August 8, 2023 • 48 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 8: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump made his lawyers file a 29-page document complaining about Joe Biden’s coffee mug. Trump really hates this coffee mug. Trump is really aggrieved by this coffee mug. Trump’s fractured emotional and intellectual depth perception is triggered by this coffee mug. Trump’s last thought before he dies might just be about this coffee mug. He made his lawyers put a picture of this coffee mug IN the response to the government’s motion to keep him from taking the evidence produced in discovery and using it to try to get somebody to kill the witnesses or the prosecutors or the judges or the Attorney General or you or me or whoever. He believes this coffee mug gives him permission to take just about anything the prosecution has and write another hundred self-pitying posts about it or give another interminable TWO hundred speeches about it.
It's SOME coffee mug.
I wonder if Judge Tanya Chutkan has stopped laughing yet. Jack Smith quickly responded claiming Trump is seeking help trying the case in the media not in the courtroom and Judge Chutkan has already scheduled a hearing sometime before Friday.
Plus the Atlanta indictments are expected this week or next but no earlier than Thursday. His genius lawyers are now 0-4 versus E. Jean Carroll and Trump tries to attack DEVON Archer but instead attacks KEVIN Archer, co-founder of the group "Dexy's Midnight Runners" and you know what their one hit was, right? C'mon Aileen Cannon.
B-Block (19:16) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: In what might be the longest 'Worsts' in this series, Piers Morgan's hatred of America and Kayleigh McEnany's complete fabrication about seeing "The Devon Archer hearing" cannot compete with Baltimore Orioles' CEO John Angelos who suspended his terrific young announcer Kevin Brown for complimenting the team on how much more success it's had this year than in previous seasons. Seriously. The guy wants the audience to believe the Orioles have never lost a game. I've been the victim of some BS suspensions, but nothing to compare to this BS. (25:54) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Just 16,194 days ago I got a letter that so profoundly changed my life that I know exactly where it is at this minute and I bet I haven't gone a full week without thinking of it.
C-Block (39:49) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL (Part 2): The letter was from Lou Adler, News Director of WCBS Radio in New York. And the trip to get back to my apartment to GET the letter ALSO nearly changed my life.
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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
wonder if Judge Tanya Chutkin has stopped laughing yet. Trump
(00:28):
made his lawyers file a twenty nine page document complaining
about Joe Biden's coffee mug. Trump really hates this coffee mug.
Trump is really aggrieved by this coffee mug. Trump's fractured
emotional and intellectual depth perception is triggered by this coffee mug.
Trump's last thought before he dies might just be about
(00:53):
this coffee mug. He made his lawyers put a picture
of this coffee mug in the response to the government's
motion to keep him from taking the evidence produced in
discovery and using it to try to get somebody to
kill the witnesses, or kill the prosecutors, or kill the judges,
or kill the attorney general, or kill you or me
or whoever. Trump believes this coffee mug gives him permission
(01:19):
to take just about anything the prosecution has and write
another one hundred self pitying posts about it, or give
another interminable two hundred two hour speeches about it. It's
some coffee mug. It's the coffee mug. President Biden was
shown drinking from in a nine second video from eleven
(01:41):
eighteen last Thursday morning, and it has the President's picture
on it, but with those dark Brandon laser beam eyes
on it and twenty twenty four on it. And in
the video Biden SIPs and then puts the mug down
and kind of stiffly says, I like my coffee dark
and frankly as a shade or a burn. It's meh.
(02:03):
But to Trump, this was on watchable and a direct
assault on him, his Lord Almighty ship Imperial Trump at
it opened Pandora's box because to quote Trump's response, and
it is his response, no lawyer was stupid enough to
think this up. To quote Trump's response, President Biden has
likewise capitalized on the indictment, posting a thinly veiled reference
(02:24):
to his administration's prosecution of President Trump just hours before arraignment.
So Biden has a coffee mug video with a meme
created by Trump's cult. By the way, and that means
Trump gets to reveal the names and addresses of the
witnesses because the First Amendment right to try to destroy
(02:45):
representative government. Oh and to show everything the prosecution has
to Tom Fitten and Cash Patel. You know who these
swipes are, right. Patel is the crazy ex Devin Newness
flunky with the crazy eyes. And Fitten is the fifty
five year old guy who tries to look thirty five
by wearing overly tight polo shirts and makeup. And he
(03:08):
runs Judicial Watch, but he's not an attorney, and he's
trump top legal advisor, and he's not a lawyer, he
just plays one on TV. And he's the one who
tried to explain the Bill Clinton sock drawer case to Trump,
and it has become permanently fixed in Trump's mind that
Bill Clinton smuggled out secrets in his socks or inside
his cat socks, or or Clinton had top secret socks.
(03:35):
In the response, Trump attorney John he may have committed
some light treason. Loro writes that after Trump's weekend orgy
of threats against against everyone, not only should there not
be further restrictions on him, there should be fewer quote.
Defense counsel may choose to bring, on, for instance, volunteer
(03:55):
attorneys or others without paid employment arrangements to assist with
the preparation of this case. The government cannot preclude the
assistance of those individuals unquote, they want to give all
of the government documents they get to volunteer attorneys or others.
(04:16):
The volunteer attorney would be Patel, and the other is
Tom Fitten. And if Judge Chutkin is not still laughing
about this poor moron Fitten being described in this filing
as other, I'd be surprised. God, I'm still laughing. The premise,
of course, is that Trump could protect himself by leaking
things through Fitten or especially this nud Nick Patel, who
(04:40):
was the guy Trump made one of his official liaisons
to the National Archives, the one who boasted that he
was going to go into the Archives and just take
classified stuff and post it on a new website day
after day. Even if leakages were traced to Fitten or Patel,
Trump could say, as he always does, I told them
not to. They don't work for me. Fitten, who I
(05:00):
don't know anybody named Fitten. Now to get back to
the coffee mug, I give him this. Trump's response to
the government's motion to keep him from using discovery materials
to try to get somebody to kill the witnesses of
the prosecutors of the judges was filed by the five
pm deadline last night, and it is about as reality
bases as if Marie Antoinette were ordering grub Hub on
(05:23):
the way to the guillotine. And make sure it isn't
in a Biden thinly veiled capitalizing on it mug damn
it all. Jack Smith's office in turn, got its response
to the response back to the judge in a little
over three hours, and frankly, I don't understand it. There's
not one word about the Biden coffee mug let alone
(05:45):
the seemingly requisite ten to fifteen volumes. The government is
offering no compromises, acknowledging nothing in the Lauro Trump document,
noting only that quote the central purpose of criminal discovery
is to provide the defendant with materials necessary to prepare
for a fair trial. The defendant instead propos and order
designed to allow him to try this case in the
(06:08):
media rather than in the courtroom. There follows a page
of quotes from John Lurro's full Ginsburg on the Sunday Shows.
The rest of it is, you know, legal stuff, precedents
and stuff like that, about how no court ever gives
the defendant the right to put everything on TV. But
on page five. Jacksmith's office did, matter of factly reveal
(06:32):
a nugget, and it's unclear to me if they know
something of Trump's plans or they are just guessing based
on uh, how he's behaved every day of his life
so far. Quote. The court should not grant a protective
order that would allow defense counsel or the defendant to
disseminate evidence such as snippets of witness interview recordings, no
(06:55):
matter how short, misleading, or unlikely to be admissible at
trial under the Federal rules of evidence, and claim that
it supports some physician the defendant later may make in
pre trial motions or at trial. The goal of the
defendant's proposed protective order prejudicial publicity, is antithetical to the
interests of justice. And then jack Smith, Thomas Wyndham, and
(07:18):
Molly Gaston conclude the defendant has proposed an unreasonable order
to facilitate his plan to litigate this case in the
media to the detriment of litigating this case in the courtroom.
Normal orders should prevail. No oral argument is necessary. The
court should enter the government's proposed protective order end quote
the end not ninety minutes after that, Judge Chutkins scheduled
(07:39):
a hearing, so that probably means there will be oral arguments.
She gave both sides until three pm today to agree
on when before Friday of this week. Trump does not
have to be there. And that's the real problem that
while to any other defendant in the history of the world,
this legal action would have registered as Jack Smith's shot
(08:01):
across Trump's bow, I am filing to protect the evidence
rather than filing to try to get your pre trial
release revoked or a gag order imposed. I'm doing that instead.
So you get the friggin' hint, dandie, so I don't
have to do it, But dementia Jay Trump is not
any other defendant in the history of the world. He's
(08:23):
like a less realistic Charles Manson. Trump does not take hints.
He just sees his streak being extended to yet another
day his streak. This would be day twenty eight and
eighty of his streak, his streak in which they have
not gotten him yet, and with each new day he
is just that much more confident that they never will
(08:44):
get him. Trump will push this, and unless Judge Chuckkin
literally gags him, he will break whatever she orders here.
And he will precipitate a crisis, and instead of preempting
the next Trump crisis, the government will as ever be
reacting to it. And he also will bring up the
(09:05):
Biden dark gross thinly veiled, capitalizing on it mug and
his next speech, or it will be the entirety of
his next speech, the one this weekend in in who knows,
who knows where, intercourse, Pennsylvania, who knows. There was a
(09:28):
little other news about Smith's prosecution, and I wish I
understood it. I've got that odd spidy sense feeling going again.
His lawyer tells CNN that Bernie Carrick had his meeting
yesterday with the prosecutors. Tim Parlatori said Kerck discussed quote,
what the Giuliani team was doing, all the efforts they
took at the time to take all the complaints of fraud,
(09:51):
to see what they could do to chase them down.
