May 30, 2023 • 51 mins
EPISODE 213: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT:
Joe Biden has still won the debt deal but now there is the chance that not only will Kevin McCarthy will lose it, but so will Joe Manchin. That putrid, unreliable, self-aggrandizing, self-inflating, fraudulent, sheep-in-sheep’s clothing Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has managed to stick the permitting legislation for his favorite project to accelerate the end of life on the planet from catastrophic climate change, the good old Mountain Valley Natural Gas Pipeline. But Senator Tim Kaine is moving to remove the good old Mountain Valley Pipeline from the deal, since it's “completely unrelated to the debt ceiling matter” and of course it IS completely unrelated to it, and Kaine will file an amendment to get it cut the hell out of the bill.
Because if President Biden would like to piss away the good will of averting a default that never should have been in play but Democrats in the House slept through the lame duck and Democrats in the White House apparently didn’t know about the 14th Amendment until a couple of weeks ago… and if President Biden would like to piss away the triumph of his victory over McCarthy, and if President Biden would like to piss away the early signs of a significant poll bump – Biden 46-44 in the Echelon Insights national poll, Biden 47-43 in the Clarity national poll, just out last night, and if President Biden would like to piss away all that, the way to do it is to umbrella this albatross of the Joe Manchin’s Integrity Memorial Pipeline into the Debt Deal.
Plus: MAGA Chip Roy on the House Rules Committee is now pretending there is a secret deal for only unanimous votes to move bills like this onto the floor, and another MAGA Dusty Johnson is politely calling him a liar.
Oh and, sorry, but the three-opponent-vanquishing hero of "Concession," Tom Wambsgans? The show's auteur says, no, he was NOT named after the three-opponent-vanquishing hero of baseball's 1920 World Series, BILL Wambsganss. Sorry!
B-Block (16:05) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: These really ARE postscripts. Not just more from the Wayback Machine but the story of how I GOT my first prestige job as a sportscaster on a top New York radio station just after my 21st birthday: the way everybody else does - by hanging around that station at 5:15 in the morning the day their sportscaster happens to call out sick.
C-Block (38:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Given today's headline, this is a good time to revisit the very FIRST Special Comment in this series: it involved fossil fuels, Joe Manchin, and the need to push Biden at all times. Also, a bad Howard Beale impression.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Joe
Biden has still won the debt deal, but now there
(00:24):
is also the chance that not only will Kevin McCarthy
lose it, but so will Joe Mansion. In page ninety
five of the agreement, that's ninety five out of ninety nine,
that putrid, unreliable, self aggrandizing, self inflating, fraudulent, sheep in
sheep's clothing. Senator Joe Mansion of West Virginia has managed
(00:45):
to stick the permitting legislation for his favorite project to
accelerate the end of life on the planet from catastrophic
climate change, the Good Old Mountain Valley natural Gas pipeline,
and Senator Tim Caine of Virginia is planning to remove
the Good Old Mountain Valley pipeline. And from page ninety
(01:05):
five and from the deal, come hell or high water.
Senator Kaine has always been opposed to this three hundred
mile long living monument to environmental disasters, both short term
and long term, and he makes the unanswerable argument that
it is quote completely unrelated to the debt ceiling matter.
And of course it is completely unrelated to it, and
(01:26):
Kane will file an amendment now to get it. Cut
the hell out of the bill. Because if President Biden
would like to piss away the goodwill of having averted
a default that never should have been in play, but
Democrats in the House slept through the Wame Duck and
Democrats in the White House apparently did not know about
the fourteenth Amendment a couple a couple of weeks ago.
And if President Biden would like to piss away the
(01:48):
triumph of his victory over McCarthy, and if President Biden
would like to piss away the early signs of a
significant poll bump here Biden forty six forty four in
the Echelon Insights national poll, Biden forty seven forty three
in the Clarity National poll just out last night. If
President Biden would like to piss away all that, the
way to do it is to umbrella this albatross of
(02:12):
the Joe Mansion's Integrity Memorial pipeline into the debt deal.
It doesn't have a damn thing to do with the
debt deal other than to lubricate Joe Manchin and make
the Democrats and Biden and Chuck Schumer think ooh, now,
Manchin will owe us something, except he never thinks that way,
and he never repays the favor, and his voting record
(02:33):
actually suggests he may be more worthless than cinema. And
trust me, I know how worthless cinema is. The Joe
Mansion burned the Atmosphere Mountain Valley pipeline is the fossil
fuel world's raised middle finger to the Democrats and the
green energy universe, and for that matter, to reality. It
(02:54):
is a reminder that people like Joe Manchin will really
try to sell the last living humans on the planet
one more cubic foot of natural gas before they die.
Mister President, you want to put something in here for
the fossil fuel industry, how about you right a guarantee
that you will not nationalize it, that when those parts
(03:16):
of it that cannot figure out how to convert their
businesses into ones that sell products that don't destroy life
on the planet slowly after utter destabilization of society and
uncontrollable waves of disease and starvation and violence, that maybe
the government can buy their destructive companies instead, Because God forbid,
(03:37):
murders like the people who own Joe Mansion don't get
to keep their profits high enough and I made a
verb out of umbrella there because it is a bleak
grammatical shorthand joke from inside my own family. I knew
it from my grandmother, my mother's mother, who used to say,
after a series of demands on her that would lead
(03:59):
to yet one more worse demand. Quote, don't own umbrella
me or just umbrella umbrella means I suppose I can
handle you shoving the umbrella up my uh posterior, just
don't open it. The Schlumbohm and Charboneir families were not
(04:24):
exactly the epitome of delicacy in the Bronx a century ago,
but even they cleaned it up to just the one word.
So umbrella, mister President, I get it you're not going
to do as much as you have said about climate,
but the other party is insane and we do not
have much choice. Just don't umbrella us. Take the Joe
(04:45):
Mansion gold plated with corruption Mountain Valley pipeline out of
the debt deal and give it to Senator Mansion and
tell him to put it. Just give it to him
and say to him, umbrella, I'm not going to let
go of the pipeline thing and Mansion, but I am
(05:07):
going to continue to give Biden props on the win.
If the pipeline remains, we will have to revisit that
in the interim. I am also going to give him
props on the humble brag tightrope. He successfully maneuvered a
little tough to hear him here as usual with the
helicopter at the White House. But he is essentially boasting
(05:28):
that he hasn't boasted, while reminding you that you would
boast and thus you'd lose. But he would never boast
about that either.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I spoke to McDonald.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
I spoke to a whole bunch.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Of people, and it feels good.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
We'll see when the boat starts, and you are. One
of the things that I hear some of these guys.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
Saying is why didn't Biden say what a good dealer is?
Why would Biden be saying.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
What a good dealer before the vote? I think that's
going to help me get a pass. No, that's why
you guys don't bargain very well. The Republicans who can't
bargain either, judging i' McCarthy are of course having one
more knockdown drag out in the Rules Committee over the
debt deal and it's so Republican, it's hilarious. You may
recall that as part of his seventeen different deals with
(06:16):
seventeen different devils to get the speakership, Kevin McCarthy had
to put the worst of MAGA like Ralph Norman and
this nutt Thomas Massey and this moron Chip Roy on
the Rules Committee. Well, now, Chip Roy insists that not
only did McCarthy agree to put the maggots on rules,
he also made a doubles secret handshake agreement that all
(06:39):
nine Republicans on that panel have to agree before any
legislation advances from their Rules committee to the full House.
So while Roy was attacking McCarthy with that, another Republican
on the Rules Committee, Dusty Johnson, was attacking Roy. Quote,
I have not heard that before. If those conversations took place,
(07:00):
the rest of the conference was unaware of them, and
frankly I doubt them. Dusty is with a kind of
civility that is startling in a twenty first century Republican.
Dusty is calling Chip a liar. Incidentally, Congressman Dusty, Congressman Chip,
what is this zz top? Well, by the way, the
(07:27):
success in succession of Tom Wombscants has nothing to do
with one of the great one moment immortals in baseball history,
Bill Wambscants. Well, you have to have seen this yesterday
or earlier. An expert at a baby Name's website tweeted
it last Wednesday, And in fact, the urban legend about
baseball and the TV series turns out to go back
(07:49):
at least two years, and it was in the New
York Times. The idea is that the success in the
well let's call it a nighttime soap opera of Tom
Wombscants wambs Gans was forecast in succession by his name
that everybody should have been able to figure out that
(08:10):
he would prevail in the succession in succession because he
more or less shared his name with Bill Wamscantce Wambsgaanss.
Bill Wamscants, or Bill Wamscants, as he was often known too,
was the second baseman of the then Cleveland Indians from
nineteen fourteen through nineteen twenty three. He was a really
(08:32):
good rangy infielder who was pretty fast and hit two
fifty nine lifetime, but in a time of sluggers didn't.
Wamscants was a lot to say back then or fit
into a box score in nineteen twenty, so Bill answered
to Wamby or Wamby. But in the fifth inning of
Game five of the nineteen twenty World Series, he became
(08:53):
a baseball immortal. The Brooklyn Robbins now the LA Dodgers,
the National League champions that year, put two men on
with nobody out. With the runners moving, Brooklyn's Clarence Mitchell
h had a sharp line drive to Wamscans for one out.
Then Wiamscans took a couple of strides and stepped on second,
thereby doubling off the runner on second, Pete Kilduff, who
(09:13):
was already halfway to third base two out. Wamscons now
said he looked up to find the Brooklyn runner from first,
Otto Miller, just a few feet away from him. Frozen
in horror at what was happening. Bill Wamscins went over
and tagged him for not just a triple play, but
an unassisted triple play, the first in World Series history
(09:36):
and the last. And it's been one hundred and three years,
and it was only the second or third in all
of baseball history at that point, depending on how you
interpret baseball history. Even now, there have only been fifteen
or sixteen unassisted triple plays. And incidentally, six of them
were either by or against Cleveland, which is statistically really unlikely.
(09:58):
And two of them happened on consecutive days in nineteen
twenty seven, which is even crazier. But the point is
Wambskantz defeated three rivals, all by himself, all at once.
Got it just like the Womscants in Succession. Huh ah,
pretty good. Huh And if you were paying attention, you
(10:21):
also noticed that in the very first episode of Succession,
Tom Wombskance played in the Roy family softball game and
he tagged out a kid at home plate. Good except
it's a coincidence. Yeah, it's a coincidence. Instead of just saying,
(10:44):
like everybody else did, it's an obscure baseball reference umbrella.
