April 9, 2024 • 57 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 154: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: You can never say a cockroach can't survive something, and after all he IS Donald J. Cockroach.
But he has now made a spectacular, amazing unforced error with this video in which he pretends to say that abortion bans should be (and would be) left to the states. He never says that, but the evangelicals who are the spine of his fanatical base don't know that. And for once the idiocy of the stenographic news media will work to hurt Trump because they repeated without examination the impression he successfully left that he was backing away from any federal abortion ban.
All that will do is piss off those evangelicals, so enraged that even Lindsey Graham felt compelled to repudiate what Trump said. It's obviously not going to convince any liberals and when the reality is made clear that he never said a damn thing about vetoing a federal abortion ban sent to him by a Republican house and senate, it wouldn't help him with that handful in the middle.
More important perhaps is what made Trump speak on the subject NOW, with the election still 211 days away. Unless he had some sudden compulsion to repudiate his life lived inside the fine print of scam contracts and confidence tricks, there is only one conclusion: the internal polling done on Trump's behalf shows he is getting DESTROYED on abortion in general, and an abortion ban specifically, and he had to run the risk of damaging religious nut job and handmaiden support in what is already - even now - a desperate last-minute attempt to put some space between him and how ever bad the damage the abortion issue is doing to him.
B-Block (25:27) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: It's the thought that counts, I guess: a news organization reports "eclipse glasses" being recalled 90 minutes before the eclipse. Fox's Harris Faulkner sounds perpetually confused; now it extends to believing that Steve Wynn, Woody Johnson and Wilbur Ross "are black." And Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson says he wants to avoid stoking "division" by repeating his endorsement of Joe Biden in 2020. You know what kind of division he's afraid of, right? The division between him and those millions standing up for his country and democracy would create - the bonehead.
C-Block (33:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: it’s another trip down memory lane; just a cassette tape from February 1977 that I found over the weekend. It contained and a sportscast I did on a radio station in Binghamton, New York I did in the middle of the night a mere 47 years ago. And oh by the way it also contained a reminder of the day 20 years later I saw a ghost and I knew who the ghost was and the ghost laughed at me and I've never told a damn soul about the ghost until now.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. You
never say a cockroach will not survive something. And he
(00:25):
is Donald J. Cockroach, and all that he said he
could deny tomorrow. There is no conscience, there is no
belief system, there is no guilt, there is no truth.
There is only the nearest hole in the floorboard for
Donald J. Cockroach to scuttle through. Nevertheless, the only people
(00:47):
Trump managed to convince that he is opposed to a
nationwide abortion ban are those who support a nationwide abortion ban,
the ones who now feel he has betrayed them. That
people Trump managed to convince that he will not stand
in the way of a nationwide a boorde are those
who oppose a nationwide abortion ban. In other words, he
(01:10):
got it all exactly backwards. Trump took one of the
few straightforward policy positions of his wasted life, one of
his few commitments. As wrong as it is, as morally
indefensible as it is, it was a rallying cry for
his most fervent supporters, the evangelicals and the handmade crowd.
(01:31):
He took that, and he lawyered it, He finessed it,
he filled it full of poisoned pills, and he trumped
it like he might trump your bill at Trump University,
and he tried to make it say yes and no
at the same time. And the evangelicals finally realized he
has been playing them and they do not know what
(01:52):
to expect from him. Next. The phrase on the religious
nutjob right yesterday and today has been he has sold
us out before his crazy abortion video statements that gained
him nothing from the middle and only further rage from
the left. Trump told the evangelicals in writing that he quote,
(02:16):
like most other Republicans believe in exceptions for rape, incest,
and life of a mother unquote, They don't. We have
an obligation. He told them to win elections unquote. They don't.
They believe he won because God counted the votes. This time.
(02:40):
They believe they won. They believe God one or Jesus
or I don't know. They believe he was just the
empty vessel chosen to get Roe v. Wade repealed. And
if anybody ever better fit the definition of an empty
vessel than cockroach je Trump, I don't know who it is.
He told them that he might have lied to them
(03:04):
about this, that he might lie to them again, might
be lying to them now might be lying to them
about the future just to get elected. The Susan B.
Anthony Pro Life America organization attacked Trump after that video.
Mike Pence attacked Trump, Kevin Bloody Sorbo attacked Trump. It
(03:25):
was such a blunder, such an obvious blunder, such a
potentially unsalvageable blunder, that even Lindsey Graham noticed, even Lindsey Graham,
who is being blackmailed to support Trump at all costs
and to threaten riots in the streets in Trump's defense,
being blackmailed with God only knows what he said. Trump
was wrong. The Supreme Court quote does not require that
(03:48):
conclusion legally, and the pro life movement has always been
about the well being of the unborn child, not geography. Unquote.
That is the closest that Lindsey Graham will get for
the rest of his natural life to telling cockroach J.
Trump to go f himself. It is, not, however, the
(04:11):
closest that the evangelicals and the anti woman and the
forced birth crowds will get to telling Trump to go
f himself. And incredibly, that may not be the biggest
part of Trump's biggest blunder yet beyond alienating his most
fervent base, there are three background consequences to Trump's remarkable
(04:34):
strategic disaster on abortion, which might in the long term
be even more important than this obvious one. And the
first one is for the first time, the gullibility, the
lack of intelligence, the lack of analytical reasoning on the
part of America's primary news outlets is working against Trump.
(04:56):
Trump says abortion law should be left to the states,
was the New York Times headline. He never said that.
He says he it will be left to the states,
which is accurate. It is left to the states. Now
that's the law. He never said a damn thing about
the future. He never said a damn thing about whether
(05:16):
or not if the Republicans in the House and Senate
managed to get into position to pass a national ban
superseding all state control. If a national abortion ban of
sixteen weeks, fifteen weeks or six weeks or whatever gets
to his desk. He never said he'd veto it. He
never said he'd veto it because it should be left
to the states. He never said that. He never said
(05:37):
anything like that, And it's in the Times headline. Trump
draws his line in the sand, was the headline in
the conservative Washington Examiner. Abortion laws should be left up
to the states. Where did he say that? He said
they are? This is fine print. He lives in the
(05:58):
fine print. Congratulations, Washington Examiner. You two have just bought
forty four thousand Trumps takes at one hundred dollars a piece.
Trump promises abortion rights will be decided by states if
re elected. Sidestepping national ban reads the New York Post,
also moronic. But the best is the one at CNN.
(06:20):
Trump makes his stance on abortion clear. And that's what
the evangelicals believe. For once the manifold journalistic failures and
personal irresponsibilities of America's reporters to gutlass, to push past
(06:41):
Trump's self created storylines, they are going to kill him
in the polls and at the ballot box. Absolutely kill
him again. That part of this nation that already hates
Trump over Roe v. Wade and the packing of the
theocratic Supreme Court and only heard these imbecilic headlines parroting
(07:02):
Trump's transparent Yes, they heard only this. Yeah, the states
can ban abortion anyway they like. They heard ban abortion, Trump, Trump,
ban abortion. If they look deeper than that they realized
it's not just las a fair. Let the States decide.
(07:25):
Trump won't guarantee that, if made president again, he would
use the power he would have to stop a national ban.
And he said nothing about MiFi pristone, and he repeated
the reproductive health equivalent of the blood libel, the q
Andon level Pizzagate worthy lie that Democrats quote support even
execution after birth. That's exactly what it is. The baby
(07:46):
is born, the baby is executed after birth, unquote. That's
the psychotic what people who already are fighting Trump on
this issue alone, that's the Trump. They heard. Those who
are supporting Trump on this issue alone were worse supporting him.
Heard babies are being executed after birth by Democrats, and
(08:10):
I Trump will not do anything to stop it. And
if Trump didn't screw up enough by telling that to
his reporters, the spine of his base, the irreplaceable part
of his base, every low synapse count reporter and editor
in America just put that message in big black capital
letters everywhere. Trump won't do what you guys want. So
(08:37):
the first subheadline here, thank you American news media for
not listening to my demands that you go back to being,
you know, reporters instead of stenographers, especially when covering a
con man who is trying to say yes and no
and up and down and abortion ban and no abortion
ban and all at the same time. Thank you. Now.
(09:02):
The second subheadline here is why did Trump say any
of this right now? Why suddenly Sunday night did he
put out that feeble social media post warning the unmovable,
unthinking objects of the religious right that they were going
to have to compromise on this, and he was going
to tell them exactly how much they were going to
(09:23):
have to compromise the next day. Somebody somewhere, even inside
the Trump idiocracy, must have realized that any statement not
giving the evangelicals everything they wanted at least stood the
chance of damaging his campaign, and rather severely at that. Certainly,
(09:44):
one of his flying monkeys like Stephen Miller hadn't have
seen the blowback online Sunday night. He's going to sell
us out, isn't he? The horrified realization across the land
of ecstatic visions and eclipses as messages from a deity
rather than a life sized geometry quiz, which is what
they are, they must have seen this. So the second
(10:05):
subheadline is somebody in the Trump campaign saw all that
before or after and said, no, we gotta do this.
We've got to do this anyway, full steam ahead. And
they said that because all campaigns, even the ones like
Trumps that are actually just fronts for legal gofundmes, all
of them have internal polling data. And the Trump internal
(10:28):
polling data must show, must show this politically suicidal video
of his confirms. It must show that he is getting
destroyed on abortion and especially on a national abortion ban,
and that if he didn't do something to distance himself
from a national ban immediately, he will lose the election
(10:52):
over it will lose. There's no other inference. Trump could
have happily gone along, letting the evangelicals believe he was
fully theirs. He was their messenger or their vessel or
their vehicle. Baby, he can take you anywhere you want
to go. He didn't have to clarify that. He didn't
(11:12):
have to clarify that at all. To go back to
yesterday's moronic headlines, no line in the sand Washington Examiner,
no making his abortion stand clear CNN. He could have
skated through to election day being all things to all people.
We're not talking about the best and the brightest here. Instead,
(11:34):
he grabbed the third rail. On the second Monday of
April of the campaign, more than two hundred days out,
he grabbed the third rail with both hands, and then
he licked it. The internal polling and other research inside
the Trump campaign must have said, if you support any
kind of national abortion ban, in fact, if you do
(11:57):
not unsupport any kind of national abortion ban, you will lose.
You will lose by two more to even be able
to lie that you had it stolen from you. You
will lose by two hundred electoral votes. That's what his
own pulling on an abortion ban and the topic in
general must have said. The only other explanation for this
(12:21):
statement at this time, alienating his friends and enraging his
enemies is that a man who has spent his life
faking it, fudging it, conning the yokels about it, that
man would suddenly say something designed to leave the impression
that he was against a federal ban. Is that he
(12:42):
suddenly decided that after this lifetime of never making a
definitive statement, never not living inside the fine print, never
seeing a scam he didn't like or try, that suddenly
on Sunday night, he decided he wanted to be upfront
and honest with everybody. Upfront and honest. Cockroach Jay Trump.
