September 5, 2023 • 41 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 27: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Uh-oh. Somebody told Trump about the 14th Amendment and he’s terrified
And we know who terrified him. The Wall Street Journal published a 900-word editorial exactly 77 minutes before Trump’s post and it is aptly titled “The 14th Amendment Trump Panic” because while the Journal usually has the confidence and arrogance and factuality of Marie Antoinette apocryphally talking about dessert, this time the lead fascists Chez Murdoch sound really scared. They have resorted to the argument that even if the 14thAmendment doesn’t JUST apply to people who literally fired a gun at the flag or those who instructed them to, it can’t apply to January 6th because January 6th wasn’t a REAL insurrection because… uh… it didn’t SUCCEED. 14-3 advocates are quote “willing to put democracy at risk in order to save it. But U-S institutions held up reasonably well despite the strains of the Trump Presidency, even the events of January 6. The transfer of power took place on schedule…the rioters and organizers are being punished, often severely…”
In other words: whaddya mean ATTEMPTED murder? What kind of crime is THAT? Either there’s murder, and you go to jail, or there isn’t murder, and you go free. Am I right? Trump bleated about socialists and democrats and election interference and who will get to tell him? The Disqualification clause was in essence created to keep the Vice President of the confederacy out of the Senate. After he won. As a DEMOCRAT. In 1866. And Alexander Stephens had been convicted of NOTHING. He was arrested for treason on May 11th, 1865, released from prison in October without even going to trial.
In 1919, 14/3 was used to keep a Congressman-Elect, Victor Berger of Wisconsin – literally an actual member of the Socialist party – out of the House because he had been convicted of violating the Espionage Act during the 1st World War because he opposed U-S entry into it. And just last year local New Mexico official Cuoy Griffin was bounced by 14/3 after nothing more than a misdemeanor conviction for trespassing. The point of course is that Stephens was kept out even though he was never convicted of anything, never even TRIED for anything, and he was readmitted only after a Congressionally-approved amnesty. Trump doesn't understand these nuances but like the wild animal he is he can smell fear, and there's nothing but fear in the WSJ editorial. Press the point.
Plus we knew Mark Meadows had confessed to the Georgia judge last week while trying to get his trial moved to Federal Court. We had no idea how MUCH he had confessed, and how screwed he is, and how his only option may be to cut a deal with Fani Willis.
B-Block (20:27) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: All is finally well at CNN where the new guy starts in one month and four days and controversy is a thing of the past and what do you mean at the BBC he once leaned over to a news editor and BIT HIM ON THE ARM HARD ENOUGH TO LEAVE MARKS THROUGH HIS SHIRT? (26:26) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Matt Schlapp conducts an exorcism...in his PANTS! The Philadelphia cemetery that has a memorial to...Nazi collaborators? And segueing perfectly: After pimping for the hashtag "Ban The ADL," Elon Musk insists he's opposed to all forms of anti-semitism and then explains that the main Jewish organization fighting anti-semitism, The Anti-Defamation League, has conspired to destroy advertising on twitter and he's suing them and if Musk ain't an antisemite it's an incredible simulation.
C-Block (33:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The school year has begun at every level and inevitably I flash back to the day my legendary Cornell American history professor nearly failed all of us in his class because his favorite football team lost.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Oh
somebody told Trump about the fourteenth Amendment last night and
(00:25):
he's panicking. Quote. Almost all legal scholars have voiced opinions
that the fourteenth Amendment has no legal basis or standing
relative to the upcoming twenty twenty four presidential election. The
insurrectionists who try to overthrow the government and talks about
terminating the constitution lied at seven fourteen Eastern last night.
(00:48):
Like election interference, it's just another trick being used by
the radical left, communists, Marxists, and fascists to again steal
an election. Who's going to tell him that it was
passed by the Republicans and that the most famous politician
it was used to disqualify in the nineteenth century was
a Democrat, and the most famous politician it was used
(01:09):
to disqualify in the twentieth century was a Socialist Party
member Make America. Trump does not answer threats that don't
scare him, and he can't help but answer those that do.
He's terrified, and we know who terrified him. The Wall
Street Journal published a nine hundred word editorial exactly seventy
(01:32):
seven minutes before Trump's post and it is aptly titled
the fourteenth Amendment Trump Panic, aptly because while the journal
usually has the confidence and arrogance and factuality of Marie
Antoinette apocryphaly talking about dessert, this time the lead fascist
say Murdoch, sound really scared themselves. They have resorted to
(01:56):
the argument that even if the fourteenth Amendment doesn't just
apply to people who literally fired a gun at the
flag or those who instr them to, it can't apply
to January sixth because January sixth wasn't a real insurrection,
because h it didn't succeed. Fourteen to three advocates are,
(02:18):
per the journal, quote, willing to put democracy at risk
in order to save it. But US institutions held up
reasonably well despite the strains of the Trump presidency. Even
the events of January sixth, the transfer of power took
place on schedule. The rioters and organizers are being punished,
often severely unquote in other words, what do you mean
(02:40):
attempted murder? What kind of crime is attempted murder? Either
there's murder and the guys dead and you go to jail,
or there isn't murder and you go home. Am I right?
The last thing you want to hear and the last
(03:01):
thing I want to read to you in this first
episode after the long holiday weekend is a Wall Street
Journal editorial. But I must underscore that there are two
main themes to it. The other one is to equate
the January sixth coup attempt with I'm serious about this
protests against the Vietnam War, and they reveal stunning weakness
(03:24):
in the argument. And it's not the coincidence that the
word appears in the headline panic, especially for fascists like
the Journal editorial board. I mean, I keep thinking of
the great Charlie Adams cartoon with the Patent Office officials
sticking a gun out the window towards a packed city
street while the meek looking inventor looks on hat literally
(03:44):
in hands death ray, says the Patent Office man Fiddlesticks.
It doesn't even slow them up insurrection. That's ridiculous. Quote.
Republicans across the government broke with mister Trump and supported
that transfer of power. Yeah, less than half of them,
forty seven of them voted to legitimize his coup attempt.
(04:08):
But because it wasn't two hundred and forty seven of them,
it wasn't a real interaction anyway. Trump does not understand
any of that nuance. He might have seen the piece
and been drawn to the headline because he saw the
words Trump, panic and fourteenth and assumed it had something
to do with his golf game in the fourteenth hole.
(04:30):
But he's very much like a wild animal. He can
smell fear, and the journal piece reeks of fear. And
there's that word panic in the title, and panic in
the last paragraph, in the word panicky in the middle,
and that's all Trump needed to set him off. Plus,
the topic of the fourteenth Amendment and the disqualification clause
(04:50):
fourteen three is finally seeping into the mainstream media from
places like oo here. Adam Schiff said on MSNBC over
the weekend that it should be used against Trump. ABC
News did a long peace on it. Politico humiliated itself
as usual, but it did get it into the discourse.