Stephan Fatsis of Slate contacted the longtime New York Times
columnist Frank Rich, who was one of the executive producers
of the show, about this, and Rich replied, quote, I
hate to spoil the internet's fun, but it's false. Tom's
family name was picked before before we had shot a
(11:05):
first season, let alone mapped out precise story twists that
would culminate thirty nine episodes later. Not to mention that
many of the key writers on the show, starting with
its creator Jesse Armstrong, are British, live in London and
are devoted to British football, if memory serves, Frank Rich continued,
we were looking for something off key that would be
(11:26):
awkward to say and pronounce, befitting a character who arrives
as an outsider in the Roys world unquote, So sorry
conspiracy fans. And anyway, if you had a triple play
accomplishing character in succession named after Bill Lambskantz, you'd really
(11:48):
also have to have had one named after triple play
hitting into batter Clarence Mitchell. Because as remarkable as wamscans
is unassistant triple play was in the nineteen twenty World Series,
I have always thought as a baseball historian that what
Clarence Mitchell did it was far more remarkable. Because the
next time Clarence Mitchell came up in the same game
(12:11):
in the eighth inning, after having just hit into a
triple play, Clarence Mitchell promptly then hit into a double play.
He made five outs with two swings. Maybe they can
make that the plot line in the sequel, and you
know there's going to be a sequel. Also of note, today,
(12:36):
the Russians have put out an arrest warrant for Lindsey
Graham over what he said about Russians dying in Ukraine
and money well spent. And ordinarily I'd be conflicted because
it's Lindsay Umbrella Graham, but more importantly it's the Russians,
and after the day long bombing of civilian targets in
Kiev yesterday and the increasing threats of using tactical nukes,
(12:57):
their terrorism in Ukraine has to stop, and we have
to stop not just dealing with them, but dealing with
any other country. It still deals with Russia. Okay, so
now I'm going to go fire up the wayback machine again.
That's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Postscripts to the news, some updates, some snark, some complete
redefinition of the premise, because this is about as POSTSCRIPTI
as you can get. But the response was so enthusiastic
and so surprising to yesterday's concluding segments in which I
dived into the big plastic banker's box in my closet
(13:43):
full of ancient, brittle audio cassettes and played stuff that
had not been heard by anybody else besides me since
nineteen eighty seven. Actually some of them were from nineteen
seventy nine. Anyway, the response has implied that maybe during
slow news or my semi vacation days, and I mean
like a couple of the a year or at worse
(14:06):
a month, I'm not doing this every week. It's worth
repriising some of this old stuff and some of the
amazing stories from my radio career which accompanied them. The
first thing you will hear today is from my stint
as the backup sportscast here at WNAW Radio in New York.
This was a legendary place when I got there in
nineteen eighty, the last of the big New York City
(14:29):
stations to broadcast from a literal ballroom with giant studios
two stories tall and drapes and room for studio audiences.
They had moved out of there by then. That was
on Fifth Avenue. They played big band music, and their
disc jockeys were legends who had succeeded other legends. Everybody
from Gene Rayburn later of Match Game, to Boris Karloff.
(14:55):
Boris Karloff was at WNAW dish jockey in the nineteen fifties. No,
Here's Elvis Predator. The newscasters were legends too. If you've
ever seeing the film of Lee Harvey Oswald being shot,
the guy in the hat and the overcoat sticking out
his microphone and trying to interview Oswald as Jack Ruby
(15:16):
puts his gun out next to the guy, that man
in the hat with the microphone is Ike Pappus of
WNAW Radio in New York. That's how big a news
department they had. And one day WNAW took its boutique
FM station, which just was a clearer version of its
AM station, and they turned it into the greatest place
in the history of rock and roll radio. And when
(15:39):
I got there in nineteen eighty, WNAW broadcast the play
by play of the New York Giants, the New York Rangers,
the New York Knicks, the New York Cosmos. And I
got to work there because they were an affiliate of
the radio network run by United Press International UPI Audio
my first employers in retrospect. Doing the night sports shift
(16:01):
at UPI was exhausting. There was a sportscas every hour
between five forty five and ten forty five. Occasionally you
had to engineer. You had to play all the carts
and dial all the dials for the newscast. At the
top of the hour, if there was a breaking sports story,
you had to try to call somebody to record a
phone interview with them, or get a local reporter somewhere
(16:22):
to do an interview or file a report. Plus, if
some reporter called in from an afternoon game or a
night game that finished early, you had to handle, edit
and feed out the tape of player interviews. No digital editing,
mind you actual physical cutting and spicing. And then there
was the commentary my side two minutes of sports commentary
(16:46):
that was sent out to the one thousand stations that
paid for UPI audio. You had to get it done
before your shift was over. In between all those other
sports casts and all those other things you had to do.
You had to write it. Well, first you had to
think about it, then you had to write it, Then
you had to record it. Then you probably had to
edit it several times together. This was something that had
been started by the great UPI baseball columnist Milton Richmond,
(17:08):
whose print column was called, guess what my side. Milt
would just read his paper copy until about a minute
fifty five had passed, and then he'd say, I'm Milton
Richmond and that's my side, whether or not he had
actually made his point by then. Anyway, Milt soon got
tired of it, and knowing UPI, they probably paid him
(17:30):
an extra three dollars a year. But our stations, most
of whom were among America's smallest, wanted needed a two
minute sports commentary to run in the mornings. Soon my
side became the side of whoever was doing the night
shift at UPI Audio Sports me Jack Russell, Sam Rosen,
(17:51):
Peter Shack, Noow, Bruce McGowan, Mike Allibaugh, whoever. And it
was traditional stuff. The Cowboys are the best team in football.
Sports leagues need to figure out a way to use
TV replays to get back. I had calls right, And
of course, how dare cashus Clay try to change his name?
I did not do that one. I usually did four
(18:13):
or five of these commentaries a week, and I got
tired of these fast. So even though I had no
time to try to make them creative, I tried to
make them creative. I in fact, started to do wacky ones.
I would save the tapes of the weird comments that
our stringer reporters would feed in, and soon I had
a running series of my sides about how often athletes
(18:35):
used the verbal crutch you know, in their answers hell
that got me written up in Sports Illustrated once, back
when that was a big deal and they paid you
fifty dollars for it and my rent was four to
ninety a month. One night I devoted my side to
a collection of weird things that hockey players said. I've
mentioned here once, and the tape exists somewhere. I've got
(18:57):
to find it. That the late legend Bobby Hull once
answered my nostalgic question by saying, oh, that's in the past.
Never mind the past, we're here in the future now,
which still freaks me out. I did one long piece
about the NHL team they used to have in Quebec City,
suddenly saying they would make public address announcements only in French,
(19:19):
no English. So I took seven years of schoolboy French
and tried to provide helpful translations for English speaking fans
who got stuck at the Quebec Nordiqe game translations of
such phrases as do not punch me, mister left wing.
I am not the fan who threw the miniature Stanley
cup at you. I'll spare you the schoolboy French ah
to hell with it. Should have a flafe pas monsieur
(19:41):
l'alier edwatch since we paal spectator kilansavu lakoup de Stanley miniature.
And yes, some of the fractured French was deliberate, some
of it. Anyway, One day when I got into work,
there was a letter waiting for me in the office
and the return address was Andy Fisher, Robin Sagan, and
Tom Morrera of w on WFM. Andy and Robin were
(20:05):
the newscasters and Tom was the overnight disc jockey, and
they had heard one of the hockey pieces and they
enjoyed it so much that on his earliest newscast on WAWFM,
which I think was at four forty five in the morning,
and he gave the headlines of the day and the weather,
and then played the entire two minute piece about the
(20:26):
hockey players. The letter from them was lovely, and they said, look,
if you ever want to come around and visit, we're
just around the corner. On the other hand, Tom leaves
the office at six am. Well, I took them up
on it. One night I did my UPI shift, ending
at eleven, and instead of hopping on the train to
go to my folks home in the Suburbs, I instead
had a lot of coffee and I hung around UPI
(20:49):
knocking off a couple of feature pieces and pre writing
a couple of more my sides. And then in the
middle of an April or early May night in the
Year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty, I walked
around the corner from UPI's office in the New York
Daily News build Bilding. You know the building. You saw
it if you ever saw the first Christopher Reeves Superman movie,
(21:09):
the one in the Big Planet in the lobby. I
did this at around three o'clock in the morning. Took
my life in my hands. They buzzed me in at
WNAW on Third Avenue, and I met Tom, and I
met Andy, and I did a commentary for them live
on WNAWFM, and then just hung out in the newsroom
with Andy and the AM news guys. And I was
(21:29):
just sitting there preparing to take the first morning train
home to my folks, which was I think six forty am.
It was about ten after five when a tall, extraordinarily
thin man with a bushy beard and a gleam in
his eye and a hello shouted in a deep Texas accent,
walked in and everybody in that newsroom said hi Sam.
(21:54):
And Sam looked at me funny and ducked into what
was evidently his office and then came out, walked over
to me and said you're a Olberman. Huh And I
said yes. He said, I'm Sam Hall. I'm the new director.
I want to make some per diem My sportscasters out
sick today. And I said sure. I mean you know
that phrase about right place, right time and all that terrific.
(22:15):
And Sam Hall said can you write fast? And I
said yeah, actually I can. It's my only skill. And
he laughed and I laughed, and he said, well, write
as much as you can. Your first sports cast is
at five thirty five. You're on in eight minutes. Well
I froze for a second. I shook his hand. I
found some wire copy and I started typing. I managed
(22:36):
somehow to call my folks and get about two minutes
of a show written and I woke them up and
I said, I'll be on WAW at five thirty five,
and then I hung up. I did the rest of
that shift that morning, and by the end of it,
Sam Hall had called me into his little office and said, listen,
my guy, John Kennelly misses a lot of work. His
wife's not well. Could you be the backup? I mean,
(22:56):
could you be the kind of backup we could call
at two am and you could be here by four.
I mean, I think it would work out to about
seventy five dollars a day union money. My full time
job at UPI was about seventy dollars a day. Sam,
I'll be moving into the city next month. I'll be
within walking distance, he smiled. Welcome aboard son. The next
(23:18):
day I went looking for an apartment in the city
within walking distance. I did not have one. I kind
of exaggerated. I do not have a tape of that
first hurried WNAW sportscast, but I have most of the others.
So here are a few and a few morsels from
my UPI days that I mentioned. Specifically, stuff I did
(23:40):
for the network from the nineteen eighty Winter Olympics in
Lake Placid New York. I'm still cold. The old CBS
mock history series was called you Were There. This series,
I think should be called I was there.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Good Morning. I'm Keith Olberman, Canalio with a goal and
an assist a Cosmo's out of their slump after a
three to one win over the Sounders last night at Cosmo's,
a Giants rather and Cincinnati, Jeff reard And gave up
a ninth inning homer to Ken Griffey, and the Mets
lost to the Reds four to three. Mets are at
Houston tonight and at Yankee Stadium, another one of those
Yankee Royals pitchers duels Casey fourteen the Yankees three. But
(24:17):
manager Dick Howser isn't worried about a repeat of the
past weekend. If the Yanks and Royals meet in the playoffs.