Parlatori insisted, Kerck defended Giuliani and that Giuliani will not
be indicted. And how in the world you could say
that if Giuliani is an unindicted co conspirator. I don't know.
I have to confess I am confused against something else.
We don't know about is going on with Carrick and
Giuliani and Jack Smith, and I'll be damned if I
(10:13):
have a hint as to what it might be. I
also did not see CNN asking Tim Parlatory anywhere in
this if Bernie Carrick really is unindicted co conspirator number six,
remember that there's also a rift brewing between Naturally, it's
been like a week Trump and the new lawyer between threats.
(10:36):
Trump spent the weekend demanding a change of venue. Turns
out John Larow went on a legal podcast Sunday and said, quote,
we haven't made a final decision on that issue at all,
and that as an attorney he had to be careful
about changes of venue. And they said just gone viral
when Trump went back out and again demanded a change
of venue. And by the way, I missed this yesterday,
and I apologize to you. The new venue they want
(10:59):
is West Virginia because John Lauro says it can provide
the kind of quote diverse jury Washington, DC cannot. A
lot of people were actually confused by that quote, thinking
Lauro meant diverse in a twenty first century or even
late twentieth Century Way. No, he means diverse, as in,
(11:22):
he can impanel jurors in West Virginia who are slightly
pro Trump, along with those who are insanely pro Trump,
along with jurors who are named Trump. That's diversity. There
was also minor movement yesterday in the Fannie Willis Fulton
County case, but while indictments aren't expected this week or
(11:45):
next to the latest, nothing is imminent. Trump's second bid
to get the special purpose grand jury and its work
thrown out as unconstitutional was dismissed yesterday, and the Atlanta
Journal Constitution says it thinks the earliest day for indictments
is Thursday because quote, some suboenaid witnesses have yet to
receive their forty eight hour notice to testify behind closed doors.
(12:10):
And I don't know what Jack Smith is talking about
trying the case in the media. Trump's spokesmodel and parking
lot attorney Alena Haba went on Fox and the host said,
you called Fannie Willis quote corrupt, and she corrected him quote.
I said, there are corrupt das and ags. Do I
believe Fani is politically motivated? Absolutely? They are backed by sorrows,
(12:33):
many of them as you know, I would point out
again these are the genius lawyers who have yet to
win a case for Trump. I mean they just lost
what a fourth different case to e. Gene Carroll, the
original forced sex case, then the appeal, then her second
defamation case against him that they wanted to throw out
(12:54):
and the judge said no, it can proceed. And now
Judge Lewis Kaplan has thrown out Trump's defamation suit against her,
which boiled down to she defamed me when she said
I raped her, because that's not what the jury said
I did to her. When you say you didn't rape her,
you were only found liable for sexually abusing her, you
(13:16):
should probably shut the f up. And two other Trump
things happened yesterday. There is a second food reference besides
the Biden coffee mug. Trump has started a contest to
quote when a special dinner with him and I doubt
this was deliberate, but if it was, I'll actually applaud
(13:38):
whoever did this. To illustrate the special dinner contest, his
social media people have repurposed an image just the image
of him, taken from nothing less than his twenty sixteen
dinner at the Jean George restaurant in Trump Tower, down
the street from me, where Mitt Romney fawned all over
(13:59):
him in hopes of becoming Secretary of State. The cut
mitt out of this picture. It's Trump that was also
a special dinner. Turned out the only thing on the
menu that night was Mitt Romney. And on social media,
Trump also tried to blister Hunter Biden's former business partner,
Devin Archer and got his name wrong, called him Kevin
(14:25):
Archer and misspelled Kevin k e v e n k
e v e n Besides which, Kevin Archer was the
guitarist who co founded the one hit wonder band Dexi's
Midnight Runners. And of course you remember the title of
Dexi's Midnight Runners one hit right, Come on, Eileen Cannon.
(14:57):
Also of interest here, I was once suspended so gratuitously
that two hundred and fifty thousand people signed a petition
to get me reinstated at MSNBC. And I was once
suspended so gratuitously elsewhere that cab drivers in New York
slowed down to yell their support at me, and all
the TV columnists wrote nice things about me. But never, never, ever,
(15:19):
have I seen the kind of outpouring for a suspended
broadcaster in any field comparable to the love and the
rage that has followed the Baltimore Orioles baseball team's suspension
of one of its play by play announcers. For well,
if you don't know this story yet, you will not
believe what for. I have been texting all of my
(15:42):
baseball announcer friends since like yesterday afternoon about this story,
and I still don't believe what for. That's next? This
is countdown, This has countdown with Keith old Woman still
(16:09):
ahead on countdown. Ever had somebody you had never met
completely change your life in a positive way and have
that change resonate for like forty four years? Where's it
just me? The saga of the Adler letter coming up
first time for the daily roundup of the miss Grants,
morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst
(16:30):
persons in the world. Bronze Piers Morgan, remember him? The
guy CNN fired Larry King to make room four and
then he personally collapsed all of CNN's primetime ratings and
they still haven't recovered. The phone hacking guy from England
or Iceland. I don't know he's writing op eds for
(16:51):
The New York Post. Now I suspect this pays twenty
or twenty five dollars headline of the latest one, don't
cry for Meghan Rapino and humiliated USWNT. Hopefully, somewhere the
Post is explained to its m bulb readers that the
acronym refers to the American Women's World Cup soccer team.
Continuing the headline, They're a bunch of unpatriotic losers. Pierre's
(17:14):
Morgan says. Alternate accurate headline, Immigrant Piers Morgan, hated by
the country of his birth, rails against the nation he envies,
but which fired and humiliated him. The runner up, Kaylee mccananey,
now appearing on Fox quote news quotes, quote non commentary
programming to say things like this yesterday quote when I
(17:38):
watched this shocking Devin Archer testimony. Then blah blah blah
blah blah Biden this blah blah blah Biden that then
quote I learned a lot from that hearing. There was
no hearing. I suppose we can't be certain Kaylee mcananny
lied about that. She could just be way more stupid
than we all thought, and that was plenty stupid. There
was also no video, so when she said she watched
(18:01):
the testimony, Kaylee mcananny either lied about or was you know,
way more stupid than we thought ten seconds ago. There
was also no testimony. It was a transcribed interview. So
Kaylee mcinanny either you get the point. There are good
liars and bad liars, and then there are the Kaylee
(18:22):
mcinnaneys of this world. But the winners, the Baltimore Orioles
and CEO John Angelos. This family has been a surprising
disappointment running what was once one of baseball's best run franchises.
But something John Angelos either did or countenanced tops all
of the rest of it combined. The website Baltimore's Sports
(18:44):
Pub reported yesterday that the Orioles excellent young play by
play TV announcer Kevin Brown was first taken off TV
broadcast as of July twenty third, and then taken off
all broadcasts as of July twenty seventh, and has not
returned because of something he said on the air. Oh no, no,
(19:04):
what now? This is usually racism or homophobia or worse.
Not with Kevin Brown, not with the Baltimore Orioles, not
with this idiot CEO John Angelos. The website Awful Announcing
reports Brown was taken off the air because well before
an Orioles Tampa Bay Rays game, Brown read on the
(19:26):
air a set of statistics about the Orioles passed one
lost record against Tampa Bay. The statistics had been included
in that day's media notes, written and issued by the
Baltimore Orioles team. They were then made into a full
screen graphic by his bosses on the TV crew, and
Kevin Brown's crime was reportedly saying on an Orioles telecast
(19:47):
that quote, the Orioles have won more games against them,
the Rays, than the last two seasons combined. Unquote. That's it.
That was Brown's crime reading stats given to him by
the But wait, there's more enough that CEO John Angelo
(20:09):
should get himself a cat scan today because he should
no longer assume that he is right in the head.
This is from the Athletic and I'll just read it
as is. Quote. Multiple sources briefed on the decision say
ownership has enacted a new policy mandating that their broadcasters
wear only team gear when on air, which has rankled
(20:29):
some that snafu led to Brown filling in on radio
after his comment in the Rays series because another broadcaster
got in trouble. Broadcasters have also been reprimanded previously for
mentioning past Orioles players who are no longer with the
team unquote seriously. So they suspended him for reading something negative,
(20:50):
but they had to use him on radio because they
suspended another guy for not wearing an Oriole's logo shirt.
This is a major league sports franchise and, by the way,
having a renaissance season, leading the American League East with
the second best record in all of baseball, and their
idiot owner Angelos has spat all over it by punishing
(21:13):
his excellent lead play by play announcer for complimenting the
team on how much better it's doing this year against
a really tough rival. I have been on the wrong
end of a number of BS suspensions in my forty
four years in radio and TV and digital, and not
one of them has been as BS as this one.
(21:35):
It is stupefying, even for an idiot like John Angelos. Oh,
and so is the Orioles response to the reports about
what they have done to Kevin Brown. According to the
Awful announcing site. The Orioles quote dispute our reporting that
any suspension took place. Yeah, I had one of those
two years ago. My employers were too cowardly to even
(21:58):
admit they had suspended me, even though they took me
off the air for two weeks and made sure all
the other employees knew it. And when I tried to
cover for them, because I knew what bad publicity they
would get, I said I was willing to say I'd
taken vacation time just to cover them, to save them
the embarrassment they would and did endure. They told me
not to say that. In a logical world, Kevin Brown
(22:22):
would be reinstated with an apology and Major League Baseball
would reclaim the franchise from this messianic moron owner John Angelos.
