April 25, 2023 • 39 mins
EPISODE 186: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-BLOCK (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Let's all congratulate - and thank - Sidney Powell for getting Tucker Carlson fired. Because of the many final straws in this sad man's case, the MOST final was when it turned out he repeatedly called Powell the C-word.
And it all may be on tape. The real reason Lachlan Murdoch and Suzanne Scott went to Rupert Murdoch over the weekend and Rupert fired Carlson was that producer Abby Grossberg has - per her lawyer - nearly 90 recordings documenting her allegations of a toxic, abusive, misogynistic, sexist workplace in Tucker Carlson's office.
I have stitched together all the reporting on the biggest firing since Bill O'Reilly - including my own - and it boils down to this. Yes, Fox was furious at all the insults against management revealed (and redacted) in the Dominion files. But Grossberg's suit was the real menace. They would not go for a repetition of the O'Reilly or Roger Ailes sexual abuse scandals. And now Carlson may walk away with $20 or $30 million a year - but only if he DOES NOT WORK at any video or news outlet that could be considered a rival to Fox.
Plus: How Don Lemon messed up the chance to get to say farewell on the air, and why he might wind up on MSNBC. Among other reasons, NBC has a lot more money today: they won't pay my lying ex-friend, fired CEO Jeff Shell, a dime. He was fired for cause, and it sure looks like he tried to push his ex-flame Hadley Gamble into re-starting their affair, either by professional carrot or stick.
B-BLOCK (20:42) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Fani Willis basically announces she will indict - or WON'T indict - Trump and company in July or August. She warns law enforcement to make appropriate preparations. The FAA shuts down SpaceX after Elon Musk nearly destroys two Texas towns. And The Wall Street Journal finds an instance where Harlan Crow did TOO have actual business in front of the Justice he bought, Clarence Thomas. (25:42) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Anti-vaxxer, Pharma conspiracy theorist Aaron Rodgers will now be paid by the heir to the Johnson & Johnson Pharma fortune. Marsha Blackburn wants to sell you a pizza-cutter. And somehow Fox's resident idiot Brian Kilmeade thought he should celebrate the Carlson firing.
C-BLOCK (30:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If I'm bringing up Aaron Rodgers going to the New York Jets, I have to flash back to the day a New York GIANTS quarterback nearly kept me from graduating from college on time!
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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. I'd
like to congratulate and thank Sydney Powell for getting Tucker
(00:26):
Carlson fired. Obviously, Tucker Carlson got Tucker Carlson fired. But
as all of the reporting threads of how the highest
rated host in cable news today was thrown off the
proverbial cliff yesterday were stitched together, it became clear there
was an entire box full of final straws, but the
most final of them was the one in which Tucker
(00:49):
Carlson called Sydney Powell the C word. And it may
be on tape, we do know it is on the record.
Lachland cart Right at The Daily Beast reported last night
that the subject of that word and that idiot Sydney
Powell came up in Carlson's depth as in the dominion
defamation case. People familiar said. The dominion attorneys asked, quote,
(01:11):
if this wasn't the only time you referred to Sydney
Powell as a sword, and Carlson's reply was, quote, you know,
I can't know, and I just want to apologize preemptively.
I mean, you're trying to embarrass me. You're definitely succeeding,
as I am embarrassed and unemployed. If you really wanted
(01:34):
to point to the person besides this condescending, racist, misogynistic,
unemployed scumbag, who got this condescending, racist, misogynistic, unemployed scumbag
off every TV in every US military base in the world,
and every police station and half the public spaces in
this country. It is Abby Grosberg, the former guest booker
(01:56):
on Carlson's show and before him, on Maria Bartiromo's show.
As I mentioned in the special edition of this podcast
yesterday afternoon, it is Grosberg's suit that tips the balance.
Last night, her attorney, Parisi's chief Filipatos, said Miss Grosberg
has nearly ninety recordings from her time at Fox, all
(02:17):
of them supporting her contention and her legal action that
the place was, particularly in Tucker Carlson's office, a sexist, abusive,
vengeful hellhole. That is what got Tucker Carlson fired. What
Grosberg alleged in her suit and in her part of
the dominion case matched not only every text and every
(02:39):
email publicly revealed in the discovery for the dominion suit,
but maybe more importantly, it also matched all of those
blacked out parts on all of those texts and emails.
Fox's lawyers redacted them, but we're not going to be
able to redact them at trial, which was itself one
of the reasons Rupert Murdoch settled that trial. And of course,
(03:02):
once they would have been on the record in the
dominion case, they would have been available for Abby Grosberg
to introduce into her suit, which already has the Nancy
Pelosi swimsuit story and the Gretchen Whitmer Tutor Dixon contest
that got to Fox quote news unquote CEO Suzanne Scott,
(03:24):
and she went to Fox CEO Lachland Murdoch and Friday
night they decided they wanted Tucker Carlson gone, as The
New York Times and The Washington Post both reported, though
both organizations seemingly have left out the next step, without
which Carlson would still be preparing as we speak to
spew more bile tonight. As Fox sources explained it to me,
(03:47):
Scott and Lochland Murdoch went to Lochland Murdoch's dad at
some point over the weekend, and that's when Rupert Murdoch
personally ordered him fired fired for the poisoning of his
workplace with stuff that got Fox sued, and for the
insulting things that Carlson had said about Fox executives as
revealed or as redacted in the dominion discovery, all of
(04:09):
which I reported yesterday. He was not fired as the
result of his lies exposed in the dominion suit, per se.
He was not fired for being a fascist, for being
a racist, for being a conspiracy monger. He was fired
for being someone who hates and abuses women and who
insulted his employers. It fell for Scott to call Carlson
(04:32):
yesterday morning and tell him to Carlson's utter shock and disbelief.
By all accounts, they gave him ten minutes warning before
making it public. The Daily Beast, again reporting his reply
to mystified and possibly now also unemployed staffers, was quote,
I have no idea what's going on. Well, I could
(04:55):
have told you that. Tucker Vanity Fair yesterday reposted a
feature on Fox that underscored that Rupert Murdoch has seemingly
been read to off Carlson for some time. It said
that before he broke it off with his not quite
ninety day fiance, Anne Leslie Smith, quote One source close
to Murdoch said he had become increasingly uncomfortable with Smith's
(05:18):
evangelical views. Quote. She said, Tucker Carlson is a messenger
from God, and he said nope. It is widely reported
that Fox will continue to pay Carlson his full salary
itself something of a mystery. Is it twenty million? Is
it thirty million? And before you reel at the thought
of how much of a non punishment that is, remember
(05:41):
it does come with a sting in its tail. Carlson
only gets that money if he does not get another job.
Almost any other job I have been through this personally
fired by Fox by Rupert Murdoch paid every dime I
was owed, but I was not allowed to do any
work for any other sports media outlet until two months
(06:03):
remained in my dear and any time I made any
other money in any other medium, even the twenty dollars
per report that I got for filing for all news
radio station KFWB in Los Angeles after nine to eleven
twenty dollars per report and Fox deducted it from the
seven hundred thousand it owed me. In short, Carlson can
(06:25):
take the twenty or thirty million Fox owes him and
sit out the remaining years of his deal, or he
can take less to go work at a Newsmax or
at say News Nation, which is also known as the
Nick at Night of newscasters from twenty years ago. Fox
will not underwrite him working for any channel, but is
even nominally considered its competition. The only way he winds
(06:48):
up on Newsmax is if he forfeits a free twenty
or thirty million a year. There are three punch lines
to the Carlson story before we move on to everybody
else who got fired. The White House Correspondents Dinner is
this Saturday. Not that Fox attends it, but the comedian
host Roy Wood. He says he now has to throw
(07:08):
away his entire script. I know how that feels. The
idea that Carlson might get a new show immediately somewhere
proved instantly true, at least an offer for one. He
was offered one by RT, the Russian state run propaganda channel,
which has already been running clips of him anyway, but
is now willing to pay him, obviously paying him in
(07:29):
vouchers for meals near the strip mall, near the Kremlin,
and all day yesterday rumors persisted that Fox was finally
going to fully address Carlson's firing on air, as the
show that your cable or satellite provider still believed was
called Tucker Carlson Tonight hit the air at eight o'clock
Eastern time. Well, it turns out they did address it,
(07:50):
and the addressing consisted of Brian Kilmead saying they'd parted ways.