(13:05):
I'm skeptical. The most important part, of course, is Trump's campaign,
and maybe it really didn't have any choice but to
do it revealed its greatest fear and revealed it to
the Biden campaign. Trump is going to get destroyed on
the overturning of Roe v. Wade in general and the
(13:25):
prospect of a national abortion band specifically. That's what their
own research must indicate. So Biden campaign put it on
a big giant bell, Trump killed Roe v Wade. You're
doing a lot of it. Now, do ten times as much,
do a thousand times as much? Have the Trump campaign
(13:45):
wading knee deep in it, and hang the bell around
Trump's neck. You have two hundred and eleven days a
commercial in every TV show, on every streamer, on every podcast,
Trump killed Roe v Wade, Which leads me to the
third sub headline here, you know who else? Now knows
(14:08):
that you know who else just visualized belling the Trump
Robert F. Kennedy Junior, as he presently exists in this
presidential race, he has the capacity to sink Joe Biden
or sink Donald Trump. His New York State campaign director,
has repeatedly spoken of taking away enough electoral votes from
(14:29):
Biden to throw the election to the House of Representatives,
and thus she assumes to Trump. The video that came
out yesterday, that's not the first time she said that.
She posted that as early as January. But whatever she
said in the last few weeks, every move Bob Kennedy
himself has made has alienated anybody who ever thought for
(14:52):
a second that their choice was Kennedy or Biden. Kennedy
has claimed Biden threatened democracy and Trump didn't. He has
claimed the prosecution of the January sixth insurrecttionists was politically
motivated and that they were mere activists, and that he
would appoint a special counsel to investigate the prosecutors. So
(15:15):
what is RFK Junior going to do with this Trump
abortion video. I mean, it's clear that Trump only Bob's
to the surface of reality once maybe twice a week,
and my former friend Bob Kennedy Junior less frequently than that.
But he has been staggering over towards being the other
option to Trump voters, not to Biden voters. And here
(15:41):
Trump just said no national abortion ban, where he seemed
to say that last summer August, Bob Kennedy said he
was in favor of a fifteen week federal ban. Then
he retracted it quickly and said he misheard the question.
And you know, with the number of voices in his head,
that is absolutely goddamn possible. Then he picked a running
mate who is pro choice but calls in vitro fertilization
(16:03):
IBF a lie and says women should instead expose themselves
to sunlight for two hours a day to get pregnant.
And I'm guessing, then, mate, only with those nude men
in the Tucker Carlson videos who were shown tanning their
tiny little tuckers. What if Kennedy now comes out for
a national abortion ban. I mean he's said it before.
(16:26):
I mean he said everything before, And like Trump, he
is unburdened by human guilt or doubt or the sense
that he'd need to explain not just a one to
eighty on any given topic, but a three sixty. But
if he is really tacking not to be the anti Biden,
but the anti Trump, this would be a gift from
Trump to hurt Trump now again Nothing Trump has ever said,
(16:52):
or done or been in his life is important enough
to him that he cannot contradict it, repudiate it, and
deny it tomorrow. The fact that he is not really
a human being and thus not burdened by guilt or
shame or memory makes that easier. Cockroaches survive. The Trump
twenty twenty four presidential campaign is about a cockroach trying
(17:13):
to survive. He could erase all this tomorrow, or try to,
as Chuck Schumer said yesterday, Let's wait a few weeks
and see what his new position will be. But I
don't think even this cockroach can run away fast enough
from this stunning mistake, and from what Kennedy can do
with this stunning mistake, and especially what the Biden campaign
(17:38):
can do with this stunning mistake. Self destroying strategic moves
(18:02):
alienating all sides about a more may come and go.
But the campaign as cover for cockroach j Trump keeping
his ass out of prison continues eternally. The Stormy Daniel's
hush money election interference trial starts next Monday. Trump, who
has lost all appeals in the case, is now essentially
filing a suit against the judge under seal because Judge
(18:27):
Juan mare Sean is not doing an Eileen Cannon impression.
It's an odd thing to do. Three days after Trump
urged the same judge to jail him and make him
into a modern Nelson Mandela. Making the Mandela analogy is
just as odd a thing, given that the great South
African leader spent twenty seven years in jail. And if
jan Mereschan can put Trump in jail for twenty seven years,
(18:50):
I'll call that a win. Also from the if You
missed It file, Trump posted a video on his site
in which he tried to apply jiu jitsu to a
very very unlikely and sensitive topic, namely the topic of peace.
People calling him Hitler, quoting the author klingon Something another Hitler.
(19:10):
They say, elect him and he will be a dictator.
We should take this hysteria as reason for hope. The
America haters rightly feared that he and his party are
on the threshold of a successful counter revolution. Yeah, that's
what humanity has taken away from the story of the
life and death of Hitler, that he was a counter revolutionary.
(19:32):
Two responses to that bid to rename Dulles International outside
Washington in memory of I'm sorry in honor of Trump.
Congressman Jerry Connolly and Jared Moskowitz said, good idea, wrong venue.
They want to put Trump's name not on an airport,
but on Miami's Federal Correctional Institute. And a software engineer
(19:56):
named Alex Cole has a different idea for renaming Dulles
call it Dwight Eisenhower International Airport, or simply by its
acronym DEI. In Sunday's warm up to the abortion fiasco video,
Trump invoked death and destruction again, first time in a while.
(20:18):
For that and in the span of two days, Trump
insisted that President Biden had delivered the State of the
Union while under the influence of cocaine and that the
President had quote soiled the resolute desk in the Oval Office.
The New York Times buried that allegation in paragraph nineteen,
Maggie Haberman writes, quote Trump's remark was interpreted as the
(20:41):
former president saying that mister Biden had defecated on the desk.
No no, no, no, no, no no no no. That
was ted nugent. Also of interest here in an all
new edition of the podcast, is there a skeezier greedier, slimier,
(21:03):
more despicable celebrity than Dwayne Johnson the Rock And when
CBS did you put out the story about the recall
of some of the eclipse glasses when Plus, I have
never revealed this before, but I once not only saw
(21:25):
a ghost, but I know exactly who it was and
why he was laughing at me. That's next. This is Countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead of us
(21:59):
on this all new edition of Countdown. It's another trip
down memory lane with things I promised not to tell.
All it is is a cassette tape from February nineteen
seventy seven and an overnight sportscast I did on a
real radio station in Binghamton, New York. And oh, by
(22:20):
the way, it served as the reminder of the day
twenty years later when I saw ghost and I knew
exactly who it was, and I have never told anybody
about it until now. First, still more idiots to talk
about the daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning
Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world.
(22:44):
Oh for Joe Flaherty. We start with the bronze worse
CBS News. CBS News reported that the Illinois Department of
Public Health was warning residents about a recall of eclipse
glasses bikini solar eclipse glasses sold by at least six
(23:06):
different retailers in Illinois, including the Perry County Grocery Marketplace
in Pinkneysville. They were supposed to protect you against going
blind by looking into the sun during that eclipse yesterday,
and you should return them right away because they've been recalled.
And CBS put the story out at noon Illinois time yesterday,
(23:29):
like an hour and a half before the eclipse. Good call.
I got plenty of time. Then, huh, why are you
moving that story about how I should return my nineteen
fifty nine for at Edsel after it was recalled? Huh
the runner up? Worse, Sir, I really do enjoy much
of the work of many of the people who were
(23:50):
made and their repeat performances on this list time and
time again, and none more so than Harris Faulkner. I
really enjoy her work on Fox quote news unquote, not
in the way she intends it, of course, but few
combine the majesty of her blinkered stupidity with total self unawareness,
(24:12):
but I hadn't quite put my finger on the exact
problem in the canon of Harris Faulkner. And then yesterday
in one sentence she explained it to me. A Biden
spokesman who appears to be an African American responded to
the Trump fundraiser at marri Lago over the weekend by
saying it was full of a bunch of billionaires, scammers, extremists,
(24:34):
and racists. Kaylee mcinaney another Fox performer who was not
the proverbial sharpest tool in the shed, although she is
a tool, and I think they in fact don't even
leave her in the shed. Kaylee mcinanney responded that who
was the racist that was there? Tim Scott was there,
vivek Ramaswami, Woody Johnson, Wilbur Ross, Steve Wynn, which is
(24:58):
when the legendary Harris Faulkner said it and said it
all quote. I want to say this so they bring
out the black surrogate to talk about racism, because apparently
the people that you just listed on that list, they're
all black, but they're not Democrats unquote. There's a reminder
that list consisted of Tim Scott, Vivek Gramaswamy, Woody Johnson,
(25:21):
Wilbur Ross, former Secretary of Commerce who's more than three
thousand years old, and Steve Winn, the Vegas gambling guy
wants backed through an old master's not a cigar, an
actual painting, Steve Winn. The list is Tim Scott, Viveck Gramaswamy,
Woody Johnson, Wilbur Ross, and Steve Win. According to Harris Faulkner,
they're all black. Woody Johnson, thank you Harris Faulkner for
(25:46):
explaining this. But our winner even uglier Johnson, Dwayne the
Rock Johnson. I always wondered why they called him the Rock,
and now I got the answer. It's a description of
his head. Dwayne Johnson went on Fox and said he
would not be repeating his twenty two endorsement of Joe
Biden and not Trump, and for several days it was
(26:08):
the lead story Johnson will not endorse Biden, will not
endorse against Trump. That was the lead story, quoting him
in his appearance that started this. The endorsement that I
made years ago with Biden was one I thought was
the best decision for me. At the time. I thought
I'm in this position where I have some influence, and
(26:29):
I felt it was my job then to exercise my influence.
I was then the most followed man in the world
and am today, and I appreciate that. But what that
caused was something that tears me up in my guts,
which is division. That got me. I didn't realize that then, unquote,
(26:49):
what the hell is he talking about? Division? Well, Dwayne
Johnson was on Fox to promote his return to this
WrestleMania thing WWE, and when he says division, he means
some of his fans got mad at him reposing Trump,
and that presumably has shown up in his bank account.
(27:10):
Wrestling is real. They actually do throw each other around,
but we seem to have forgotten that the rest of
it and everybody in it is fake, as fake as
Dwayne Johnson, and as cowardly and is stupid. Interactive Polls,
which is tied to that polymarket gambling site I cited
last week, had it Trump forty three forty one in February.
(27:31):
Now they have it Biden forty three point forty. That
is a five point swing even after a Rasmussen poll.