But of course this is not such a world, John.
We are the Orioles. We have never lost a game.
Angelos two days, worst person in the world to the
(23:00):
number one story on the Countdown and my favorite topic,
me and things I promised not to tell. And I
was reminded of this the other day, and what a
juxtaposition against the Orioles. This is about genius management, So
I thought about this the other day, and I thought, well, okay,
and that's a good enough excuse to tell the story
(23:21):
of this letter I received sixteen thousand, one hundred and
ninety four days ago that changed my life, and that
still startles me whenever I read it, and I read
it a lot. This is the story, and it is
a long one of the Adler letter and the hell
(23:41):
through which I had to go just to read it.
The letter falling into my hands on the night of Sunday,
April eight, nineteen seventy nine was like the PostScript to
a breathless five hundred page novel that turns out to
be a million times more exciting, more interesting, and more
important than any of those five hundred pages or the
five hundred pages combined. We had driven by that point
(24:05):
around nine or ten hours. I do not believe I
ever actually expected to die on the trip, but I
was at least a dozen times absolutely convinced that George
and I would wind up in the hospital. He and
I were college seniors, gone home to see the defending
two time world champion New York Yankees opened the nineteen
seventy nine baseball season, and then back on the road
(24:27):
for the four and a half hour trip from the
parking garage at Yankee Stadium to the rural wilds of Ithaca,
New York. We had done this countless times, but I
did not know, as I got out of my dad's
car and later on into George's, that this trip had
two previously unimaginable components. First, at that hour, the Adler
(24:51):
letter had already been sitting in my mailbox at my
apartment at two hundred and seven Delaware Avenue, Ithaca, New York,
for at least one day, maybe two. And I did
not know the other thing, and only found it out
as George told me about it at the ball game.
His father had yelled towards him as George backed out
of the driveway that morning, George, there's rain in the forecast.
(25:14):
Drive Carefully, remember I took off your snow tires because
it's spring now. The midpoint of the trip to my school,
Cornell and his Ethaca College, more or less, was a
McDonald's restaurant in Liberty, New York, and we stopped there
and got a late lunch or an early dinner. And
(25:35):
I was sitting facing the window and George was sitting
facing the counter, and as we ate and mumbled. I said, George,
you have a really bad case of dandriff Or did
it just start really snowing? George wheeled around to look
out the window. Uh oh. We wrapped up our burgers
and took them with us and literally ran to the car.
(25:57):
My father and his goddamn snow tire obsession, George shouted.
Within an hour on the outskirts of Binghamton, New York,
three or four inches of snow had reduced speed to
just above single digits and visibility to next to nothing.
George was a meticulously good driver, didn't matter. We spun
out a full three sixty loop the loop. We're going north. Oops,
(26:20):
we're going west to oncoming traffic. Oops, we're going south
into the cars behind us. Oops, we're going east into
the ditch next to the highway. Hoo boy, we're going
north again. I think we spun out six or seven
times on the highway alone before we got to Binghamton.
There was some sola scene, seeing other cars in both
directions doing exactly the same thing, and concluding that George's
(26:41):
father could not have had the time to remove all
their snow tires too. We were not far north of Binghamton,
still skidding, still spinning, George swearing NonStop. When he interrupted
himself long enough to ask me what time it was,
I had to hold my watch up to the car
window to get brief flashes of illumination from the highway lights.
(27:02):
A little after seven, we skidded again. George swore loudly
put the Ranger game on. I'd do it myself, but
we skid it again. By now I was getting kind
of used to it. I turned the radio literally before
George regained control of the steering. I found the Rangers station,
the one in New York WNAW. If you had told
(27:23):
me that night that a little over a year later
I would be broadcasting on WNAW, my first thought would
have been, so we don't get killed tonight because George's
father took off the snow tires. That's nice. Oh and
I work there and I'm not a ghost. If you
told me that night that the Adler letter was waiting
for me back in my snow covered mailbox in Ithaca,
I might have pressed George to go faster, and they
(27:46):
might never have even found our bodies. The storm, as
storms often did in those long gone days, somehow boosted
the am radio signal from New York, and though we
were two hundred miles away from the transmitter, Marv Albert
and the WNAW Rangers broadcast was clear as a bell.
The traction even seemed to get a little better. But
(28:08):
we both knew the ordeal that lay ahead. The exit
from the highway at Whitney Point. It amazed us, as
it amazes the students there now, as it must have
amazed the students who went there a century ago. A
century and a half ago. That Cornell University, which I attended,
(28:31):
at Ithaca College, which George attended, were both an hour's
drive away from the nearest highway. There was, in fact,
no access to Ithaca, New York, by anything more than
a two lane road. It was legendary on the Cornell
campus that old Ezra Cornell, the barely literate railroad tie
preservative tycoon of the nineteenth century, decided to give away
nearly all of his fortune, which today would have been
(28:53):
at least a billion dollars. And he told a friend
he was going to open a university where anyone can
study anything. His friend reacted in horror, They will stampede
the place. Ezra Cornell laughed, Wait, you see where I
put it. Ezra Cornell's little geographical joke was still vividly
(29:16):
alive one hundred and ten odd years later. The easiest
of the roots to his university was the one that
took you from Ithaca to Whitney Point. Whitney Point the
capital of the metroplex there Whitney Point, Lyle and Center Lyle,
also known as the Calcutta of Broome County, where nearly
three thousand people live atop each other in conditions so
(29:36):
crowded that every person barely has his own square mile.
Once you got off at Whitney Point, you were at
the mercies of Route seventy nine, where if traffic were
light or the driver's adroit you might make it back
to Ithaca in thirty minutes, but if you got stuck
behind somebody, it could be an hour or two. Or
(29:57):
if there was an April blizzard and George's father had
take it off your snow tires, it could take you
longer than it took Antarctic explorers to reached the South Pole,
and you'd see more snow and ice than they did.
I believe George and I skidded making the left turn
off the highway, but he managed to stay on the road.
The radio signal was not quite as fortunate. Within minutes
(30:20):
of leaving the highway, WNW began to compete for space
on George's car radio, with some audible noise that the
radio could suddenly pick up from his turn signals, Make
a right, and Marv Albert was being drowned out by
a loud kick a Jim Vickers cross the click punk
fans slashers click click. Within minutes after the first spin
(30:45):
out en route seventy nine, mercifully with literally no other
cars on the road, the woo woos arrived. We never
figured out what they were, but they waxed and waned
so slowly that at first I asked George why Ranger
fans at Madison Square Garden were chanting woo woo during
the game. George was too busy swearing to answer. The
(31:08):
snow was now horizontal, and as it danced towards us
in George's headlights, it was hypnotic, and the Ranger broadcast
now sounded like this, Vickers crossly woo woo woooo pock
fan slashes click click, damn it all to hell, woooooo
titlandson holds with the same woo woo son of a bed.
(31:30):
The trip from Whitney Point had taken well over an hour,
and we were not halfway there yet when the inevitable happened.
George kept a steady slow pace ten or fifteen miles
an hour tops. He really was a great driver. He
did not accelerate, he did not turn. Yet all of
a moment, his green nineteen seventy Dodge Dart decided to
make an abrupt left at about a forty five degree angle.
(31:54):
We were off the road in seconds and headed for
an unscheduled visit to the front porch of a farmer's
house that had to have been set back at least
two hundred feet from the road. Here find the heavy
snow worked to our advantage. It slowed us, then it
stopped us, just two or three feet before we would
have flowed into this guy's house. However, since we were
(32:17):
in Richford, New York, birthplace of John Rockefeller, by the way,
or we were in Caroline or Caroline Center or Slaterville
Springs or wherever the hell we were, the homeowner emerged
bearing not a gun nor an attitude, but genuine concern.
In fact, he heard the Ranger game on the radio
and asked me the score, which is when I noticed,
(32:40):
at the moment we had left the road, the woo
woos had stopped, and the waw signal was as good
as it must have been in Madison Square Garden in
New York. The farmer helped us push the car back
on to Route seventy nine, and as we got in
he went and said, warre you snow tires. George started
to swear again. I took over and explained about George's
(33:02):
father never been up here as he George started the
car back up and now drove even slower. Within a minute,
the woo woos were back marv Alvertamsel Messina. Woo Woo
whoo where the Rangers lead. Woo woo woo. We got there. Finally,
(33:22):
George was actually going to try to drive up the
hill that led to the other hill that led to
the Delaware Avenue hill where my apartment was. Calculating that
I had pressed my luck sufficiently, I told him just
let me out at East State and Mitchell and I'd
make it from there on foot. Thankfully, George's father had
not removed the sure grip souls from my winter boots.
(33:45):
I actually went to my radio station first. It was
literally a two minute walk from there to my apartment.
I lingered at WVBR for fifteen or twenty minutes, and
then hiked back. The Rangers had won their game from
the station I had called George's apartment and he had
made it back there. And I took my first deep
breath since the McDonald's in Liberty, and I reflected that
it was only six hours until my next class, and
(34:07):
guess what I was gonna cut. I stopped off the
snow on my porch at two hundred and seven Delaware Avenue,
and I opened the door and I dumped my bag inside,
and then I reached into the mailbox and I saw
it immediately the return address Adler WCBS, CBS Radio, the
(34:32):
division of CBS Inc. Fifty one West fifty two Street,
New York, New York one zero zero one nine two
one two nine seven five four three two one. Lou
Adler was radio news in New York City in April
nineteen seventy nine. And this was April nineteen seventy nine.