He considered himself a great friend of Tucker and buy
Tucker Carlson, demon of American fascist media. On Friday night,
h the Father Coglin of our time, the Bill O'Reilly
of our time. As Monday morning, broke was shoved off
(08:13):
the Fox stage in a total time of eight point
seven seven seconds. Bye Felicia. Okay, so now that he
belongs to the ages, let's go through the latest on
everybody else who got fired in the last forty eight hours,
and we start with Don Lemon. There are rumbles out
of CNN that he might still have survived. The infamous
(08:36):
Nikki Haley primed quote. Remember it wasn't just misogyny and agism.
He said, if you google when a woman is in
her prime, it will say twenties and thirties, and maybe forties.
I'm just saying what the facts are. Google it. The
obstreperousness of that, the anger, and the nonsense of googling
something like that indicate a guy who was not coping
(08:58):
well with doing mornings. And trust me, I can't do
mornings radio or TV. My record is like two days
without starting to hallucinate. Latest Don Lemon is he might
still have survived that. But when one of the fringe
Republican presidential vanity candidates, this Vivek guy, insisted on air
(09:19):
that the NRA was responsible for civil rights for black
people in the sixties during an interview with Don Lemon,
and Lemon correctly slammed him. CNN's new fascist owners recoiled,
and still The Daily Beast reports CNN was thinking, negotiate this,
make it a mutual decision. Let's have a buyout, give
Lemon a chance to do a farewell on the air.
(09:39):
He's been here seventeen years. And then two additional things happened.
Sinsing the end was approaching, Don Lemon hired a communications
crisis expert, and he chose He chose Alison Gallist, an
old colleague of mine from NBC who just happened to
be you know, Jeff Zucker's squeeze, and was the nominal
(10:00):
reason CNN could fire its most successful executive this century
place him with this idiot Licked and shove her out
the door as well. Maybe not the right person to
handle stuff at CNN. The other killer was after his
agents informed him he was Don Lemon immediately tweeted that
he had been terminated, and so a planned meeting with
(10:22):
Chris Lick for yesterday afternoon to discuss a soft landing
was also terminated. On the other hand, faced with a
meeting with Chris Licked, I probably would have announced I
had been terminated as well, just to not have to go.
On the other other hand, when Fox pushed me out
the door from Sports in two thousand and one, they
were desperately trying to get me to overreact in exactly
(10:45):
the way Don Lemon did. One day, they took away
my baseball assignments. The next day they took away my
cable show. The day after that, they told me to
come in and clean out my office. They expected me
to blow up so they could fire me for cause
and owe me nothing. It never occurred to them that
if I just restrained myself for only seven months, I
(11:06):
could not only get the seven hundred thousand dollars they
still owed me, but the day the contract expired and
the last check cleared, I could begin slamming Fox every
day for the rest of my life, which I have.
I don't know if CNN is going to pay Lemon
out the way Fox is supposed to pay Carlson out.
(11:28):
They might be able to terminate him for cause now
after making the announcement, though what would that do except
make him more of a martyr. The real problem CNN's
geniuses now have, which they clearly did not stop to
think about for one minute, is that while MSNBC is
doing well by contrast to them, MSNBC's ratings frankly suck.
(11:49):
Chris Hayes and Lawrence O'Donnell have been somen ambulent for years.
Alex Wagner has done one memorable show in eight months,
memorable in a good way, and I honestly had to
go look up who hosts at eleven PM, especially given
the accusations of racism after the firing of Tiffany Cross,
Lemon would be a good move by MSNBC put him
(12:10):
on at nine PM, where he had been something of
a hit at CNN and had his own audience, and
he wasn't encumbered by unqualified co hosts who made him
shout Google it. There's no info here. This is just
speculation on my part. Of course, it is at MSNBC
and NBC that they were the happiest in the wake
of yesterday's cable gedden, the most startling TV corporate boardroom
(12:35):
change since less Moon Best got caught at CBS had
a news cycle shelf life of less than twenty four hours.
Anybody remember NBC firing at CEO. Anybody over a woman
with a weird name. The Wall Street Journal says Jeff
Shell was fired for cause way back when on Sunday.
(12:57):
No money here. You can take your business cards. You
go sell them on eBay. There's your money. And the
lawyers from the woman named in this case, Handley Gamble,
are giving NBC new problems because she was the woman
named in the case. They accuse NBC of doing that,
of leaking her name deliberately to take some of the
heat off of Shell, or off of them, or off
(13:18):
of somebody. Quote. The investigation into mister Shell, said her lawyer,
arose from a complaint by my client of sexual harassment
and sex discrimination. Now you can connect the dots here,
and I think pretty easily. If Gamble and Shell had
as reported a relationship as long ago as twenty eleven
and it petered out and it has been dormant for
(13:41):
several years, and she suddenly has filed a harassment claim
in the last month and a discrimination claim against Jeff Shell,
it's a pretty good guess that my old lying ex
friend tried to restart the fling with Gamble and she
said no, and he continued to press her, and finally
he either offered her career rewards inside NBC or he
(14:02):
threatened her with demotion, and either way, maybe they shouldn't
even let him take those business cards with him. The
funniest part of the Shell story, besides my still shimmering
vast bowl of schadenfreud, is the statement that Jeff Shell
was now going to spend more time with his family,
(14:23):
presumably explaining to them that yes, he screwed up his
entire career by lying to them and to his employers,
and yes, her name really is Hadlee Gamble. And lastly,
on this broad topic, somebody lost his job yesterday who
did not advocate turning Europe over to Vladimir Putin, or
(14:45):
call Sidney Powell the Sea word, or insisting women peaued
before they were fifty, or using company email to try
to start an illicit relationship with a reporter. His name
was Mike Sultis, and he was an employee of ESPN
for forty three years and vice president of PR there,
and he was part of the layoffs there yesterday. Mike
(15:05):
is probably best known for saying, after I first left
ESPN in nineteen ninety seven, that I had not only
burned my bridges there, but I had nay palmed them. Now,
I have always had one sticky little complaint with that line,
that it was pretty good, but that it was clear
Mike had heard something I had said after I left ESPN.
(15:27):
When I was on Tom Snyder's CBSTV late night show,
Tom asked me if I had burned my bridges at ESPN,
and I said, I not only burned the bridges, Tom,
I burned the rivers. Still, I always felt good about
helping Mike to his place in the sun. More seriously,
when I returned to ESPN full time in twenty thirteen,
(15:49):
one of the first people to welcome me back was
Mike Sultics, and he remained one of my biggest supporters
and promoters throughout that tenure and my next return in
twenty eighteen. So if you see that sultess quote about me,
just remember we laughed about it. Good luck Mike still
(16:22):
ahead on this edition of Countdown. If you are not
going to indict Trump and those around him, why would
you warn local law enforcement to provide heightened security in
your town between July and September. This is not a
tough tea leaf to read. The Fulton County DA has
warned local law enforcement the indictments are coming as soon
(16:43):
as three months from now, and a tradition as old
as sports itself, the New York Jets have traded for
another old timey, washed up quarterback, except this one is
thirty nine years old, is an anti vaxer, anti big
pharma conspiracy theorist, and he will now draw his fifty
nine million dollars salary from the heir to the John's
(17:04):
an Johnson big pharma company. What could possibly go wrong?