Speaker 5 (24:22):
Series doesn't mean anything to me.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Now, Howser will have more to say, and we'll answer
the question. How hot was it at Yankee Stadium yesterday?
On the Sports reported at about a thirty five And that
man's name is Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Now, how hot was it at Yankee Stadium? Bob Harris got.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
To figure about one hundred and ten to one hundred
and twelve degrees in the outfield in the noonday sun.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
The news has been brought to you by Alan Carpett.
I'm Bob Hayden.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
And now wvlendy W's Sports un commentary with John kennerley Man.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Good Morning, John continues on vacation, I'm Keith Olberman. So
maybe the Cosmos didn't beat Philadelphia or Detroit last week,
You'd never have guessed they were in any kind of
slump the way they beat league leading Seattle last night
despite one of and twelve degree on field temperatures. The
Cosmos won three to one at Giant Stadium. Can Ayo
the goal and an assistant moved back in the first
place in the scoring race. Next up for the Cosmos
(25:14):
Wednesday night at Giants Stadium against San Diego. The Mets
are in Houston right now, resting up for their opener
with the Astros tonight. John Fasela and Ken Force the
likely pitchers. You hope a ball game like yesterday's won't
take too much out of these kids. They storm back
to storm back to ty Cincinnati when Mazzilli hit his
thirteenth homer in the eighth, with Flynn on and then
Jeff reard And gives up a game winning homer with
(25:35):
two out on the ninth to Ken Griffy. Joe Torrey says,
if it had to be anybody, he's not mad that
it was Griffy.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Things happened. You know, he tried to make a pitch
and he didn't know it hit the location he wanted.
And he'll never be embarrassed when you beat the play
a home run from Ken Griffy. You know, I'm going
to shorten the All Star Game. And yeah, yeah, I
felt we were pretty fortunate to be able to tie
the score. That was you know, they didn't have more runs.
We had great relief pitching and great pitching when we
needed it to get out of innings, and you know,
(26:02):
I thought, once we tied it, we're going to win it.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
But then came Grippy's homer. Toy's club now six and
a half out. The Pirates are in first after splitting
a doubleheader with the Dodgers, losing the first four to two,
winning the nightcap eight to seven. The Expos lost at
Houston four to three, so the Astros go back into
first in the West. It was the Cards two sent
Francisco one the Braves over the Phillies three to two
at Chicago, topping San Diego six nothing. How hot was
(26:25):
it at Yankee Stadium yesterday afternoon? It was so hot.
When Dick Howser went out to the mound to take
Ron Gidry out in the second inning, he wore his
bestest suit. It was so hot. After the game, I
saw the Royals being poured into their team bus. It
was so hot. But seriously, the Royals were what was
hot yesterday. They won fourteen to three. As game time
temperatures hit ninety eight degrees at the stadium. Gidrey shelled
(26:47):
for seven in less than two winnings. His confidence definitely shaken.
How about the Yankees confidence that they could beat the
Royals in the playoffs. Dick Howser still seems pretty sure
of his club.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
We might have a shade more power, they might hit
for a little better average, but I think our pitching
is better and they have more speed. And we'll just
when we lock horns if we do see it was
the best club then. But a series doesn't mean anything
to me. Now. Gedri's gonna pitch against him aginn in
Kansas City, and we'll see what happens then.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Also key what happens this week is the Brewers come
to town for what could be the last important series
of the Eastern Race four games. Brewers currently trail Yanks
by eight and a half. Mike Caldwell against Tom Underwood tonight.
Milwaukee won yesterday seven to six over the White Sox.
It was Texas seven and Baltimore one twins over the
Red Sox five to four. Blue Jays beat the Angels
six three in ten Detroit over Seattle five to two
(27:36):
in Oakland Stock Cleveland sixty five. That one took fourteen innings.
Only three Americans had ever won the British Open, three
times each. They were Ben Hogan, Bobby Jones and Jack
Nicholas Well. You can add Tom Watson's name to that list.
Watson by four yesterday at Meerfield to beat Lee Trevino
for the title. In Jersey. Yesterday, in the weekly light
Heavyweight title bout, Eddie Mustapha Muhammad no relation to Matthew
(27:57):
Sad Muhammad knocked out Jerry Martin no relation to Billy
Martin at two to ten of the tenth round. Mastafa
maintains the WBA crown in the vision that Sports for
John Kennelly on Keith Olberman on the Ted Brown Show.
The Rangers season ended in April. Some say it ended
last October, but they're the Islander fans. Who cares what
(28:19):
they say? Anyway, It's been three months since Freddy the fog.
Shiro has clouded up the Big Apple. But there he
was at the Garden news conference Tuesday, the one at
which Craig Patrick got the job as director of Operations,
the one at which the Ranger management structure took on
all the clarity of the government of Iran. The subject
was assistant coach Mike Nikoluk, the methods, circular logic. The
(28:40):
question to Shiro, what's the story with Nikoluk? Will he
be back this fall?
Speaker 6 (28:44):
I sent him a cable Graham to Switzerland a couple
of days ago, saying that I have accepted the fact
that he wished to quit and stay out of hockey,
and I haven't heard any further on the subject.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Then a reporter said, Nikoluk told him he'd never resigned.
Speaker 6 (29:02):
He never said resigned to me, he said quit, But he.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Told you he was quitting. Did he give you a
letter of resignation?
Speaker 6 (29:07):
Nobody has a letter of resignation from him. I just
happen to read the words in the paper one day.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Yeah, but Fred, you're Freddie Schiro, scourge of newspaper men.
You've never been one to rely on some words in
the paper, right.
Speaker 6 (29:20):
I think we'll take a lot of things into consideration,
not just one write them.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
We had better stop now before damage is done to
the delicate tissues in our brains. For WAWFM, I'm Keith Oberman.
And while it is too early in the morning for sports,
it is definitely too early in the morning for Fred Shiro.
They went wild in the streets with America's gold medal
in hockey, shouts of We're number one, the singing of
the national anthem, Chance of USA USA, and after the
(29:47):
gold was one, one fan was awfully glad he had
not followed through on an idea to scalp his tickets.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
I thought about it.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
I thought, if somebody'd offer me two hundred dollars a
piece for them, I would sell them.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
But I'm glad it didn't. What is your reaction now
with the wind, Oh my gracious, I wouldn't have missed
it for the world.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
See this game. You never have to see another game
in the rest of your life, the biggest born up
set in twenty years, Steam of destiny. The postgame celebrations
spilled over from the Olympics Center area to the streets
of Lake Placid. The thousands of celebrants showing no ill
effects of having done this twice in three days. Keith Oberman,
Lake Placid, stunning the packed Olympics Center crowd. The favorite
(30:25):
American team of time, Babylonia and Randy Gardner, have withdrawn
from the pairs figure skating competition due to injury. Gardner
had been receiving treatment for a muscle pull and he's
growing all day. He fell twice during the warm ups
before the start of the event, and after testing his
injury briefly on ice, he and Babylonia skated off. Shortly after,
a representative of the US team walked across ice to
(30:46):
the referee to announce the withdrawal. And so the current
defending world champions are out of the Olympic pairs competition.
Years of practice and patients coming to naught for Ti
Babylonia and Randy Gardner Keith Oberman at the Olympics Center.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
Joy turned to sadness in a matter of minutes for
the United States on Friday. After winning two medals, a
silver and a gold, and doing surprisingly well in the
men's two man Bob's led us hopes for a gold
medal and the pair's figure skating competition were shattered when
the team of Randy Gardner and tie Babylonia had to withdraw.
Keith Olberman was at the Olympic Center when the announcement
(31:21):
of the withdrawal was made.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
First hint came during the warm ups before the pairs
competition began. Randy Gardner fell twice, and after he and
ty Babylonia came on ice before their skating turn, Gardner
determined he could not perform, and the pair withdrew due
to injury. Gardner had been receiving treatment all day for
a muscle pull in his groin. The news of the
withdrawal shock to packed house at the Olympic Center and
left the Americans without a strong pair of candidates for
(31:45):
a medal.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
Coach John Nick said there was no way Gardner could skate.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
He missed three things.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Imagine if you will being transported to another planet. On
this planet, which is very similar to our own, you
are not allowed to drive a car, but there is
nothing within walking distance. No matter where you are on
this planet. There are are a million things you must
find out immediately, and there are a million people authorized
to tell you. Yet when you ask one of them,
they always say, I don't know. On this strange planet,
(32:14):
everyone wears heavy and sometimes absurd clothing. But the natives say,
it's almost like summer. Got the picture. Well, this is
the culture shock. Hundreds of reporters and thousands of fans
are going through right now. Welcome to Lake Placid for
the nineteen eighty Winter Olympics. I speak to you from
the bleachers next to the skating rink that the Heidens
and the Muellers will use in a couple of days,
and I speak of a remarkable event called the Winter Games,
(32:35):
an experience unto itself that almost defies description. Again, I
ask you to do a little imagining. See the high
school in your town, or better still, the town of
your youth. Imagine it shut down suddenly and changed overnight
into three floors of sheer madness, as the representatives of newspapers, magazines,
and radio and television companies from around the world take
over everything from the gym to the chemistry lab. Some
(32:57):
strange things happen here. You are standing next to a
press representative of the Olympic Committee when he receives an
important note from an assistant, Call your wife at once,
it reads. The press representative looks at you with a
dumbfounded stair and says, but I'm not married. Reporters looking
to see the trial runs on Whiteface Mountain are sent
halfway up the slope on a ski lift, and then
they must tumble walk, slide, and shiver halfway down again
(33:19):
to the finish line. At every turn somebody asks you
for a pin. A pin, You say, you know somebody's
official Olympic pin. There was this girl who got on
one of the press buses where a hat literally covered
with pins, Team pins, sports pins, sporting good manufacturers pins,
press pins. The pin appears to be as important to
the average reporter or fan as the results of the
women's Giant slalom. Officials charged with letting authorized persons in
(33:42):
and with keeping unauthorized persons out sometimes miss their duty
while negotiating the trade of a Polish hockey pin for
the pin of a German news agency. This is a
weird plant at this Lake Placid and it's only just started.
Who knows what pin will turn up next. I'm Keith
Oberman and from Lake Placid. That's my side.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
So as a reminder, let me close this time with
where this thing started. As I said before, the great
thing about podcasts is the metrics. I do not have
to just believe that the TV ratings are correct, that
they really are accurate extrapolations from I don't know two
thousand selective viewers across the country who are supposed to
(34:26):
represent every possible person composed of every possible demographic, and
everybody in every one demographic watches the same thing. I
just go to this website and there it is the
record of everybody who listened to this, not by name,
but just how many of them actually downloaded each episode,
and the growth of this podcast indicates that around half
(34:48):
of all of today's regular listeners did not hear the
first edition when we published it at three am Eastern
daylight time on August one, twenty twenty two, after a
weekend in which I actually learned how to use the equipment,
even though the lapt I was using it on crashed
and burned thirty three hours before posting. So this from
(35:12):
August first Episode one is a little wacky of a
way to start, but I think it's still kind of
on point. I don't have to tell you things are bad.