(34:54):
I could barely breathe the Adler letter. What was in
the Adler letter, which it's plains why five decades later,
I know it by heart and can tell you exactly
where it is at the moment. That's next. This is Countdown,
(35:19):
resuming the number one story on the Countdown and the
several lifetimes contained. On Sunday, April eighth, nineteen seventy nine,
I survived nine or ten eight hundred hour drive in
a blizzard, right after my friend's dad had healthfully removed
the snow tires from my friend's car. I had lived
(35:39):
to resume my desperate bid to graduate college in two
months and get a job somewhere in radio in three months.
And against all odds, amid all the snow and mess,
there was a letter waiting for me at my apartment
in silent snow inundated Ithaca, New York, a letter from
Lou Adler, the news director of the leading all news
station in the United States of America. Lou Adler had
(36:04):
begun I'm on on WCBS the year I was born.
In nineteen sixty seven, the station went all news, and
it immediately became the best all news station in the country.
Lou Adler co anchored the mornings and eight years earlier,
he had become the station's news director. He was the best.
His co anchor, Jim Donnelly, was the best. His sportscaster
at Ingles was the best. His reporters were the best.
(36:27):
His weatherman was the best. His traffic guys were the best.
His jingles were the best. I listened daily in high school,
and when I was home from college, I did not
take literal notes, only mental ones. My college graduation, if
I made it, was seven weeks away. I had never
worked on television in any form, but I had been
on radio two or three thousand times by then, and
(36:50):
I thought I was pretty good at it. In the
preceding months, I had flooded every radio station in every
major market in the Northeast with a demo tape and
a resume. I figured I might as well start in
my home of New York and not eliminate a potential job,
no matter how long a long shot it might have been.
If I wasn't good enough to work there, I concluded
(37:11):
I should let the people who ran New York's radio
stations decide that, since that's what they were paid to do.
To this point, they had decided that By not responding,
I got a few nibbles from some of the smaller stations,
but as April eighth turned to April ninth, I had
no job prospects. Other friends were getting offers in Waterbury, Connecticut,
(37:34):
and Laconia, New Hampshire. Thought of which and nothing against
either of those cities filled me with terror. And now,
after this ordeal by snow and without snow tires, after
the WNW whooo's and Georgia's father's near fatal decision to
remove those winter tires, here in my hand was a
letter from the man who was, to my mind, the
(37:55):
best radio newscaster I had ever heard. Obviously it would
be a rejection, But even in that moment, even at
my age twenty years, two months and change, I was
awestruck not only that lou Adler had replied, but that
he alone, of all I had written to, he had
been the one who replied. I believe I did not
(38:18):
remove my parka before opening the envelope. I did put
on one lamp in my apartment, and I read WCBS,
CBS Radio, a division of CBS Inc. Fifty one least
fifty two Street, New York, New York, one zero zero
one nine two one two nine seventy five four three
two one April third, nineteen seventy nine, mister Keith Olderman,
two hundred and seven Delaware Avenue at the New York
(38:40):
one four eighty five. Oh dear, mister Olberman. This will
reply to your letter of March twenty seventh, with which
you included a tape of your sports work on WVBRFM.
Sometimes it's hard to know what a man can do
by listening to a brief tape. I stopped. Wait a man,
(39:02):
wait which which? Oh me, I'm just a kid. Sometimes
it's hard to know what a man can do by
listening to a brief tape. But I must tell you
I was excited by what I heard of yours. I
think you have exceptional talent and poise considering your age
and experience. You read well, and you write well, and
(39:22):
you know how to use tape. If the short tape
is truly representative of what you can do, and if
your knowledge of sports is broad, and if you can
perform under pressure well, then I feel you have an
excellent future in this industry. By this point, my heart
was beating so furiously I could hear it. I was
(39:43):
this close to hearing it make the woo woo sound.
I think it might be a good idea for us
to meet. Let me know when you can make it
to New York. I have nothing here for you, and
I know of nothing solid. But if I feel as
strongly about your potential after we meet as I do now,
a meeting certainly could do you no harm. Sincerely us
(40:05):
see Adler, Director News, Operations and Programs LCA slash PP George,
I screamed into the phone. Can we drive back to
the city right now? He swore. I read George the letter,
He paused, No, we shouldn't go tonight. You're not going
(40:26):
to see him tomorrow. Wait till you get your appointment.
But Jesus, this is like the manager of the Yankees
asking you to stop by the stadium and bring your
glove and bat just in case. I think I got
to sleep at sunrise. I had read the Adler letter
twenty or thirty times, and not until the fifteenth or
so did I stop expecting it to have turned back
into some courteous form letter rejection badly xeroxton slightly off center.
(40:50):
Slowly it dawned on me that my own assessment of
my radio skills were not predicated on ego or even
the context of what else I could hear in Ithaca,
which was then the three hundred and fifty first largest
radio market in the country. Good, but still three hundred
and fifty first. I cannot now describe the sense of
(41:12):
validation except to say that I half seriously considered not
taking Lou Adler up on his offer to meet him
at CBS World Headquarters, black Rock itself, where Bill Paley
would be working upstairs, because short of offering me a job,
there really was no chance mister Adler could do or
say anything more that could make me feel better or
(41:35):
more confident that my dream of becoming a sportscaster would
not lead me to starvation or to Laconia, New Hampshire.
In fact, in person, Lou Adler found more things to say.
If I had an opening for a sportscaster right now,
I would seriously consider you for it. I would hesitate
because of your age and your lack of practical experience,
(41:57):
and then I'd probably do it anyway. He was as
warm and supportive and informal as his letter had been,
structured and serious and tempered. Let me take you on
a tour. We saw the live studios, the production studios,
the writer's area. I wasn't just speechless again, I was breathless.
And you should probably recognize this man by voice, if
(42:17):
not by sight. Keith Olderman, Meet our sports director Ed Ingles. Ed,
this is Keith. This is the fellow with the tape.
Ed Ingles took a moment that his eyes widened. Hi,
what a tape, Jesus, Lou, don't tell me you've hired him?
Did you fire me? I must admit I thought for
(42:39):
a second it might have happened. I did not shrink
entirely from that fantasy. Lou Adler laughed, No, Eddie. Then
he paused, it was irresistible. Not yet. We went back
to Lou Adwer's office. Have you got any job prospects?
I explained that a month earlier, thanks to a chain
of recommendations that stretched from my internship at Channel five
(42:59):
Television the year before, through a young ABC sports executive
named Bob Bob Iger. I think it was to a
friend of a friend of a friend of a friend.
I had met everybody at the radio network of United
Press International, and I was supposed to go back and
see them about working their freelance as summer vacation, relief
for the year ahead in sports and in news. Oh,
(43:21):
that would be ideal for you, lou Adwerer said. It's
a tough place to work. They don't pay well at UPI,
but it's here in the city, and every other radio
station in this country will hear you on the feed.
That's where we hired ed from at Ingles. So if
we have an opening, he smiled broadly, I can poach
you and get you here in less than two weeks,
can I. Mister Adler then suggested that CBS station in
(43:46):
Atlanta would be needing a sportscaster in a few months.
I'll stay on top of that. They already have a
copy of your tape. I hope you don't mind. I
made several copies of your tape. If UPI does not
work out, I am confident you will be offered a
job in Atlanta, and maybe quite a few other jobs.
I hope I've been of some help. Stay in touch.
It's one of the privileges of this job to be
able to help. But frankly, you're not going to need
(44:08):
that much help. I may have taken the train back
to my folks house, or I may have just walked
the twenty miles or floated. The UPI job worked out
full time. Two months later, at the first game I
covered for money, I walked into the press box at
Chase Stadium and there was ed ingles, thank god you
(44:31):
went to UPI. The way Adler went on about you,
I seriously wondered if he was planning to bring you
in and kick me out. The Atlanta offer Lou Adler
arranged came, I turned it down. About a year later,
I got a call from Adler's assistant saying they were
going to need a new afternoon sportscaster at WCBS and
would I send a new tape. But by that fall,
(44:51):
when the job opened, Lou Adler was leaving WCBS to
become news director and vice president of another New York
radio station, WOR. His successor would choose somebody else for
the job. Just as I heard from the people who
ran the radio network that the WOR folks had started
the year before. It was not coincidental Lou Adler had
sent these people starting this new network my tape there
(45:17):
is inevitably from the distant future a punchline in two
thousand and six or two thousand and seven, when Countdown
had become the highest rated cable news program that wasn't
on Fox, an email appeared in my inbox. I could
not believe the name of the sender, Lou Adler. He
began just as formally as he had in nineteen seventy nine.
(45:39):
He actually felt it was necessary to remind me about
his letter. He said he watched every night, and when
he found other viewers of the program, he told them
the story. Proudly, he said. He asked if I remembered.
I wrote back immediately, remembered. Remembered. I told him I
still had his letter, and I still had the sense
(46:00):
of confidence it had given me that it was central
to my decision to more or less give up my
sports career at the age of thirty eight and try news.
And I told him the whole driving back to Ithaca
and the snow tire story just for fun. Lou wrote
back again within minutes. He had just retired after running
the mass communications program at Quinnipiac College, and he said
he had had a strong sense of his career having
(46:21):
been the proverbial punch into a pail of water. Now
it was my turn to reassure him that the people
like me who he had supported and taught and broadcast to,
had long since begun to support and teach the next generation.