And if we are talking New York quarterbacks, I'm going
back in time to the day one of them nearly
kept me from graduating from college. Things I promise not
to tell the Joe Pisarcik edition. That's next. This is countdown.
(17:31):
This is countdown with Keith Olberman coming up. When you
think nobody noticed that your TV network just ended the
show starring its biggest name. Rachel Maadow tried this once.
Now Brian Kilmead has two only much dumber, much much dumber.
(17:52):
First postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions. Date Line Atlanta, a little more on da
Fannie willis moving closer and closer and slower and slower
to indicting Trump and his minions. She has now warned
local law enforcement about her timeline for indicting. We're not indicting.
(18:12):
But if she's not indicting, why would she be doing
this Trump and company. She has written telling local law
enforcement to be prepared for quote heightened security and preparedness
between July eleventh and September one, because her announcement quote
may provoke a significant public reaction. Yeah, when we have
(18:33):
the prospect of riots because Trump isn't indicted. This will
be the utopia of our dreams. She's indicting. Somebody looking
at you, Rudy Dateline, The Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas just
got caught by the Wall Street Journal. Let me quote
the start of Zoe Tillman's minor blockbuster. If such a
(18:53):
thing isn't too much of an oxymoron, A minor blockbuster,
Thomas quote said he was advised he didn't have to
disclose private jet lights and luxury vacations paid for by
billionaire Harlan Crow because although a close friend, Crowe quote
did not have business before the court, but in at
least one case Crowe did. Tillman goes on to give
(19:14):
the details. In January two thousand and five, an architectural
firm had sued a property company for twenty five million
dollars or more for basically stealing its copyrighted designs for buildings.
Womack and Hampton Architects had designed some stuff for this
property company in the nineties, then discovered that it was
still using its designs, even letting other architects use them.
(19:39):
A decade later, Womack and Hampton sued for twenty five million.
This raised an important intellectual property issue, and the case
rose through the courts. The last decision was against the architects.
Then the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, so
the property company won and did not have to pay
more than twenty five million dollars and the name of
(19:59):
the property company Trammel Crow Residential Founded Buy Trammel Crow
senior father of of anybody paying attention, You got it,
father of Harlan Crow. Nearly half the company at that
time was owned by Crowe Holdings Chairman and CEO, Harlan Crowe.
(20:22):
Twenty five million dollars richer because Clarence Thomas and the
Supreme Court would not hear the appeal of the case,
just to drop in the bucket, given Crow's political and
legal activism that also reached the court. But it counts,
and it's tangible, and it's twenty five million dollars in corruption,
it's just a drop in the bucket of Clarence name
(20:42):
your price, Thomas, christ and Dayline Port Isabelle and Boca Chica, Texas.
Elon Musk's SpaceX disaster last week, we're in His rocket
blowed up good, blowed up real good. Also painted the
town not red but brown and gray. Almost everything in
the area surrounding the launch pad in Texas is Or
(21:04):
was bombarded. Broken windows, buildings, damaged schools covered in a
coating of sand and ash. The whole town covered in
a coating of sand and ash. Only it's not sand,
it's whatever was in the rocket. God knows what that was,
(21:43):
Thank you, Nancy Faust A town full of dirty laundry,
knowing Musk, what was in that rocket was the sweat
of apartheid diamond miners. The Federal Aviation Administration is not
real happy about this. It has now grounded all future
Starship launches until the results of a quote mishap investigation.
No comment yet from Gray Slick. Yeah, the mishap here
(22:06):
is that the United States government has any connection to
this idiot Musk and his inability to understand that there
are other humans on this planet besides him. Terminate his contract.
Please still ahead on countdown. In a second, I'll be
(22:35):
invoking the new New York Jets football quarterback, and thus
I am immediately transported to the day when I was
nineteen years old and I nearly didn't graduate from college
because of a New York Giants quarterback. Things I promise
not to tell next first time for the daily round
up of the miss Greens, Morons and Dunny Kruger Effects,
specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world. The
(22:58):
Bronze the New York Jets and Aaron Rodgers. They made
that trade. They brought the vaccine scamard to quarterback in
fun City. There's a reason the Jets have not won
the Super Bowl since two weeks after my tenth birthday.
The Jets are addicted to trading for old Timers' Day candidates.
In the last thirty years, they've dealt for or signed
(23:19):
Brett farre Joe Flacco, Michael Vick, Vinnie Testaverdi, Neil O'Donnell,
Frank Reich, Bobby Brister, Boomer Asiasin, even Tim Tebow and
now Aaron Rodgers, all washed up quarterbacks who shockingly never
got any better and never won anything for the Jets.
But this time it's special. The Jets are owned by
Woody Johnson, who is the heir to the Johnson and
(23:42):
Johnson company, which is Big Pharma, and they've just traded
for an anti Big Pharma vaccine conspiracy theorist to be
their new quarterback. And he will now take Big Farma's money,
fifty nine million dollars of it. I can't imagine that
will come up in the New York Media. And by
the way, Woody Johnson, isn't that a redundant name? Lebron
(24:05):
Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, speaking of redundant, we have
saluted her original career here fashion Advice, Bawbles and Ryanstones.
And you can take the pitch woman out of the
crappy products department, but you can't take the crappy products
out of the pitch woman. Marcia is now asking for
donations to help her cut red tape in Washington. If
(24:27):
you fledged twenty dollars today, I'll send you your very
own made in America pizza cutter. Together we can cut
the red tape once and for all. Bye, Golly, Marcia
Blackburn's own custom pizza cutter, and you can trust her.
She uses it on her hair. But our winner, Brian
(24:50):
kill me the guy ordered into the chair at Fox
at eight pm last night when they fired Tucson Carlson.
I mean, I've been there. Firings, departures, they destabilize people
and workplaces. And then there are those who, of course
come pre destabilized, like this idiot kill Mead at six
nineteen Eastern kill Mead tweeted quote tune in tonight at
(25:13):
eight pm for a big surprise on Fox. Yeah, Brian,
I think by then it was no longer a surprise, Brian.
He deleted the tweet, just like his bosses deleted Tucker
Carlson two days worse, Parson, and see the number one
(25:43):
story on the Countdown on my favorite topic, me and
things I promised not to tell since I already brought
up New York quarterbacks in the story of the Trade
of Aaron. I hate Big Pharma, but I'll happily take
fifty nine million dollars in salary from the NEPO baby
owner who got rich from Johnson and Johnson Rogers. There's
another story to tell. New York's football teams have played
(26:03):
in Old Giants Stadium and New Giant Stadium, which has
a corporate name too. But why does everybody use corporate
stadium names. You are not obliged to do their advertising
for them. Call it Giant Stadium anyway. They played in
Giant stadiums in New Jersey since nineteen eighty four, a
unique arrangement in major American sports. They literally changed the
(26:26):
color of the lighting in the stadium gift shops from
green to blue or back to green or back to blue,
depending on which team is playing there that week. So
the Giants and Jets fans share a commonplace to weep,
although the Jets weep more frequently. I think of the
Giants and the Jets as just one franchise. And so
(26:46):
you say Jets quarterbacks, I say Giants quarterbacks, and I
flashback inevitably to the day I actually walked reluctantly but
proudly into a class as a senior at Cornell University,
if I remember correctly, to get into Professor Joel Sylvie's
nineteenth Century Tree American History course eight credits spanning two semesters,
(27:08):
I had to get permission from the head of the
History department because I was not a history major. I
just took all the history classes they would let me,
and this one, Sylby's. This was one of the good ones.
And I remember Professor Silby's first lecture and the accent
and the mannerisms that quickly identified him not only as
(27:28):
a fellow native New Yorker, but as a Brookly Knight
and a Brookly Knight fan of as he quickly told
us the New York Football Giants. What Professor Joel Silby
said next, cause the I think it was two hundred
or so other students in the lecture hall to laugh,
all of them except me, because I was the sports
(27:50):
director of the Cornhill student owned radio station. And in
those days you could actually know everything about and everybody
in all the national sports off the top of your head.