The Republicans who founded ESPN then sold it for like
seventy dollars and some magic beans. Even with that measured
in which had Trump up by a the Real Clear
Politics poll of polls, which is itself a right leaning statistic,
(27:55):
it has Trump now up by three tenths of one
point the conservative Real Clear Politics RCP pole. So, mister
the Rock, nice job to get on the sinking ship
just in time, so everybody will remember your cowardice if
and when Biden wins. Dwayne Johnson trying to avoid division,
(28:19):
division of himself from a few million dollars in income
that kind of division. So he made two hundred and
seventy million in twenty twenty two, but less than half
of that last year according to Forbes. So you can
see that the financial division is just killing him and
he can't have any more of this costly, damaging concern
(28:41):
for his country. Twayne the Rock division No. Two hundred
and seventy million dollars y as Johnson two days wast
Pyson And to the number one story on the countdown,
(29:11):
and my favorite topic, me and I once saw a ghost.
I have never talked about this before, not publicly anyway,
but I once saw a ghost and it wasn't one
of these vague things where you're not sure what you're
seeing or who you're seeing. I know exactly who the
ghost was. I will get to this story, but first,
(29:33):
the setup requires a cassette tape I found that dates
from February nineteen seventy seven. And the damnedest thing about
this cassette tape is, if you were familiar at all
with cassette tapes, they used to have little pinholes at
the top, little pieces of plastic that you were supposed
to break out or break off or punch through after
(29:54):
you were done recording on the tape, so you could
not accidentally record over the tape. And when I found
this cassette the other day, these little things that you
had to make not intact anymore. We're still intact. So
this tape has survived not only intact since nineteen seventy seven,
but it has not been accidentally erased, even though I
left it eligible to be accidentally erased every day since
(30:18):
February nineteen seventy seven, and it contains, among other things,
the voice of the ghost. The setup here is. The
radio station involved is called WINR in Binghamton, New York.
The man you will hear calling himself Tom Daniels, is
actually named Glenn Cornelius. He called himself Tom Daniels because
that's what the jingle package said, and they had a
(30:40):
variety of Tom Daniels's's over the years at WINR in Binghamton.
He was our friend Glenn who worked at WVBR, the
Cornell radio station. I have mentioned m teen thousand times
on this podcast. He was going to be the program
director and tried to become the general manager of the station.
And he was my original frenemy best friends. Helped me
(31:02):
out in a thousand different situations as I did. He
and we once had a fist fight over a girl.
He won the girl, and of course that turned out
to be the best thing he ever did for me.
But that's another story for another time. As they say so,
Glenn is portraying Tom Daniels. And one weekend in the
(31:22):
winter of nineteen seventy seven, he brought his friends me,
Peter shack now and Pat Lyons that's now Patrick J. Lyons,
executive Foreign Desk editor of The New York Times. He
brought the three of us down there with him to
see a real radio station, and he put Peter and
I on the air, Peter doing a newscast and me
doing a sportscast. The only part of this before I
(31:43):
play this tape that requires a setup is the explanation
of the vitamin B twelve joke. Peter used to introduce
me on the newscast at WVBR, and he used to
ask me a trivia question every Tuesday and got so
frustrated in my always getting the answers to his trivia
questions that he changed the trivia question from a sports
trivia question to a question, the answer to which was
(32:06):
vitamin B twelve. And I didn't get it, and it
became a running joke inside the studios of WVBR for
quite a while. That's the setup. And then there is
the additional detail that Glenn Cornelius portraying Tom Daniels on
this next tape was the ghost I.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Saw sixteen minutes after one o'clock in the morning on
a Sunday, which is now February twentieth, nineteen hundred and
seventy seven. My name is Tom Daniels, and I have
a question for you. If I was as old as
Joe Nameth's football number, how old would I be? Well,
of course I would be twelve. And on that note,
we'll have the sports.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Here's wy on r sports.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
The Oclonas have sol relief pitcher Paul Lindbley ad to
the Texas Rangers, despite Baseball Commissioner Bowie kwans edict that
no such players sales be made without his approval. Oakland
owner Charlie Finley, who likes to let jingle very much
number one of Kewan's best friends, says he'll ignore Hwanes
ruly and may just sell ace pitcher.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Vital Blue to the Montreal Expos.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
On the sports scoreboard last night in the NBA, the
New York Nets came from behind to beat the New
York Knicks eighty six eighty five. It was Cleveland ninety
two Phoenix eighty eight, twenty three points and eighteen rebounds
for Jim Jones. Mac Calvin, signed as a free agent
the other day by Denver, led the Nuggets to a
one thirty three, one twenty four win over Portland. Some
other scores Washington one to oz five, Detroit ninety five,
Buffalo one o three, Seattle one hundred and Kansas City
(33:27):
one fifteen, Houston one oh nine. In college hoop action,
Anthony Roberts porty in sixty six points as Oral Roberts
beat North Carolina A and t won ten to sixty four,
which a taw State ruined. Marquette coach Al McGuire's last
home game, beating the Warriors seventy five sixty four, and
some other scores Kentucky ninety, LSU seventy six, Oregon toppling
UCLA sixty six six is fifty five rather and it
(33:48):
was Michigan eighty nine Minnesota seventy on the ice last
night in the NHL, Rene ro Bear scored a late
goal lead Buffalo over Detroit two to one. The New
York Islanders smashed the Rangers by the score of five two.
Yvon CORNWAYA scored two goals, including number four hundred, as
Montreal beat Philly five to two. Rookie Bernie Federko he
has a funny name, scored his second hat trick in
only two weeks of play as Saint Louis toppled Washington
(34:09):
will four to one. And Derek Sanderson, back in the
NHL with Vancouver, had a goal and an assist tonight
as the Canucks beat Atlanta five to one. Of their
finals Pittsburgh in Toronto, a six to sixth tie in
Minnesota Beach, Chicago six to two, and that's WI and
R sports. Great, mister.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
So I will come back to that cassette from February
nineteen seventy seven later on to give you a few
more laughs. But now to the little story about how
I saw a ghost and it was Glenn. As I said, frenemies,
I think the last conversation we actually had sometime in
(34:52):
the nineteen eighties was about the fact that I graduated
on time, beating odds of probably five million to one,
and he did not graduate on time. That was probably
an even bet. But nevertheless, at the actual graduation ceremony
at Cornell, with me and my cap and gown drinking
champagne at ten o'clock in the morning with all the
other graduates and just happy to get out by hook
(35:14):
or by crook, Glenn looked up towards me and had
the forlorn look of sadness that I can't quite describe,
and I may have given him a popular three thousand
year old Anglo Saxon gesture involving fingers. Later on, in
what I think was the last conversation we ever had,
he said he deserved that, and I said, yes, you did.
(35:37):
On the other hand, I shouldn't have done it, and
he said, no, you probably shouldn't have. And that was it.
That would have been somewhere in the eighties. Early in
nineteen ninety six, Glenn, who was then thirty nine years old,
died suddenly while he was giving a lecture about radio
(35:57):
at Katz Radio in New York. He had a hidden
heart defect that could not have been identified, certainly not
then except in the autopsy. It killed him before he
hit the floor. And so the rest of us, Pat
and Peter and all the rest of us from that
era at Cornell at WVBR reunited recreating a film. And
(36:17):
as always when you get to recreate a film, it
is not the one you want. It is, in fact
the one you want the least. And it was the
big Chill. And so we said goodbye to Glenn. And
I don't think a month has passed, maybe not a
week has passed without my thinking of him. And then
there was the time I saw him after he died.
(36:40):
In nineteen ninety seven, Dan Patrick and I wrote a
book about sports Center called Surprisingly Enough, This is Sports Center,
and simultaneous with its publication, accidentally with its publication, I
was invited to come back to Cornell for the first
time in fifteen years to give the graduation party, the
annual graduation party speech. At the graduation dinner of the
(37:05):
Cornell Daily Sun newspaper, which I had worked for for
one day in nineteen seventy five before, they said, well,
you have to choose between us or the radio station
that you also want to work for. And I said, well,
that's damn stupid, especially since the Cornell station. The radio
station is just kind of a slight walk up the hill,
but the one to the Cornell Daily Sun newspaper is
(37:28):
then down a twenty minute hill and then back up
a twenty minute hill. I'm going into radio in any event.
They asked me to come up and give a speech,
and I arrived by car. I said, send a car
for me, and I brought my stuff with me and
got into the Cornell Hotel and checked in and had
some time before my speech that night, and I went
(37:49):
over to WVVR, where I had not been to see anybody,
not since Glenn's death, in fact, not since nineteen eighty two.
It had been fifteen years since i'd been there. Now
I had this book. I had just done the Boston
Market commercial which made me a lot of money, and
I was and I think it was already out. Then
I was going to leave ESPN to go somewhere else.
(38:10):
We're even more money, and I was beginning to run
into tax problems. And that sounds dull and conceded, but
there's irrelevance to the story. So I get it to
the radio station at WVBR to twenty seven Linden Avenue.
It had not been cleaned since my last appearance there
in nineteen eighty two, and probably had not in fact
(38:31):
been cleaned since my first appearance there in nineteen seventy five.
And I buzzed my way in and the first person
I saw was a man named Phil Shapiro, who was
a salesman who had come to WVBR in about nineteen
sixty seven and never left. He managed to make a living,
just barely a living, selling time on a nominally college
radio station that had advertising. I won't go and do
(38:53):
the explanation as to why we had advertising, but Phil
Shapiro stopped and stared at me, and he said, what
are you doing here? He also did the Folk Show
every Sunday night, folk Music Live festival show, bound for
Glory from the law school at Cornell, and he had
one of those voices, and he did a lot of
commercials and he just had enough money to get by.
(39:16):
And he said, what are you doing here? And I said,
I used to work here? Remember? He said, no, of course,
of course, of course we remember you. What are you
doing here now? I said, well, I'm up here to
give the speech to the Daily Sun people. And you
know that's of course I'm going to come over here. Now.
I walked around campus for about five minutes and here
I am, just like the old days. He goes, no,
why are you here today? And I said, I'm not
(39:37):
getting your point. He said, we are holding a board
of director's emergency meeting in one hour, and we're going
to shut the radio station down for the summer. And
I said, what, you can't shut the radio station down
for the summer. It'll never go back on the air.
He said, I know. I said, well, what happened. Well,
now we go to the explanation as to what happened.
(40:00):
They ran out of money, But they didn't run out
of money. The place was still making advertise money enough
to make a profit every year. Although we couldn't keep
the profit because of the hybrid nature of the radio.
You don't care about this part. They had borrowed so
much money in the eighties for various capital projects that
the debt was killing the radio station. And the only
solution they could come up with was to take the
(40:22):
radio station off the air for the summer and then
bring it back in the fall when the students came
back and there were more listeners and therefore more profits
to make, or some profits to make, and they had
a chance of paying off the debt. And we all
knew that if the radio station went off the air,
it would never go back on the air. They would
sell the license to somebody else, carve up the money,
(40:44):
take some sort of AM carrier, current radio signal, and
reduce this factory of broadcasters that everybody that you could
think of, whoever went to Cornell and went into broadcasting,
went through. They're going to take it off the air.
