March 10, 2023 • 38 mins
EPISODE 151: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:42): New Tucker Carlson bombshell in the Dominion Documents Dump. Media Matters discovers a text in which Carlson praised and disseminated the writings of a racist holocaust denier, only 2-1/2 years ago. He sent somebody close enough to Carlson to have his cell number a link to a column written by David Cole - who denies that Auschwitz was an extermination camp and questions whether six million Jewish people perished in the Holocaust. Carlson added "This is a good piece."
That Carlson would praise such scum is hardly news: he works for Fox "News." But this shocker coming out at such a critical time for him and Fox is indeed news. Because it reopens the 2019 scandal that vanished into the pandemic year, in which radio recordings surfaced of Carlson being crassly racist and sexist, and insulting in those ways to the likes of everybody from Barack Obama to Martha Stewart's daughter. Carlson also defended convicted child rapist Warren Jeffs and attacked statutory rape laws.
His other problems continue. A fourth night of "January 6 Video" produced only more re-runs. And he impeached his own Wednesday guest. The Q Shaman's first attorney Albert Watkins was, on Wednesday, a victim of the vast plot Carlson claimed to have uncovered. But last night Watkins became a villain who had let the "shaman" down. In point of fact, Watkins had been fired after he called his client "retarded" and one of the "short bus people" and Watkins was cited for "ineffective assistance of counsel."
Every time Rupert Murdoch and Fox have squirmed out of a scandal they've done so by firing somebody big: Roger Ailes, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly. Rupert is in survival mode and the new revelations make it easier for him to scapegoat Carlson.
B-Block (19:03) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Yeah yeah sure Trump's gonna be indicted any day now (says the Times. Again). Jenna Ellis, the Canary in the Rudy Giuliani gas coal mine, confesses. Lauren Boebert can't count nor tell time and shock of shocks, a new George Santos scandal. (22:25) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Trump has a new book that sums him up. It's stuff other people wrote TO him. Letters. Now I may have to publish the letter HE wrote to ME. Elon Musk's novel way to promote employees. And Lindsey Graham. No - not that one. A far funnier one.
C-Block (28:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: When he went to the 4th Grade at the turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries, the great writer lived in a world where if you failed the 4th Grade, you stayed in the 4th Grade. If his wonderful account is true, some of his classmates had been there for more than a decade, and constituted the best amateur baseball team in the state of Ohio, good enough to beat Ohio State. "I Went To Sullivant."
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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. Tucker
Carlson's January sixth video gas Lighting Fail and his I
(00:25):
Hate Trump passionately text may prove to be the least
of his problems. Tucker Carlson praised and disseminated the work
of a racist Holocaust denier, and just two and a
half years ago, Media Matters for America found another text
in round three of the dominion lawsuit document dump, which
(00:46):
confirms Carlson is as they phrased it quote a reader
of a Holocaust denier who writes for the white nationalist
hub Tackie mag Media Matters discovered a text from Carlson
to an unidentified individual dated November seventeenth, twenty twenty, in
which Carlson sent that person a link to the taki
man site and added quote, this is a smart piece.
(01:09):
The author of that piece was David Cole, a far
right commentator who claims that Auschwitz was not an extermination
camp with Gash Chambers and who questions whether six million
Jews really died in the Holocaust. The piece Carlson texted
was not about Jewish people. It was about the quote
third worlding of Chico, California, and in white supremacist circles.
(01:31):
Third worlding is code for criticism of people of color
and other minorities, fitting because the site to which Tucker
Carlson linked, Takie Mag, has had stories headlined quote the
trouble with Blacks, quote America's black male problem, quote blacks
behaving badly in Memphis, and quote our de facto anti
(01:55):
white apartheid. The former managing editor of Takie Mag is
the white supremacist Richard Spencer, as in neo Nazi Richard
Spencer who got punched in the face the day of
Trump's inauguration. I know what you're saying. A white supremacist
reads and forwards a Holocaust denier and hosts a Russian
(02:16):
disinformation show on Fox. Quote news unquote. How is this newsworthy, Keith? Well,
it's newsworthy because it is not news, not to anybody
who liked me once worked with Tucker Carlson, nor anybody
paying attention to previous revelations about Tucker Carlson's racism and misogyny.
It's news because, at this most vulnerable moment in his career,
(02:38):
it reopens an entire, huge, ugly racist can of worms.
In twenty nineteen, this same watchdog group, Media Matters, dug
up the audio tapes of Carlson's regular appearances, which he
began in two thousand and six when he still worked
at MSNBC on a crass radio show called Bubba the
(03:00):
Love Sponge. On tape still posted on the Media Matters
is segment after segment in which Tucker Carlson makes racist
remarks in which Tucker Carlson makes sexist remarks. In which
Tucker Carlson makes remarks justifying statutory rape. On the show,
Carlson said about Barack Obama, quote, I don't know how
(03:20):
black he is, but I'm sure he's a good basketball player.