Everybody knows things are bad. It's a recession. Everybody goes
to work, but they're still scared of losing their job.
The corporations make sure the dollar buys a Nicholsworth. Banks
(35:34):
are making record profits. Teachers are told to keep a
gun under the desk. Punks are running wild in Congress,
and there's nobody anywhere seems to know what to do,
and there's no end to it. We know the air
is unfit to breathe and our planet will be unfit
for life. And we sit watching our TVs while some
Fox newscaster tells us that today Trump is the real
(35:54):
victim and minorities are the real problem, as if that's
the way it's supposed to be. We all know things
are bad, worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything
everywhere is going so we don't go out anymore. We
have the Senate in the House, but slowly the democracy
we're living and is getting smaller, And all we say
is please at least leave us alone in our living rooms.
Let me have my president and my RBG Shrine and
(36:17):
my January sixth hearings, and I won't say anything. Just
leave us alone. Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.
I want you to get mad. I want you to protest.
I want you to strike. I want you to write
to your congressman, because you don't need me to tell
you what to write. You know what to do about
the recession and the inflation, and the Russians and the
Nazis in the street. All I know is first you've
(36:38):
got to get mad. You've got to say I'm a
human being. God damn it, my life has value. So
I want you to get up now. I want all
of you to get up and out of your chairs.
I want you to get up right now and go
to the window, open it and stick your head out
and yell, I'm as mad as hell and I'm not
(37:00):
gonna take Trump anymore. I want you to get up
right now, get up, go to your windows, open them,
and stick your head out and yell, I'm as mad
as hell and I'm not gonna take Trump anymore. Things
have got to change. But first you've got to get mad.
You've got to say I'm as mad as hell, and
I'm not gonna take Trump anymore. Then we'll figure out
what to do about the recession and the inflation and
(37:22):
the oil cartels. But first, get up out of your chairs,
open your windows, stick your head out, and yell and
say it. I'm as mad as Helen, I'm not gonna
take Trump anymore. The bote as hell take Trump anymore.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
I am mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take
Trump anymore.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
As who sorry, couldn't resist. And for the first time
in my life, even through the brutal years of Reagan
and even through the psychotic years of Bush, that famous
Howard Beal speech from the nineteen seventy six movie Network
seems to fit this moment, with some revisions. Of course,
the Beal character as portrayed by Peter Finch, and especially
(38:01):
that speech, and especially that catchphrase I'm as mad as
hell and I'm not going to take this anymore, spoke
to long before it became a cliche. This weird overlap
between somebody who is so enraged that he is angry
mad as hell and somebody who may be so insane
that he is crazy mad as hell. But there's also
(38:23):
a third subtext to it, which only occasionally gets mentioned
and only occasionally gets appreciated, And it is why beal
and mad as hell means something today. It's that line
towards the start. We all know things are bad. Worse
than bad, they're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy.
In short, it's like Howard Beale, representing all of us,
(38:45):
is going crazy because nobody else is when they should be.
If in school you had read that one hundred years ago,
or one hundred and fifty years ago, or whenever a
president of the United States fraudulently denied he lost the
election and tried to overturn it in the courts and
in the Congress, and it didn't work because it was
one big lie. So he invited gangs of thugs and
(39:08):
racists and gun suckers and militias to come to the
Capitol during the most boasted about part of American democracy,
the peaceful transfer of power, And having invited them, he
then incited them to try to overthrow the government by violence.
You would have expected to then have read about the
police and the military and the laws that stopped him,
(39:30):
and the arrests and the indictments and the lifetimes in
prison and the vengeance that followed. Hell, what precipitated the
Civil War if not eleven states trying to stop the
peaceful transfer of power because they didn't like who got elected.
We are supposed to do something about this. When a
(39:53):
large minority of Americans stood up and said only whites
are real people. And when they said we will use
the police to lynch black people. And when they said
guns settle every and when they said women are here
only to breed, and when they said we own the
Supreme Court now, and when they said we will not
teach history because we don't want children to know there's
a more righteous way. And when they said this is
(40:15):
our world, and you the majority. Your votes do not
count here. Your cities do not count here, Your lives
do not count here. Your president does not count here.
When all that happened within thirty nine days, our anger
and our vengeance democracies anger and vengeance began. It was
(40:36):
eighteen sixty one. But first you've got to get mad.
Today they have Trump and Schedule F and a plan
to impeach Biden for whatever, and they've already turned the
Supreme Court into the theocratic republican Supreme religious Court and
(40:57):
they've overturned abortion, and next will be marriage equality. And
they intend to investigate the January sixth committee members and
pardon everybody who actually attacked the capital, even though you
and I grew up presuming you know, if I attack
the capital during the peaceful transfer of power, I'm going
to guess they'll give me about five seconds to stop
before they start shooting at me. And they want to
(41:20):
put Fauci in prison, and their passing laws prosecuting doctors
and prosecuting women who leave a state to go to
another state for an abortion. In other words, they want
to prosecute women who leave a slave state to go
to a free state and bring them back to the
slave state. And they have a Fox News, and another
(41:43):
worse Fox News, and another worser even than that Fox News.
And what do we have? We have once a week
somebody who says we must find a compromise with them.
We must be bipartisan, we must be democrats and liberals
who act like Republicans and fascists and Nazis. We have
(42:06):
Joe Manchin, and for eighteen months, Joe Manchin has obstructed
all the good Joe Biden has tried to do, and
prevented all the emergency measures we must have to keep
the last words by the last humans surviving the climate
catastrophe on this planet from being as chairman of Excellent Mobile,
(42:27):
I want to report record profits for the year e
twenty fifty two. And when the bribe for Joe Manchin,
the Senator from fossil fuel gulch West Virginia, is finally
sufficient to his liking and he finally agrees with Chuck
Schumer on the seven hundred and forty billion dollar Climate
(42:49):
and Deficit Reduction Bill, what does he get? He gets
to go on all five network Sunday political television nitwitch
shows the proverbial full Ginsburg glory, Glory, hallelujah. It's Joe Manchin,
our lawgiver, the true Democrat. And yet Kirsten Cinema could
(43:11):
still kill the thing today and Joe Manchin would then
still look reasonable. By contrast, tomorrow, he'd still be the
hero who achieved nothing, and of all that cinema stuff
bothers you. I used to go out with her. We
all know things are bad. Worse than bad, they're crazy.
(43:34):
It's like everything everywhere has going crazy, even the fascists
who hate or fear Trump have something closer to a
plan than we do. This Town. Author Mark Leibovich quoted
a former Republican congressman is saying, quote, look, we have
no plan for this except sitting around hoping he dies, unquote,
(43:57):
which actually sounds like more of a plan than our plan.
Our plan make sure Democrats help the craziest Trump supporters
and election deniers. And it's not Iqanon, it's just q Andon.
Nutbags get nominated because we're confident we can beat them
(44:18):
right right, right this weekend, it will be nineteen months
since the coup. They have plans for more coups. A
coup in Washington, a coup in every state, a coup
in every county. Looks like they compromise the Secret Service
and it's still compromised. Looks like they compromise the inspector
(44:41):
General at Homeland Security. They've compromised half the cops in
this country, a little less, a little more. They've compromised,
as my hero's Bob Elliott Ray Goulding once joked, everything
except the Visiting Nurse Association. They have built a cult
around denying the twenty twenty election. And if you haven't
figured out what's behind that nonsense, by the way, seemingly
(45:03):
quicksotic and academic at the same time. Here's the little secret.
The idea about the twenty twenty stuff still being talked
about is if l. Duche gets elected in twenty twenty
four and goes back to the White House, he will
somehow make somebody like I don't know, the Supreme Court
confirm that, yes, he actually won in twenty twenty, but
(45:26):
was denied that rightful term in the White House, so
he will be given a third term in twenty twenty eight,
or at least allowed to run for it. In short,
if twenty twenty was stolen from him, he's owed another term.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
That's in the Constitution, isn't it. Gee, maybe we could just,
you know, skip the twenty twenty eight election outright. The
fascists have all this in the works. And what do
we have? We have Chuck Todd three weeks ago asking
a Republican governor, quote, what's best for the country? Do
(46:05):
you think the country can handle prosecuting a former president?
And we have less Yer Holts one week ago telling
the Attorney General of the United States, quote, indictment of
a former president and perhaps a candidate for president would
arguably tear the country apart. Is that your concern? They
(46:26):
have Fox News? We have Fox News only we call
it NBC. I will do this podcast every weekday, morning,
no holiday, mondays. Sorry I'm getting old. It will be
as best as I can do it, the podcast version
of what the old TV show was. I will explain
(46:47):
to you later in this first episode what exactly happened
to the old TV show. And here's a tease. It's
none of the things you've heard. And I'll have comments
on the news and comments on the sports. Did you
know I used to do sports? And the worst persons
in the world are back? And why Trump gets a
(47:08):
tax break for burying his wife in the golf course.
But first, I want to button up this topic about
getting mad as hell with two quotes and one question.
Quote number one, it's General William To comes to Sherman,
and it's meant metaphorically. So don't think I'm talking about bloodshed,
because you can't do political bloodshed in this country unless
(47:31):
you're a Republican. This was Sherman the last time Americans
tried to overthrow American democracy. Quote, war is the remedy
our enemies have chosen. Other simple remedies were within their choice.
You know it, and they know it. But they wanted war,
and I say, let us give them all they want,
(47:52):
not a word of argument, not a sign of let up,
no cave in till we are whipped or they are
end Sherman quote. First, you've got to get mad. What
greater active war against the United States by someone owing
allegiance to the United States within the United States could
(48:13):
there ever be than to send armed militias into the
United States Capital than to encourage them to attack and
kill members of Congress, members of the Senate, even the
Vice President. What greater act of war against the United
States could there be than to try to prevent by
violent revolution, the peaceful transfer of power in the United States.
(48:37):
I have no complaints about the January sixth Committee. I
do not buy the argument that it's the Liz Cheney Show,
And so what if it were. Chairman Thompson and the
other Democrats have been terrific if, as I speculated months ago,
they are programming to the proverbial audience of one and
it is named Merrick Garland Dandy. But I don't see
(49:00):
exactly how they plan to end this. So what if?
