortitude. She was confident that burglars
(47:33):
had been getting into her house every night for forty years.
The fact that she never missed anything was to her
no proof. To the contrary, she always claimed that she
scared them off before they could take anything by throwing
shoes down the hallway. When she went to bed, she
piled where she could get at them handily, all the
(47:53):
shoes there were about her house. Five minutes after she
had turned off the light, she would sit up in
bed and say hark. Her husband, who had learned to
ignore the whole situation as long ago as nineteen o three,
would either be sound asleep or pretend to be sound asleep.
In either case, he would not respond to her tugging
(48:15):
and pulling, so that presently she would arise, tiptoe to
the door, open it slightly, and heave a shoe down
the hall in one direction, and its mate down the
hall in the other direction. Some nights she threw them all,
some nights only a couple of pear. But I am
straying from the remarkable incidents that took place during the
(48:37):
night that the bed fell on father. By midnight we
were all in bed. The layout of the rooms and
the disposition of their occupants is important to an understanding
of what later occurred. In the front room upstairs, just
under father's attic bedroom, where my mother and my brother Hermann,
who sometimes sang in his sleep, usually marching through Georgia
(48:59):
or onward Christian soldiers, briggs Beale and myself were in
a room adjoining this one one. My brother Roy was
in a room across the hall from ours. Our bull
terrier Wrecks slept in the hall. My bed was an
army cot, one of those affairs which were made wide
enough to sleep on comfortably only by putting up flat
with the middle section the two sides, which ordinarily hang
(49:22):
down like the sideboards of a drop leaf table. When
these sides are up, it is perilous to roll too
far toward the edge, for then the cot is likely
to tip completely over, bringing the whole bed down on
top of one with a tremendous banging crash. This, in fact,
is precisely what happened about two o'clock in the morning.
(49:45):
It was my mother who, in recalling the scene, later
first referred to it as the night the bed fell
on your father, Always a deep sleeper and slow to arouse,
I had lied to Briggs. I was at first unconscious
of what had happened when the ironcot rolled me onto
the floor and toppled over on it left me still
(50:06):
warmly bundled up and unheard, for the bed rested above
me like a canopy. Hence I did not wake up,
only reached the edge of consciousness and went back. The racket, however,
instantly awakened my mother in the next room, who came
to the immediate conclusion that her worst dread was realized.
The big wooden bed upstairs had fallen on father. She
(50:27):
therefore screamed, let's go to your poor father. It was
this shout, rather than the noise of my cot falling,
that awakened Herman in the same room with her, He
thought that mother had become, for no apparent reason, hysterical.
You're all right, Mama, he shouted, trying to calm her.
They exchanged shout for shout for perhaps ten seconds. Let's
(50:50):
go to your poor father, and you're all right. That
woke up Briggs. By this time I was conscious of
what was going on in a vague way, but did
not yet realize that I was under my bed instead
of on it. Briggs, awakening in the midst of loud
shouts of fear and apprehension, came to the quick conclusion
(51:11):
that he was suffocating, and that we were all trying
to bring him out. With a low moan, he grasped
the glass of camphor at the head of his bed,
and instead of sniffing it, he poured it over himself.
The room reeked of camphor ugh ah choked Briggs like
a drowning man, for he had almost succeeded in stopping
(51:34):
his breath under the deluge of pungent spirits. He leaped
out of bed and groped toward the open window, but
he came up against one that was closed. With his hand,
he beat out the glass, and I could hear it
crash and tinkle on the alleyway below. It was at
this juncture that I, in trying to get up, had
the uncanny sensation of feeling my bed above me foggy
(51:58):
with sleep. I now suspected, in my turn that the
whole uproar was being made in a frantic endeavor to
extricate me from what must be an unheard of and
perilous situation. Get me out of this, I bawled, Get
me out. I think I had the night marrish belief
that I was entombed in a mine. Oh gasp, Briggs
floundering in his camphor. By this time, my mother, still shouting,
(52:23):
pursued by Hermann, still shouting, was trying to open the
door to the attic in order to go up and
get my father's body out of the wreckage. The door
was stuck, however, and would not yield. Her frantic pulls
on it only added to the general banging and confusion.
Roy and the dog were now up, the one shouting questions,
(52:44):
the other barking. Father, farthest away and soundest sleeper of all,
had by this time been awakened by the battering on
the attic door. He decided that the house was on fire.
Oh coming, okaming, he wailed in a slow, sleepy voice.
It took him many minutes to regain full consciousness. My mother,
(53:06):
still believing he was caught under the bed, detected in
his I'm coming, the mournful resigned note of one who
was preparing to meet his maker. He's dying, She shouted,
I'm all right. Briggs yelled to reassure her, I'm all right.
He still believed that it was his own closeness to
death that was worrying Mother. I found at last the
(53:28):
light switch in my room, unlocked the door, and Briggs
and I joined the others at the attic door. The dog,
who never did like Briggs, jumped for him, assuming that
he was the culprit in whatever was going on, and
Roy had to throw Rex and hold him. We could
hear Father crawling out of the bed upstairs. Roy pulled
the attic door open with a mighty jerk, and Father
(53:49):
came down the stairs, sleepy and irritable, but safe and sound.
My mother began to weep when she saw him. Rex
began to howl. What in the name of God is
going on here? Asked father. The situation was finally put
together like a giant gigsaw puzzle. Father caught a cold
(54:13):
from prowling around in his bare feet, but there were
no other bad results. I'm glad, said Mother, who always
looked on the bright side of things, that your grandfather
wasn't here. I've done all the damage I can do here.
(54:40):
Thank you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of
the music arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and
John Phillip Shanel, who are the Countdown musical directors. All
orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanel, Guitars, bass and
drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven's
selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,
(55:03):
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of
the ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best
baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend
John Dean. Everything else was pretty much my fault. So
that's countdown for this, the nine and eighty third day
since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
government of the United States. Convict him now while we
(55:26):
still can. The next scheduled countdown is Monday or Tuesday.
I gotta tell you, I gotta shake this throat thing.
So if there's no real news over the weekend, I'm
just gonna take Monday off. Okay, one way or the other.
Your subscription will notify you and bulletins as the news
(55:47):
warrants anyway, because me, I'm your local neighborhood masochist till
then I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Bill maher is a Scab Countdown with
(56:17):
Keith Olreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
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