And usually that meant you could figure out all the
teams and all the sports that had the slightest chance
of succeeding, and all the teams and all the sports
that did not. And the New York Football Giants did not.
(28:11):
I want you to know I graded the papers, not
the teaching assistance me and I happen to be a lifelong,
therefore long suffering fan of the New York Football Giants.
I saw my first Giants game in nineteen forty five,
and over the years I happened to developed this habit
of grading your papers on Sunday afternoons and evenings right
after I watch my New York Football Giants. So, to
(28:34):
some degree great or small, your grade will depend on
how well the New York Football Giants do. In this
nineteen seventy eight National Football League Season one hundred and
ninety nine of Joel Sylby's students laughed. I emitted a
low moan, since they had gone to five NFL Championship
(28:57):
games in the six seasons ending in nineteen sixty three
and lost all five. By the way, the Giants had
had exactly two winning seasons, and they had lost nine
of fourteen games the year before nineteen seventy seven. Though
they had opened this nineteen seventy eight season with a
narrow victory over a very bad Tampa Bay team, and
the first half of their schedule had as many as
(29:19):
four more opponents who they might be better than. They would
be lucky to win two games in the second half
of the season. When I got back to the radio station,
I looked at the Giants' schedule and Professor Silbey's class schedule,
and I circled one critical day when the schedules converged, Sunday,
November nineteenth, nineteen seventy eight. Our term papers were due
(29:42):
on Thursday the sixteenth. He could actually read them all
after the Giants Eagles game that night. In the following day. Amazingly,
your New York Football Giants actually opened the season winning
three of their first four. In the middle of October,
they were still five and three, and in the history
lecture room, Professor Sylby was very happy, and he often
(30:03):
recreated highlights of his glorious Giants pleasing success, and he
was furiously fanboying on the new quarterback they'd brought in
from the Canadian League, Joe Pisarcik. If you are a
football history fan, or god forbid, a fan of the
New York Football Giants, you already know where I'm going
(30:23):
with this. The Giants lost the next three games, and
then our term papers were due on November sixteenth, and
Joel Sylby turned morose, and I was at the radio
station watching the Giants Eagles game of the nineteenth on
a big black and white TV in the lounge when
my nightmare unfolded impossibly. The Giants led the much better
(30:45):
Philadelphia Eagles fourteen to nothing after the first quarter. Pisarcik
threw two touchdown passes. After the third quarter, it was
still seventeen to six Giants. Then the Eagles scored, and
they were driving to go ahead with a minute and
a half left in the game, when the impossible happened
deep in Giants' territory. The Philly quarterback threw an interception
with eighty three seconds left and in possession of the ball.
(31:07):
The Giants led seventeen thirteen. The crowd at the radio
station was ecstatic. I was even more ecstatic. All the
Giants now had to do was stall and have the
quarterback fall on the ball, maybe twice, as if he
had heard me. The quarterback, Joe Pisarcik fell on the ball.
Then he nearly killed me by handing the ball off
(31:29):
to his running back Larry Zanka, who plowed up the
middle to get a first down and burn another thirty
seconds off the clock. The Eagles called their last time
out thirty one seconds left, thirty one seconds to my
grade in Joel Silbey's nineteenth century American history class, probably
ending up being half or maybe even a full grade
better than I deserved. All Jopisarchi god to do was
(31:52):
fall on the damn ball again and it was over. However,
on the Giants sideline, offensive coordinator Bob Gibson decided that
the safe play, the winning play, was for Jopisarcik to
the ball off again to Larry Zanka. Now that might
have been the right play, only Bob Gibson and everybody
(32:12):
else failed to tell Larry Zanka. Larry Zanka assumed he
was there just to block for Joe Pisarcik, as Joe
Pisarcik collapsed to the turf and ran out the clock
and got me a better grade instead, Pisarchik handed the
ball to where Zanka's hands should have been, except Larry
Zanka was in the blocking stance, and Pisarchik in fact
handed it off directly to Larry Zanka's helmet. I screamed.
(32:38):
The ball bounced once off the turf and directly into
the hands of Philadelphia cornerback Herman Edwards. I continued to
scream there was nobody near Edwards, and he scooted twenty
six yards into the end zone and the Giants lost
the damn game nineteen to seventeen in the last seconds.
And as the Giants fans at the radio station shouted
or moaned or swore, I could see Professor Joel Sylvie
(32:59):
shutting off the TV, grabbing our papers and sentencing us
to hell, and I continued to scream. Our term papers
were returned. On Tuesday the twenty first, just before school
broke for Thanksgiving. I actually was thankful I got either
a B or A B plus. I can't find the paper.
(33:19):
It should be somewhere in a box. There was a
rumor which I was never able to confirm, that my
B or B plus was the highest grade in the class.
I can confirm. I saw classmates most far more prepared
and astute than myself, most of them history majors, looking
at their grades and blanching visibly. One girl cried, a C,
(33:41):
really a C. Professor Joel Silbey said much of our
grade would depend on how well the New York Football
Giants did in that nineteen seventy eight national football season.
And my god, they had just sustained a loss so
bad that it has still talked about to this day.
My classmates did not listen, and I only am escaped
(34:02):
alone to tell thee There is a PostScript. The PostScript
takes place thirty two and one half years later. I
returned to Cornell in March of twenty eleven to give
a lecture and teach a series of classes to students
who no longer afterwards felt they had gotten their full
(34:24):
money from the university. My alma mater was very kind
to me. They gave me a tour of the secret
places they never would have shown me when I was
a struggling student, like where they kept Cornell's copy of
the Gettysburg address. And they promised me something special for
lunch the first day, And sure enough I was dropped
off at a restaurant, and there, rising from a table
(34:44):
to greet me with applause, were Cornell's official historian and
former Professor Glenn Altschuler and their very famous history professor
Walter Lefeber, and I swear Professor Joel Silby, and they
were fans of mine. Of course I could not leave
well enough alone. After a few minutes of very pleasant
(35:07):
conversation with mister alt Schuller and Professor la Faber and
Professor Silby, I brought up the nineteen seventy eight term
paper Joe pisarcik Handoff story. Professor la Faber looked at
Professor Silby like Professor Silby was out of his mind?
Is that true? And Sylby smiled and said, yes, yes
it is. And then Joel Silby looked off into the
(35:30):
distance as if he were peering backwards through time. Nineteen
seventy eight, that's when you could really enjoy being a professor.
He then looked back in me and smiled, Keith, you
won't believe this, but I actually graded those papers pretty fairly,
and I didn't follow through on my original plan. After
(35:52):
the fumble, I actually turned off the TV and I
sat there for a few minutes, and I asked my
soul if it was okay for me to take my
revenge on the universe by failing all of you favor
gulped Oh, said Sylby. It was so great to be
a professor back then. I laughed so much I had
(36:13):
tears in my eyes. And then Sylvie said, okay, okay,
maybe I was a little unfair to you guys, but
you know it's the Giants, and you have to take
this as a whole. The year they won their first
Super Bowl, what was that, eighty six? The final exam
in that class was like two days after they finished
the regular season, fourteen and two, eight o'clock in the morning.
So I go to the final see, which I never do,
(36:36):
and I waited until they were all sitting there sweating,
and I said, remember last September when I told you
your grade will depend on how well the New York
Football Giants doing this. Nineteen eighty six National Football League season,
and it was just silence, and I said, well, if
you didn't notice, they went fourteen and two, and I
haven't been this happy since when they won the title
(36:57):
in nineteen fifty six. So guess what, there's no final exam.
And nobody moved. I said it again, there's no final exam.