First they realized, you've got to get mad, You've got
to say I'm as mad as hell and I'm not
going to take Trump anymore. What if they ended it
with another quote? What if the January sixth Committee ends
its final hearing by simply quoting just the start of
(49:21):
Title eighteen USC Chapter one fifteen, Section two three eight
one quote. Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies
war against them, or adheres to their enemies, giving them
aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is
guilty of treason the way this began just two hundred
(49:58):
and thirteen episodes ago on August first of last year. Anyway,
I've done all the damage I can do here. I
suspect we will be back to something resembling the normal
format tomorrow, or hell, maybe not. Who knows. Who's gonna
tell me what to do?
Speaker 5 (50:13):
Here?
Speaker 1 (50:15):
Here are the credits. Most of the music arranged, produced
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip s Chanelle
the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John
Phillip Shanelle. Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray. Produced
by TKO Brothers TKO Brothers or John Phillip Shanel, Brian
Ray and me. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and
(50:37):
performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music
is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, and it was
written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy of ESPN, Inc. Musical
comments by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer was my friend Larry David, and everything else
was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this,
the eight hundred and seventy fifth day since Donald Trump's
(50:58):
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Don't forget to keep arresting him. I always
still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then,
I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(51:24):
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. Joe
Biden has still won the debt deal, but now there
(00:24):
is also the chance that not only will Kevin McCarthy
lose it, but so will Joe Mansion. In page ninety
five of the agreement, that's ninety five out of ninety nine,
that putrid, unreliable, self aggrandizing, self inflating, fraudulent, sheep in
sheep's clothing. Senator Joe Mansion of West Virginia has managed
(00:45):
to stick the permitting legislation for his favorite project to
accelerate the end of life on the planet from catastrophic
climate change, the Good Old Mountain Valley natural Gas pipeline,
and Senator Tim Caine of Virginia is planning to remove
the Good Old Mountain Valley pipeline. And from page ninety
(01:05):
five and from the deal, come hell or high water.
Senator Kaine has always been opposed to this three hundred
mile long living monument to environmental disasters, both short term
and long term, and he makes the unanswerable argument that
it is quote completely unrelated to the debt ceiling matter.
And of course it is completely unrelated to it, and
(01:26):
Kane will file an amendment now to get it. Cut
the hell out of the bill. Because if President Biden
would like to piss away the goodwill of having averted
a default that never should have been in play, but
Democrats in the House slept through the Wame Duck and
Democrats in the White House apparently did not know about
the fourteenth Amendment a couple a couple of weeks ago.
And if President Biden would like to piss away the
(01:48):
triumph of his victory over McCarthy, and if President Biden
would like to piss away the early signs of a
significant poll bump here Biden forty six forty four in
the Echelon Insights national poll, Biden forty seven forty three
in the Clarity National poll just out last night. If
President Biden would like to piss away all that, the
way to do it is to umbrella this albatross of
(02:12):
the Joe Mansion's Integrity Memorial pipeline into the debt deal.
It doesn't have a damn thing to do with the
debt deal other than to lubricate Joe Manchin and make
the Democrats and Biden and Chuck Schumer think ooh, now,
Manchin will owe us something, except he never thinks that way,
and he never repays the favor, and his voting record
(02:33):
actually suggests he may be more worthless than cinema. And
trust me, I know how worthless cinema is. The Joe
Mansion burned the Atmosphere Mountain Valley pipeline is the fossil
fuel world's raised middle finger to the Democrats and the
green energy universe, and for that matter, to reality. It
(02:54):
is a reminder that people like Joe Manchin will really
try to sell the last living humans on the planet
one more cubic foot of natural gas before they die.
Mister President, you want to put something in here for
the fossil fuel industry, how about you right a guarantee
that you will not nationalize it, that when those parts
(03:16):
of it that cannot figure out how to convert their
businesses into ones that sell products that don't destroy life
on the planet slowly after utter destabilization of society and
uncontrollable waves of disease and starvation and violence, that maybe
the government can buy their destructive companies instead, Because God forbid,
(03:37):
murders like the people who own Joe Mansion don't get
to keep their profits high enough and I made a
verb out of umbrella there because it is a bleak
grammatical shorthand joke from inside my own family. I knew
it from my grandmother, my mother's mother, who used to say,
after a series of demands on her that would lead
(03:59):
to yet one more worse demand. Quote, don't own umbrella
me or just umbrella umbrella means I suppose I can
handle you shoving the umbrella up my uh posterior, just
don't open it. The Schlumbohm and Charboneir families were not
(04:24):
exactly the epitome of delicacy in the Bronx a century ago,
but even they cleaned it up to just the one word.
So umbrella, mister President, I get it you're not going
to do as much as you have said about climate,
but the other party is insane and we do not
have much choice. Just don't umbrella us. Take the Joe
(04:45):
Mansion gold plated with corruption Mountain Valley pipeline out of
the debt deal and give it to Senator Mansion and
tell him to put it. Just give it to him
and say to him, umbrella, I'm not going to let
go of the pipeline thing and Mansion, but I am
(05:07):
going to continue to give Biden props on the win.
If the pipeline remains, we will have to revisit that
in the interim. I am also going to give him
props on the humble brag tightrope. He successfully maneuvered a
little tough to hear him here as usual with the
helicopter at the White House. But he is essentially boasting
(05:28):
that he hasn't boasted, while reminding you that you would
boast and thus you'd lose. But he would never boast
about that either.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I spoke to McDonald.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
I spoke to a whole bunch.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Of people, and it feels good.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
We'll see when the boat starts, and you are. One
of the things that I hear some of these guys.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
Saying is why didn't Biden say what a good dealer is?
Why would Biden be saying.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
What a good dealer before the vote? I think that's
going to help me get a pass. No, that's why
you guys don't bargain very well. The Republicans who can't
bargain either, judging i' McCarthy are of course having one
more knockdown drag out in the Rules Committee over the
debt deal and it's so Republican, it's hilarious. You may
recall that as part of his seventeen different deals with
(06:16):
seventeen different devils to get the speakership, Kevin McCarthy had
to put the worst of MAGA like Ralph Norman and
this nutt Thomas Massey and this moron Chip Roy on
the Rules Committee. Well, now, Chip Roy insists that not
only did McCarthy agree to put the maggots on rules,
he also made a doubles secret handshake agreement that all
(06:39):
nine Republicans on that panel have to agree before any
legislation advances from their Rules committee to the full House.
So while Roy was attacking McCarthy with that, another Republican
on the Rules Committee, Dusty Johnson, was attacking Roy. Quote,
I have not heard that before. If those conversations took place,
(07:00):
the rest of the conference was unaware of them, and
frankly I doubt them. Dusty is with a kind of
civility that is startling in a twenty first century Republican.
Dusty is calling Chip a liar. Incidentally, Congressman Dusty, Congressman Chip,
what is this zz top? Well, by the way, the
(07:27):
success in succession of Tom Wombscants has nothing to do
with one of the great one moment immortals in baseball history,
Bill Wambscants. Well, you have to have seen this yesterday
or earlier. An expert at a baby Name's website tweeted
it last Wednesday, And in fact, the urban legend about
baseball and the TV series turns out to go back
(07:49):
at least two years, and it was in the New
York Times. The idea is that the success in the
well let's call it a nighttime soap opera of Tom
Wombscants wambs Gans was forecast in succession by his name
that everybody should have been able to figure out that
(08:10):
he would prevail in the succession in succession because he
more or less shared his name with Bill Wamscantce Wambsgaanss.
Bill Wamscants, or Bill Wamscants, as he was often known too,
was the second baseman of the then Cleveland Indians from
nineteen fourteen through nineteen twenty three. He was a really
(08:32):
good rangy infielder who was pretty fast and hit two
fifty nine lifetime, but in a time of sluggers didn't.
Wamscants was a lot to say back then or fit
into a box score in nineteen twenty, so Bill answered
to Wamby or Wamby. But in the fifth inning of
Game five of the nineteen twenty World Series, he became
(08:53):
a baseball immortal. The Brooklyn Robbins now the LA Dodgers,
the National League champions that year, put two men on
with nobody out. With the runners moving, Brooklyn's Clarence Mitchell
h had a sharp line drive to Wamscans for one out.
Then Wiamscans took a couple of strides and stepped on second,
thereby doubling off the runner on second, Pete Kilduff, who
(09:13):
was already halfway to third base two out. Wamscons now
said he looked up to find the Brooklyn runner from first,
Otto Miller, just a few feet away from him. Frozen
in horror at what was happening. Bill Wamscins went over
and tagged him for not just a triple play, but
an unassisted triple play, the first in World Series history
(09:36):
and the last. And it's been one hundred and three years,
and it was only the second or third in all
of baseball history at that point, depending on how you
interpret baseball history. Even now, there have only been fifteen
or sixteen unassisted triple plays. And incidentally, six of them
were either by or against Cleveland, which is statistically really unlikely.
(09:58):
And two of them happened on consecutive days in nineteen
twenty seven, which is even crazier. But the point is
Wambskantz defeated three rivals, all by himself, all at once.
Got it just like the Womscants in Succession. Huh ah,
pretty good. Huh And if you were paying attention, you
(10:21):
also noticed that in the very first episode of Succession,
Tom Wombskance played in the Roy family softball game and
he tagged out a kid at home plate. Good except
it's a coincidence. Yeah, it's a coincidence. Instead of just saying,
(10:44):
like everybody else did, it's an obscure baseball reference umbrella.
Stephan Fatsis of Slate contacted the longtime New York Times
columnist Frank Rich, who was one of the executive producers
of the show, about this, and Rich replied, quote, I
hate to spoil the internet's fun, but it's false. Tom's
family name was picked before before we had shot a
(11:05):
first season, let alone mapped out precise story twists that
would culminate thirty nine episodes later. Not to mention that
many of the key writers on the show, starting with
its creator Jesse Armstrong, are British, live in London and
are devoted to British football, if memory serves, Frank Rich continued,
we were looking for something off key that would be
(11:26):
awkward to say and pronounce, befitting a character who arrives
as an outsider in the Roys world unquote, So sorry
conspiracy fans. And anyway, if you had a triple play
accomplishing character in succession named after Bill Lambskantz, you'd really
(11:48):
also have to have had one named after triple play
hitting into batter Clarence Mitchell. Because as remarkable as wamscans
is unassistant triple play was in the nineteen twenty World Series,
I have always thought as a baseball historian that what
Clarence Mitchell did it was far more remarkable. Because the
next time Clarence Mitchell came up in the same game
(12:11):
in the eighth inning, after having just hit into a
triple play, Clarence Mitchell promptly then hit into a double play.