The sleeper legal fight that could define twenty twenty four
(05:13):
is Trump even eligible to run? Which is a better headline,
I guess than what I would have predicted. This one
weird trick could make Chris Christy, the Republican nominee. Trumpians
hate it the Journal. Notwithstanding, and one last thing to extrapolate,
using their theory that there are no unsuccessful insurrections, I
(05:33):
await their next editorial explaining that the whole Confederacy's slavery
battle between the states thing wasn't really a civil war
because President Lincoln might have been killed but not the government.
It is a good time to note again that the
fourteenth was used a year ago to expel a sitting
local official in New Mexico, and Coy Griffin had been
(05:56):
convicted only of a misdemeanor trespass charge, and he didn't
even try to appeal, and the Republican Party didn't even
try to appeal. Owhen it did keep the vice President
of the Confederacy out of the Senate after he won
election as a Democrat in eighteen sixty six, and Alexander Stevens,
(06:18):
by the way, had been convicted of nothing. He was
arrested for treason on May eleventh, eighteen sixty five, released
from prison in October without even going to trial. Kept
out of the Senate at first by the remaining military
occupation laws in the wake of the Lincoln assassination, and
the third clause was included in the fourteenth Amendment, which
(06:38):
is basically about everything but the rebellion, largely to give
the government a way to legally keep unrepentant Southerners like
Stevens out permanently. It was adopted on July ninth, eighteen
sixty eight, and they used it to keep Stevens out
of the Senate. By eighteen seventy two, when he began
to run for the House, a different spirit was abroad
(06:59):
in the land. A Confederate Amnesty Act passed that May,
and Stevens slipped in and served nearly nine years in
the House, even though all that time he continued to
insist that secession was constitutionally protected and that the war
was all Northern aggression. In nineteen nineteen fourteen three was
(07:19):
used to keep a Congressman elect, Victor Berger of Wisconsin,
literally a member of the Socialist Party, out of the
House because he had been convicted of violating the Espionage
Act during the First World War when he opposed US
entry into it. Burger sued it went to the Supreme Court.
The court said that was not enough, and he was
seated in nineteen twenty one. The point, of course, is
(07:43):
that Stevens was kept out even though he was never
convicted of anything, never even tried for anything, and he
was readmitted only after a congressionally approved amnesty. Fourteen three
was then used to keep Victor Berger out until the
Supreme Court ruled it was his conviction that was excessive,
not his disqualification from serving in the House. And while
(08:04):
a legal bid to knock Marjorie Taylor Green off the
ballot last year because of the fourteenth came to nothing,
it did produce several rulings, largely unresolved that sitting members
of Congress could be expelled for participating in rebellion. And
of course the biggest question is this, do you have
to be convicted of insurrection to be banned from serving
(08:28):
as president? The Supreme Court would, of course rule whichever
way would get Alito and Thomas the most frequent flyer miles,
but otherwise the answer seems to be no. There is
a law on the books written to enforce fourteen three.
It's eighteen US Code two three eighty three quote whoever incites,
sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or
(08:53):
insurrection against the authority of the United States or the
laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort there too, shall
be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than
ten years, or both, and shall be incapable of holding
any office under the United States. So in Code two
three eight three, you can be banned for rebellion, for insurrection,
(09:18):
for assisting in either for inciting it, for giving aid
or comfort to those who did, and best of all,
for setting it on foot setting it on foot. If
any phrase in any statute anywhere better applies to what
Trump did on January sixth than setting rebellion and insurrection
(09:41):
on foot, I'd like to see it. Trump could wind
up being Victor Berger convicted of anything under the umbrella
of the Espionage Act, or he could be Coy Griffin
convicted of misdemeanor trespass. Or he could be Alexander Stevens
convicted of nothing at all. So Trump is not only
panicking about the fourteenth Amendment. He has good reason to.
(10:08):
Of course, Trump could still be convicted of everything, and
if he is, Mark Meadows gets the game ball. We
underestimated two things about Mark Meadows last week, how dumb
he is and how much he convicted himself when he
took the amazingly risky chance of testifying for three hours
(10:30):
in a procedural long shot. Hearing to try to get
himself a whiter jury pool in northern Virginia rather than
the one in Atlanta. Portions of the transcript came out
after the holiday weekend began, and he really is a
complete dope. They asked why if he was acting under
(10:50):
color of his office as a White House official and
the trial should be moved to federal court and not
acting as a mere part of Trump's political gang. Why
if that was the case, he got involved in the
fake electors ski quote. It was mentioned to me that
there was litigation going on and that you had to
have a provisional or conditional elector. And what I didn't
(11:13):
want to happen was for the campaign to prevail in
certain areas and then not have this. Well, first off,
he just mentioned the campaign. He wanted something for the campaign.
That's not his office, that's his campaign. And then the
follow up question of Meadows was why did you not
(11:34):
want that to happen? Answer quote, Well, because I knew
I would get yelled at if we had not. What
follow up question to Meadows by whom? Answer Meadows? Quote
by the President of the United States Uh, yeah, that's
(11:56):
really a bad answer. Mark Meadows just confessed to acting
not on behalf of the president under color of office,
but for the campaign. He used similar words quote for
the campaign and out of fear of getting yelled at,
which means Trump was fully involved in a political scheme,
(12:19):
which also means Trump got Meadows fully involved in a
political scheme, which is a third problem because Meadows had
insisted he did not play quote any role in the
fake elector's scheme, and then he not only admitted it,
but the prosecution also produced an email in which Meadows
had written, we just need to have someone coordinating the
electors for the states. There is an excellent chance now
(12:42):
that the District Attorney of Fulton County adds at least
one perjury charge against Mark Meadows, and he's also not
going to get the trial reassigned to federal court because,
as the impeccable Ryan Goodman of Just Security notes, remember
when the judge asked both sides last week if all
of Meadows's actions had to be under color of his office,
(13:03):
or if it was enough for just one of them
to be. There's an easy to miss reverse image there.
The judge is also saying, oh, by the way, what
does it mean if at least one, and maybe all
but one of Meadows's actions was not under color of
his office, And now we know which one would be
(13:23):
at least one. I have long assumed here that at
the federal level, Mark Meadows either flipped on Trump or
simply gave Jack Smith everything he had on him without
formally agreeing to testify against him. Doing the same in
Georgia must be flying through the mind of his attorney
right now, because Meadows has dug himself a really deep
pit that ends in a penitentiary. And one more note
(13:47):
on this bid to sever trials and go to federal
court in Georgia no matter what the price, and boy,
oh boy, the price turns out to be really high.