Go home, go study for something else. Y'all get a's.
And then there was a couple of seconds of silence,
and they all simultaneously realized I was not kidding, and
everybody cheered and ran out into the sunshine. So with
(37:21):
me and professors Alt Schuler and la Faber now in tears,
Sylby said, see it evens out, and I said, the
hell it does. I graduated in nineteen seventy nine. How
does it canceled final in nineteen eighty six? Even it
out for me? Fella? Joel Silby thought for a second
and then he said, wow, I am buying you lunch.
(37:56):
Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced,
and performed by Ryan Ray and John Phillip Schanel, who
are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by
John Phillip Schenel guitars, bass on drums by Brian Ray,
produced by Tko Brothers. Countdown has come to you from
the Olderman Broadcasting Empire World headquarters in the Sports Capsule
(38:16):
Building in New York. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
and performed by No horns allowed. The sports music is
the Olberman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren
Davis for to see of ESPN, inc musical comments by
Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer
today was Tony Kornheiser. Everything else pretty much my fault.
(38:37):
So that's countdown for this the eight hundred and fortieth
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Don't forget keep arresting
him while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Until then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(39:12):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I'd
like to congratulate and thank Sydney Powell for getting Tucker
(00:26):
Carlson fired. Obviously, Tucker Carlson got Tucker Carlson fired. But
as all of the reporting threads of how the highest
rated host in cable news today was thrown off the
proverbial cliff yesterday were stitched together, it became clear there
was an entire box full of final straws, but the
most final of them was the one in which Tucker
(00:49):
Carlson called Sydney Powell the C word. And it may
be on tape, we do know it is on the record.
Lachland cart Right at The Daily Beast reported last night
that the subject of that word and that idiot Sydney
Powell came up in Carlson's depth as in the dominion
defamation case. People familiar said. The dominion attorneys asked, quote,
(01:11):
if this wasn't the only time you referred to Sydney
Powell as a sword, and Carlson's reply was, quote, you know,
I can't know, and I just want to apologize preemptively.
I mean, you're trying to embarrass me. You're definitely succeeding,
as I am embarrassed and unemployed. If you really wanted
(01:34):
to point to the person besides this condescending, racist, misogynistic,
unemployed scumbag, who got this condescending, racist, misogynistic, unemployed scumbag
off every TV in every US military base in the world,
and every police station and half the public spaces in
this country. It is Abby Grosberg, the former guest booker
(01:56):
on Carlson's show and before him, on Maria Bartiromo's show.
As I mentioned in the special edition of this podcast
yesterday afternoon, it is Grosberg's suit that tips the balance.
Last night, her attorney, Parisi's chief Filipatos, said Miss Grosberg
has nearly ninety recordings from her time at Fox, all
(02:17):
of them supporting her contention and her legal action that
the place was, particularly in Tucker Carlson's office, a sexist, abusive,
vengeful hellhole. That is what got Tucker Carlson fired. What
Grosberg alleged in her suit and in her part of
the dominion case matched not only every text and every
(02:39):
email publicly revealed in the discovery for the dominion suit,
but maybe more importantly, it also matched all of those
blacked out parts on all of those texts and emails.
Fox's lawyers redacted them, but we're not going to be
able to redact them at trial, which was itself one
of the reasons Rupert Murdoch settled that trial. And of course,
(03:02):
once they would have been on the record in the
dominion case, they would have been available for Abby Grosberg
to introduce into her suit, which already has the Nancy
Pelosi swimsuit story and the Gretchen Whitmer Tutor Dixon contest
that got to Fox quote news unquote CEO Suzanne Scott,
(03:24):
and she went to Fox CEO Lachland Murdoch and Friday
night they decided they wanted Tucker Carlson gone, as The
New York Times and The Washington Post both reported, though
both organizations seemingly have left out the next step, without
which Carlson would still be preparing as we speak to
spew more bile tonight. As Fox sources explained it to me,
(03:47):
Scott and Lochland Murdoch went to Lochland Murdoch's dad at
some point over the weekend, and that's when Rupert Murdoch
personally ordered him fired fired for the poisoning of his
workplace with stuff that got Fox sued, and for the
insulting things that Carlson had said about Fox executives as
revealed or as redacted in the dominion discovery, all of
(04:09):
which I reported yesterday. He was not fired as the
result of his lies exposed in the dominion suit, per se.
He was not fired for being a fascist, for being
a racist, for being a conspiracy monger. He was fired
for being someone who hates and abuses women and who
insulted his employers. It fell for Scott to call Carlson
(04:32):
yesterday morning and tell him to Carlson's utter shock and disbelief.
By all accounts, they gave him ten minutes warning before
making it public. The Daily Beast, again reporting his reply
to mystified and possibly now also unemployed staffers, was quote,
I have no idea what's going on. Well, I could
(04:55):
have told you that. Tucker Vanity Fair yesterday reposted a
feature on Fox that underscored that Rupert Murdoch has seemingly
been read to off Carlson for some time. It said
that before he broke it off with his not quite
ninety day fiance, Anne Leslie Smith, quote One source close
to Murdoch said he had become increasingly uncomfortable with Smith's
(05:18):
evangelical views. Quote. She said, Tucker Carlson is a messenger
from God, and he said nope. It is widely reported
that Fox will continue to pay Carlson his full salary
itself something of a mystery. Is it twenty million? Is
it thirty million? And before you reel at the thought
of how much of a non punishment that is, remember
(05:41):
it does come with a sting in its tail. Carlson
only gets that money if he does not get another job.
Almost any other job I have been through this personally
fired by Fox by Rupert Murdoch paid every dime I
was owed, but I was not allowed to do any
work for any other sports media outlet until two months
(06:03):
remained in my dear and any time I made any
other money in any other medium, even the twenty dollars
per report that I got for filing for all news
radio station KFWB in Los Angeles after nine to eleven
twenty dollars per report and Fox deducted it from the
seven hundred thousand it owed me. In short, Carlson can
(06:25):
take the twenty or thirty million Fox owes him and
sit out the remaining years of his deal, or he
can take less to go work at a Newsmax or
at say News Nation, which is also known as the
Nick at Night of newscasters from twenty years ago. Fox
will not underwrite him working for any channel, but is
even nominally considered its competition. The only way he winds
(06:48):
up on Newsmax is if he forfeits a free twenty
or thirty million a year. There are three punch lines
to the Carlson story before we move on to everybody
else who got fired. The White House Correspondents Dinner is
this Saturday. Not that Fox attends it, but the comedian
host Roy Wood. He says he now has to throw
(07:08):
away his entire script. I know how that feels. The
idea that Carlson might get a new show immediately somewhere
proved instantly true, at least an offer for one. He
was offered one by RT, the Russian state run propaganda channel,
which has already been running clips of him anyway, but
is now willing to pay him, obviously paying him in
(07:29):
vouchers for meals near the strip mall, near the Kremlin,
and all day yesterday rumors persisted that Fox was finally
going to fully address Carlson's firing on air, as the
show that your cable or satellite provider still believed was
called Tucker Carlson Tonight hit the air at eight o'clock
Eastern time. Well, it turns out they did address it,
(07:50):
and the addressing consisted of Brian Kilmead saying they'd parted ways.
He considered himself a great friend of Tucker and buy
Tucker Carlson, demon of American fascist media. On Friday night,
h the Father Coglin of our time, the Bill O'Reilly
of our time. As Monday morning, broke was shoved off
(08:13):
the Fox stage in a total time of eight point
seven seven seconds. Bye Felicia. Okay, so now that he
belongs to the ages, let's go through the latest on
everybody else who got fired in the last forty eight hours,
and we start with Don Lemon. There are rumbles out
of CNN that he might still have survived. The infamous
(08:36):
Nikki Haley primed quote. Remember it wasn't just misogyny and agism.