He made five outs with two swings. Maybe they can
make that the plot line in the sequel, and you
know there's going to be a sequel. Also of note, today,
(12:36):
the Russians have put out an arrest warrant for Lindsey
Graham over what he said about Russians dying in Ukraine
and money well spent. And ordinarily I'd be conflicted because
it's Lindsay Umbrella Graham, but more importantly it's the Russians,
and after the day long bombing of civilian targets in
Kiev yesterday and the increasing threats of using tactical nukes,
(12:57):
their terrorism in Ukraine has to stop, and we have
to stop not just dealing with them, but dealing with
any other country. It still deals with Russia. Okay, so
now I'm going to go fire up the wayback machine again.
That's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Postscripts to the news, some updates, some snark, some complete
redefinition of the premise, because this is about as POSTSCRIPTI
as you can get. But the response was so enthusiastic
and so surprising to yesterday's concluding segments in which I
dived into the big plastic banker's box in my closet
(13:43):
full of ancient, brittle audio cassettes and played stuff that
had not been heard by anybody else besides me since
nineteen eighty seven. Actually some of them were from nineteen
seventy nine. Anyway, the response has implied that maybe during
slow news or my semi vacation days, and I mean
like a couple of the a year or at worse
(14:06):
a month, I'm not doing this every week. It's worth
repriising some of this old stuff and some of the
amazing stories from my radio career which accompanied them. The
first thing you will hear today is from my stint
as the backup sportscast here at WNAW Radio in New York.
This was a legendary place when I got there in
nineteen eighty, the last of the big New York City
(14:29):
stations to broadcast from a literal ballroom with giant studios
two stories tall and drapes and room for studio audiences.
They had moved out of there by then. That was
on Fifth Avenue. They played big band music, and their
disc jockeys were legends who had succeeded other legends. Everybody
from Gene Rayburn later of Match Game, to Boris Karloff.
(14:55):
Boris Karloff was at WNAW dish jockey in the nineteen fifties. No,
Here's Elvis Predator. The newscasters were legends too. If you've
ever seeing the film of Lee Harvey Oswald being shot,
the guy in the hat and the overcoat sticking out
his microphone and trying to interview Oswald as Jack Ruby
(15:16):
puts his gun out next to the guy, that man
in the hat with the microphone is Ike Pappus of
WNAW Radio in New York. That's how big a news
department they had. And one day WNAW took its boutique
FM station, which just was a clearer version of its
AM station, and they turned it into the greatest place
in the history of rock and roll radio. And when
(15:39):
I got there in nineteen eighty, WNAW broadcast the play
by play of the New York Giants, the New York Rangers,
the New York Knicks, the New York Cosmos. And I
got to work there because they were an affiliate of
the radio network run by United Press International UPI Audio
my first employers in retrospect. Doing the night sports shift
(16:01):
at UPI was exhausting. There was a sportscas every hour
between five forty five and ten forty five. Occasionally you
had to engineer. You had to play all the carts
and dial all the dials for the newscast. At the
top of the hour, if there was a breaking sports story,
you had to try to call somebody to record a
phone interview with them, or get a local reporter somewhere
(16:22):
to do an interview or file a report. Plus, if
some reporter called in from an afternoon game or a
night game that finished early, you had to handle, edit
and feed out the tape of player interviews. No digital editing,
mind you actual physical cutting and spicing. And then there
was the commentary my side two minutes of sports commentary
(16:46):
that was sent out to the one thousand stations that
paid for UPI audio. You had to get it done
before your shift was over. In between all those other
sports casts and all those other things you had to do.
You had to write it. Well, first you had to
think about it, then you had to write it, Then
you had to record it. Then you probably had to
edit it several times together. This was something that had
been started by the great UPI baseball columnist Milton Richmond,
(17:08):
whose print column was called, guess what my side. Milt
would just read his paper copy until about a minute
fifty five had passed, and then he'd say, I'm Milton
Richmond and that's my side, whether or not he had
actually made his point by then. Anyway, Milt soon got
tired of it, and knowing UPI, they probably paid him
(17:30):
an extra three dollars a year. But our stations, most
of whom were among America's smallest, wanted needed a two
minute sports commentary to run in the mornings. Soon my
side became the side of whoever was doing the night
shift at UPI Audio Sports me Jack Russell, Sam Rosen,
(17:51):
Peter Shack, Noow, Bruce McGowan, Mike Allibaugh, whoever. And it
was traditional stuff. The Cowboys are the best team in football.
Sports leagues need to figure out a way to use
TV replays to get back. I had calls right, And
of course, how dare cashus Clay try to change his name?
I did not do that one. I usually did four
(18:13):
or five of these commentaries a week, and I got
tired of these fast. So even though I had no
time to try to make them creative, I tried to
make them creative. I in fact, started to do wacky ones.
I would save the tapes of the weird comments that
our stringer reporters would feed in, and soon I had
a running series of my sides about how often athletes
(18:35):
used the verbal crutch you know, in their answers hell
that got me written up in Sports Illustrated once, back
when that was a big deal and they paid you
fifty dollars for it and my rent was four to
ninety a month. One night I devoted my side to
a collection of weird things that hockey players said. I've
mentioned here once, and the tape exists somewhere. I've got
(18:57):
to find it. That the late legend Bobby Hull once
answered my nostalgic question by saying, oh, that's in the past.
Never mind the past, we're here in the future now,
which still freaks me out. I did one long piece
about the NHL team they used to have in Quebec City,
suddenly saying they would make public address announcements only in French,
(19:19):
no English. So I took seven years of schoolboy French
and tried to provide helpful translations for English speaking fans
who got stuck at the Quebec Nordiqe game translations of
such phrases as do not punch me, mister left wing.
I am not the fan who threw the miniature Stanley
cup at you. I'll spare you the schoolboy French ah
to hell with it. Should have a flafe pas monsieur
(19:41):
l'alier edwatch since we paal spectator kilansavu lakoup de Stanley miniature.
And yes, some of the fractured French was deliberate, some
of it. Anyway, One day when I got into work,
there was a letter waiting for me in the office
and the return address was Andy Fisher, Robin Sagan, and
Tom Morrera of w on WFM. Andy and Robin were
(20:05):
the newscasters and Tom was the overnight disc jockey, and
they had heard one of the hockey pieces and they
enjoyed it so much that on his earliest newscast on WAWFM,
which I think was at four forty five in the morning,
and he gave the headlines of the day and the weather,
and then played the entire two minute piece about the
(20:26):
hockey players. The letter from them was lovely, and they said, look,
if you ever want to come around and visit, we're
just around the corner. On the other hand, Tom leaves
the office at six am. Well, I took them up
on it. One night I did my UPI shift, ending
at eleven, and instead of hopping on the train to
go to my folks home in the Suburbs, I instead
had a lot of coffee and I hung around UPI
(20:49):
knocking off a couple of feature pieces and pre writing
a couple of more my sides. And then in the
middle of an April or early May night in the
Year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty, I walked
around the corner from UPI's office in the New York
Daily News build Bilding. You know the building. You saw
it if you ever saw the first Christopher Reeves Superman movie,
(21:09):
the one in the Big Planet in the lobby. I
did this at around three o'clock in the morning. Took
my life in my hands. They buzzed me in at
WNAW on Third Avenue, and I met Tom, and I
met Andy, and I did a commentary for them live
on WNAWFM, and then just hung out in the newsroom
with Andy and the AM news guys. And I was
(21:29):
just sitting there preparing to take the first morning train
home to my folks, which was I think six forty am.
It was about ten after five when a tall, extraordinarily
thin man with a bushy beard and a gleam in
his eye and a hello shouted in a deep Texas accent,
walked in and everybody in that newsroom said hi Sam.
(21:54):
And Sam looked at me funny and ducked into what
was evidently his office and then came out, walked over
to me and said you're a Olberman. Huh And I
said yes. He said, I'm Sam Hall. I'm the new director.
I want to make some per diem My sportscasters out
sick today. And I said sure. I mean you know
that phrase about right place, right time and all that terrific.
(22:15):
And Sam Hall said can you write fast? And I
said yeah, actually I can. It's my only skill. And
he laughed and I laughed, and he said, well, write
as much as you can. Your first sports cast is
at five thirty five. You're on in eight minutes. Well
I froze for a second. I shook his hand. I
found some wire copy and I started typing. I managed
(22:36):
somehow to call my folks and get about two minutes
of a show written and I woke them up and
I said, I'll be on WAW at five thirty five,
and then I hung up. I did the rest of
that shift that morning, and by the end of it,
Sam Hall had called me into his little office and said, listen,
my guy, John Kennelly misses a lot of work. His
wife's not well. Could you be the backup? I mean,
(22:56):
could you be the kind of backup we could call
at two am and you could be here by four.
I mean, I think it would work out to about
seventy five dollars a day union money. My full time
job at UPI was about seventy dollars a day. Sam,
I'll be moving into the city next month. I'll be
within walking distance, he smiled. Welcome aboard son. The next
(23:18):
day I went looking for an apartment in the city
within walking distance. I did not have one. I kind
of exaggerated. I do not have a tape of that
first hurried WNAW sportscast, but I have most of the others.
So here are a few and a few morsels from
my UPI days that I mentioned. Specifically, stuff I did
(23:40):
for the network from the nineteen eighty Winter Olympics in
Lake Placid New York. I'm still cold. The old CBS
mock history series was called you Were There. This series,
I think should be called I was there.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Good Morning. I'm Keith Olberman, Canalio with a goal and
an assist a Cosmo's out of their slump after a
three to one win over the Sounders last night at Cosmo's,
a Giants rather and Cincinnati, Jeff reard And gave up
a ninth inning homer to Ken Griffey, and the Mets
lost to the Reds four to three. Mets are at
Houston tonight and at Yankee Stadium, another one of those
Yankee Royals pitchers duels Casey fourteen the Yankees three. But
(24:17):
manager Dick Howser isn't worried about a repeat of the
past weekend. If the Yanks and Royals meet in the playoffs.
Speaker 5 (24:22):
Series doesn't mean anything to me.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Now, Howser will have more to say, and we'll answer
the question. How hot was it at Yankee Stadium yesterday?
On the Sports reported at about a thirty five And that
man's name is Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Now, how hot was it at Yankee Stadium? Bob Harris got.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
To figure about one hundred and ten to one hundred
and twelve degrees in the outfield in the noonday sun.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
The news has been brought to you by Alan Carpett.