This is from Randall Eliason of George Washington University Law
and its lawyer and nerd humor. But it's pretty good
lawyer and nerd humor, and Cheesebroo ends up being tried
by himself in Georgia. The headline should be the Cheese
(14:11):
stands alone. But if he ends up being tried with
Sidney Powell, of course, then it's cheese and Kraken. Cheese
and Kraken. One last note here, the website Decision Desk
(14:31):
HQ first big one to call twenty twenty for Biden,
by the way, had a really good quick write up
erasing one of the most widespread assumptions about the indictments
of Donald Trump. No, they are not helping him in
the polls, either in the Republican primary polls or in
the general election matchup polls. One of the great gnawing
(14:52):
undercurrents of fear in this whole thing, what if prosecuting
him just gets him elected, has no basis in reality. Unquestionably,
Trump has raised money off the prosecutions, but even most
of that seems predicated on the assumption that Trump would
not have raised similar amounts of money in a similar
timeframe anyway. But Decision Desk notes a that a few
(15:14):
weeks ago, Elliott Morris at ABC News wrote Trump's lead
in the twenty twenty four primary hasn't shifted significantly since
the third indictment was unsealed on August first. It then
notes that last week Charles Franklin of the Marquette Law
Poll said even that was wrong. Quoting Franklin, the indictments
of Donald Trump have not boosted him in the polls,
(15:36):
either for favorability or for his support in the GOP primary.
This claim keeps getting repeated as if the data is supported,
it does not unquote, and this, unlike most data, is
not hard to parse. Franklin notes that any growth in
Trump's lead in the GOP race has had nothing to
do with him, or the indictments or anything pertaining to him.
(16:00):
This is all about Desantus's numbers collapsing. Charles Franklin, Marquette Lawpole. Again,
there has been very little trend in Trump's primary vote unquote.
Also of interest here after this past weekend, anybody got
(16:23):
any remaining questions about Elon musk Oh. He's pro free
speech and anti anti Semitism. And then he says the
reason Twitter advertising is crashed is the Anti Defamation League.
And then there's all sorts of things about what the
Anti Defamation did to conspire against him, So he's going
(16:43):
to sue them. Have fun in discovering nitwit. Also, all's
well at CNN. The new guy starts it a month and
four days, so this is the golden time for him,
when nothing bad is his fault and anything good is
a reflection of his wisdom, and don't pay any attention
(17:03):
to that lible incident from the BBC when he leaned
over in the middle of a friendly conversation with a
BBC colleague and suddenly bit the guy in the arm
hard enough to leave Marx. This is CNN. Our new
boss may be a vampire. That's next. This is countdown.
(17:25):
This is countdown with Keith Oberman. Pose scripts to the news,
some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions, date lines,
CNN World Headquarters, Hudson Yards, New York. Well, the Chris
lickt era is just a memory now and CNN is
(17:47):
in the wys and comforting hands a former BBC in
New York Times chief Mark Thompson, and the controversies and
the biting pain of the last year are gone. And
wait what, a former BBC reporter and producer said, Mark
Thompson once bit him in the newsroom, and the BBC
confirmed it but claimed it was horse play. I'm going
(18:08):
to avoid getting too deep in the woods here, so
let me just read some of the original story by
Richard Kay in Britain's tabloid The Daily Mail from April thirteenth,
twenty twelve. Quote he has always enjoyed a reputation as
a controversial figure, but last night an extraordinary story about
(18:29):
how BBC Director General Mark Thompson bit a newsroom colleague
was sweeping the corridors of the corporation. The bizarre, apparently
unprovoked attack was on senior television journalist Anthony Massey. Thompson's
forty four year old victims suffered clear bite marks through
his shirt and immediately reported the incident. Their bosses were
(18:52):
so determined to hush up the affair, however, that Massey
was promptly sent to Rwanda on a perilous assignment, and Thompson,
then a rising star, was allowed to continue his sore
career unhindered. The story has only become public thanks to
a leaked email exchange between Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman and Massey,
(19:14):
in which Pasman observes that the Director General is quote
quite clearly insane unquote. A spokesman for Thompson last Night
confirmed the story but claimed it was quote horseplay. The
tale began to make its way into the public domain
when Paxman emailed Massey, who is now on the BBC's
Foreign newsdesk but long worked in Bosnia and elsewhere as
(19:37):
Kate eighty's producer. As an aside, I don't have any
idea who Kate eighty is. I probably should have googled her.
Paxman asked, I've got to interview Mark Thompson tomorrow. Is
it true that he wants bit you? Unquote? Massey replied,
too late for the big interview, but gave full detail.
It is absolutely true, he said. It was nineteen eighty
(19:59):
eight when he was the newly appointed editor of the
nine o'clock News, and I was a home news whose organizer. Again,
I probably should have googled that home news organizer. It
was nine fifteen in the morning. According to the victim,
I went up to his desk to talk about some story.
I was standing next to him on his right, and
(20:19):
he was sitting reading his horoscope in the Daily Star.
I always remember that detail. Before I could say a word,
he suddenly turned, snarled, and sank his teeth into my
left upper arm, leaving marks through the shirt but not
drawing blood. It hurt. I pulled my arm out of
his jaws like a stick out of the jaws of
(20:42):
a labrador. The key thing is we didn't have a
row first or even speak, and I had never had
any dispute with him. He was just recently arrived in
the newsroom and I hardly knew him. He just bit
me in the arm for no reason, without any warning
or preamble. I don't think it was personal, the victim continued,
Something turned in his brain, and anyone who had been
(21:04):
standing there at that moment would have been bitten. Linda
from the t Bar, the BBC chairman, Keith Graves, anyone again.
I should have googled those people. It just happened to
be me. Thompson didn't apologize or explain, so I went
to complain to my then boss, Chris Kramer. All Kramer
said was, quote, this whole place is full of effing
(21:26):
headbangers unquote, which was a fair point and indeed is
still true, but didn't help. Somehow. I wanted to bring
the whole BBC disciplinary process down on Thompson's head, but
Kramer was desperate for that not to happen. So I
got sent abroad on some story for a month or so,
and when I came back, it had lost momentum and
I never pursued it. Massey added that quote, in those days,
(21:49):
it seemed quite acceptable for senior people to bite junior colleagues. Unquote,
The BBC said, quote Mark did bite him, but it
wasn't intended to hurt him. He thought he was doing
something funny. When he was later told that Anthony thought
he had gone for him, Mark went up and said
sorry and tried to make amends. Mark does remember the
(22:11):
incident because of your members, Anthony took it the wrong way.
It was horseplay. Unquote Richard Kay in the Daily Mail
of April thirteenth, twenty twelve, the new chairman of CNN,
everybody clearly management once bitten twice shy, So the vetting
(22:33):
process is still top right over there. Memo to CNN
staff and my friends who still worked there. If you're
in an argument with your new boss, Mark Thompson, whatever
you do, do not say Mark bite me. Still ahead
(23:05):
on countdown, ah back to school September in New York.
It's opened with a real feel of ninety two degrees,
and still I cannot and will never shake the sense
that it is now winter because this is the month's
school starts. Moreover, this month of September never starts without
me thinking of the superstar Cornell History professor who once
(23:25):
nearly failed all of us in his class because the
New York Football Giants lost a game things I promised
not to tell. Coming up first time for the daily
roundup of the miss grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects
specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world. The
Bronze Matt the sound of one hand slapping slap and
(23:46):
his wife Mercedes, and Mercedes is either an idiot or
very very broad minded. The Daily Beast reports that after
a bunch of employees resigned in protest from his little
fascist insurrectionist seapack last year, that spring of twenty twenty two,
the Slaps brought in a priest to see pack headquarters
(24:06):
and conducted an exorcism. And this was before we found
out about the allegations of the Herschel Walker campaign staffer
that Schlapp had groped him holy water, medallions, incantations, everything
but biting some guy on the arm. We'll never know
if Schlap used either of the money quotes from the
movie by the way, on the Herschel staffer. Is there
someone inside you and the power of Christ compels you?