He said, if you google when a woman is in
her prime, it will say twenties and thirties, and maybe forties.
I'm just saying what the facts are. Google it. The
obstreperousness of that, the anger, and the nonsense of googling
something like that indicate a guy who was not coping
(08:58):
well with doing mornings. And trust me, I can't do
mornings radio or TV. My record is like two days
without starting to hallucinate. Latest Don Lemon is he might
still have survived that. But when one of the fringe
Republican presidential vanity candidates, this Vivek guy, insisted on air
(09:19):
that the NRA was responsible for civil rights for black
people in the sixties during an interview with Don Lemon,
and Lemon correctly slammed him. CNN's new fascist owners recoiled,
and still The Daily Beast reports CNN was thinking, negotiate this,
make it a mutual decision. Let's have a buyout, give
Lemon a chance to do a farewell on the air.
(09:39):
He's been here seventeen years. And then two additional things happened.
Sinsing the end was approaching, Don Lemon hired a communications
crisis expert, and he chose He chose Alison Gallist, an
old colleague of mine from NBC who just happened to
be you know, Jeff Zucker's squeeze, and was the nominal
(10:00):
reason CNN could fire its most successful executive this century
place him with this idiot Licked and shove her out
the door as well. Maybe not the right person to
handle stuff at CNN. The other killer was after his
agents informed him he was Don Lemon immediately tweeted that
he had been terminated, and so a planned meeting with
(10:22):
Chris Lick for yesterday afternoon to discuss a soft landing
was also terminated. On the other hand, faced with a
meeting with Chris Licked, I probably would have announced I
had been terminated as well, just to not have to go.
On the other other hand, when Fox pushed me out
the door from Sports in two thousand and one, they
were desperately trying to get me to overreact in exactly
(10:45):
the way Don Lemon did. One day, they took away
my baseball assignments. The next day they took away my
cable show. The day after that, they told me to
come in and clean out my office. They expected me
to blow up so they could fire me for cause
and owe me nothing. It never occurred to them that
if I just restrained myself for only seven months, I
(11:06):
could not only get the seven hundred thousand dollars they
still owed me, but the day the contract expired and
the last check cleared, I could begin slamming Fox every
day for the rest of my life, which I have.
I don't know if CNN is going to pay Lemon
out the way Fox is supposed to pay Carlson out.
(11:28):
They might be able to terminate him for cause now
after making the announcement, though what would that do except
make him more of a martyr. The real problem CNN's
geniuses now have, which they clearly did not stop to
think about for one minute, is that while MSNBC is
doing well by contrast to them, MSNBC's ratings frankly suck.
(11:49):
Chris Hayes and Lawrence O'Donnell have been somen ambulent for years.
Alex Wagner has done one memorable show in eight months,
memorable in a good way, and I honestly had to
go look up who hosts at eleven PM, especially given
the accusations of racism after the firing of Tiffany Cross,
Lemon would be a good move by MSNBC put him
(12:10):
on at nine PM, where he had been something of
a hit at CNN and had his own audience, and
he wasn't encumbered by unqualified co hosts who made him
shout Google it. There's no info here. This is just
speculation on my part. Of course, it is at MSNBC
and NBC that they were the happiest in the wake
of yesterday's cable gedden, the most startling TV corporate boardroom
(12:35):
change since less Moon Best got caught at CBS had
a news cycle shelf life of less than twenty four hours.
Anybody remember NBC firing at CEO. Anybody over a woman
with a weird name. The Wall Street Journal says Jeff
Shell was fired for cause way back when on Sunday.
(12:57):
No money here. You can take your business cards. You
go sell them on eBay. There's your money. And the
lawyers from the woman named in this case, Handley Gamble,
are giving NBC new problems because she was the woman
named in the case. They accuse NBC of doing that,
of leaking her name deliberately to take some of the
heat off of Shell, or off of them, or off
(13:18):
of somebody. Quote. The investigation into mister Shell, said her lawyer,
arose from a complaint by my client of sexual harassment
and sex discrimination. Now you can connect the dots here,
and I think pretty easily. If Gamble and Shell had
as reported a relationship as long ago as twenty eleven
and it petered out and it has been dormant for
(13:41):
several years, and she suddenly has filed a harassment claim
in the last month and a discrimination claim against Jeff Shell,
it's a pretty good guess that my old lying ex
friend tried to restart the fling with Gamble and she
said no, and he continued to press her, and finally
he either offered her career rewards inside NBC or he
(14:02):
threatened her with demotion, and either way, maybe they shouldn't
even let him take those business cards with him. The
funniest part of the Shell story, besides my still shimmering
vast bowl of schadenfreud, is the statement that Jeff Shell
was now going to spend more time with his family,
(14:23):
presumably explaining to them that yes, he screwed up his
entire career by lying to them and to his employers,
and yes, her name really is Hadlee Gamble. And lastly,
on this broad topic, somebody lost his job yesterday who
did not advocate turning Europe over to Vladimir Putin, or
(14:45):
call Sidney Powell the Sea word, or insisting women peaued
before they were fifty, or using company email to try
to start an illicit relationship with a reporter. His name
was Mike Sultis, and he was an employee of ESPN
for forty three years and vice president of PR there,
and he was part of the layoffs there yesterday. Mike
(15:05):
is probably best known for saying, after I first left
ESPN in nineteen ninety seven, that I had not only
burned my bridges there, but I had nay palmed them. Now,
I have always had one sticky little complaint with that line,
that it was pretty good, but that it was clear
Mike had heard something I had said after I left ESPN.
(15:27):
When I was on Tom Snyder's CBSTV late night show,
Tom asked me if I had burned my bridges at ESPN,
and I said, I not only burned the bridges, Tom,
I burned the rivers. Still, I always felt good about
helping Mike to his place in the sun. More seriously,
when I returned to ESPN full time in twenty thirteen,
(15:49):
one of the first people to welcome me back was
Mike Sultics, and he remained one of my biggest supporters
and promoters throughout that tenure and my next return in
twenty eighteen. So if you see that sultess quote about me,
just remember we laughed about it. Good luck Mike still
(16:22):
ahead on this edition of Countdown. If you are not
going to indict Trump and those around him, why would
you warn local law enforcement to provide heightened security in
your town between July and September. This is not a
tough tea leaf to read. The Fulton County DA has
warned local law enforcement the indictments are coming as soon
(16:43):
as three months from now, and a tradition as old
as sports itself, the New York Jets have traded for
another old timey, washed up quarterback, except this one is
thirty nine years old, is an anti vaxer, anti big
pharma conspiracy theorist, and he will now draw his fifty
nine million dollars salary from the heir to the John's
(17:04):
an Johnson big pharma company. What could possibly go wrong?
And if we are talking New York quarterbacks, I'm going
back in time to the day one of them nearly
kept me from graduating from college. Things I promise not
to tell the Joe Pisarcik edition. That's next. This is countdown.
(17:31):
This is countdown with Keith Olberman coming up. When you
think nobody noticed that your TV network just ended the
show starring its biggest name. Rachel Maadow tried this once.
Now Brian Kilmead has two only much dumber, much much dumber.
(17:52):
First postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions. Date Line Atlanta, a little more on da
Fannie willis moving closer and closer and slower and slower
to indicting Trump and his minions. She has now warned
local law enforcement about her timeline for indicting. We're not indicting.