And that generation was already supporting the one after that.
And there would be people in this business beginning their
(46:42):
careers after both of us were dead who would owe
a debt of gratitude, whether or not they knew it
to Lou Adler, as I always will. Lou Adler died
five years ago at the age of eighty eight. There
are letters and photos in the hallway that leads in
(47:03):
from the front door my home. They are from Barack Obama,
Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, and Lou Adler. I've
(47:29):
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the music
was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and John
Phillip Shanelle, who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration
at keyboards by John Phillip Shanel, guitars, bas and drums
by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other selections, including
some Beethoven You'll hear now and again, have been arranged
(47:50):
and performed by the group No Horns allowed. The sports
music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two. It was
written by Mitch Warren Davis, Curtis c VESPN Inc. Musical
comments by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Jonathan Banks. Confidence supplied
by lou Adword. Everything else is pretty much my fault.
(48:11):
That's countdown for this the nine hundred and forty fourth
days since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Arrest him again while
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Boltons
is the news warrants till then. I'm Keith Olremman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(48:44):
Olreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
wonder if Judge Tanya Chutkin has stopped laughing yet. Trump
(00:28):
made his lawyers file a twenty nine page document complaining
about Joe Biden's coffee mug. Trump really hates this coffee mug.
Trump is really aggrieved by this coffee mug. Trump's fractured
emotional and intellectual depth perception is triggered by this coffee mug.
Trump's last thought before he dies might just be about
(00:53):
this coffee mug. He made his lawyers put a picture
of this coffee mug in the response to the government's
motion to keep him from taking the evidence produced in
discovery and using it to try to get somebody to
kill the witnesses, or kill the prosecutors, or kill the judges,
or kill the attorney general, or kill you or me
or whoever. Trump believes this coffee mug gives him permission
(01:19):
to take just about anything the prosecution has and write
another one hundred self pitying posts about it, or give
another interminable two hundred two hour speeches about it. It's
some coffee mug. It's the coffee mug. President Biden was
shown drinking from in a nine second video from eleven
(01:41):
eighteen last Thursday morning, and it has the President's picture
on it, but with those dark Brandon laser beam eyes
on it and twenty twenty four on it. And in
the video Biden SIPs and then puts the mug down
and kind of stiffly says, I like my coffee dark
and frankly as a shade or a burn. It's meh.
(02:03):
But to Trump, this was on watchable and a direct
assault on him, his Lord Almighty ship Imperial Trump at
it opened Pandora's box because to quote Trump's response, and
it is his response, no lawyer was stupid enough to
think this up. To quote Trump's response, President Biden has
likewise capitalized on the indictment, posting a thinly veiled reference
(02:24):
to his administration's prosecution of President Trump just hours before arraignment.
So Biden has a coffee mug video with a meme
created by Trump's cult. By the way, and that means
Trump gets to reveal the names and addresses of the
witnesses because the First Amendment right to try to destroy
(02:45):
representative government. Oh and to show everything the prosecution has
to Tom Fitten and Cash Patel. You know who these
swipes are, right. Patel is the crazy ex Devin Newness
flunky with the crazy eyes. And Fitten is the fifty
five year old guy who tries to look thirty five
by wearing overly tight polo shirts and makeup. And he
(03:08):
runs Judicial Watch, but he's not an attorney, and he's
trump top legal advisor, and he's not a lawyer, he
just plays one on TV. And he's the one who
tried to explain the Bill Clinton sock drawer case to Trump,
and it has become permanently fixed in Trump's mind that
Bill Clinton smuggled out secrets in his socks or inside
his cat socks, or or Clinton had top secret socks.
(03:35):
In the response, Trump attorney John he may have committed
some light treason. Loro writes that after Trump's weekend orgy
of threats against against everyone, not only should there not
be further restrictions on him, there should be fewer quote.
Defense counsel may choose to bring, on, for instance, volunteer
(03:55):
attorneys or others without paid employment arrangements to assist with
the preparation of this case. The government cannot preclude the
assistance of those individuals unquote, they want to give all
of the government documents they get to volunteer attorneys or others.
(04:16):
The volunteer attorney would be Patel, and the other is
Tom Fitten. And if Judge Chutkin is not still laughing
about this poor moron Fitten being described in this filing
as other, I'd be surprised. God, I'm still laughing. The premise,
of course, is that Trump could protect himself by leaking
things through Fitten or especially this nud Nick Patel, who
(04:40):
was the guy Trump made one of his official liaisons
to the National Archives, the one who boasted that he
was going to go into the Archives and just take
classified stuff and post it on a new website day
after day. Even if leakages were traced to Fitten or Patel,
Trump could say, as he always does, I told them
not to. They don't work for me. Fitten, who I
(05:00):
don't know anybody named Fitten. Now to get back to
the coffee mug, I give him this. Trump's response to
the government's motion to keep him from using discovery materials
to try to get somebody to kill the witnesses of
the prosecutors of the judges was filed by the five
pm deadline last night, and it is about as reality
bases as if Marie Antoinette were ordering grub Hub on
(05:23):
the way to the guillotine. And make sure it isn't
in a Biden thinly veiled capitalizing on it mug damn
it all. Jack Smith's office in turn, got its response
to the response back to the judge in a little
over three hours, and frankly, I don't understand it. There's
not one word about the Biden coffee mug let alone
(05:45):
the seemingly requisite ten to fifteen volumes. The government is
offering no compromises, acknowledging nothing in the Lauro Trump document,
noting only that quote the central purpose of criminal discovery
is to provide the defendant with materials necessary to prepare
for a fair trial. The defendant instead propos and order
designed to allow him to try this case in the
(06:08):
media rather than in the courtroom. There follows a page
of quotes from John Lurro's full Ginsburg on the Sunday Shows.
The rest of it is, you know, legal stuff, precedents
and stuff like that, about how no court ever gives
the defendant the right to put everything on TV. But
on page five. Jacksmith's office did, matter of factly reveal
(06:32):
a nugget, and it's unclear to me if they know
something of Trump's plans or they are just guessing based
on uh, how he's behaved every day of his life
so far. Quote. The court should not grant a protective
order that would allow defense counsel or the defendant to
disseminate evidence such as snippets of witness interview recordings, no
(06:55):
matter how short, misleading, or unlikely to be admissible at
trial under the Federal rules of evidence, and claim that
it supports some physician the defendant later may make in
pre trial motions or at trial. The goal of the
defendant's proposed protective order prejudicial publicity, is antithetical to the
interests of justice. And then jack Smith, Thomas Wyndham, and
(07:18):
Molly Gaston conclude the defendant has proposed an unreasonable order
to facilitate his plan to litigate this case in the
media to the detriment of litigating this case in the courtroom.
Normal orders should prevail. No oral argument is necessary. The
court should enter the government's proposed protective order end quote
the end not ninety minutes after that, Judge Chutkins scheduled
(07:39):
a hearing, so that probably means there will be oral arguments.
She gave both sides until three pm today to agree
on when before Friday of this week. Trump does not
have to be there. And that's the real problem that
while to any other defendant in the history of the world,
this legal action would have registered as Jack Smith's shot
(08:01):
across Trump's bow, I am filing to protect the evidence
rather than filing to try to get your pre trial
release revoked or a gag order imposed. I'm doing that instead.
So you get the friggin' hint, dandie, so I don't
have to do it, But dementia Jay Trump is not
any other defendant in the history of the world. He's
(08:23):
like a less realistic Charles Manson. Trump does not take hints.
He just sees his streak being extended to yet another
day his streak. This would be day twenty eight and
eighty of his streak, his streak in which they have
not gotten him yet, and with each new day he
is just that much more confident that they never will
(08:44):
get him. Trump will push this, and unless Judge Chuckkin
literally gags him, he will break whatever she orders here.
And he will precipitate a crisis, and instead of preempting
the next Trump crisis, the government will as ever be
reacting to it. And he also will bring up the
(09:05):
Biden dark gross thinly veiled, capitalizing on it mug and
his next speech, or it will be the entirety of
his next speech, the one this weekend in in who knows,
who knows where, intercourse, Pennsylvania, who knows. There was a
(09:28):
little other news about Smith's prosecution, and I wish I
understood it. I've got that odd spidy sense feeling going again.
His lawyer tells CNN that Bernie Carrick had his meeting
yesterday with the prosecutors. Tim Parlatori said Kerck discussed quote,
what the Giuliani team was doing, all the efforts they
took at the time to take all the complaints of fraud,
(09:51):
to see what they could do to chase them down.
Parlatori insisted, Kerck defended Giuliani and that Giuliani will not
be indicted. And how in the world you could say
that if Giuliani is an unindicted co conspirator. I don't know.
I have to confess I am confused against something else.
We don't know about is going on with Carrick and
Giuliani and Jack Smith, and I'll be damned if I
(10:13):
have a hint as to what it might be. I
also did not see CNN asking Tim Parlatory anywhere in
this if Bernie Carrick really is unindicted co conspirator number six,
remember that there's also a rift brewing between Naturally, it's
been like a week Trump and the new lawyer between threats.