I'm Bob Hayden.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
And now wvlendy W's Sports un commentary with John kennerley Man.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Good Morning, John continues on vacation, I'm Keith Olberman. So
maybe the Cosmos didn't beat Philadelphia or Detroit last week,
You'd never have guessed they were in any kind of
slump the way they beat league leading Seattle last night
despite one of and twelve degree on field temperatures. The
Cosmos won three to one at Giant Stadium. Can Ayo
the goal and an assistant moved back in the first
place in the scoring race. Next up for the Cosmos
(25:14):
Wednesday night at Giants Stadium against San Diego. The Mets
are in Houston right now, resting up for their opener
with the Astros tonight. John Fasela and Ken Force the
likely pitchers. You hope a ball game like yesterday's won't
take too much out of these kids. They storm back
to storm back to ty Cincinnati when Mazzilli hit his
thirteenth homer in the eighth, with Flynn on and then
Jeff reard And gives up a game winning homer with
(25:35):
two out on the ninth to Ken Griffy. Joe Torrey says,
if it had to be anybody, he's not mad that
it was Griffy.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Things happened. You know, he tried to make a pitch
and he didn't know it hit the location he wanted.
And he'll never be embarrassed when you beat the play
a home run from Ken Griffy. You know, I'm going
to shorten the All Star Game. And yeah, yeah, I
felt we were pretty fortunate to be able to tie
the score. That was you know, they didn't have more runs.
We had great relief pitching and great pitching when we
needed it to get out of innings, and you know,
(26:02):
I thought, once we tied it, we're going to win it.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
But then came Grippy's homer. Toy's club now six and
a half out. The Pirates are in first after splitting
a doubleheader with the Dodgers, losing the first four to two,
winning the nightcap eight to seven. The Expos lost at
Houston four to three, so the Astros go back into
first in the West. It was the Cards two sent
Francisco one the Braves over the Phillies three to two
at Chicago, topping San Diego six nothing. How hot was
(26:25):
it at Yankee Stadium yesterday afternoon? It was so hot.
When Dick Howser went out to the mound to take
Ron Gidry out in the second inning, he wore his
bestest suit. It was so hot. After the game, I
saw the Royals being poured into their team bus. It
was so hot. But seriously, the Royals were what was
hot yesterday. They won fourteen to three. As game time
temperatures hit ninety eight degrees at the stadium. Gidrey shelled
(26:47):
for seven in less than two winnings. His confidence definitely shaken.
How about the Yankees confidence that they could beat the
Royals in the playoffs. Dick Howser still seems pretty sure
of his club.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
We might have a shade more power, they might hit
for a little better average, but I think our pitching
is better and they have more speed. And we'll just
when we lock horns if we do see it was
the best club then. But a series doesn't mean anything
to me. Now. Gedri's gonna pitch against him aginn in
Kansas City, and we'll see what happens then.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Also key what happens this week is the Brewers come
to town for what could be the last important series
of the Eastern Race four games. Brewers currently trail Yanks
by eight and a half. Mike Caldwell against Tom Underwood tonight.
Milwaukee won yesterday seven to six over the White Sox.
It was Texas seven and Baltimore one twins over the
Red Sox five to four. Blue Jays beat the Angels
six three in ten Detroit over Seattle five to two
(27:36):
in Oakland Stock Cleveland sixty five. That one took fourteen innings.
Only three Americans had ever won the British Open, three
times each. They were Ben Hogan, Bobby Jones and Jack
Nicholas Well. You can add Tom Watson's name to that list.
Watson by four yesterday at Meerfield to beat Lee Trevino
for the title. In Jersey. Yesterday, in the weekly light
Heavyweight title bout, Eddie Mustapha Muhammad no relation to Matthew
(27:57):
Sad Muhammad knocked out Jerry Martin no relation to Billy
Martin at two to ten of the tenth round. Mastafa
maintains the WBA crown in the vision that Sports for
John Kennelly on Keith Olberman on the Ted Brown Show.
The Rangers season ended in April. Some say it ended
last October, but they're the Islander fans. Who cares what
(28:19):
they say? Anyway, It's been three months since Freddy the fog.
Shiro has clouded up the Big Apple. But there he
was at the Garden news conference Tuesday, the one at
which Craig Patrick got the job as director of Operations,
the one at which the Ranger management structure took on
all the clarity of the government of Iran. The subject
was assistant coach Mike Nikoluk, the methods, circular logic. The
(28:40):
question to Shiro, what's the story with Nikoluk? Will he
be back this fall?
Speaker 6 (28:44):
I sent him a cable Graham to Switzerland a couple
of days ago, saying that I have accepted the fact
that he wished to quit and stay out of hockey,
and I haven't heard any further on the subject.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Then a reporter said, Nikoluk told him he'd never resigned.
Speaker 6 (29:02):
He never said resigned to me, he said quit, But he.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Told you he was quitting. Did he give you a
letter of resignation?
Speaker 6 (29:07):
Nobody has a letter of resignation from him. I just
happen to read the words in the paper one day.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Yeah, but Fred, you're Freddie Schiro, scourge of newspaper men.
You've never been one to rely on some words in
the paper, right.
Speaker 6 (29:20):
I think we'll take a lot of things into consideration,
not just one write them.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
We had better stop now before damage is done to
the delicate tissues in our brains. For WAWFM, I'm Keith Oberman.
And while it is too early in the morning for sports,
it is definitely too early in the morning for Fred Shiro.
They went wild in the streets with America's gold medal
in hockey, shouts of We're number one, the singing of
the national anthem, Chance of USA USA, and after the
(29:47):
gold was one, one fan was awfully glad he had
not followed through on an idea to scalp his tickets.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
I thought about it.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
I thought, if somebody'd offer me two hundred dollars a
piece for them, I would sell them.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
But I'm glad it didn't. What is your reaction now
with the wind, Oh my gracious, I wouldn't have missed
it for the world.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
See this game. You never have to see another game
in the rest of your life, the biggest born up
set in twenty years, Steam of destiny. The postgame celebrations
spilled over from the Olympics Center area to the streets
of Lake Placid. The thousands of celebrants showing no ill
effects of having done this twice in three days. Keith Oberman,
Lake Placid, stunning the packed Olympics Center crowd. The favorite
(30:25):
American team of time, Babylonia and Randy Gardner, have withdrawn
from the pairs figure skating competition due to injury. Gardner
had been receiving treatment for a muscle pull and he's
growing all day. He fell twice during the warm ups
before the start of the event, and after testing his
injury briefly on ice, he and Babylonia skated off. Shortly after,
a representative of the US team walked across ice to
(30:46):
the referee to announce the withdrawal. And so the current
defending world champions are out of the Olympic pairs competition.
Years of practice and patients coming to naught for Ti
Babylonia and Randy Gardner Keith Oberman at the Olympics Center.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
Joy turned to sadness in a matter of minutes for
the United States on Friday. After winning two medals, a
silver and a gold, and doing surprisingly well in the
men's two man Bob's led us hopes for a gold
medal and the pair's figure skating competition were shattered when
the team of Randy Gardner and tie Babylonia had to withdraw.
Keith Olberman was at the Olympic Center when the announcement
(31:21):
of the withdrawal was made.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
First hint came during the warm ups before the pairs
competition began. Randy Gardner fell twice, and after he and
ty Babylonia came on ice before their skating turn, Gardner
determined he could not perform, and the pair withdrew due
to injury. Gardner had been receiving treatment all day for
a muscle pull in his groin. The news of the
withdrawal shock to packed house at the Olympic Center and
left the Americans without a strong pair of candidates for
(31:45):
a medal.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
Coach John Nick said there was no way Gardner could skate.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
He missed three things.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Imagine if you will being transported to another planet. On
this planet, which is very similar to our own, you
are not allowed to drive a car, but there is
nothing within walking distance. No matter where you are on
this planet. There are are a million things you must
find out immediately, and there are a million people authorized
to tell you. Yet when you ask one of them,
they always say, I don't know. On this strange planet,
(32:14):
everyone wears heavy and sometimes absurd clothing. But the natives say,
it's almost like summer. Got the picture. Well, this is
the culture shock. Hundreds of reporters and thousands of fans
are going through right now. Welcome to Lake Placid for
the nineteen eighty Winter Olympics. I speak to you from
the bleachers next to the skating rink that the Heidens
and the Muellers will use in a couple of days,
and I speak of a remarkable event called the Winter Games,
(32:35):
an experience unto itself that almost defies description. Again, I
ask you to do a little imagining. See the high
school in your town, or better still, the town of
your youth. Imagine it shut down suddenly and changed overnight
into three floors of sheer madness, as the representatives of newspapers, magazines,
and radio and television companies from around the world take
over everything from the gym to the chemistry lab. Some
(32:57):
strange things happen here. You are standing next to a
press representative of the Olympic Committee when he receives an
important note from an assistant, Call your wife at once,
it reads. The press representative looks at you with a
dumbfounded stair and says, but I'm not married. Reporters looking
to see the trial runs on Whiteface Mountain are sent
halfway up the slope on a ski lift, and then
they must tumble walk, slide, and shiver halfway down again
(33:19):
to the finish line. At every turn somebody asks you
for a pin. A pin, You say, you know somebody's
official Olympic pin. There was this girl who got on
one of the press buses where a hat literally covered
with pins, Team pins, sports pins, sporting good manufacturers pins,
press pins. The pin appears to be as important to
the average reporter or fan as the results of the
women's Giant slalom. Officials charged with letting authorized persons in
(33:42):
and with keeping unauthorized persons out sometimes miss their duty
while negotiating the trade of a Polish hockey pin for
the pin of a German news agency. This is a
weird plant at this Lake Placid and it's only just started.
Who knows what pin will turn up next. I'm Keith
Oberman and from Lake Placid. That's my side.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
So as a reminder, let me close this time with
where this thing started. As I said before, the great
thing about podcasts is the metrics. I do not have
to just believe that the TV ratings are correct, that
they really are accurate extrapolations from I don't know two
thousand selective viewers across the country who are supposed to
(34:26):
represent every possible person composed of every possible demographic, and
everybody in every one demographic watches the same thing. I
just go to this website and there it is the
record of everybody who listened to this, not by name,
but just how many of them actually downloaded each episode,
and the growth of this podcast indicates that around half
(34:48):
of all of today's regular listeners did not hear the
first edition when we published it at three am Eastern
daylight time on August one, twenty twenty two, after a
weekend in which I actually learned how to use the equipment,
even though the lapt I was using it on crashed
and burned thirty three hours before posting. So this from
(35:12):
August first Episode one is a little wacky of a
way to start, but I think it's still kind of
on point. I don't have to tell you things are bad.
Everybody knows things are bad. It's a recession. Everybody goes
to work, but they're still scared of losing their job.
The corporations make sure the dollar buys a Nicholsworth. Banks
(35:34):
are making record profits. Teachers are told to keep a
gun under the desk. Punks are running wild in Congress,
and there's nobody anywhere seems to know what to do,
and there's no end to it. We know the air
is unfit to breathe and our planet will be unfit
for life. And we sit watching our TVs while some
Fox newscaster tells us that today Trump is the real
(35:54):
victim and minorities are the real problem, as if that's
the way it's supposed to be. We all know things
are bad, worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything
everywhere is going so we don't go out anymore. We
have the Senate in the House, but slowly the democracy
we're living and is getting smaller, And all we say
is please at least leave us alone in our living rooms.