(18:12):
But if she's not indicting, why would she be doing
this Trump and company. She has written telling local law
enforcement to be prepared for quote heightened security and preparedness
between July eleventh and September one, because her announcement quote
may provoke a significant public reaction. Yeah, when we have
(18:33):
the prospect of riots because Trump isn't indicted. This will
be the utopia of our dreams. She's indicting. Somebody looking
at you, Rudy Dateline, The Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas just
got caught by the Wall Street Journal. Let me quote
the start of Zoe Tillman's minor blockbuster. If such a
(18:53):
thing isn't too much of an oxymoron, A minor blockbuster,
Thomas quote said he was advised he didn't have to
disclose private jet lights and luxury vacations paid for by
billionaire Harlan Crow because although a close friend, Crowe quote
did not have business before the court, but in at
least one case Crowe did. Tillman goes on to give
(19:14):
the details. In January two thousand and five, an architectural
firm had sued a property company for twenty five million
dollars or more for basically stealing its copyrighted designs for buildings.
Womack and Hampton Architects had designed some stuff for this
property company in the nineties, then discovered that it was
still using its designs, even letting other architects use them.
(19:39):
A decade later, Womack and Hampton sued for twenty five million.
This raised an important intellectual property issue, and the case
rose through the courts. The last decision was against the architects.
Then the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, so
the property company won and did not have to pay
more than twenty five million dollars and the name of
(19:59):
the property company Trammel Crow Residential Founded Buy Trammel Crow
senior father of of anybody paying attention, You got it,
father of Harlan Crow. Nearly half the company at that
time was owned by Crowe Holdings Chairman and CEO, Harlan Crowe.
(20:22):
Twenty five million dollars richer because Clarence Thomas and the
Supreme Court would not hear the appeal of the case,
just to drop in the bucket, given Crow's political and
legal activism that also reached the court. But it counts,
and it's tangible, and it's twenty five million dollars in corruption,
it's just a drop in the bucket of Clarence name
(20:42):
your price, Thomas, christ and Dayline Port Isabelle and Boca Chica, Texas.
Elon Musk's SpaceX disaster last week, we're in His rocket
blowed up good, blowed up real good. Also painted the
town not red but brown and gray. Almost everything in
the area surrounding the launch pad in Texas is Or
(21:04):
was bombarded. Broken windows, buildings, damaged schools covered in a
coating of sand and ash. The whole town covered in
a coating of sand and ash. Only it's not sand,
it's whatever was in the rocket. God knows what that was,
(21:43):
Thank you, Nancy Faust A town full of dirty laundry,
knowing Musk, what was in that rocket was the sweat
of apartheid diamond miners. The Federal Aviation Administration is not
real happy about this. It has now grounded all future
Starship launches until the results of a quote mishap investigation.
No comment yet from Gray Slick. Yeah, the mishap here
(22:06):
is that the United States government has any connection to
this idiot Musk and his inability to understand that there
are other humans on this planet besides him. Terminate his contract.
Please still ahead on countdown. In a second, I'll be
(22:35):
invoking the new New York Jets football quarterback, and thus
I am immediately transported to the day when I was
nineteen years old and I nearly didn't graduate from college
because of a New York Giants quarterback. Things I promise
not to tell next first time for the daily round
up of the miss Greens, Morons and Dunny Kruger Effects,
specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world. The
(22:58):
Bronze the New York Jets and Aaron Rodgers. They made
that trade. They brought the vaccine scamard to quarterback in
fun City. There's a reason the Jets have not won
the Super Bowl since two weeks after my tenth birthday.
The Jets are addicted to trading for old Timers' Day candidates.
In the last thirty years, they've dealt for or signed
(23:19):
Brett farre Joe Flacco, Michael Vick, Vinnie Testaverdi, Neil O'Donnell,
Frank Reich, Bobby Brister, Boomer Asiasin, even Tim Tebow and
now Aaron Rodgers, all washed up quarterbacks who shockingly never
got any better and never won anything for the Jets.
But this time it's special. The Jets are owned by
Woody Johnson, who is the heir to the Johnson and
(23:42):
Johnson company, which is Big Pharma, and they've just traded
for an anti Big Pharma vaccine conspiracy theorist to be
their new quarterback. And he will now take Big Farma's money,
fifty nine million dollars of it. I can't imagine that
will come up in the New York Media. And by
the way, Woody Johnson, isn't that a redundant name? Lebron
(24:05):
Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, speaking of redundant, we have
saluted her original career here fashion Advice, Bawbles and Ryanstones.
And you can take the pitch woman out of the
crappy products department, but you can't take the crappy products
out of the pitch woman. Marcia is now asking for
donations to help her cut red tape in Washington. If
(24:27):
you fledged twenty dollars today, I'll send you your very
own made in America pizza cutter. Together we can cut
the red tape once and for all. Bye, Golly, Marcia
Blackburn's own custom pizza cutter, and you can trust her.
She uses it on her hair. But our winner, Brian
(24:50):
kill me the guy ordered into the chair at Fox
at eight pm last night when they fired Tucson Carlson.
I mean, I've been there. Firings, departures, they destabilize people
and workplaces. And then there are those who, of course
come pre destabilized, like this idiot kill Mead at six
nineteen Eastern kill Mead tweeted quote tune in tonight at
(25:13):
eight pm for a big surprise on Fox. Yeah, Brian,
I think by then it was no longer a surprise, Brian.
He deleted the tweet, just like his bosses deleted Tucker
Carlson two days worse, Parson, and see the number one
(25:43):
story on the Countdown on my favorite topic, me and
things I promised not to tell since I already brought
up New York quarterbacks in the story of the Trade
of Aaron. I hate Big Pharma, but I'll happily take
fifty nine million dollars in salary from the NEPO baby
owner who got rich from Johnson and Johnson Rogers. There's
another story to tell. New York's football teams have played
(26:03):
in Old Giants Stadium and New Giant Stadium, which has
a corporate name too. But why does everybody use corporate
stadium names. You are not obliged to do their advertising
for them. Call it Giant Stadium anyway. They played in
Giant stadiums in New Jersey since nineteen eighty four, a
unique arrangement in major American sports. They literally changed the
(26:26):
color of the lighting in the stadium gift shops from
green to blue or back to green or back to blue,
depending on which team is playing there that week. So
the Giants and Jets fans share a commonplace to weep,
although the Jets weep more frequently. I think of the
Giants and the Jets as just one franchise. And so
(26:46):
you say Jets quarterbacks, I say Giants quarterbacks, and I
flashback inevitably to the day I actually walked reluctantly but
proudly into a class as a senior at Cornell University,
if I remember correctly, to get into Professor Joel Sylvie's
nineteenth Century Tree American History course eight credits spanning two semesters,
(27:08):
I had to get permission from the head of the
History department because I was not a history major. I
just took all the history classes they would let me,
and this one, Sylby's. This was one of the good ones.
And I remember Professor Silby's first lecture and the accent
and the mannerisms that quickly identified him not only as
(27:28):
a fellow native New Yorker, but as a Brookly Knight
and a Brookly Knight fan of as he quickly told
us the New York Football Giants. What Professor Joel Silby
said next, cause the I think it was two hundred
or so other students in the lecture hall to laugh,
all of them except me, because I was the sports
(27:50):
director of the Cornhill student owned radio station. And in
those days you could actually know everything about and everybody
in all the national sports off the top of your head.
And usually that meant you could figure out all the
teams and all the sports that had the slightest chance
of succeeding, and all the teams and all the sports
that did not. And the New York Football Giants did not.
(28:11):
I want you to know I graded the papers, not
the teaching assistance me and I happen to be a lifelong,
therefore long suffering fan of the New York Football Giants.