(24:31):
Or did he just sort of free form on it. Hey,
did I tell you about the exorcism in my pants?
The runner's up Saint Mary's Ukrainian Catholic Cemetery in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. Yeah,
there's an invisible thread stretching through today's worsts. Now, this
is a topic fraught with political implications, but that does
not make this story any less true nor any less troublesome.
(24:54):
The cemetery contains, per the Philadelphia Inquirer, a quote large
stone cross honoring Nazi collaborators. That's right, a monument on
on us soil honoring Nazi collaborators, using the tortured logic
that since some Ukrainians fought with the Nazis late in
the Second World War against the Russians, they were kind
(25:18):
of okay. This monument near Philadelphia was erected sometime in
the nineties to honor the Galitzian unit that fought with
the SS. The paper quotes Ukrainian history expert John Paul Himpke.
The unit quote helped suppress the Slovak uprising. It was
involved in atrocities against Poles and Slovaks. It welcomed into
(25:38):
its ranks many perpetrators of the ethnic cleansing against the
Polish population and of the Holocaust. It propagated anti Semitism
and seems to have been involved in a roundup of
Jews in Brody in nineteen forty four. This was one
of the Ukrainian units condemned by Ukrainian President Zelenski in
twenty twenty one, and we've got a monument dedicated to
(26:02):
them near Philly. And by the way, it's one of
apparently forty two monuments honoring Nazis, usually individual Nazis on
American soil, which brings us, via the invisible thread to
today's winner. Elon Musk quote. To be super clear, I'm
pro free speech, he tweeted at twelve thirty yesterday, but
(26:24):
against anti semitism of any kind. This was so untrue
that within half an hour Musk, who had spent the
weekend amplifying the hashtag ban the ADL, had gone full
anti Semitic trope. Quote. Since the acquisition, he means of
Twitter by him, the ADL has been trying to kill
(26:45):
this platform by falsely accusing it and me of being
anti Semitic and then quote. Our US advertising revenue is
still down sixty percent, primarily due to pressure on advertisers
by ADL that's what advertisers tell us. So they almost
succeeded in killing x slash Twitter exclamation point unquote. So
(27:11):
how many different anti Jewish cliches and tropes can you
put in one paragraph? This might be the record here
by Musk. Let's see, you got one. The Jews control
the media in here. You've got two. The Jews have
undue influence over business. You got three. The Jews control
all the money. You've got four. It's all the Jews fault.
(27:33):
And best of all, you've got five. There's a Jewish
conspiracy against fill in the blank, Elon Musk. Well, Elon,
if you're not an anti Semite, you better have a
really good alternative explanation, like insanity or acute physical illness,
because guess what, you, Musk are behaving exactly the way
(27:55):
an anti Semite behaves, and the rest of us pretty
much have to respond the way we would to an
anti Semite who was running an anti Smit website. Elon
Musk two days, worst person in the world. Finally to
(28:29):
the number one story on the countdown and my favorite topic,
me and Things I promised not to tell So September again,
I literally don't know anybody who ever shakes the childhood
dread of back to school days in August and the
beginning of September. Third grade, high school, college doesn't matter,
forty four degrees, ninety four degrees, doesn't matter. It's September,
(28:53):
and by now. The dread, even if you liked school,
remains until the day you die, especially if it invokes
memories like the one I have about the I nearly
failed a for credit course in college because of a
fumble in a professional football game. Forty four years ago.
(29:14):
This week, I actually walked reluctantly but proudly into a
class at Cornell University, if I remember correctly. To get
into Professor Joel Silby's nineteenth Century American History course eight
credits spanning two semesters, I had to get special permission
from the History department because I was not a history major.
I just took all the history classes they would let me,
(29:34):
and this was one of the best ones. And I
remember Professor Silby's first lecture and the accent and the
mannerisms that quickly identified him not only as 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,
(29:55):
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 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
(30:15):
usually that meant you could figure out all the teams
in all the sports that had the slightest chance of succeeding,
and all the teams in all the sports that did not.
And the New York Football Giants did not. I want
you to know, I grade the papers, not the teaching
assistance me and I happened to be a lifelong, therefore
long suffering fan of the New York Football Giants. I
(30:37):
saw my first Giants game in nineteen forty five, and
over the years I happened to have developed this habit
of grading your papers on Sunday afternoons and evenings right
after I watch my New York Football Giants. So, to
some degree great or small, your grade will depend on
how well the New York Football Giants do in this
(30:57):
nineteen seventy eight National Football League season. One hundred and
ninety nine of Joel Silbey's students laughed. I emitted a
low moan, since they had gone to five NFL championship
games in the six seasons ending in nineteen sixty three
and lost all five. By the way, the Giants had
(31:18):
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
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
(31:41):
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 on Thursday the sixteenth. He could
actually read them all after the Giants Eagles game that night.
(32:04):
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 Sylvie was very happy,
and he often recreated highlights of his glorious Giants pleasing success,
and he was furiously fanboying on the new quarterback they'd
(32:25):
brought in from the Canadian League, Joe Pisarchick. 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 with this. The Giants lost the next three games,
and then our term papers were due on November sixteenth,
and Joel Sylvie turned morose. And I was at the
(32:48):
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 Philadelphia Eagles fourteen to nothing. After the first quarter.
Pisarcik threw two touchdownses. After the third quarter, it was
still seventeen to six Giants. Then the Eagles scored and
(33:09):
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.
The Giants led seventeen to thirteen. The crowd at the
radio station was ecstatic. I was even more ecstatic. All
(33:30):
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 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
(33:51):
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 Joe Pisarchik had to
do was fall on the damn ball again and it
was over. However, on the Giant's sideline, offensive coordinator Bob
(34:14):
Gibson decided that the safe play, the winning play, was
for Jopisarchic to hand the ball off again. To Larry Zanka.