(10:36):
Trump spent the weekend demanding a change of venue. Turns
out John Larow went on a legal podcast Sunday and said, quote,
we haven't made a final decision on that issue at all,
and that as an attorney he had to be careful
about changes of venue. And they said just gone viral
when Trump went back out and again demanded a change
of venue. And by the way, I missed this yesterday,
and I apologize to you. The new venue they want
(10:59):
is West Virginia because John Lauro says it can provide
the kind of quote diverse jury Washington, DC cannot. A
lot of people were actually confused by that quote, thinking
Lauro meant diverse in a twenty first century or even
late twentieth Century Way. No, he means diverse, as in,
(11:22):
he can impanel jurors in West Virginia who are slightly
pro Trump, along with those who are insanely pro Trump,
along with jurors who are named Trump. That's diversity. There
was also minor movement yesterday in the Fannie Willis Fulton
County case, but while indictments aren't expected this week or
(11:45):
next to the latest, nothing is imminent. Trump's second bid
to get the special purpose grand jury and its work
thrown out as unconstitutional was dismissed yesterday, and the Atlanta
Journal Constitution says it thinks the earliest day for indictments
is Thursday because quote, some suboenaid witnesses have yet to
receive their forty eight hour notice to testify behind closed doors.
(12:10):
And I don't know what Jack Smith is talking about
trying the case in the media. Trump's spokesmodel and parking
lot attorney Alena Haba went on Fox and the host said,
you called Fannie Willis quote corrupt, and she corrected him quote.
I said, there are corrupt das and ags. Do I
believe Fani is politically motivated? Absolutely? They are backed by sorrows,
(12:33):
many of them as you know, I would point out
again these are the genius lawyers who have yet to
win a case for Trump. I mean they just lost
what a fourth different case to e. Gene Carroll, the
original forced sex case, then the appeal, then her second
defamation case against him that they wanted to throw out
(12:54):
and the judge said no, it can proceed. And now
Judge Lewis Kaplan has thrown out Trump's defamation suit against her,
which boiled down to she defamed me when she said
I raped her, because that's not what the jury said
I did to her. When you say you didn't rape her,
you were only found liable for sexually abusing her, you
(13:16):
should probably shut the f up. And two other Trump
things happened yesterday. There is a second food reference besides
the Biden coffee mug. Trump has started a contest to
quote when a special dinner with him and I doubt
this was deliberate, but if it was, I'll actually applaud
(13:38):
whoever did this. To illustrate the special dinner contest, his
social media people have repurposed an image just the image
of him, taken from nothing less than his twenty sixteen
dinner at the Jean George restaurant in Trump Tower, down
the street from me, where Mitt Romney fawned all over
(13:59):
him in hopes of becoming Secretary of State. The cut
mitt out of this picture. It's Trump that was also
a special dinner. Turned out the only thing on the
menu that night was Mitt Romney. And on social media,
Trump also tried to blister Hunter Biden's former business partner,
Devin Archer and got his name wrong, called him Kevin
(14:25):
Archer and misspelled Kevin k e v e n k
e v e n Besides which, Kevin Archer was the
guitarist who co founded the one hit wonder band Dexi's
Midnight Runners. And of course you remember the title of
Dexi's Midnight Runners one hit right, Come on, Eileen Cannon.
(14:57):
Also of interest here, I was once suspended so gratuitously
that two hundred and fifty thousand people signed a petition
to get me reinstated at MSNBC. And I was once
suspended so gratuitously elsewhere that cab drivers in New York
slowed down to yell their support at me, and all
the TV columnists wrote nice things about me. But never, never, ever,
(15:19):
have I seen the kind of outpouring for a suspended
broadcaster in any field comparable to the love and the
rage that has followed the Baltimore Orioles baseball team's suspension
of one of its play by play announcers. For well,
if you don't know this story yet, you will not
believe what for. I have been texting all of my
(15:42):
baseball announcer friends since like yesterday afternoon about this story,
and I still don't believe what for. That's next? This
is countdown, This has countdown with Keith old Woman still
(16:09):
ahead on countdown. Ever had somebody you had never met
completely change your life in a positive way and have
that change resonate for like forty four years? Where's it
just me? The saga of the Adler letter coming up
first time for the daily roundup of the miss Grants,
morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst
(16:30):
persons in the world. Bronze Piers Morgan, remember him? The
guy CNN fired Larry King to make room four and
then he personally collapsed all of CNN's primetime ratings and
they still haven't recovered. The phone hacking guy from England
or Iceland. I don't know he's writing op eds for
(16:51):
The New York Post. Now I suspect this pays twenty
or twenty five dollars headline of the latest one, don't
cry for Meghan Rapino and humiliated USWNT. Hopefully, somewhere the
Post is explained to its m bulb readers that the
acronym refers to the American Women's World Cup soccer team.
Continuing the headline, They're a bunch of unpatriotic losers. Pierre's
(17:14):
Morgan says. Alternate accurate headline, Immigrant Piers Morgan, hated by
the country of his birth, rails against the nation he envies,
but which fired and humiliated him. The runner up, Kaylee mccananey,
now appearing on Fox quote news quotes, quote non commentary
programming to say things like this yesterday quote when I
(17:38):
watched this shocking Devin Archer testimony. Then blah blah blah
blah blah Biden this blah blah blah Biden that then
quote I learned a lot from that hearing. There was
no hearing. I suppose we can't be certain Kaylee mcananny
lied about that. She could just be way more stupid
than we all thought, and that was plenty stupid. There
was also no video, so when she said she watched
(18:01):
the testimony, Kaylee mcananny either lied about or was you know,
way more stupid than we thought ten seconds ago. There
was also no testimony. It was a transcribed interview. So
Kaylee mcinanny either you get the point. There are good
liars and bad liars, and then there are the Kaylee
(18:22):
mcinnaneys of this world. But the winners, the Baltimore Orioles
and CEO John Angelos. This family has been a surprising
disappointment running what was once one of baseball's best run franchises.
But something John Angelos either did or countenanced tops all
of the rest of it combined. The website Baltimore's Sports
(18:44):
Pub reported yesterday that the Orioles excellent young play by
play TV announcer Kevin Brown was first taken off TV
broadcast as of July twenty third, and then taken off
all broadcasts as of July twenty seventh, and has not
returned because of something he said on the air. Oh no, no,
(19:04):
what now? This is usually racism or homophobia or worse.
Not with Kevin Brown, not with the Baltimore Orioles, not
with this idiot CEO John Angelos. The website Awful Announcing
reports Brown was taken off the air because well before
an Orioles Tampa Bay Rays game, Brown read on the
(19:26):
air a set of statistics about the Orioles passed one
lost record against Tampa Bay. The statistics had been included
in that day's media notes, written and issued by the
Baltimore Orioles team. They were then made into a full
screen graphic by his bosses on the TV crew, and
Kevin Brown's crime was reportedly saying on an Orioles telecast
(19:47):
that quote, the Orioles have won more games against them,
the Rays, than the last two seasons combined. Unquote. That's it.
That was Brown's crime reading stats given to him by
the But wait, there's more enough that CEO John Angelo
(20:09):
should get himself a cat scan today because he should
no longer assume that he is right in the head.
This is from the Athletic and I'll just read it
as is. Quote. Multiple sources briefed on the decision say
ownership has enacted a new policy mandating that their broadcasters
wear only team gear when on air, which has rankled
(20:29):
some that snafu led to Brown filling in on radio
after his comment in the Rays series because another broadcaster
got in trouble. Broadcasters have also been reprimanded previously for
mentioning past Orioles players who are no longer with the
team unquote seriously. So they suspended him for reading something negative,
(20:50):
but they had to use him on radio because they
suspended another guy for not wearing an Oriole's logo shirt.
This is a major league sports franchise and, by the way,
having a renaissance season, leading the American League East with
the second best record in all of baseball, and their
idiot owner Angelos has spat all over it by punishing
(21:13):
his excellent lead play by play announcer for complimenting the
team on how much better it's doing this year against
a really tough rival. I have been on the wrong
end of a number of BS suspensions in my forty
four years in radio and TV and digital, and not
one of them has been as BS as this one.
(21:35):
It is stupefying, even for an idiot like John Angelos. Oh,
and so is the Orioles response to the reports about
what they have done to Kevin Brown. According to the
Awful announcing site. The Orioles quote dispute our reporting that
any suspension took place. Yeah, I had one of those
two years ago. My employers were too cowardly to even
(21:58):
admit they had suspended me, even though they took me
off the air for two weeks and made sure all
the other employees knew it. And when I tried to
cover for them, because I knew what bad publicity they
would get, I said I was willing to say I'd
taken vacation time just to cover them, to save them
the embarrassment they would and did endure. They told me
not to say that. In a logical world, Kevin Brown
(22:22):
would be reinstated with an apology and Major League Baseball
would reclaim the franchise from this messianic moron owner John Angelos.
But of course this is not such a world, John.
We are the Orioles. We have never lost a game.
Angelos two days, worst person in the world to the
(23:00):
number one story on the Countdown and my favorite topic,
me and things I promised not to tell. And I
was reminded of this the other day, and what a
juxtaposition against the Orioles. This is about genius management, So
I thought about this the other day, and I thought, well, okay,
and that's a good enough excuse to tell the story
(23:21):
of this letter I received sixteen thousand, one hundred and
ninety four days ago that changed my life, and that
still startles me whenever I read it, and I read
it a lot. This is the story, and it is
a long one of the Adler letter and the hell
(23:41):
through which I had to go just to read it.