The place that I owed my entire care or two.
(41:05):
And I sat down and listened to Phil and he said,
let me get the general manager. And they brought out
this fella from the class of ninety eight, and we
sat down in the business office, and the business office
was really just big enough for four large desks, and
the promotion director had a desk, and I believe the
music director may have had a desk, and the program
(41:28):
director had a desk over in the other corner. The
fourth corner was saved for the copying machine. That's how
small a business office it was. That far corner, essentially
the upper left hand corner of this office had been
Glenn's desk, and every time, for probably two years, even
before he was program director of the radio station, when
(41:49):
I would go into this office, I would see Glenn
on the phone with his feed up talking to a
music rep from Los Angeles, trying to get free radio
players of various kinds and performances or records or leased
or tickets to concerts or something, and ultimately to get
himself a career in the business, which I admired him for.
(42:12):
He was really good at it and it worked. But
I could see him then, And it occurred to me
as I sat down, to my surprise, that I could
see him now, not if I look directly at the
corner of what was his desk, but only if I
maintained my eye contact with the general manager of the
(42:33):
radio station and with Phil Shapiro, who was basically explaining
to me. The two of them were that the radio
station was going to go out of business shortly, like
forty five minutes from now, and I just happened to
wander in for the first time in literally fifteen years,
on the day they were going to vote to take
the radio station off the air. So that was Phil
(42:54):
Shapiro's question, what are you doing here today? And I said,
I don't know. Now I begin to understand what I
was doing there, because and I did not look into
the corner that had Glenn's desk in it, I could
see him quite clearly with his feet up on the
phone and now hanging the phone up, and now putting
(43:14):
his feet down, and just sort of sitting back in
the chair with his hands behind his head, rocking back
and forth in that chair and smiling and smiling more
and more broadly at me. And he was there. And
I don't think I've ever told anybody about this, but
I could see him. If I snapped over and tried
to catch him, he wasn't there. If I looked at
(43:37):
the general manager and at Phil Shapiro, he was there.
And they began to explain to me the whole history
of the ten or fifteen year decline of the finances
of w FBR, which apparently was the last radio station
in this country to try to go top forty for
some reason in the mid nineteen eighties. And that's where
the financial problem, which was not truly a financial problem.
(43:58):
If they could get rid of the debt, they'd be
making money. I mean, it sounds act academic, and for
my financial cuman, which is almost nothing, it is kind
of academic. But literally, if they could just wipe out
this debt, but there was no way to wipe out
the debt, they could never get out from under it.
And that was what the meeting was about. And the
(44:19):
votes were there to shut the radio station down and
there would be no chance it could ever resume. It
had to stay on the air during the summer, for
if no other reason, in the summer was when the
real training was done. The people who aspired to be
professionals in radio stayed in Ithaca, New York for the
summer and were on the air five six days a
week as disc jockeys, as newscasters, as sportscasters, as salesmen,
(44:44):
as running a radio station for three months in a
small town. I did it for one summer, and it
doubled my ability in three months, and so everything I
had owed to WVBR and I knew it, and the
ghost in the corner knew it too. And now I'm
(45:07):
waiting for the punchline to this how much money they
have and how much money they owe, and what the
debt service is, and how much money there is standing
between them and the apocalypse of shutting down for the summer.
And I'm waiting to hear half a million dollars, seven
(45:29):
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, even three hundred thousand dollars
something enormous. Remember at ESPN doing Sports Center, I never
made three hundred thousand dollars, not in the nineties, and
I was the highest paid guy doing SportsCenter. They didn't
even offer me half a million dollars to stay in
nineteen ninety seven. They're never going to pay anybody to
(45:50):
do SportsCenter for that much money. So I'm listening, and
the only thing that occurred to me was, well, maybe
maybe I can throw some money at it and we
can delay this a couple of weeks. Maybe because what
had happened was because of the book, which made me
some money, and that commercial when I fell off the cliff,
(46:14):
the Boston Market commercial which I'd made, had made me
some money too. My tax guy had told me that
I had to find a charitable donation to make to
a nonprofit of some sort. And WVBR qualified as a
nonprofit because of this byzantine tax structure and legal status
(46:37):
granted by it the FCC to it in nineteen thirty nine.
It had those properties. But what good would it be
if they needed ten million dollars I had to give away,
according to my accountant, about fifty thousand dollars, or just
give it to the irs. So he said, be on
the lookout. You have about a month to make up
(46:58):
your mind. And I listened to this nightmare. I listened
to Glenn's radio station about to go off the air,
and Peter's radio station, and Pat's radio station, and my
radio station going off the air, because among other things,
I hadn't paid any attention to it for fifteen years.
And Joyce Brothers worked at that radio station, not with me.
(47:21):
She was some years before. And I listened to this,
and in the corner of my eye, in the corner
of the office, I could see Glenn and I what
could not understand about this. It made absolute perfect sense
to me that Glenn Cornelius's ghost would be in the
corner of the business office at WVBR, and my first
appearance there in fifteen years, when I happened somehow to
(47:43):
have been driven there in one hour shy of the
moment that they were going to take the radio station
off the air. That I happened to be there that day,
I could understand why Glenn's ghost would be standing there
or sitting there in the corner, staring at me. What
I could not understand was why he had a smile
on his face. This did not seem to make any sense.
That was the part that disturbed me, not that I
(48:04):
could see him even though he had been dead for
more than a year. Not that part. It was that
he was smiling at me. That's when I cut to
the chase with Phil Shapiro and the general manager of
the radio station. I said, how much do you need?
(48:25):
And I'm waiting for the answer three hundred and seventy
nine thousand front and the guy goes, well, I haven't
checked it today, And I'm thinking, oh my god, it
goes up every day. Oh my god, why is Glenn
laughing at this? It can't possibly be something I can
help with. It'll be a drop in the bucket even
if I had to, he said, But I think the
(48:47):
last time I looked, earlier in the week, it was
forty nine and eighty three dollars and twenty seven cents.
Now I saw Glenn's ghost burst into laughter silently. Of course,
I burst into laughter full volume. I said, say that again,
(49:08):
forty nine and twenty seven cents. And I said, Okay,
you're not shutting down the radio station on my watch?
Can you keep it open until tomorrow morning without any help? Well,
I suppose, I said, okay, because here's the deal. My
(49:32):
accountant wants me to give away fifty thousand dollars in
the next month. And I happened to be here an
hour before the meeting at which you're going to shut
down because you don't have fifty thousand dollars. So here's
what I proposed to do. In addition to the fact
that I had to pay for the limo to take
me up here from New York, and I thought it
(49:52):
was going to be one check for the trip up
and one check for the trip back. In fact, they
demanded the round trip in advance, so when I got
out of the car an hour ago, I had to
give them a round trip fee on one check. I
still have one of my corporate checks back in the hotel,
so I have a check, a blank check, and I
(50:14):
have a need to give away fifty thousand dollars, which
is slightly more than you need by about thirteen bucks.
So here's what I want. I want you to rename
that studio over there where you do most of the
music programming from. I need you to rename that after Glenn,
and I want a party tomorrow with cake, and I
want balloons, and I want this announcement to run just once.
(50:38):
You're listening to WVBRFM ninety three point five Ithica, New York,
an Olberman Broadcasting Empire station. You don't have to run
it once. And they went what And Phil Shapiro went
white as a sheet. I said, I'm giving you the
money you need. How's that? Can you stay open until
(50:59):
tomorrow without it? Because I have it back in my
room and I really don't want to go over there
and come back again today. I'll come back tomorrow. I mean,
I'm not criticizing anybody, none of you are the ones
who are responsible for turning this into a top forty
radio station in nineteen eighty five. That wasn't your fault.
It's nineteen ninety six. Those people are long gone from
(51:21):
this radio station. I said, okay, can you just not
shut down my station, Glenn's radio station. Can you just
stay on the air and stay in business till tomorrow morning?
And Phil Shapiro, who I thought was going to faint,
(51:43):
and I'm thinking, oh great, now there'll be two ghosts
in this room, Phil, and I think we can handle it.
What do you think? And the general manager just looked
at me like, oh, thank god, how did you come
here today? I went, I looked over in the corner
of the room and there was no ghost anymore. And
I said, someday I'll explain it to you. The radio
(52:07):
station survived. They managed to keep it open till the
next day, and then we had a party, and then
they put up a plaque that called at the Glenn
Cornelius Memorial Studio. And then they got into other problems
that really were not their fault, where we had to
build them a new studio in about two thousand and
ten or so, and there has a little bit more
money circulating through my life, so I helped them out
there too, and now they operate from a much nicer
(52:29):
multimedia facility called the Olderman Cornelius Studios, which I claim
are named after Glenn and after my father, because my
father put in such effort to getting me into that
place in the first time, and into Cornell in the
first place. But obviously it also the other Olderman in
the equation is me, but it's Olderman Cornelius rather than
(52:52):
Cornelius Olderman, because as I think Glenn would have agreed
with me, the damnedest part of this would have been
if somebody someday had thought there was actually somebody named
Cornelius Olderman, so we wouldn't have that, neither he nor I,
and so it is now today the Olderman Cornelias Studios.
But I saw him laughing his ass off. Something put
(53:19):
me in that studio an hour before they were going
to go out of business after not being there for
fifteen years, nor worrying about their financial status. Something put
me in that studio having to give away fifty thousand
dollars for tax purposes when they needed just slightly less
than that. I'm happy to say that they spent the
(53:39):
additional thirteen dollars on the cake. I saw him, didn't
hear him, didn't ask him questions, didn't say anything. I
saw him. And then the other day I found this cassette.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
All right, that's what I like to see, a record
that's hop skipping and jumping. There all the young dude'es.
Just listen to this, folks, you are and are Wait,
that wasn't your cue?
Speaker 1 (54:22):
Hold it.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
We're not quite ready yet.
Speaker 3 (54:24):
Time out one?
Speaker 1 (54:25):
Two?
Speaker 2 (54:26):
Okay, wait, don't go yet. Well that's three and a
half minutes before two o'clock. We're w I at R Binghamson.
My name is Tom Daniels, and we're going off the
air in a very little while. I'll be back tomorrow
morning and maybe at ten o'clock, and i'll be here
through four Dandy Don Morgan at at four o'clock, And.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
Now this message, why are well?
Speaker 2 (54:46):
The world may never recover from this. I certainly won't
ever recover from this. But Al Stewart's gonna come and
he's gonna sing a song, and this is entertaining. It's
a nice song to go to, bit too.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
It's all about that you're the cat.
Speaker 3 (55:09):
Yes, I know.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
All right, Hurricane, list enough, Hurricane you're not listening. We're
gonna have to take acisive action here. A hurricane doesn't
watch out. I told you weren't nice. Well, the views
and opinions expressed by this activity do not particularly reflect
(55:35):
the opinions or the views of anyone, most especially Keith
or Peter or Bad or anybody else like that. Thirteen
before one o'clock at w I n R. That was
a little bit of Hurricane Smith. Luckily not a whole lot,
though eagles are here.