Now that might have been the right play, only Bob
Gibson and everybody 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
(34:36):
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. The ball bounced once off the turf and
directly into the hands of Philadelphia cornerback Herman Edwards. I
(34:58):
continued to scream there was nobody near Edwards, and he
scooted twenty six yards into the end zone, and the
Giants lost the day 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 Sylby shutting off the TV, grabbing our papers and
sentencing us to hell, and I continued to scream. Our
(35:24):
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. 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
(35:46):
far more prepared and astute than myself, most of them
history majors, looking at their grades and blanching visibly. One
girl cried, a C, really a C. Professor Joel Sylby
said much of our grade would depend on how well
the New York Football Giants did in that nineteen seven
the eight national football season, and my god, they had
(36:07):
just sustained a loss so bad that it is still
talked about to this day. My classmates did not listen,
and I only am escaped 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
(36:31):
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 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
(36:52):
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 to greet me with applause, were
Cornell's official historian and former Professor Glenn alt Schuller and
their very famous history professor Walter LaFeber, and I swear
Professor Joel Silby, and they were fans of mine. Of
(37:16):
course I could not leave well enough alone. After a
few minutes of very pleasant conversation with mister alt Schuller
and Professor Lea 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
(37:38):
smiled and said, yes, yes it is. And then Joel
Silby looked off into the 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
at me and smiled, Keith, you won't believe this, but
(37:59):
I actually graded those papers pretty fairly, and I didn't
follow through on my original old plan. After 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 the favor gulped Oh,
(38:21):
said Sylby. It was so great to be a professor
back then. I laughed so much I had 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 examine that class
(38:43):
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, 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,
(39:03):
And it was just silent, 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
in nineteen fifty six. So guess what, there's no final exam.
And nobody moved, so I said it again, there's no
final exam. Go home, go study for something else. Y'all
(39:24):
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 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.
(39:46):
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, well, I am buying you lunch.
(40:10):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown has come to you from our
studios high on top the sports Capsule building here in
New York. Here are the credits. Most of the music arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schhanel.
They are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards
by John Phillip Schanel, Guitars based in drums by Brian Ray,
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
(40:34):
unperformed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music
is the Olberman theme from ESPN two and it was
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical
comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Howard Feynman, and everything
else was pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this
the nine hundred and seventy third day since Donald Trump's
(40:55):
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Convict him while we still can. The next
schedule countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins has the news warrant till then.
I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(41:20):
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. Oh
somebody told Trump about the fourteenth Amendment last night and
(00:25):
he's panicking. Quote. Almost all legal scholars have voiced opinions
that the fourteenth Amendment has no legal basis or standing
relative to the upcoming twenty twenty four presidential election. The
insurrectionists who try to overthrow the government and talks about
terminating the constitution lied at seven fourteen Eastern last night.
(00:48):
Like election interference, it's just another trick being used by
the radical left, communists, Marxists, and fascists to again steal
an election. Who's going to tell him that it was
passed by the Republicans and that the most famous politician
it was used to disqualify in the nineteenth century was
a Democrat, and the most famous politician it was used
(01:09):
to disqualify in the twentieth century was a Socialist Party
member Make America. Trump does not answer threats that don't
scare him, and he can't help but answer those that do.
He's terrified, and we know who terrified him. The Wall
Street Journal published a nine hundred word editorial exactly seventy
(01:32):
seven minutes before Trump's post and it is aptly titled
the fourteenth Amendment Trump Panic, aptly because while the journal
usually has the confidence and arrogance and factuality of Marie
Antoinette apocryphaly talking about dessert, this time the lead fascist
say Murdoch, sound really scared themselves. They have resorted to
(01:56):
the argument that even if the fourteenth Amendment doesn't just
apply to people who literally fired a gun at the
flag or those who instr them to, it can't apply
to January sixth because January sixth wasn't a real insurrection,
because h it didn't succeed. Fourteen to three advocates are,
(02:18):
per the journal, quote, willing to put democracy at risk
in order to save it. But US institutions held up
reasonably well despite the strains of the Trump presidency. Even
the events of January sixth, the transfer of power took
place on schedule. The rioters and organizers are being punished,
often severely unquote in other words, what do you mean
(02:40):
attempted murder? What kind of crime is attempted murder? Either
there's murder and the guys dead and you go to jail,
or there isn't murder and you go home. Am I right?
The last thing you want to hear and the last
(03:01):
thing I want to read to you in this first
episode after the long holiday weekend is a Wall Street
Journal editorial. But I must underscore that there are two
main themes to it. The other one is to equate
the January sixth coup attempt with I'm serious about this
protests against the Vietnam War, and they reveal stunning weakness
(03:24):
in the argument. And it's not the coincidence that the
word appears in the headline panic, especially for fascists like
the Journal editorial board. I mean, I keep thinking of
the great Charlie Adams cartoon with the Patent Office officials
sticking a gun out the window towards a packed city
street while the meek looking inventor looks on hat literally
(03:44):
in hands death ray, says the Patent Office man Fiddlesticks.
It doesn't even slow them up insurrection. That's ridiculous. Quote.
Republicans across the government broke with mister Trump and supported
that transfer of power. Yeah, less than half of them,
forty seven of them voted to legitimize his coup attempt.
(04:08):
But because it wasn't two hundred and forty seven of them,
it wasn't a real interaction anyway. Trump does not understand
any of that nuance. He might have seen the piece
and been drawn to the headline because he saw the
words Trump, panic and fourteenth and assumed it had something
to do with his golf game in the fourteenth hole.
(04:30):
But he's very much like a wild animal. He can
smell fear, and the journal piece reeks of fear. And
there's that word panic in the title, and panic in
the last paragraph, in the word panicky in the middle,
and that's all Trump needed to set him off. Plus,
the topic of the fourteenth Amendment and the disqualification clause
(04:50):
fourteen three is finally seeping into the mainstream media from
places like oo here. Adam Schiff said on MSNBC over
the weekend that it should be used against Trump. ABC
News did a long peace on it. Politico humiliated itself
as usual, but it did get it into the discourse.
The sleeper legal fight that could define twenty twenty four
(05:13):
is Trump even eligible to run? Which is a better headline,
I guess than what I would have predicted. This one
weird trick could make Chris Christy, the Republican nominee. Trumpians
hate it the Journal. Notwithstanding, and one last thing to extrapolate,
using their theory that there are no unsuccessful insurrections, I
(05:33):
await their next editorial explaining that the whole Confederacy's slavery
battle between the states thing wasn't really a civil war
because President Lincoln might have been killed but not the government.
It is a good time to note again that the
fourteenth was used a year ago to expel a sitting
local official in New Mexico, and Coy Griffin had been
(05:56):
convicted only of a misdemeanor trespass charge, and he didn't
even try to appeal, and the Republican Party didn't even
try to appeal. Owhen it did keep the vice President
of the Confederacy out of the Senate after he won
election as a Democrat in eighteen sixty six, and Alexander Stevens,
(06:18):
by the way, had been convicted of nothing. He was
arrested for treason on May eleventh, eighteen sixty five, released
from prison in October without even going to trial. Kept
out of the Senate at first by the remaining military
occupation laws in the wake of the Lincoln assassination, and
the third clause was included in the fourteenth Amendment, which
(06:38):
is basically about everything but the rebellion, largely to give
the government a way to legally keep unrepentant Southerners like
Stevens out permanently. It was adopted on July ninth, eighteen
sixty eight, and they used it to keep Stevens out
of the Senate. By eighteen seventy two, when he began
to run for the House, a different spirit was abroad
(06:59):
in the land. A Confederate Amnesty Act passed that May,
and Stevens slipped in and served nearly nine years in
the House, even though all that time he continued to
insist that secession was constitutionally protected and that the war
was all Northern aggression. In nineteen nineteen fourteen three was
(07:19):
used to keep a Congressman elect, Victor Berger of Wisconsin,
literally a member of the Socialist Party, out of the
House because he had been convicted of violating the Espionage
Act during the First World War when he opposed US
entry into it. Burger sued it went to the Supreme Court.