Let me have my president and my RBG Shrine and
(36:17):
my January sixth hearings, and I won't say anything. Just
leave us alone. Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.
I want you to get mad. I want you to protest.
I want you to strike. I want you to write
to your congressman, because you don't need me to tell
you what to write. You know what to do about
the recession and the inflation, and the Russians and the
Nazis in the street. All I know is first you've
(36:38):
got to get mad. You've got to say I'm a
human being. God damn it, my life has value. So
I want you to get up now. I want all
of you to get up and out of your chairs.
I want you to get up right now and go
to the window, open it and stick your head out
and yell, I'm as mad as hell and I'm not
(37:00):
gonna take Trump anymore. I want you to get up
right now, get up, go to your windows, open them,
and stick your head out and yell, I'm as mad
as hell and I'm not gonna take Trump anymore. Things
have got to change. But first you've got to get mad.
You've got to say I'm as mad as hell, and
I'm not gonna take Trump anymore. Then we'll figure out
what to do about the recession and the inflation and
(37:22):
the oil cartels. But first, get up out of your chairs,
open your windows, stick your head out, and yell and
say it. I'm as mad as Helen, I'm not gonna
take Trump anymore. The bote as hell take Trump anymore.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
I am mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take
Trump anymore.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
As who sorry, couldn't resist. And for the first time
in my life, even through the brutal years of Reagan
and even through the psychotic years of Bush, that famous
Howard Beal speech from the nineteen seventy six movie Network
seems to fit this moment, with some revisions. Of course,
the Beal character as portrayed by Peter Finch, and especially
(38:01):
that speech, and especially that catchphrase I'm as mad as
hell and I'm not going to take this anymore, spoke
to long before it became a cliche. This weird overlap
between somebody who is so enraged that he is angry
mad as hell and somebody who may be so insane
that he is crazy mad as hell. But there's also
(38:23):
a third subtext to it, which only occasionally gets mentioned
and only occasionally gets appreciated, And it is why beal
and mad as hell means something today. It's that line
towards the start. We all know things are bad. Worse
than bad, they're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy.
In short, it's like Howard Beale, representing all of us,
(38:45):
is going crazy because nobody else is when they should be.
If in school you had read that one hundred years ago,
or one hundred and fifty years ago, or whenever a
president of the United States fraudulently denied he lost the
election and tried to overturn it in the courts and
in the Congress, and it didn't work because it was
one big lie. So he invited gangs of thugs and
(39:08):
racists and gun suckers and militias to come to the
Capitol during the most boasted about part of American democracy,
the peaceful transfer of power, And having invited them, he
then incited them to try to overthrow the government by violence.
You would have expected to then have read about the
police and the military and the laws that stopped him,
(39:30):
and the arrests and the indictments and the lifetimes in
prison and the vengeance that followed. Hell, what precipitated the
Civil War if not eleven states trying to stop the
peaceful transfer of power because they didn't like who got elected.
We are supposed to do something about this. When a
(39:53):
large minority of Americans stood up and said only whites
are real people. And when they said we will use
the police to lynch black people. And when they said
guns settle every and when they said women are here
only to breed, and when they said we own the
Supreme Court now, and when they said we will not
teach history because we don't want children to know there's
a more righteous way. And when they said this is
(40:15):
our world, and you the majority. Your votes do not
count here. Your cities do not count here, Your lives
do not count here. Your president does not count here.
When all that happened within thirty nine days, our anger
and our vengeance democracies anger and vengeance began. It was
(40:36):
eighteen sixty one. But first you've got to get mad.
Today they have Trump and Schedule F and a plan
to impeach Biden for whatever, and they've already turned the
Supreme Court into the theocratic republican Supreme religious Court and
(40:57):
they've overturned abortion, and next will be marriage equality. And
they intend to investigate the January sixth committee members and
pardon everybody who actually attacked the capital, even though you
and I grew up presuming you know, if I attack
the capital during the peaceful transfer of power, I'm going
to guess they'll give me about five seconds to stop
before they start shooting at me. And they want to
(41:20):
put Fauci in prison, and their passing laws prosecuting doctors
and prosecuting women who leave a state to go to
another state for an abortion. In other words, they want
to prosecute women who leave a slave state to go
to a free state and bring them back to the
slave state. And they have a Fox News, and another
(41:43):
worse Fox News, and another worser even than that Fox News.
And what do we have? We have once a week
somebody who says we must find a compromise with them.
We must be bipartisan, we must be democrats and liberals
who act like Republicans and fascists and Nazis. We have
(42:06):
Joe Manchin, and for eighteen months, Joe Manchin has obstructed
all the good Joe Biden has tried to do, and
prevented all the emergency measures we must have to keep
the last words by the last humans surviving the climate
catastrophe on this planet from being as chairman of Excellent Mobile,
(42:27):
I want to report record profits for the year e
twenty fifty two. And when the bribe for Joe Manchin,
the Senator from fossil fuel gulch West Virginia, is finally
sufficient to his liking and he finally agrees with Chuck
Schumer on the seven hundred and forty billion dollar Climate
(42:49):
and Deficit Reduction Bill, what does he get? He gets
to go on all five network Sunday political television nitwitch
shows the proverbial full Ginsburg glory, Glory, hallelujah. It's Joe Manchin,
our lawgiver, the true Democrat. And yet Kirsten Cinema could
(43:11):
still kill the thing today and Joe Manchin would then
still look reasonable. By contrast, tomorrow, he'd still be the
hero who achieved nothing, and of all that cinema stuff
bothers you. I used to go out with her. We
all know things are bad. Worse than bad, they're crazy.
(43:34):
It's like everything everywhere has going crazy, even the fascists
who hate or fear Trump have something closer to a
plan than we do. This Town. Author Mark Leibovich quoted
a former Republican congressman is saying, quote, look, we have
no plan for this except sitting around hoping he dies, unquote,
(43:57):
which actually sounds like more of a plan than our plan.
Our plan make sure Democrats help the craziest Trump supporters
and election deniers. And it's not Iqanon, it's just q Andon.
Nutbags get nominated because we're confident we can beat them
(44:18):
right right, right this weekend, it will be nineteen months
since the coup. They have plans for more coups. A
coup in Washington, a coup in every state, a coup
in every county. Looks like they compromise the Secret Service
and it's still compromised. Looks like they compromise the inspector
(44:41):
General at Homeland Security. They've compromised half the cops in
this country, a little less, a little more. They've compromised,
as my hero's Bob Elliott Ray Goulding once joked, everything
except the Visiting Nurse Association. They have built a cult
around denying the twenty twenty election. And if you haven't
figured out what's behind that nonsense, by the way, seemingly
(45:03):
quicksotic and academic at the same time. Here's the little secret.
The idea about the twenty twenty stuff still being talked
about is if l. Duche gets elected in twenty twenty
four and goes back to the White House, he will
somehow make somebody like I don't know, the Supreme Court
confirm that, yes, he actually won in twenty twenty, but
(45:26):
was denied that rightful term in the White House, so
he will be given a third term in twenty twenty eight,
or at least allowed to run for it. In short,
if twenty twenty was stolen from him, he's owed another term.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
That's in the Constitution, isn't it. Gee, maybe we could just,
you know, skip the twenty twenty eight election outright. The
fascists have all this in the works. And what do
we have? We have Chuck Todd three weeks ago asking
a Republican governor, quote, what's best for the country? Do
(46:05):
you think the country can handle prosecuting a former president?
And we have less Yer Holts one week ago telling
the Attorney General of the United States, quote, indictment of
a former president and perhaps a candidate for president would
arguably tear the country apart. Is that your concern? They
(46:26):
have Fox News? We have Fox News only we call
it NBC. I will do this podcast every weekday, morning,
no holiday, mondays. Sorry I'm getting old. It will be
as best as I can do it, the podcast version
of what the old TV show was. I will explain
(46:47):
to you later in this first episode what exactly happened
to the old TV show. And here's a tease. It's
none of the things you've heard. And I'll have comments
on the news and comments on the sports. Did you
know I used to do sports? And the worst persons
in the world are back? And why Trump gets a
(47:08):
tax break for burying his wife in the golf course.
But first, I want to button up this topic about
getting mad as hell with two quotes and one question.
Quote number one, it's General William To comes to Sherman,
and it's meant metaphorically. So don't think I'm talking about bloodshed,
because you can't do political bloodshed in this country unless
(47:31):
you're a Republican. This was Sherman the last time Americans
tried to overthrow American democracy. Quote, war is the remedy
our enemies have chosen. Other simple remedies were within their choice.
You know it, and they know it. But they wanted war,
and I say, let us give them all they want,
(47:52):
not a word of argument, not a sign of let up,
no cave in till we are whipped or they are
end Sherman quote. First, you've got to get mad. What
greater active war against the United States by someone owing
allegiance to the United States within the United States could
(48:13):
there ever be than to send armed militias into the
United States Capital than to encourage them to attack and
kill members of Congress, members of the Senate, even the
Vice President. What greater act of war against the United
States could there be than to try to prevent by
violent revolution, the peaceful transfer of power in the United States.
(48:37):
I have no complaints about the January sixth Committee. I
do not buy the argument that it's the Liz Cheney Show,
And so what if it were. Chairman Thompson and the
other Democrats have been terrific if, as I speculated months ago,
they are programming to the proverbial audience of one and
it is named Merrick Garland Dandy. But I don't see
(49:00):
exactly how they plan to end this. So what if?
First they realized, you've got to get mad, You've got
to say I'm as mad as hell and I'm not
going to take Trump anymore. What if they ended it
with another quote? What if the January sixth Committee ends
its final hearing by simply quoting just the start of
(49:21):
Title eighteen USC Chapter one fifteen, Section two three eight
one quote. Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies
war against them, or adheres to their enemies, giving them
aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is
guilty of treason the way this began just two hundred
(49:58):
and thirteen episodes ago on August first of last year. Anyway,
I've done all the damage I can do here. I
suspect we will be back to something resembling the normal
format tomorrow, or hell, maybe not. Who knows. Who's gonna
tell me what to do?
Speaker 5 (50:13):
Here?
Speaker 1 (50:15):
Here are the credits. Most of the music arranged, produced
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip s Chanelle
the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John
Phillip Shanelle. Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray. Produced
by TKO Brothers TKO Brothers or John Phillip Shanel, Brian
Ray and me. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and
(50:37):
performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music
is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, and it was
written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy of ESPN, Inc. Musical
comments by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer was my friend Larry David, and everything else
was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this,
the eight hundred and seventy fifth day since Donald Trump's
(50:58):
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Don't forget to keep arresting him. I always
still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then,
I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(51:24):
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