Speaker 1 (55:59):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray and John
Phillips arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister
Ray on guitars, bass and drums. Mister Schanelle handled orchestration
and keyboards. Produced by TKO Brothers. I saw him. He
was a ghost. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions,
(56:20):
were arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two,
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our
satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the
best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today is my
friend Larry David. Everything else was pretty much my fault.
(56:41):
Could I have not really seen him and just seen
him in my mind's eye. That's countdown for this the
two hundred and eleventh day until the twenty twenty four
presidential election, the one one hundred and ninetieth day since
dementia j Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
government of the United States. Use the fourteenth Amendment and
(57:02):
the not regularly given elector of Objection option. Use the
Insurrection Act, the justice system, the mental health system to
stop him from doing it again while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins is the news
warrants till then. I'm Keith Oulraman. Good Morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is a production
(57:36):
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. You
never say a cockroach will not survive something. And he
(00:25):
is Donald J. Cockroach, and all that he said he
could deny tomorrow. There is no conscience, there is no
belief system, there is no guilt, there is no truth.
There is only the nearest hole in the floorboard for
Donald J. Cockroach to scuttle through. Nevertheless, the only people
(00:47):
Trump managed to convince that he is opposed to a
nationwide abortion ban are those who support a nationwide abortion ban,
the ones who now feel he has betrayed them. That
people Trump managed to convince that he will not stand
in the way of a nationwide a boorde are those
who oppose a nationwide abortion ban. In other words, he
(01:10):
got it all exactly backwards. Trump took one of the
few straightforward policy positions of his wasted life, one of
his few commitments. As wrong as it is, as morally
indefensible as it is, it was a rallying cry for
his most fervent supporters, the evangelicals and the handmade crowd.
(01:31):
He took that, and he lawyered it, He finessed it,
he filled it full of poisoned pills, and he trumped
it like he might trump your bill at Trump University,
and he tried to make it say yes and no
at the same time. And the evangelicals finally realized he
has been playing them and they do not know what
(01:52):
to expect from him. Next. The phrase on the religious
nutjob right yesterday and today has been he has sold
us out before his crazy abortion video statements that gained
him nothing from the middle and only further rage from
the left. Trump told the evangelicals in writing that he quote,
(02:16):
like most other Republicans believe in exceptions for rape, incest,
and life of a mother unquote, They don't. We have
an obligation. He told them to win elections unquote. They don't.
They believe he won because God counted the votes. This time.
(02:40):
They believe they won. They believe God one or Jesus
or I don't know. They believe he was just the
empty vessel chosen to get Roe v. Wade repealed. And
if anybody ever better fit the definition of an empty
vessel than cockroach je Trump, I don't know who it is.
He told them that he might have lied to them
(03:04):
about this, that he might lie to them again, might
be lying to them now might be lying to them
about the future just to get elected. The Susan B.
Anthony Pro Life America organization attacked Trump after that video.
Mike Pence attacked Trump, Kevin Bloody Sorbo attacked Trump. It
(03:25):
was such a blunder, such an obvious blunder, such a
potentially unsalvageable blunder, that even Lindsey Graham noticed, even Lindsey Graham,
who is being blackmailed to support Trump at all costs
and to threaten riots in the streets in Trump's defense,
being blackmailed with God only knows what he said. Trump
was wrong. The Supreme Court quote does not require that
(03:48):
conclusion legally, and the pro life movement has always been
about the well being of the unborn child, not geography. Unquote.
That is the closest that Lindsey Graham will get for
the rest of his natural life to telling cockroach J.
Trump to go f himself. It is, not, however, the
(04:11):
closest that the evangelicals and the anti woman and the
forced birth crowds will get to telling Trump to go
f himself. And incredibly, that may not be the biggest
part of Trump's biggest blunder yet beyond alienating his most
fervent base, there are three background consequences to Trump's remarkable
(04:34):
strategic disaster on abortion, which might in the long term
be even more important than this obvious one. And the
first one is for the first time, the gullibility, the
lack of intelligence, the lack of analytical reasoning on the
part of America's primary news outlets is working against Trump.
(04:56):
Trump says abortion law should be left to the states,
was the New York Times headline. He never said that.
He says he it will be left to the states,
which is accurate. It is left to the states. Now
that's the law. He never said a damn thing about
the future. He never said a damn thing about whether
(05:16):
or not if the Republicans in the House and Senate
managed to get into position to pass a national ban
superseding all state control. If a national abortion ban of
sixteen weeks, fifteen weeks or six weeks or whatever gets
to his desk. He never said he'd veto it. He
never said he'd veto it because it should be left
to the states. He never said that. He never said
(05:37):
anything like that, And it's in the Times headline. Trump
draws his line in the sand, was the headline in
the conservative Washington Examiner. Abortion laws should be left up
to the states. Where did he say that? He said
they are? This is fine print. He lives in the
(05:58):
fine print. Congratulations, Washington Examiner. You two have just bought
forty four thousand Trumps takes at one hundred dollars a piece.
Trump promises abortion rights will be decided by states if
re elected. Sidestepping national ban reads the New York Post,
also moronic. But the best is the one at CNN.
(06:20):
Trump makes his stance on abortion clear. And that's what
the evangelicals believe. For once the manifold journalistic failures and
personal irresponsibilities of America's reporters to gutlass, to push past
(06:41):
Trump's self created storylines, they are going to kill him
in the polls and at the ballot box. Absolutely kill
him again. That part of this nation that already hates
Trump over Roe v. Wade and the packing of the
theocratic Supreme Court and only heard these imbecilic headlines parroting
(07:02):
Trump's transparent Yes, they heard only this. Yeah, the states
can ban abortion anyway they like. They heard ban abortion, Trump, Trump,
ban abortion. If they look deeper than that they realized
it's not just las a fair. Let the States decide.
(07:25):
Trump won't guarantee that, if made president again, he would
use the power he would have to stop a national ban.
And he said nothing about MiFi pristone, and he repeated
the reproductive health equivalent of the blood libel, the q
Andon level Pizzagate worthy lie that Democrats quote support even
execution after birth. That's exactly what it is. The baby
(07:46):
is born, the baby is executed after birth, unquote. That's
the psychotic what people who already are fighting Trump on
this issue alone, that's the Trump. They heard. Those who
are supporting Trump on this issue alone were worse supporting him.
Heard babies are being executed after birth by Democrats, and
(08:10):
I Trump will not do anything to stop it. And
if Trump didn't screw up enough by telling that to
his reporters, the spine of his base, the irreplaceable part
of his base, every low synapse count reporter and editor
in America just put that message in big black capital
letters everywhere. Trump won't do what you guys want. So
(08:37):
the first subheadline here, thank you American news media for
not listening to my demands that you go back to being,
you know, reporters instead of stenographers, especially when covering a
con man who is trying to say yes and no
and up and down and abortion ban and no abortion
ban and all at the same time. Thank you. Now.
(09:02):
The second subheadline here is why did Trump say any
of this right now? Why suddenly Sunday night did he
put out that feeble social media post warning the unmovable,
unthinking objects of the religious right that they were going
to have to compromise on this, and he was going
to tell them exactly how much they were going to
(09:23):
have to compromise the next day. Somebody somewhere, even inside
the Trump idiocracy, must have realized that any statement not
giving the evangelicals everything they wanted at least stood the
chance of damaging his campaign, and rather severely at that. Certainly,
(09:44):
one of his flying monkeys like Stephen Miller hadn't have
seen the blowback online Sunday night. He's going to sell
us out, isn't he? The horrified realization across the land
of ecstatic visions and eclipses as messages from a deity
rather than a life sized geometry quiz, which is what
they are, they must have seen this. So the second
(10:05):
subheadline is somebody in the Trump campaign saw all that
before or after and said, no, we gotta do this.
We've got to do this anyway, full steam ahead. And
they said that because all campaigns, even the ones like
Trumps that are actually just fronts for legal gofundmes, all
of them have internal polling data. And the Trump internal
(10:28):
polling data must show, must show this politically suicidal video
of his confirms. It must show that he is getting
destroyed on abortion and especially on a national abortion ban,
and that if he didn't do something to distance himself
from a national ban immediately, he will lose the election
(10:52):
over it will lose. There's no other inference. Trump could
have happily gone along, letting the evangelicals believe he was
fully theirs. He was their messenger or their vessel or
their vehicle. Baby, he can take you anywhere you want
to go. He didn't have to clarify that. He didn't
(11:12):
have to clarify that at all. To go back to
yesterday's moronic headlines, no line in the sand Washington Examiner,
no making his abortion stand clear CNN. He could have
skated through to election day being all things to all people.
We're not talking about the best and the brightest here. Instead,
(11:34):
he grabbed the third rail. On the second Monday of
April of the campaign, more than two hundred days out,
he grabbed the third rail with both hands, and then
he licked it. The internal polling and other research inside
the Trump campaign must have said, if you support any
kind of national abortion ban, in fact, if you do
(11:57):
not unsupport any kind of national abortion ban, you will lose.
You will lose by two more to even be able
to lie that you had it stolen from you. You
will lose by two hundred electoral votes. That's what his
own pulling on an abortion ban and the topic in
general must have said. The only other explanation for this
(12:21):
statement at this time, alienating his friends and enraging his
enemies is that a man who has spent his life
faking it, fudging it, conning the yokels about it, that
man would suddenly say something designed to leave the impression
that he was against a federal ban. Is that he
(12:42):
suddenly decided that after this lifetime of never making a
definitive statement, never not living inside the fine print, never
seeing a scam he didn't like or try, that suddenly
on Sunday night, he decided he wanted to be upfront
and honest with everybody. Upfront and honest. Cockroach Jay Trump.
(13:05):
I'm skeptical. The most important part, of course, is Trump's campaign,
and maybe it really didn't have any choice but to
do it revealed its greatest fear and revealed it to
the Biden campaign. Trump is going to get destroyed on
the overturning of Roe v. Wade in general and the
(13:25):
prospect of a national abortion band specifically. That's what their
own research must indicate. So Biden campaign put it on
a big giant bell, Trump killed Roe v Wade. You're
doing a lot of it. Now, do ten times as much,
do a thousand times as much? Have the Trump campaign
(13:45):
wading knee deep in it, and hang the bell around
Trump's neck. You have two hundred and eleven days a
commercial in every TV show, on every streamer, on every podcast,
Trump killed Roe v Wade, Which leads me to the
third sub headline here, you know who else? Now knows
(14:08):
that you know who else just visualized belling the Trump
Robert F. Kennedy Junior, as he presently exists in this
presidential race, he has the capacity to sink Joe Biden
or sink Donald Trump. His New York State campaign director,
has repeatedly spoken of taking away enough electoral votes from
(14:29):
Biden to throw the election to the House of Representatives,
and thus she assumes to Trump. The video that came
out yesterday, that's not the first time she said that.