The letter falling into my hands on the night of Sunday,
April eight, nineteen seventy nine was like the PostScript to
a breathless five hundred page novel that turns out to
be a million times more exciting, more interesting, and more
important than any of those five hundred pages or the
five hundred pages combined. We had driven by that point
(24:05):
around nine or ten hours. I do not believe I
ever actually expected to die on the trip, but I
was at least a dozen times absolutely convinced that George
and I would wind up in the hospital. He and
I were college seniors, gone home to see the defending
two time world champion New York Yankees opened the nineteen
seventy nine baseball season, and then back on the road
(24:27):
for the four and a half hour trip from the
parking garage at Yankee Stadium to the rural wilds of Ithaca,
New York. We had done this countless times, but I
did not know, as I got out of my dad's
car and later on into George's, that this trip had
two previously unimaginable components. First, at that hour, the Adler
(24:51):
letter had already been sitting in my mailbox at my
apartment at two hundred and seven Delaware Avenue, Ithaca, New York,
for at least one day, maybe two. And I did
not know the other thing, and only found it out
as George told me about it at the ball game.
His father had yelled towards him as George backed out
of the driveway that morning, George, there's rain in the forecast.
(25:14):
Drive Carefully, remember I took off your snow tires because
it's spring now. The midpoint of the trip to my school,
Cornell and his Ethaca College, more or less, was a
McDonald's restaurant in Liberty, New York, and we stopped there
and got a late lunch or an early dinner. And
(25:35):
I was sitting facing the window and George was sitting
facing the counter, and as we ate and mumbled. I said, George,
you have a really bad case of dandriff Or did
it just start really snowing? George wheeled around to look
out the window. Uh oh. We wrapped up our burgers
and took them with us and literally ran to the car.
(25:57):
My father and his goddamn snow tire obsession, George shouted.
Within an hour on the outskirts of Binghamton, New York,
three or four inches of snow had reduced speed to
just above single digits and visibility to next to nothing.
George was a meticulously good driver, didn't matter. We spun
out a full three sixty loop the loop. We're going north. Oops,
(26:20):
we're going west to oncoming traffic. Oops, we're going south
into the cars behind us. Oops, we're going east into
the ditch next to the highway. Hoo boy, we're going
north again. I think we spun out six or seven
times on the highway alone before we got to Binghamton.
There was some sola scene, seeing other cars in both
directions doing exactly the same thing, and concluding that George's
(26:41):
father could not have had the time to remove all
their snow tires too. We were not far north of Binghamton,
still skidding, still spinning, George swearing NonStop. When he interrupted
himself long enough to ask me what time it was,
I had to hold my watch up to the car
window to get brief flashes of illumination from the highway lights.
(27:02):
A little after seven, we skidded again. George swore loudly
put the Ranger game on. I'd do it myself, but
we skid it again. By now I was getting kind
of used to it. I turned the radio literally before
George regained control of the steering. I found the Rangers station,
the one in New York WNAW. If you had told
(27:23):
me that night that a little over a year later
I would be broadcasting on WNAW, my first thought would
have been, so we don't get killed tonight because George's
father took off the snow tires. That's nice. Oh and
I work there and I'm not a ghost. If you
told me that night that the Adler letter was waiting
for me back in my snow covered mailbox in Ithaca,
I might have pressed George to go faster, and they
(27:46):
might never have even found our bodies. The storm, as
storms often did in those long gone days, somehow boosted
the am radio signal from New York, and though we
were two hundred miles away from the transmitter, Marv Albert
and the WNAW Rangers broadcast was clear as a bell.
The traction even seemed to get a little better. But
(28:08):
we both knew the ordeal that lay ahead. The exit
from the highway at Whitney Point. It amazed us, as
it amazes the students there now, as it must have
amazed the students who went there a century ago. A
century and a half ago. That Cornell University, which I attended,
(28:31):
at Ithaca College, which George attended, were both an hour's
drive away from the nearest highway. There was, in fact,
no access to Ithaca, New York, by anything more than
a two lane road. It was legendary on the Cornell
campus that old Ezra Cornell, the barely literate railroad tie
preservative tycoon of the nineteenth century, decided to give away
nearly all of his fortune, which today would have been
(28:53):
at least a billion dollars. And he told a friend
he was going to open a university where anyone can
study anything. His friend reacted in horror, They will stampede
the place. Ezra Cornell laughed, Wait, you see where I
put it. Ezra Cornell's little geographical joke was still vividly
(29:16):
alive one hundred and ten odd years later. The easiest
of the roots to his university was the one that
took you from Ithaca to Whitney Point. Whitney Point the
capital of the metroplex there Whitney Point, Lyle and Center Lyle,
also known as the Calcutta of Broome County, where nearly
three thousand people live atop each other in conditions so
(29:36):
crowded that every person barely has his own square mile.
Once you got off at Whitney Point, you were at
the mercies of Route seventy nine, where if traffic were
light or the driver's adroit you might make it back
to Ithaca in thirty minutes, but if you got stuck
behind somebody, it could be an hour or two. Or
(29:57):
if there was an April blizzard and George's father had
take it off your snow tires, it could take you
longer than it took Antarctic explorers to reached the South Pole,
and you'd see more snow and ice than they did.
I believe George and I skidded making the left turn
off the highway, but he managed to stay on the road.
The radio signal was not quite as fortunate. Within minutes
(30:20):
of leaving the highway, WNW began to compete for space
on George's car radio, with some audible noise that the
radio could suddenly pick up from his turn signals, Make
a right, and Marv Albert was being drowned out by
a loud kick a Jim Vickers cross the click punk
fans slashers click click. Within minutes after the first spin
(30:45):
out en route seventy nine, mercifully with literally no other
cars on the road, the woo woos arrived. We never
figured out what they were, but they waxed and waned
so slowly that at first I asked George why Ranger
fans at Madison Square Garden were chanting woo woo during
the game. George was too busy swearing to answer. The
(31:08):
snow was now horizontal, and as it danced towards us
in George's headlights, it was hypnotic, and the Ranger broadcast
now sounded like this, Vickers crossly woo woo woooo pock
fan slashes click click, damn it all to hell, woooooo
titlandson holds with the same woo woo son of a bed.
(31:30):
The trip from Whitney Point had taken well over an hour,
and we were not halfway there yet when the inevitable happened.
George kept a steady slow pace ten or fifteen miles
an hour tops. He really was a great driver. He
did not accelerate, he did not turn. Yet all of
a moment, his green nineteen seventy Dodge Dart decided to
make an abrupt left at about a forty five degree angle.
(31:54):
We were off the road in seconds and headed for
an unscheduled visit to the front porch of a farmer's
house that had to have been set back at least
two hundred feet from the road. Here find the heavy
snow worked to our advantage. It slowed us, then it
stopped us, just two or three feet before we would
have flowed into this guy's house. However, since we were
(32:17):
in Richford, New York, birthplace of John Rockefeller, by the way,
or we were in Caroline or Caroline Center or Slaterville
Springs or wherever the hell we were, the homeowner emerged
bearing not a gun nor an attitude, but genuine concern.
In fact, he heard the Ranger game on the radio
and asked me the score, which is when I noticed,
(32:40):
at the moment we had left the road, the woo
woos had stopped, and the waw signal was as good
as it must have been in Madison Square Garden in
New York. The farmer helped us push the car back
on to Route seventy nine, and as we got in
he went and said, warre you snow tires. George started
to swear again. I took over and explained about George's
(33:02):
father never been up here as he George started the
car back up and now drove even slower. Within a minute,
the woo woos were back marv Alvertamsel Messina. Woo Woo
whoo where the Rangers lead. Woo woo woo. We got there. Finally,
(33:22):
George was actually going to try to drive up the
hill that led to the other hill that led to
the Delaware Avenue hill where my apartment was. Calculating that
I had pressed my luck sufficiently, I told him just
let me out at East State and Mitchell and I'd
make it from there on foot. Thankfully, George's father had
not removed the sure grip souls from my winter boots.
(33:45):
I actually went to my radio station first. It was
literally a two minute walk from there to my apartment.
I lingered at WVBR for fifteen or twenty minutes, and
then hiked back. The Rangers had won their game from
the station I had called George's apartment and he had
made it back there. And I took my first deep
breath since the McDonald's in Liberty, and I reflected that
it was only six hours until my next class, and
(34:07):
guess what I was gonna cut. I stopped off the
snow on my porch at two hundred and seven Delaware Avenue,
and I opened the door and I dumped my bag inside,
and then I reached into the mailbox and I saw
it immediately the return address Adler WCBS, CBS Radio, the
(34:32):
division of CBS Inc. Fifty one West fifty two Street,
New York, New York one zero zero one nine two
one two nine seven five four three two one. Lou
Adler was radio news in New York City in April
nineteen seventy nine. And this was April nineteen seventy nine.
(34:54):
I could barely breathe the Adler letter. What was in
the Adler letter, which it's plains why five decades later,
I know it by heart and can tell you exactly
where it is at the moment. That's next. This is Countdown,
(35:19):
resuming the number one story on the Countdown and the
several lifetimes contained. On Sunday, April eighth, nineteen seventy nine,
I survived nine or ten eight hundred hour drive in
a blizzard, right after my friend's dad had healthfully removed
the snow tires from my friend's car. I had lived
(35:39):
to resume my desperate bid to graduate college in two
months and get a job somewhere in radio in three months.
And against all odds, amid all the snow and mess,
there was a letter waiting for me at my apartment
in silent snow inundated Ithaca, New York, a letter from
Lou Adler, the news director of the leading all news
station in the United States of America. Lou Adler had
(36:04):
begun I'm on on WCBS the year I was born.
In nineteen sixty seven, the station went all news, and
it immediately became the best all news station in the country.