The court said that was not enough, and he was
seated in nineteen twenty one. The point, of course, is
(07:43):
that Stevens was kept out even though he was never
convicted of anything, never even tried for anything, and he
was readmitted only after a congressionally approved amnesty. Fourteen three
was then used to keep Victor Berger out until the
Supreme Court ruled it was his conviction that was excessive,
not his disqualification from serving in the House. And while
(08:04):
a legal bid to knock Marjorie Taylor Green off the
ballot last year because of the fourteenth came to nothing,
it did produce several rulings, largely unresolved that sitting members
of Congress could be expelled for participating in rebellion. And
of course the biggest question is this, do you have
to be convicted of insurrection to be banned from serving
(08:28):
as president? The Supreme Court would, of course rule whichever
way would get Alito and Thomas the most frequent flyer miles,
but otherwise the answer seems to be no. There is
a law on the books written to enforce fourteen three.
It's eighteen US Code two three eighty three quote whoever incites,
sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or
(08:53):
insurrection against the authority of the United States or the
laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort there too, shall
be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than
ten years, or both, and shall be incapable of holding
any office under the United States. So in Code two
three eight three, you can be banned for rebellion, for insurrection,
(09:18):
for assisting in either for inciting it, for giving aid
or comfort to those who did, and best of all,
for setting it on foot setting it on foot. If
any phrase in any statute anywhere better applies to what
Trump did on January sixth than setting rebellion and insurrection
(09:41):
on foot, I'd like to see it. Trump could wind
up being Victor Berger convicted of anything under the umbrella
of the Espionage Act, or he could be Coy Griffin
convicted of misdemeanor trespass. Or he could be Alexander Stevens
convicted of nothing at all. So Trump is not only
panicking about the fourteenth Amendment. He has good reason to.
(10:08):
Of course, Trump could still be convicted of everything, and
if he is, Mark Meadows gets the game ball. We
underestimated two things about Mark Meadows last week, how dumb
he is and how much he convicted himself when he
took the amazingly risky chance of testifying for three hours
(10:30):
in a procedural long shot. Hearing to try to get
himself a whiter jury pool in northern Virginia rather than
the one in Atlanta. Portions of the transcript came out
after the holiday weekend began, and he really is a
complete dope. They asked why if he was acting under
(10:50):
color of his office as a White House official and
the trial should be moved to federal court and not
acting as a mere part of Trump's political gang. Why
if that was the case, he got involved in the
fake electors ski quote. It was mentioned to me that
there was litigation going on and that you had to
have a provisional or conditional elector. And what I didn't
(11:13):
want to happen was for the campaign to prevail in
certain areas and then not have this. Well, first off,
he just mentioned the campaign. He wanted something for the campaign.
That's not his office, that's his campaign. And then the
follow up question of Meadows was why did you not
(11:34):
want that to happen? Answer quote, Well, because I knew
I would get yelled at if we had not. What
follow up question to Meadows by whom? Answer Meadows? Quote
by the President of the United States Uh, yeah, that's
(11:56):
really a bad answer. Mark Meadows just confessed to acting
not on behalf of the president under color of office,
but for the campaign. He used similar words quote for
the campaign and out of fear of getting yelled at,
which means Trump was fully involved in a political scheme,
(12:19):
which also means Trump got Meadows fully involved in a
political scheme, which is a third problem because Meadows had
insisted he did not play quote any role in the
fake elector's scheme, and then he not only admitted it,
but the prosecution also produced an email in which Meadows
had written, we just need to have someone coordinating the
electors for the states. There is an excellent chance now
(12:42):
that the District Attorney of Fulton County adds at least
one perjury charge against Mark Meadows, and he's also not
going to get the trial reassigned to federal court because,
as the impeccable Ryan Goodman of Just Security notes, remember
when the judge asked both sides last week if all
of Meadows's actions had to be under color of his office,
(13:03):
or if it was enough for just one of them
to be. There's an easy to miss reverse image there.
The judge is also saying, oh, by the way, what
does it mean if at least one, and maybe all
but one of Meadows's actions was not under color of
his office, And now we know which one would be
(13:23):
at least one. I have long assumed here that at
the federal level, Mark Meadows either flipped on Trump or
simply gave Jack Smith everything he had on him without
formally agreeing to testify against him. Doing the same in
Georgia must be flying through the mind of his attorney
right now, because Meadows has dug himself a really deep
pit that ends in a penitentiary. And one more note
(13:47):
on this bid to sever trials and go to federal
court in Georgia no matter what the price, and boy,
oh boy, the price turns out to be really high.
This is from Randall Eliason of George Washington University Law
and its lawyer and nerd humor. But it's pretty good
lawyer and nerd humor, and Cheesebroo ends up being tried
by himself in Georgia. The headline should be the Cheese
(14:11):
stands alone. But if he ends up being tried with
Sidney Powell, of course, then it's cheese and Kraken. Cheese
and Kraken. One last note here, the website Decision Desk
(14:31):
HQ first big one to call twenty twenty for Biden,
by the way, had a really good quick write up
erasing one of the most widespread assumptions about the indictments
of Donald Trump. No, they are not helping him in
the polls, either in the Republican primary polls or in
the general election matchup polls. One of the great gnawing
(14:52):
undercurrents of fear in this whole thing, what if prosecuting
him just gets him elected, has no basis in reality. Unquestionably,
Trump has raised money off the prosecutions, but even most
of that seems predicated on the assumption that Trump would
not have raised similar amounts of money in a similar
timeframe anyway. But Decision Desk notes a that a few
(15:14):
weeks ago, Elliott Morris at ABC News wrote Trump's lead
in the twenty twenty four primary hasn't shifted significantly since
the third indictment was unsealed on August first. It then
notes that last week Charles Franklin of the Marquette Law
Poll said even that was wrong. Quoting Franklin, the indictments
of Donald Trump have not boosted him in the polls,
(15:36):
either for favorability or for his support in the GOP primary.
This claim keeps getting repeated as if the data is supported,
it does not unquote, and this, unlike most data, is
not hard to parse. Franklin notes that any growth in
Trump's lead in the GOP race has had nothing to
do with him, or the indictments or anything pertaining to him.
(16:00):
This is all about Desantus's numbers collapsing. Charles Franklin, Marquette Lawpole. Again,
there has been very little trend in Trump's primary vote unquote.
Also of interest here after this past weekend, anybody got
(16:23):
any remaining questions about Elon musk Oh. He's pro free
speech and anti anti Semitism. And then he says the
reason Twitter advertising is crashed is the Anti Defamation League.