She posted that as early as January. But whatever she
said in the last few weeks, every move Bob Kennedy
himself has made has alienated anybody who ever thought for
(14:52):
a second that their choice was Kennedy or Biden. Kennedy
has claimed Biden threatened democracy and Trump didn't. He has
claimed the prosecution of the January sixth insurrecttionists was politically
motivated and that they were mere activists, and that he
would appoint a special counsel to investigate the prosecutors. So
(15:15):
what is RFK Junior going to do with this Trump
abortion video. I mean, it's clear that Trump only Bob's
to the surface of reality once maybe twice a week,
and my former friend Bob Kennedy Junior less frequently than that.
But he has been staggering over towards being the other
option to Trump voters, not to Biden voters. And here
(15:41):
Trump just said no national abortion ban, where he seemed
to say that last summer August, Bob Kennedy said he
was in favor of a fifteen week federal ban. Then
he retracted it quickly and said he misheard the question.
And you know, with the number of voices in his head,
that is absolutely goddamn possible. Then he picked a running
mate who is pro choice but calls in vitro fertilization
(16:03):
IBF a lie and says women should instead expose themselves
to sunlight for two hours a day to get pregnant.
And I'm guessing, then, mate, only with those nude men
in the Tucker Carlson videos who were shown tanning their
tiny little tuckers. What if Kennedy now comes out for
a national abortion ban. I mean he's said it before.
(16:26):
I mean he said everything before, And like Trump, he
is unburdened by human guilt or doubt or the sense
that he'd need to explain not just a one to
eighty on any given topic, but a three sixty. But
if he is really tacking not to be the anti Biden,
but the anti Trump, this would be a gift from
Trump to hurt Trump now again Nothing Trump has ever said,
(16:52):
or done or been in his life is important enough
to him that he cannot contradict it, repudiate it, and
deny it tomorrow. The fact that he is not really
a human being and thus not burdened by guilt or
shame or memory makes that easier. Cockroaches survive. The Trump
twenty twenty four presidential campaign is about a cockroach trying
(17:13):
to survive. He could erase all this tomorrow, or try to,
as Chuck Schumer said yesterday, Let's wait a few weeks
and see what his new position will be. But I
don't think even this cockroach can run away fast enough
from this stunning mistake, and from what Kennedy can do
with this stunning mistake, and especially what the Biden campaign
(17:38):
can do with this stunning mistake. Self destroying strategic moves
(18:02):
alienating all sides about a more may come and go.
But the campaign as cover for cockroach j Trump keeping
his ass out of prison continues eternally. The Stormy Daniel's
hush money election interference trial starts next Monday. Trump, who
has lost all appeals in the case, is now essentially
filing a suit against the judge under seal because Judge
(18:27):
Juan mare Sean is not doing an Eileen Cannon impression.
It's an odd thing to do. Three days after Trump
urged the same judge to jail him and make him
into a modern Nelson Mandela. Making the Mandela analogy is
just as odd a thing, given that the great South
African leader spent twenty seven years in jail. And if
jan Mereschan can put Trump in jail for twenty seven years,
(18:50):
I'll call that a win. Also from the if You
missed It file, Trump posted a video on his site
in which he tried to apply jiu jitsu to a
very very unlikely and sensitive topic, namely the topic of peace.
People calling him Hitler, quoting the author klingon Something another Hitler.
(19:10):
They say, elect him and he will be a dictator.
We should take this hysteria as reason for hope. The
America haters rightly feared that he and his party are
on the threshold of a successful counter revolution. Yeah, that's
what humanity has taken away from the story of the
life and death of Hitler, that he was a counter revolutionary.
(19:32):
Two responses to that bid to rename Dulles International outside
Washington in memory of I'm sorry in honor of Trump.
Congressman Jerry Connolly and Jared Moskowitz said, good idea, wrong venue.
They want to put Trump's name not on an airport,
but on Miami's Federal Correctional Institute. And a software engineer
(19:56):
named Alex Cole has a different idea for renaming Dulles
call it Dwight Eisenhower International Airport, or simply by its
acronym DEI. In Sunday's warm up to the abortion fiasco video,
Trump invoked death and destruction again, first time in a while.
(20:18):
For that and in the span of two days, Trump
insisted that President Biden had delivered the State of the
Union while under the influence of cocaine and that the
President had quote soiled the resolute desk in the Oval Office.
The New York Times buried that allegation in paragraph nineteen,
Maggie Haberman writes, quote Trump's remark was interpreted as the
(20:41):
former president saying that mister Biden had defecated on the desk.
No no, no, no, no, no no no no. That
was ted nugent. Also of interest here in an all
new edition of the podcast, is there a skeezier greedier, slimier,
(21:03):
more despicable celebrity than Dwayne Johnson the Rock And when
CBS did you put out the story about the recall
of some of the eclipse glasses when Plus, I have
never revealed this before, but I once not only saw
(21:25):
a ghost, but I know exactly who it was and
why he was laughing at me. That's next. This is Countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead of us
(21:59):
on this all new edition of Countdown. It's another trip
down memory lane with things I promised not to tell.
All it is is a cassette tape from February nineteen
seventy seven and an overnight sportscast I did on a
real radio station in Binghamton, New York. And oh, by
(22:20):
the way, it served as the reminder of the day
twenty years later when I saw ghost and I knew
exactly who it was, and I have never told anybody
about it until now. First, still more idiots to talk
about the daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning
Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world.
(22:44):
Oh for Joe Flaherty. We start with the bronze worse
CBS News. CBS News reported that the Illinois Department of
Public Health was warning residents about a recall of eclipse
glasses bikini solar eclipse glasses sold by at least six
(23:06):
different retailers in Illinois, including the Perry County Grocery Marketplace
in Pinkneysville. They were supposed to protect you against going
blind by looking into the sun during that eclipse yesterday,
and you should return them right away because they've been recalled.
And CBS put the story out at noon Illinois time yesterday,
(23:29):
like an hour and a half before the eclipse. Good call.
I got plenty of time. Then, huh, why are you
moving that story about how I should return my nineteen
fifty nine for at Edsel after it was recalled? Huh
the runner up? Worse, Sir, I really do enjoy much
of the work of many of the people who were
(23:50):
made and their repeat performances on this list time and
time again, and none more so than Harris Faulkner. I
really enjoy her work on Fox quote news unquote, not
in the way she intends it, of course, but few
combine the majesty of her blinkered stupidity with total self unawareness,
(24:12):
but I hadn't quite put my finger on the exact
problem in the canon of Harris Faulkner. And then yesterday
in one sentence she explained it to me. A Biden
spokesman who appears to be an African American responded to
the Trump fundraiser at marri Lago over the weekend by
saying it was full of a bunch of billionaires, scammers, extremists,
(24:34):
and racists. Kaylee mcinaney another Fox performer who was not
the proverbial sharpest tool in the shed, although she is
a tool, and I think they in fact don't even
leave her in the shed. Kaylee mcinanney responded that who
was the racist that was there? Tim Scott was there,
vivek Ramaswami, Woody Johnson, Wilbur Ross, Steve Wynn, which is
(24:58):
when the legendary Harris Faulkner said it and said it
all quote. I want to say this so they bring
out the black surrogate to talk about racism, because apparently
the people that you just listed on that list, they're
all black, but they're not Democrats unquote. There's a reminder
that list consisted of Tim Scott, Vivek Gramaswamy, Woody Johnson,
(25:21):
Wilbur Ross, former Secretary of Commerce who's more than three
thousand years old, and Steve Winn, the Vegas gambling guy
wants backed through an old master's not a cigar, an
actual painting, Steve Winn. The list is Tim Scott, Viveck Gramaswamy,
Woody Johnson, Wilbur Ross, and Steve Win. According to Harris Faulkner,
they're all black. Woody Johnson, thank you Harris Faulkner for
(25:46):
explaining this. But our winner even uglier Johnson, Dwayne the
Rock Johnson. I always wondered why they called him the Rock,
and now I got the answer. It's a description of
his head. Dwayne Johnson went on Fox and said he
would not be repeating his twenty two endorsement of Joe
Biden and not Trump, and for several days it was
(26:08):
the lead story Johnson will not endorse Biden, will not
endorse against Trump. That was the lead story, quoting him
in his appearance that started this. The endorsement that I
made years ago with Biden was one I thought was
the best decision for me. At the time. I thought
I'm in this position where I have some influence, and
(26:29):
I felt it was my job then to exercise my influence.
I was then the most followed man in the world
and am today, and I appreciate that. But what that
caused was something that tears me up in my guts,
which is division. That got me. I didn't realize that then, unquote,
(26:49):
what the hell is he talking about? Division? Well, Dwayne
Johnson was on Fox to promote his return to this
WrestleMania thing WWE, and when he says division, he means
some of his fans got mad at him reposing Trump,
and that presumably has shown up in his bank account.
(27:10):
Wrestling is real. They actually do throw each other around,
but we seem to have forgotten that the rest of
it and everybody in it is fake, as fake as
Dwayne Johnson, and as cowardly and is stupid. Interactive Polls,
which is tied to that polymarket gambling site I cited
last week, had it Trump forty three forty one in February.
(27:31):
Now they have it Biden forty three point forty. That
is a five point swing even after a Rasmussen poll.
The Republicans who founded ESPN then sold it for like
seventy dollars and some magic beans. Even with that measured
in which had Trump up by a the Real Clear
Politics poll of polls, which is itself a right leaning statistic,
(27:55):
it has Trump now up by three tenths of one
point the conservative Real Clear Politics RCP pole. So, mister
the Rock, nice job to get on the sinking ship
just in time, so everybody will remember your cowardice if
and when Biden wins. Dwayne Johnson trying to avoid division,
(28:19):
division of himself from a few million dollars in income
that kind of division. So he made two hundred and
seventy million in twenty twenty two, but less than half
of that last year according to Forbes. So you can
see that the financial division is just killing him and
he can't have any more of this costly, damaging concern
(28:41):
for his country. Twayne the Rock division No. Two hundred
and seventy million dollars y as Johnson two days wast
Pyson And to the number one story on the countdown,
(29:11):
and my favorite topic, me and I once saw a ghost.