I saw my first Giants game in nineteen forty five,
and over the years I happened to developed this habit
of grading your papers on Sunday afternoons and evenings right
after I watch my New York Football Giants. So, to
(28:34):
some degree great or small, your grade will depend on
how well the New York Football Giants do. In this
nineteen seventy eight National Football League Season one hundred and
ninety nine of Joel Sylby's students laughed. I emitted a
low moan, since they had gone to five NFL Championship
(28:57):
games in the six seasons ending in nineteen sixty three
and lost all five. By the way, the Giants had
had exactly two winning seasons, and they had lost nine
of fourteen games the year before nineteen seventy seven. Though
they had opened this nineteen seventy eight season with a
narrow victory over a very bad Tampa Bay team, and
the first half of their schedule had as many as
(29:19):
four more opponents who they might be better than. They would
be lucky to win two games in the second half
of the season. When I got back to the radio station,
I looked at the Giants' schedule and Professor Silbey's class schedule,
and I circled one critical day when the schedules converged, Sunday,
November nineteenth, nineteen seventy eight. Our term papers were due
(29:42):
on Thursday the sixteenth. He could actually read them all
after the Giants Eagles game that night. In the following day. Amazingly,
your New York Football Giants actually opened the season winning
three of their first four. In the middle of October,
they were still five and three, and in the history
lecture room, Professor Sylby was very happy, and he often
(30:03):
recreated highlights of his glorious Giants pleasing success, and he
was furiously fanboying on the new quarterback they'd brought in
from the Canadian League, Joe Pisarcik. If you are a
football history fan, or god forbid, a fan of the
New York Football Giants, you already know where I'm going
(30:23):
with this. The Giants lost the next three games, and
then our term papers were due on November sixteenth, and
Joel Sylby turned morose, and I was at the radio
station watching the Giants Eagles game of the nineteenth on
a big black and white TV in the lounge when
my nightmare unfolded impossibly. The Giants led the much better
(30:45):
Philadelphia Eagles fourteen to nothing after the first quarter. Pisarcik
threw two touchdown passes. After the third quarter, it was
still seventeen to six Giants. Then the Eagles scored, and
they were driving to go ahead with a minute and
a half left in the game, when the impossible happened
deep in Giants' territory. The Philly quarterback threw an interception
with eighty three seconds left and in possession of the ball.
(31:07):
The Giants led seventeen thirteen. The crowd at the radio
station was ecstatic. I was even more ecstatic. All the
Giants now had to do was stall and have the
quarterback fall on the ball, maybe twice, as if he
had heard me. The quarterback, Joe Pisarcik fell on the ball.
Then he nearly killed me by handing the ball off
(31:29):
to his running back Larry Zanka, who plowed up the
middle to get a first down and burn another thirty
seconds off the clock. The Eagles called their last time
out thirty one seconds left, thirty one seconds to my
grade in Joel Silbey's nineteenth century American history class, probably
ending up being half or maybe even a full grade
better than I deserved. All Jopisarchi god to do was
(31:52):
fall on the damn ball again and it was over. However,
on the Giants sideline, offensive coordinator Bob Gibson decided that
the safe play, the winning play, was for Jopisarcik to
the ball off again to Larry Zanka. Now that might
have been the right play, only Bob Gibson and everybody
(32:12):
else failed to tell Larry Zanka. Larry Zanka assumed he
was there just to block for Joe Pisarcik, as Joe
Pisarcik collapsed to the turf and ran out the clock
and got me a better grade instead, Pisarchik handed the
ball to where Zanka's hands should have been, except Larry
Zanka was in the blocking stance, and Pisarchik in fact
handed it off directly to Larry Zanka's helmet. I screamed.
(32:38):
The ball bounced once off the turf and directly into
the hands of Philadelphia cornerback Herman Edwards. I continued to
scream there was nobody near Edwards, and he scooted twenty
six yards into the end zone and the Giants lost
the damn game nineteen to seventeen in the last seconds.
And as the Giants fans at the radio station shouted
or moaned or swore, I could see Professor Joel Sylvie
(32:59):
shutting off the TV, grabbing our papers and sentencing us
to hell, and I continued to scream. Our term papers
were returned. On Tuesday the twenty first, just before school
broke for Thanksgiving. I actually was thankful I got either
a B or A B plus. I can't find the paper.
(33:19):
It should be somewhere in a box. There was a
rumor which I was never able to confirm, that my
B or B plus was the highest grade in the class.
I can confirm. I saw classmates most far more prepared
and astute than myself, most of them history majors, looking
at their grades and blanching visibly. One girl cried, a C,
(33:41):
really a C. Professor Joel Silbey said much of our
grade would depend on how well the New York Football
Giants did in that nineteen seventy eight national football season.
And my god, they had just sustained a loss so
bad that it has still talked about to this day.
My classmates did not listen, and I only am escaped
(34:02):
alone to tell thee There is a PostScript. The PostScript
takes place thirty two and one half years later. I
returned to Cornell in March of twenty eleven to give
a lecture and teach a series of classes to students
who no longer afterwards felt they had gotten their full
(34:24):
money from the university. My alma mater was very kind
to me. They gave me a tour of the secret
places they never would have shown me when I was
a struggling student, like where they kept Cornell's copy of
the Gettysburg address. And they promised me something special for
lunch the first day, And sure enough I was dropped
off at a restaurant, and there, rising from a table
(34:44):
to greet me with applause, were Cornell's official historian and
former Professor Glenn Altschuler and their very famous history professor
Walter Lefeber, and I swear Professor Joel Silby, and they
were fans of mine. Of course I could not leave
well enough alone. After a few minutes of very pleasant
(35:07):
conversation with mister alt Schuller and Professor la Faber and
Professor Silby, I brought up the nineteen seventy eight term
paper Joe pisarcik Handoff story. Professor la Faber looked at
Professor Silby like Professor Silby was out of his mind?
Is that true? And Sylby smiled and said, yes, yes
it is. And then Joel Silby looked off into the
(35:30):
distance as if he were peering backwards through time. Nineteen
seventy eight, that's when you could really enjoy being a professor.
He then looked back in me and smiled, Keith, you
won't believe this, but I actually graded those papers pretty fairly,
and I didn't follow through on my original plan. After
(35:52):
the fumble, I actually turned off the TV and I
sat there for a few minutes, and I asked my
soul if it was okay for me to take my
revenge on the universe by failing all of you favor
gulped Oh, said Sylby. It was so great to be
a professor back then. I laughed so much I had
(36:13):
tears in my eyes. And then Sylvie said, okay, okay,
maybe I was a little unfair to you guys, but
you know it's the Giants, and you have to take
this as a whole. The year they won their first
Super Bowl, what was that, eighty six? The final exam
in that class was like two days after they finished
the regular season, fourteen and two, eight o'clock in the morning.
So I go to the final see, which I never do,
(36:36):
and I waited until they were all sitting there sweating,
and I said, remember last September when I told you
your grade will depend on how well the New York
Football Giants doing this. Nineteen eighty six National Football League season,
and it was just silence, and I said, well, if
you didn't notice, they went fourteen and two, and I
haven't been this happy since when they won the title
(36:57):
in nineteen fifty six. So guess what, there's no final exam.
And nobody moved. I said it again, there's no final exam.
Go home, go study for something else. Y'all get a's.
And then there was a couple of seconds of silence,
and they all simultaneously realized I was not kidding, and
everybody cheered and ran out into the sunshine. So with
(37:21):
me and professors Alt Schuler and la Faber now in tears,
Sylby said, see it evens out, and I said, the
hell it does. I graduated in nineteen seventy nine. How
does it canceled final in nineteen eighty six? Even it
out for me? Fella? Joel Silby thought for a second
and then he said, wow, I am buying you lunch.
(37:56):
Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced,
and performed by Ryan Ray and John Phillip Schanel, who
are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by
John Phillip Schenel guitars, bass on drums by Brian Ray,
produced by Tko Brothers. Countdown has come to you from
the Olderman Broadcasting Empire World headquarters in the Sports Capsule
(38:16):
Building in New York. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
and performed by No horns allowed. The sports music is
the Olberman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren
Davis for to see of ESPN, inc musical comments by
Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer
today was Tony Kornheiser. Everything else pretty much my fault.
(38:37):
So that's countdown for this the eight hundred and fortieth
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Don't forget keep arresting
him while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Until then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(39:12):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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