Lou Adler co anchored the mornings and eight years earlier,
he had become the station's news director. He was the best.
His co anchor, Jim Donnelly, was the best. His sportscaster
at Ingles was the best. His reporters were the best.
(36:27):
His weatherman was the best. His traffic guys were the best.
His jingles were the best. I listened daily in high school,
and when I was home from college, I did not
take literal notes, only mental ones. My college graduation, if
I made it, was seven weeks away. I had never
worked on television in any form, but I had been
on radio two or three thousand times by then, and
(36:50):
I thought I was pretty good at it. In the
preceding months, I had flooded every radio station in every
major market in the Northeast with a demo tape and
a resume. I figured I might as well start in
my home of New York and not eliminate a potential job,
no matter how long a long shot it might have been.
If I wasn't good enough to work there, I concluded
(37:11):
I should let the people who ran New York's radio
stations decide that, since that's what they were paid to do.
To this point, they had decided that By not responding,
I got a few nibbles from some of the smaller stations,
but as April eighth turned to April ninth, I had
no job prospects. Other friends were getting offers in Waterbury, Connecticut,
(37:34):
and Laconia, New Hampshire. Thought of which and nothing against
either of those cities filled me with terror. And now,
after this ordeal by snow and without snow tires, after
the WNW whooo's and Georgia's father's near fatal decision to
remove those winter tires, here in my hand was a
letter from the man who was, to my mind, the
(37:55):
best radio newscaster I had ever heard. Obviously it would
be a rejection, But even in that moment, even at
my age twenty years, two months and change, I was
awestruck not only that lou Adler had replied, but that
he alone, of all I had written to, he had
been the one who replied. I believe I did not
(38:18):
remove my parka before opening the envelope. I did put
on one lamp in my apartment, and I read WCBS,
CBS Radio, a division of CBS Inc. Fifty one least
fifty two Street, New York, New York, one zero zero
one nine two one two nine seventy five four three
two one April third, nineteen seventy nine, mister Keith Olderman,
two hundred and seven Delaware Avenue at the New York
(38:40):
one four eighty five. Oh dear, mister Olberman. This will
reply to your letter of March twenty seventh, with which
you included a tape of your sports work on WVBRFM.
Sometimes it's hard to know what a man can do
by listening to a brief tape. I stopped. Wait a man,
(39:02):
wait which which? Oh me, I'm just a kid. Sometimes
it's hard to know what a man can do by
listening to a brief tape. But I must tell you
I was excited by what I heard of yours. I
think you have exceptional talent and poise considering your age
and experience. You read well, and you write well, and
(39:22):
you know how to use tape. If the short tape
is truly representative of what you can do, and if
your knowledge of sports is broad, and if you can
perform under pressure well, then I feel you have an
excellent future in this industry. By this point, my heart
was beating so furiously I could hear it. I was
(39:43):
this close to hearing it make the woo woo sound.
I think it might be a good idea for us
to meet. Let me know when you can make it
to New York. I have nothing here for you, and
I know of nothing solid. But if I feel as
strongly about your potential after we meet as I do now,
a meeting certainly could do you no harm. Sincerely us
(40:05):
see Adler, Director News, Operations and Programs LCA slash PP George,
I screamed into the phone. Can we drive back to
the city right now? He swore. I read George the letter,
He paused, No, we shouldn't go tonight. You're not going
(40:26):
to see him tomorrow. Wait till you get your appointment.
But Jesus, this is like the manager of the Yankees
asking you to stop by the stadium and bring your
glove and bat just in case. I think I got
to sleep at sunrise. I had read the Adler letter
twenty or thirty times, and not until the fifteenth or
so did I stop expecting it to have turned back
into some courteous form letter rejection badly xeroxton slightly off center.
(40:50):
Slowly it dawned on me that my own assessment of
my radio skills were not predicated on ego or even
the context of what else I could hear in Ithaca,
which was then the three hundred and fifty first largest
radio market in the country. Good, but still three hundred
and fifty first. I cannot now describe the sense of
(41:12):
validation except to say that I half seriously considered not
taking Lou Adler up on his offer to meet him
at CBS World Headquarters, black Rock itself, where Bill Paley
would be working upstairs, because short of offering me a job,
there really was no chance mister Adler could do or
say anything more that could make me feel better or
(41:35):
more confident that my dream of becoming a sportscaster would
not lead me to starvation or to Laconia, New Hampshire.
In fact, in person, Lou Adler found more things to say.
If I had an opening for a sportscaster right now,
I would seriously consider you for it. I would hesitate
because of your age and your lack of practical experience,
(41:57):
and then I'd probably do it anyway. He was as
warm and supportive and informal as his letter had been,
structured and serious and tempered. Let me take you on
a tour. We saw the live studios, the production studios,
the writer's area. I wasn't just speechless again, I was breathless.
And you should probably recognize this man by voice, if
(42:17):
not by sight. Keith Olderman, Meet our sports director Ed Ingles. Ed,
this is Keith. This is the fellow with the tape.
Ed Ingles took a moment that his eyes widened. Hi,
what a tape, Jesus, Lou, don't tell me you've hired him?
Did you fire me? I must admit I thought for
(42:39):
a second it might have happened. I did not shrink
entirely from that fantasy. Lou Adler laughed, No, Eddie. Then
he paused, it was irresistible. Not yet. We went back
to Lou Adwer's office. Have you got any job prospects?
I explained that a month earlier, thanks to a chain
of recommendations that stretched from my internship at Channel five
(42:59):
Television the year before, through a young ABC sports executive
named Bob Bob Iger. I think it was to a
friend of a friend of a friend of a friend.
I had met everybody at the radio network of United
Press International, and I was supposed to go back and
see them about working their freelance as summer vacation, relief
for the year ahead in sports and in news. Oh,
(43:21):
that would be ideal for you, lou Adwerer said. It's
a tough place to work. They don't pay well at UPI,
but it's here in the city, and every other radio
station in this country will hear you on the feed.
That's where we hired ed from at Ingles. So if
we have an opening, he smiled broadly, I can poach
you and get you here in less than two weeks,
can I. Mister Adler then suggested that CBS station in
(43:46):
Atlanta would be needing a sportscaster in a few months.
I'll stay on top of that. They already have a
copy of your tape. I hope you don't mind. I
made several copies of your tape. If UPI does not
work out, I am confident you will be offered a
job in Atlanta, and maybe quite a few other jobs.
I hope I've been of some help. Stay in touch.
It's one of the privileges of this job to be
able to help. But frankly, you're not going to need
(44:08):
that much help. I may have taken the train back
to my folks house, or I may have just walked
the twenty miles or floated. The UPI job worked out
full time. Two months later, at the first game I
covered for money, I walked into the press box at
Chase Stadium and there was ed ingles, thank god you
(44:31):
went to UPI. The way Adler went on about you,
I seriously wondered if he was planning to bring you
in and kick me out. The Atlanta offer Lou Adler
arranged came, I turned it down. About a year later,
I got a call from Adler's assistant saying they were
going to need a new afternoon sportscaster at WCBS and
would I send a new tape. But by that fall,
(44:51):
when the job opened, Lou Adler was leaving WCBS to
become news director and vice president of another New York
radio station, WOR. His successor would choose somebody else for
the job. Just as I heard from the people who
ran the radio network that the WOR folks had started
the year before. It was not coincidental Lou Adler had
sent these people starting this new network my tape there
(45:17):
is inevitably from the distant future a punchline in two
thousand and six or two thousand and seven, when Countdown
had become the highest rated cable news program that wasn't
on Fox, an email appeared in my inbox. I could
not believe the name of the sender, Lou Adler. He
began just as formally as he had in nineteen seventy nine.
(45:39):
He actually felt it was necessary to remind me about
his letter. He said he watched every night, and when
he found other viewers of the program, he told them
the story. Proudly, he said. He asked if I remembered.
I wrote back immediately, remembered. Remembered. I told him I
still had his letter, and I still had the sense
(46:00):
of confidence it had given me that it was central
to my decision to more or less give up my
sports career at the age of thirty eight and try news.
And I told him the whole driving back to Ithaca
and the snow tire story just for fun. Lou wrote
back again within minutes. He had just retired after running
the mass communications program at Quinnipiac College, and he said
he had had a strong sense of his career having
(46:21):
been the proverbial punch into a pail of water. Now
it was my turn to reassure him that the people
like me who he had supported and taught and broadcast to,
had long since begun to support and teach the next generation.
And that generation was already supporting the one after that.
And there would be people in this business beginning their
(46:42):
careers after both of us were dead who would owe
a debt of gratitude, whether or not they knew it
to Lou Adler, as I always will. Lou Adler died
five years ago at the age of eighty eight. There
are letters and photos in the hallway that leads in
(47:03):
from the front door my home. They are from Barack Obama,
Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, and Lou Adler. I've
(47:29):
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the music
was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and John
Phillip Shanelle, who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration
at keyboards by John Phillip Shanel, guitars, bas and drums
by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other selections, including
some Beethoven You'll hear now and again, have been arranged
(47:50):
and performed by the group No Horns allowed. The sports
music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two. It was
written by Mitch Warren Davis, Curtis c VESPN Inc. Musical
comments by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Jonathan Banks. Confidence supplied
by lou Adword. Everything else is pretty much my fault.
(48:11):
That's countdown for this the nine hundred and forty fourth
days since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Arrest him again while
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Boltons
is the news warrants till then. I'm Keith Olremman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(48:44):
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