I have never talked about this before, not publicly anyway,
but I once saw a ghost and it wasn't one
of these vague things where you're not sure what you're
seeing or who you're seeing. I know exactly who the
ghost was. I will get to this story, but first,
(29:33):
the setup requires a cassette tape I found that dates
from February nineteen seventy seven. And the damnedest thing about
this cassette tape is, if you were familiar at all
with cassette tapes, they used to have little pinholes at
the top, little pieces of plastic that you were supposed
to break out or break off or punch through after
(29:54):
you were done recording on the tape, so you could
not accidentally record over the tape. And when I found
this cassette the other day, these little things that you
had to make not intact anymore. We're still intact. So
this tape has survived not only intact since nineteen seventy seven,
but it has not been accidentally erased, even though I
left it eligible to be accidentally erased every day since
(30:18):
February nineteen seventy seven, and it contains, among other things,
the voice of the ghost. The setup here is. The
radio station involved is called WINR in Binghamton, New York.
The man you will hear calling himself Tom Daniels, is
actually named Glenn Cornelius. He called himself Tom Daniels because
that's what the jingle package said, and they had a
(30:40):
variety of Tom Daniels's's over the years at WINR in Binghamton.
He was our friend Glenn who worked at WVBR, the
Cornell radio station. I have mentioned m teen thousand times
on this podcast. He was going to be the program
director and tried to become the general manager of the station.
And he was my original frenemy best friends. Helped me
(31:02):
out in a thousand different situations as I did. He
and we once had a fist fight over a girl.
He won the girl, and of course that turned out
to be the best thing he ever did for me.
But that's another story for another time. As they say so,
Glenn is portraying Tom Daniels. And one weekend in the
(31:22):
winter of nineteen seventy seven, he brought his friends me,
Peter shack now and Pat Lyons that's now Patrick J. Lyons,
executive Foreign Desk editor of The New York Times. He
brought the three of us down there with him to
see a real radio station, and he put Peter and
I on the air, Peter doing a newscast and me
doing a sportscast. The only part of this before I
(31:43):
play this tape that requires a setup is the explanation
of the vitamin B twelve joke. Peter used to introduce
me on the newscast at WVBR, and he used to
ask me a trivia question every Tuesday and got so
frustrated in my always getting the answers to his trivia
questions that he changed the trivia question from a sports
trivia question to a question, the answer to which was
(32:06):
vitamin B twelve. And I didn't get it, and it
became a running joke inside the studios of WVBR for
quite a while. That's the setup. And then there is
the additional detail that Glenn Cornelius portraying Tom Daniels on
this next tape was the ghost I.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Saw sixteen minutes after one o'clock in the morning on
a Sunday, which is now February twentieth, nineteen hundred and
seventy seven. My name is Tom Daniels, and I have
a question for you. If I was as old as
Joe Nameth's football number, how old would I be? Well,
of course I would be twelve. And on that note,
we'll have the sports.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Here's wy on r sports.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
The Oclonas have sol relief pitcher Paul Lindbley ad to
the Texas Rangers, despite Baseball Commissioner Bowie kwans edict that
no such players sales be made without his approval. Oakland
owner Charlie Finley, who likes to let jingle very much
number one of Kewan's best friends, says he'll ignore Hwanes
ruly and may just sell ace pitcher.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Vital Blue to the Montreal Expos.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
On the sports scoreboard last night in the NBA, the
New York Nets came from behind to beat the New
York Knicks eighty six eighty five. It was Cleveland ninety
two Phoenix eighty eight, twenty three points and eighteen rebounds
for Jim Jones. Mac Calvin, signed as a free agent
the other day by Denver, led the Nuggets to a
one thirty three, one twenty four win over Portland. Some
other scores Washington one to oz five, Detroit ninety five,
Buffalo one o three, Seattle one hundred and Kansas City
(33:27):
one fifteen, Houston one oh nine. In college hoop action,
Anthony Roberts porty in sixty six points as Oral Roberts
beat North Carolina A and t won ten to sixty four,
which a taw State ruined. Marquette coach Al McGuire's last
home game, beating the Warriors seventy five sixty four, and
some other scores Kentucky ninety, LSU seventy six, Oregon toppling
UCLA sixty six six is fifty five rather and it
(33:48):
was Michigan eighty nine Minnesota seventy on the ice last
night in the NHL, Rene ro Bear scored a late
goal lead Buffalo over Detroit two to one. The New
York Islanders smashed the Rangers by the score of five two.
Yvon CORNWAYA scored two goals, including number four hundred, as
Montreal beat Philly five to two. Rookie Bernie Federko he
has a funny name, scored his second hat trick in
only two weeks of play as Saint Louis toppled Washington
(34:09):
will four to one. And Derek Sanderson, back in the
NHL with Vancouver, had a goal and an assist tonight
as the Canucks beat Atlanta five to one. Of their
finals Pittsburgh in Toronto, a six to sixth tie in
Minnesota Beach, Chicago six to two, and that's WI and
R sports. Great, mister.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
So I will come back to that cassette from February
nineteen seventy seven later on to give you a few
more laughs. But now to the little story about how
I saw a ghost and it was Glenn. As I said, frenemies,
I think the last conversation we actually had sometime in
(34:52):
the nineteen eighties was about the fact that I graduated
on time, beating odds of probably five million to one,
and he did not graduate on time. That was probably
an even bet. But nevertheless, at the actual graduation ceremony
at Cornell, with me and my cap and gown drinking
champagne at ten o'clock in the morning with all the
other graduates and just happy to get out by hook
(35:14):
or by crook, Glenn looked up towards me and had
the forlorn look of sadness that I can't quite describe,
and I may have given him a popular three thousand
year old Anglo Saxon gesture involving fingers. Later on, in
what I think was the last conversation we ever had,
he said he deserved that, and I said, yes, you did.
(35:37):
On the other hand, I shouldn't have done it, and
he said, no, you probably shouldn't have. And that was it.
That would have been somewhere in the eighties. Early in
nineteen ninety six, Glenn, who was then thirty nine years old,
died suddenly while he was giving a lecture about radio
(35:57):
at Katz Radio in New York. He had a hidden
heart defect that could not have been identified, certainly not
then except in the autopsy. It killed him before he
hit the floor. And so the rest of us, Pat
and Peter and all the rest of us from that
era at Cornell at WVBR reunited recreating a film. And
(36:17):
as always when you get to recreate a film, it
is not the one you want. It is, in fact
the one you want the least. And it was the
big Chill. And so we said goodbye to Glenn. And
I don't think a month has passed, maybe not a
week has passed without my thinking of him. And then
there was the time I saw him after he died.
(36:40):
In nineteen ninety seven, Dan Patrick and I wrote a
book about sports Center called Surprisingly Enough, This is Sports Center,
and simultaneous with its publication, accidentally with its publication, I
was invited to come back to Cornell for the first
time in fifteen years to give the graduation party, the
annual graduation party speech. At the graduation dinner of the
(37:05):
Cornell Daily Sun newspaper, which I had worked for for
one day in nineteen seventy five before, they said, well,
you have to choose between us or the radio station
that you also want to work for. And I said, well,
that's damn stupid, especially since the Cornell station. The radio
station is just kind of a slight walk up the hill,
but the one to the Cornell Daily Sun newspaper is
(37:28):
then down a twenty minute hill and then back up
a twenty minute hill. I'm going into radio in any event.
They asked me to come up and give a speech,
and I arrived by car. I said, send a car
for me, and I brought my stuff with me and
got into the Cornell Hotel and checked in and had
some time before my speech that night, and I went
(37:49):
over to WVVR, where I had not been to see anybody,
not since Glenn's death, in fact, not since nineteen eighty two.
It had been fifteen years since i'd been there. Now
I had this book. I had just done the Boston
Market commercial which made me a lot of money, and
I was and I think it was already out. Then
I was going to leave ESPN to go somewhere else.
(38:10):
We're even more money, and I was beginning to run
into tax problems. And that sounds dull and conceded, but
there's irrelevance to the story. So I get it to
the radio station at WVBR to twenty seven Linden Avenue.
It had not been cleaned since my last appearance there
in nineteen eighty two, and probably had not in fact
(38:31):
been cleaned since my first appearance there in nineteen seventy five.
And I buzzed my way in and the first person
I saw was a man named Phil Shapiro, who was
a salesman who had come to WVBR in about nineteen
sixty seven and never left. He managed to make a living,
just barely a living, selling time on a nominally college
radio station that had advertising. I won't go and do
(38:53):
the explanation as to why we had advertising, but Phil
Shapiro stopped and stared at me, and he said, what
are you doing here? He also did the Folk Show
every Sunday night, folk Music Live festival show, bound for
Glory from the law school at Cornell, and he had
one of those voices, and he did a lot of
commercials and he just had enough money to get by.
(39:16):
And he said, what are you doing here? And I said,
I used to work here? Remember? He said, no, of course,
of course, of course we remember you. What are you
doing here now? I said, well, I'm up here to
give the speech to the Daily Sun people. And you
know that's of course I'm going to come over here. Now.
I walked around campus for about five minutes and here
I am, just like the old days. He goes, no,
why are you here today? And I said, I'm not
(39:37):
getting your point. He said, we are holding a board
of director's emergency meeting in one hour, and we're going
to shut the radio station down for the summer. And
I said, what, you can't shut the radio station down
for the summer. It'll never go back on the air.
He said, I know. I said, well, what happened. Well,
now we go to the explanation as to what happened.
(40:00):
They ran out of money, But they didn't run out
of money. The place was still making advertise money enough
to make a profit every year. Although we couldn't keep
the profit because of the hybrid nature of the radio.
You don't care about this part. They had borrowed so
much money in the eighties for various capital projects that
the debt was killing the radio station. And the only
solution they could come up with was to take the
(40:22):
radio station off the air for the summer and then
bring it back in the fall when the students came
back and there were more listeners and therefore more profits
to make, or some profits to make, and they had
a chance of paying off the debt. And we all
knew that if the radio station went off the air,
it would never go back on the air. They would
sell the license to somebody else, carve up the money,
(40:44):
take some sort of AM carrier, current radio signal, and
reduce this factory of broadcasters that everybody that you could
think of, whoever went to Cornell and went into broadcasting,
went through. They're going to take it off the air.
The place that I owed my entire care or two.
(41:05):
And I sat down and listened to Phil and he said,
let me get the general manager. And they brought out
this fella from the class of ninety eight, and we
sat down in the business office, and the business office
was really just big enough for four large desks, and
the promotion director had a desk, and I believe the
music director may have had a desk, and the program
(41:28):
director had a desk over in the other corner. The
fourth corner was saved for the copying machine. That's how
small a business office it was. That far corner, essentially
the upper left hand corner of this office had been
Glenn's desk, and every time, for probably two years, even
before he was program director of the radio station, when
(41:49):
I would go into this office, I would see Glenn
on the phone with his feed up talking to a
music rep from Los Angeles, trying to get free radio
players of various kinds and performances or records or leased
or tickets to concerts or something, and ultimately to get
himself a career in the business, which I admired him for.