And then there's all sorts of things about what the
Anti Defamation did to conspire against him, So he's going
(16:43):
to sue them. Have fun in discovering nitwit. Also, all's
well at CNN. The new guy starts it a month and
four days, so this is the golden time for him,
when nothing bad is his fault and anything good is
a reflection of his wisdom, and don't pay any attention
(17:03):
to that lible incident from the BBC when he leaned
over in the middle of a friendly conversation with a
BBC colleague and suddenly bit the guy in the arm
hard enough to leave Marx. This is CNN. Our new
boss may be a vampire. That's next. This is countdown.
(17:25):
This is countdown with Keith Oberman. Pose scripts to the news,
some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions, date lines,
CNN World Headquarters, Hudson Yards, New York. Well, the Chris
lickt era is just a memory now and CNN is
(17:47):
in the wys and comforting hands a former BBC in
New York Times chief Mark Thompson, and the controversies and
the biting pain of the last year are gone. And
wait what, a former BBC reporter and producer said, Mark
Thompson once bit him in the newsroom, and the BBC
confirmed it but claimed it was horse play. I'm going
(18:08):
to avoid getting too deep in the woods here, so
let me just read some of the original story by
Richard Kay in Britain's tabloid The Daily Mail from April thirteenth,
twenty twelve. Quote he has always enjoyed a reputation as
a controversial figure, but last night an extraordinary story about
(18:29):
how BBC Director General Mark Thompson bit a newsroom colleague
was sweeping the corridors of the corporation. The bizarre, apparently
unprovoked attack was on senior television journalist Anthony Massey. Thompson's
forty four year old victims suffered clear bite marks through
his shirt and immediately reported the incident. Their bosses were
(18:52):
so determined to hush up the affair, however, that Massey
was promptly sent to Rwanda on a perilous assignment, and Thompson,
then a rising star, was allowed to continue his sore
career unhindered. The story has only become public thanks to
a leaked email exchange between Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman and Massey,
(19:14):
in which Pasman observes that the Director General is quote
quite clearly insane unquote. A spokesman for Thompson last Night
confirmed the story but claimed it was quote horseplay. The
tale began to make its way into the public domain
when Paxman emailed Massey, who is now on the BBC's
Foreign newsdesk but long worked in Bosnia and elsewhere as
(19:37):
Kate eighty's producer. As an aside, I don't have any
idea who Kate eighty is. I probably should have googled her.
Paxman asked, I've got to interview Mark Thompson tomorrow. Is
it true that he wants bit you? Unquote? Massey replied,
too late for the big interview, but gave full detail.
It is absolutely true, he said. It was nineteen eighty
(19:59):
eight when he was the newly appointed editor of the
nine o'clock News, and I was a home news whose organizer. Again,
I probably should have googled that home news organizer. It
was nine fifteen in the morning. According to the victim,
I went up to his desk to talk about some story.
I was standing next to him on his right, and
(20:19):
he was sitting reading his horoscope in the Daily Star.
I always remember that detail. Before I could say a word,
he suddenly turned, snarled, and sank his teeth into my
left upper arm, leaving marks through the shirt but not
drawing blood. It hurt. I pulled my arm out of
his jaws like a stick out of the jaws of
(20:42):
a labrador. The key thing is we didn't have a
row first or even speak, and I had never had
any dispute with him. He was just recently arrived in
the newsroom and I hardly knew him. He just bit
me in the arm for no reason, without any warning
or preamble. I don't think it was personal, the victim continued,
Something turned in his brain, and anyone who had been
(21:04):
standing there at that moment would have been bitten. Linda
from the t Bar, the BBC chairman, Keith Graves, anyone again.
I should have googled those people. It just happened to
be me. Thompson didn't apologize or explain, so I went
to complain to my then boss, Chris Kramer. All Kramer
said was, quote, this whole place is full of effing
(21:26):
headbangers unquote, which was a fair point and indeed is
still true, but didn't help. Somehow. I wanted to bring
the whole BBC disciplinary process down on Thompson's head, but
Kramer was desperate for that not to happen. So I
got sent abroad on some story for a month or so,
and when I came back, it had lost momentum and
I never pursued it. Massey added that quote, in those days,
(21:49):
it seemed quite acceptable for senior people to bite junior colleagues. Unquote,
The BBC said, quote Mark did bite him, but it
wasn't intended to hurt him. He thought he was doing
something funny. When he was later told that Anthony thought
he had gone for him, Mark went up and said
sorry and tried to make amends. Mark does remember the
(22:11):
incident because of your members, Anthony took it the wrong way.
It was horseplay. Unquote Richard Kay in the Daily Mail
of April thirteenth, twenty twelve, the new chairman of CNN,
everybody clearly management once bitten twice shy, So the vetting
(22:33):
process is still top right over there. Memo to CNN
staff and my friends who still worked there. If you're
in an argument with your new boss, Mark Thompson, whatever
you do, do not say Mark bite me. Still ahead
(23:05):
on countdown, ah back to school September in New York.
It's opened with a real feel of ninety two degrees,
and still I cannot and will never shake the sense
that it is now winter because this is the month's
school starts. Moreover, this month of September never starts without
me thinking of the superstar Cornell History professor who once
(23:25):
nearly failed all of us in his class because the
New York Football Giants lost a game things I promised
not to tell. Coming up first time for the daily
roundup of the miss grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects
specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world. The
Bronze Matt the sound of one hand slapping slap and
(23:46):
his wife Mercedes, and Mercedes is either an idiot or
very very broad minded. The Daily Beast reports that after
a bunch of employees resigned in protest from his little
fascist insurrectionist seapack last year, that spring of twenty twenty two,
the Slaps brought in a priest to see pack headquarters
(24:06):
and conducted an exorcism. And this was before we found
out about the allegations of the Herschel Walker campaign staffer
that Schlapp had groped him holy water, medallions, incantations, everything
but biting some guy on the arm. We'll never know
if Schlap used either of the money quotes from the
movie by the way, on the Herschel staffer. Is there
someone inside you and the power of Christ compels you?
(24:31):
Or did he just sort of free form on it. Hey,
did I tell you about the exorcism in my pants?
The runner's up Saint Mary's Ukrainian Catholic Cemetery in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. Yeah,
there's an invisible thread stretching through today's worsts. Now, this
is a topic fraught with political implications, but that does
not make this story any less true nor any less troublesome.
(24:54):
The cemetery contains, per the Philadelphia Inquirer, a quote large
stone cross honoring Nazi collaborators. That's right, a monument on
on us soil honoring Nazi collaborators, using the tortured logic
that since some Ukrainians fought with the Nazis late in
the Second World War against the Russians, they were kind
(25:18):
of okay. This monument near Philadelphia was erected sometime in
the nineties to honor the Galitzian unit that fought with
the SS. The paper quotes Ukrainian history expert John Paul Himpke.