(42:12):
He was really good at it and it worked. But
I could see him then, And it occurred to me
as I sat down, to my surprise, that I could
see him now, not if I look directly at the
corner of what was his desk, but only if I
maintained my eye contact with the general manager of the
(42:33):
radio station and with Phil Shapiro, who was basically explaining
to me. The two of them were that the radio
station was going to go out of business shortly, like
forty five minutes from now, and I just happened to
wander in for the first time in literally fifteen years,
on the day they were going to vote to take
the radio station off the air. So that was Phil
(42:54):
Shapiro's question, what are you doing here today? And I said,
I don't know. Now I begin to understand what I
was doing there, because and I did not look into
the corner that had Glenn's desk in it, I could
see him quite clearly with his feet up on the
phone and now hanging the phone up, and now putting
(43:14):
his feet down, and just sort of sitting back in
the chair with his hands behind his head, rocking back
and forth in that chair and smiling and smiling more
and more broadly at me. And he was there. And
I don't think I've ever told anybody about this, but
I could see him. If I snapped over and tried
to catch him, he wasn't there. If I looked at
(43:37):
the general manager and at Phil Shapiro, he was there.
And they began to explain to me the whole history
of the ten or fifteen year decline of the finances
of w FBR, which apparently was the last radio station
in this country to try to go top forty for
some reason in the mid nineteen eighties. And that's where
the financial problem, which was not truly a financial problem.
(43:58):
If they could get rid of the debt, they'd be
making money. I mean, it sounds act academic, and for
my financial cuman, which is almost nothing, it is kind
of academic. But literally, if they could just wipe out
this debt, but there was no way to wipe out
the debt, they could never get out from under it.
And that was what the meeting was about. And the
(44:19):
votes were there to shut the radio station down and
there would be no chance it could ever resume. It
had to stay on the air during the summer, for
if no other reason, in the summer was when the
real training was done. The people who aspired to be
professionals in radio stayed in Ithaca, New York for the
summer and were on the air five six days a
week as disc jockeys, as newscasters, as sportscasters, as salesmen,
(44:44):
as running a radio station for three months in a
small town. I did it for one summer, and it
doubled my ability in three months, and so everything I
had owed to WVBR and I knew it, and the
ghost in the corner knew it too. And now I'm
(45:07):
waiting for the punchline to this how much money they
have and how much money they owe, and what the
debt service is, and how much money there is standing
between them and the apocalypse of shutting down for the summer.
And I'm waiting to hear half a million dollars, seven
(45:29):
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, even three hundred thousand dollars
something enormous. Remember at ESPN doing Sports Center, I never
made three hundred thousand dollars, not in the nineties, and
I was the highest paid guy doing SportsCenter. They didn't
even offer me half a million dollars to stay in
nineteen ninety seven. They're never going to pay anybody to
(45:50):
do SportsCenter for that much money. So I'm listening, and
the only thing that occurred to me was, well, maybe
maybe I can throw some money at it and we
can delay this a couple of weeks. Maybe because what
had happened was because of the book, which made me
some money, and that commercial when I fell off the cliff,
(46:14):
the Boston Market commercial which I'd made, had made me
some money too. My tax guy had told me that
I had to find a charitable donation to make to
a nonprofit of some sort. And WVBR qualified as a
nonprofit because of this byzantine tax structure and legal status
(46:37):
granted by it the FCC to it in nineteen thirty nine.
It had those properties. But what good would it be
if they needed ten million dollars I had to give away,
according to my accountant, about fifty thousand dollars, or just
give it to the irs. So he said, be on
the lookout. You have about a month to make up
(46:58):
your mind. And I listened to this nightmare. I listened
to Glenn's radio station about to go off the air,
and Peter's radio station, and Pat's radio station, and my
radio station going off the air, because among other things,
I hadn't paid any attention to it for fifteen years.
And Joyce Brothers worked at that radio station, not with me.
(47:21):
She was some years before. And I listened to this,
and in the corner of my eye, in the corner
of the office, I could see Glenn and I what
could not understand about this. It made absolute perfect sense
to me that Glenn Cornelius's ghost would be in the
corner of the business office at WVBR, and my first
appearance there in fifteen years, when I happened somehow to
(47:43):
have been driven there in one hour shy of the
moment that they were going to take the radio station
off the air. That I happened to be there that day,
I could understand why Glenn's ghost would be standing there
or sitting there in the corner, staring at me. What
I could not understand was why he had a smile
on his face. This did not seem to make any sense.
That was the part that disturbed me, not that I
(48:04):
could see him even though he had been dead for
more than a year. Not that part. It was that
he was smiling at me. That's when I cut to
the chase with Phil Shapiro and the general manager of
the radio station. I said, how much do you need?
(48:25):
And I'm waiting for the answer three hundred and seventy
nine thousand front and the guy goes, well, I haven't
checked it today, And I'm thinking, oh my god, it
goes up every day. Oh my god, why is Glenn
laughing at this? It can't possibly be something I can
help with. It'll be a drop in the bucket even
if I had to, he said, But I think the
(48:47):
last time I looked, earlier in the week, it was
forty nine and eighty three dollars and twenty seven cents.
Now I saw Glenn's ghost burst into laughter silently. Of course,
I burst into laughter full volume. I said, say that again,
(49:08):
forty nine and twenty seven cents. And I said, Okay,
you're not shutting down the radio station on my watch?
Can you keep it open until tomorrow morning without any help? Well,
I suppose, I said, okay, because here's the deal. My
(49:32):
accountant wants me to give away fifty thousand dollars in
the next month. And I happened to be here an
hour before the meeting at which you're going to shut
down because you don't have fifty thousand dollars. So here's
what I proposed to do. In addition to the fact
that I had to pay for the limo to take
me up here from New York, and I thought it
(49:52):
was going to be one check for the trip up
and one check for the trip back. In fact, they
demanded the round trip in advance, so when I got
out of the car an hour ago, I had to
give them a round trip fee on one check. I
still have one of my corporate checks back in the hotel,
so I have a check, a blank check, and I
(50:14):
have a need to give away fifty thousand dollars, which
is slightly more than you need by about thirteen bucks.
So here's what I want. I want you to rename
that studio over there where you do most of the
music programming from. I need you to rename that after Glenn,
and I want a party tomorrow with cake, and I
want balloons, and I want this announcement to run just once.
(50:38):
You're listening to WVBRFM ninety three point five Ithica, New York,
an Olberman Broadcasting Empire station. You don't have to run
it once. And they went what And Phil Shapiro went
white as a sheet. I said, I'm giving you the
money you need. How's that? Can you stay open until
(50:59):
tomorrow without it? Because I have it back in my
room and I really don't want to go over there
and come back again today. I'll come back tomorrow. I mean,
I'm not criticizing anybody, none of you are the ones
who are responsible for turning this into a top forty
radio station in nineteen eighty five. That wasn't your fault.
It's nineteen ninety six. Those people are long gone from
(51:21):
this radio station. I said, okay, can you just not
shut down my station, Glenn's radio station. Can you just
stay on the air and stay in business till tomorrow morning?
And Phil Shapiro, who I thought was going to faint,
(51:43):
and I'm thinking, oh great, now there'll be two ghosts
in this room, Phil, and I think we can handle it.
What do you think? And the general manager just looked
at me like, oh, thank god, how did you come
here today? I went, I looked over in the corner
of the room and there was no ghost anymore. And
I said, someday I'll explain it to you. The radio
(52:07):
station survived. They managed to keep it open till the
next day, and then we had a party, and then
they put up a plaque that called at the Glenn
Cornelius Memorial Studio. And then they got into other problems
that really were not their fault, where we had to
build them a new studio in about two thousand and
ten or so, and there has a little bit more
money circulating through my life, so I helped them out
there too, and now they operate from a much nicer
(52:29):
multimedia facility called the Olderman Cornelius Studios, which I claim
are named after Glenn and after my father, because my
father put in such effort to getting me into that
place in the first time, and into Cornell in the
first place. But obviously it also the other Olderman in
the equation is me, but it's Olderman Cornelius rather than
(52:52):
Cornelius Olderman, because as I think Glenn would have agreed
with me, the damnedest part of this would have been
if somebody someday had thought there was actually somebody named
Cornelius Olderman, so we wouldn't have that, neither he nor I,
and so it is now today the Olderman Cornelias Studios.
But I saw him laughing his ass off. Something put
(53:19):
me in that studio an hour before they were going
to go out of business after not being there for
fifteen years, nor worrying about their financial status. Something put
me in that studio having to give away fifty thousand
dollars for tax purposes when they needed just slightly less
than that. I'm happy to say that they spent the
(53:39):
additional thirteen dollars on the cake. I saw him, didn't
hear him, didn't ask him questions, didn't say anything. I
saw him. And then the other day I found this cassette.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
All right, that's what I like to see, a record
that's hop skipping and jumping. There all the young dude'es.
Just listen to this, folks, you are and are Wait,
that wasn't your cue?
Speaker 1 (54:22):
Hold it.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
We're not quite ready yet.
Speaker 3 (54:24):
Time out one?
Speaker 1 (54:25):
Two?
Speaker 2 (54:26):
Okay, wait, don't go yet. Well that's three and a
half minutes before two o'clock. We're w I at R Binghamson.
My name is Tom Daniels, and we're going off the
air in a very little while. I'll be back tomorrow
morning and maybe at ten o'clock, and i'll be here
through four Dandy Don Morgan at at four o'clock, And.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
Now this message, why are well?
Speaker 2 (54:46):
The world may never recover from this. I certainly won't
ever recover from this. But Al Stewart's gonna come and
he's gonna sing a song, and this is entertaining. It's
a nice song to go to, bit too.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
It's all about that you're the cat.
Speaker 3 (55:09):
Yes, I know.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
All right, Hurricane, list enough, Hurricane you're not listening. We're
gonna have to take acisive action here. A hurricane doesn't
watch out. I told you weren't nice. Well, the views
and opinions expressed by this activity do not particularly reflect
(55:35):
the opinions or the views of anyone, most especially Keith
or Peter or Bad or anybody else like that. Thirteen
before one o'clock at w I n R. That was
a little bit of Hurricane Smith. Luckily not a whole lot,
though eagles are here.
Speaker 1 (55:59):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray and John
Phillips arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister
Ray on guitars, bass and drums. Mister Schanelle handled orchestration
and keyboards. Produced by TKO Brothers. I saw him. He
was a ghost. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions,
(56:20):
were arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two,
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our
satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the
best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today is my
friend Larry David. Everything else was pretty much my fault.
(56:41):
Could I have not really seen him and just seen
him in my mind's eye. That's countdown for this the
two hundred and eleventh day until the twenty twenty four
presidential election, the one one hundred and ninetieth day since
dementia j Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
government of the United States. Use the fourteenth Amendment and
(57:02):
the not regularly given elector of Objection option. Use the
Insurrection Act, the justice system, the mental health system to
stop him from doing it again while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins is the news
warrants till then. I'm Keith Oulraman. Good Morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is a production
(57:36):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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