The unit quote helped suppress the Slovak uprising. It was
involved in atrocities against Poles and Slovaks. It welcomed into
(25:38):
its ranks many perpetrators of the ethnic cleansing against the
Polish population and of the Holocaust. It propagated anti Semitism
and seems to have been involved in a roundup of
Jews in Brody in nineteen forty four. This was one
of the Ukrainian units condemned by Ukrainian President Zelenski in
twenty twenty one, and we've got a monument dedicated to
(26:02):
them near Philly. And by the way, it's one of
apparently forty two monuments honoring Nazis, usually individual Nazis on
American soil, which brings us, via the invisible thread to
today's winner. Elon Musk quote. To be super clear, I'm
pro free speech, he tweeted at twelve thirty yesterday, but
(26:24):
against anti semitism of any kind. This was so untrue
that within half an hour Musk, who had spent the
weekend amplifying the hashtag ban the ADL, had gone full
anti Semitic trope. Quote. Since the acquisition, he means of
Twitter by him, the ADL has been trying to kill
(26:45):
this platform by falsely accusing it and me of being
anti Semitic and then quote. Our US advertising revenue is
still down sixty percent, primarily due to pressure on advertisers
by ADL that's what advertisers tell us. So they almost
succeeded in killing x slash Twitter exclamation point unquote. So
(27:11):
how many different anti Jewish cliches and tropes can you
put in one paragraph? This might be the record here
by Musk. Let's see, you got one. The Jews control
the media in here. You've got two. The Jews have
undue influence over business. You got three. The Jews control
all the money. You've got four. It's all the Jews fault.
(27:33):
And best of all, you've got five. There's a Jewish
conspiracy against fill in the blank, Elon Musk. Well, Elon,
if you're not an anti Semite, you better have a
really good alternative explanation, like insanity or acute physical illness,
because guess what, you, Musk are behaving exactly the way
(27:55):
an anti Semite behaves, and the rest of us pretty
much have to respond the way we would to an
anti Semite who was running an anti Smit website. Elon
Musk two days, worst person in the world. Finally to
(28:29):
the number one story on the countdown and my favorite topic,
me and Things I promised not to tell So September again,
I literally don't know anybody who ever shakes the childhood
dread of back to school days in August and the
beginning of September. Third grade, high school, college doesn't matter,
forty four degrees, ninety four degrees, doesn't matter. It's September,
(28:53):
and by now. The dread, even if you liked school,
remains until the day you die, especially if it invokes
memories like the one I have about the I nearly
failed a for credit course in college because of a
fumble in a professional football game. Forty four years ago.
(29:14):
This week, I actually walked reluctantly but proudly into a
class at Cornell University, if I remember correctly. To get
into Professor Joel Silby's nineteenth Century American History course eight
credits spanning two semesters, I had to get special permission
from the History department because I was not a history major.
I just took all the history classes they would let me,
(29:34):
and this was one of the best ones. And I
remember Professor Silby's first lecture and the accent and the
mannerisms that quickly identified him not only as 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,
(29:55):
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 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
(30:15):
usually that meant you could figure out all the teams
in all the sports that had the slightest chance of succeeding,
and all the teams in all the sports that did not.
And the New York Football Giants did not. I want
you to know, I grade the papers, not the teaching
assistance me and I happened to be a lifelong, therefore
long suffering fan of the New York Football Giants. I
(30:37):
saw my first Giants game in nineteen forty five, and
over the years I happened to have developed this habit
of grading your papers on Sunday afternoons and evenings right
after I watch my New York Football Giants. So, to
some degree great or small, your grade will depend on
how well the New York Football Giants do in this
(30:57):
nineteen seventy eight National Football League season. One hundred and
ninety nine of Joel Silbey's students laughed. I emitted a
low moan, since they had gone to five NFL championship
games in the six seasons ending in nineteen sixty three
and lost all five. By the way, the Giants had
(31:18):
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
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
(31:41):
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 on Thursday the sixteenth. He could
actually read them all after the Giants Eagles game that night.
(32:04):
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 Sylvie was very happy,
and he often recreated highlights of his glorious Giants pleasing success,
and he was furiously fanboying on the new quarterback they'd
(32:25):
brought in from the Canadian League, Joe Pisarchick. 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 with this. The Giants lost the next three games,
and then our term papers were due on November sixteenth,
and Joel Sylvie turned morose. And I was at the
(32:48):
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 Philadelphia Eagles fourteen to nothing. After the first quarter.
Pisarcik threw two touchdownses. After the third quarter, it was
still seventeen to six Giants. Then the Eagles scored and
(33:09):
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.
The Giants led seventeen to thirteen. The crowd at the
radio station was ecstatic. I was even more ecstatic. All
(33:30):
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 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
(33:51):
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 Joe Pisarchik had to
do was fall on the damn ball again and it
was over. However, on the Giant's sideline, offensive coordinator Bob
(34:14):
Gibson decided that the safe play, the winning play, was
for Jopisarchic to hand the ball off again. To Larry Zanka.
Now that might have been the right play, only Bob
Gibson and everybody 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
(34:36):
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. The ball bounced once off the turf and
directly into the hands of Philadelphia cornerback Herman Edwards. I
(34:58):
continued to scream there was nobody near Edwards, and he
scooted twenty six yards into the end zone, and the
Giants lost the day 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 Sylby shutting off the TV, grabbing our papers and
sentencing us to hell, and I continued to scream. Our
(35:24):
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. 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
(35:46):
far more prepared and astute than myself, most of them
history majors, looking at their grades and blanching visibly. One
girl cried, a C, really a C. Professor Joel Sylby
said much of our grade would depend on how well
the New York Football Giants did in that nineteen seven
the eight national football season, and my god, they had
(36:07):
just sustained a loss so bad that it is still
talked about to this day. My classmates did not listen,
and I only am escaped 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
(36:31):
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 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
(36:52):
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 to greet me with applause, were
Cornell's official historian and former Professor Glenn alt Schuller and
their very famous history professor Walter LaFeber, and I swear
Professor Joel Silby, and they were fans of mine. Of
(37:16):
course I could not leave well enough alone. After a
few minutes of very pleasant conversation with mister alt Schuller
and Professor Lea 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
(37:38):
smiled and said, yes, yes it is. And then Joel
Silby looked off into the 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
at me and smiled, Keith, you won't believe this, but
(37:59):
I actually graded those papers pretty fairly, and I didn't
follow through on my original old plan. After 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 the favor gulped Oh,
(38:21):
said Sylby. It was so great to be a professor
back then. I laughed so much I had 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 examine that class
(38:43):
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, 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,
(39:03):
And it was just silent, 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
in nineteen fifty six. So guess what, there's no final exam.
And nobody moved, so I said it again, there's no
final exam. Go home, go study for something else. Y'all
(39:24):
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 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.
(39:46):
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, well, I am buying you lunch.
(40:10):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown has come to you from our
studios high on top the sports Capsule building here in
New York. Here are the credits. Most of the music arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schhanel.
They are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards
by John Phillip Schanel, Guitars based in drums by Brian Ray,
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
(40:34):
unperformed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music
is the Olberman theme from ESPN two and it was
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical
comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Howard Feynman, and everything
else was pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this
the nine hundred and seventy third day since Donald Trump's
(40:55):
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Convict him while we still can. The next
schedule countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins has the news warrant till then.
I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(41:20):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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