He later added, how is he black? For one thing?
He has one white parent, one black parent. I mean,
why isn't he white? On the show, Carlson dismissed iraqis
as quote semi literate primitive monkeys who quote don't use
toilet paper or forks. On that show, Carlson claimed to
(03:43):
criticize underage marriage, saying, in the case of statutory rape, however,
quote the rapist in this case has made a lifelong
commitment to live and take care of the person and
he later defended the cult leader and convicted child rapist
Warren Jeffs. Quote He's not accused of touching anybody. He's
accused of facilitating a marriage between a sixteen year old
(04:05):
girl and a twenty seven year old man. That's the accusation.
That's what they're calling felony rape. That's bullshit unquote. On
this show, Carlson went full misogyny. Quote. I mean, I
love women, but they're extremely primitive. They're basic. On this show,
Carlson Crassley attacked everyone from Hillary Clinton to Martha Stewart's
(04:26):
daughter to Oprah Winfrey quote. The rest of us have
been bullied into pretending that Oprah's great, that she doesn't
hate the penis, that she's not anti man unquote, and
on and on and on, and it will all go
under the spotlight anew because whether or not Tucker Carlson
(04:46):
remains on television at Fox quote news unquote, it is
undeniable that at that company, at Rippert Murdock's level and
around it. One of the ways out of the blowback
to the Kevin McCarthy January sixth tape fiasco and the
Murdoch News Corp. Fox crisis over the one point six
billion our dominion defamation suit and the paralyzing drip drip
(05:08):
drip of dominions awe inspiring legal filings. One of the
ways out Rupert Murdoch is considering is firing Tucker Carlson,
or firing Sean Hannity or Laura Ingram or CEO Suzanne
Scott or all of them. Tucker Carlson is on the ropes.
And suddenly there is a text of him from just
(05:29):
two and a half years ago telling someone close enough
to him to have his cell phone number that a
racist column written by a Holocaust denier is quote a
good piece. That was the last thing Tucker Carlson needed
Rupert Murdoch to know, because Rupert Murdoch has moved into
the mode in which he is the most dangerous, the
(05:51):
mode in which Rupert Murdoch is focused on one thing,
and one thing alone, saving Rupert Murdoch. And it is
not as if the holocaust denier racist link somehow erased
Tucker Carlson's other problems. While last night, Carlson largely backed
away from the January sixth story and particularly the January
(06:14):
sixth video story, and did so faster than Haraldo Rivera
got out of al Capone's vault and instead led his
show with a transphobic segment which he concluded that of
those honored on International Women's Day, quote, a lot of
them weren't actually women. They were lumpy looking dudes unquote.
Later Carlson came back to January sixth, but only to
(06:36):
that part of which which he has latched onto, which
has I am guessing resonated with his viewership. The saga
of Jacob Chansley, the so called Q Shaman, the guy
in the hat, the center point of Carlson's four days
of showing meaningless and not particularly interesting January sixth video,
(06:58):
including one night with just a few seconds of video
and two nights of reruns from the first night. Was
he ever more heated claims that this Jacob Chansley, this
Q Shaman, was railroaded and betrayed and scapegoaded, and so
he represents that gas lit reality of Carlson and the
other conspiracy theorists that all the insurrectionists were just in
(07:19):
Carlson's word, sightseers who were troubled that day by some
in his other word, hooligans. The Tucker Carlson pitch is
Chansley the Q Shaman was innocent. Therefore everybody on January
six was innocent. Therefore it was an FBI induced false flag.
Therefore the January six committee members are liars. Therefore they
(07:43):
must be investigated and prosecute. And therefore Trump is innocent
and must walk free. And therefore the videotape that showed
nothing proves all this. Carlson's gaslighting about Chansley had three
central components. The video of him walking nonchalantly, certainly non
(08:03):
violently around the Capitol that day, often shown with police
around him. Carlson showed that again last night, again insisting
the video proved Chansly was being escorted around the Capitol
by the police. That's his second major central point. This,
of course, is rather than the other explanation, which would
be that Chansly was not being escorted by police. Chansly
(08:26):
was being followed by police, police who were trying to
avoid escalation and violence. The third element in the Tucker
Carlson saga was the interview with Chansly's first lawyer, Albert
Watkins wis was on Wednesday night, in which Watkins claimed
he never saw any of that January sixth video before
(08:46):
nor did Chansly so that Chansly's guilty plea was a
miscarriage of justice and somehow needs to be overturned and
blah blah blah blah blah. Then last night, Chansly's current
lawyer appeared and he and Tucker Carlson slimed Chansley's first lawyer,
whom Carlson applauded and praised as a truth teller the
night before. Carlson's audience was to believe Chansley's first lawyer
(09:11):
on Wednesday night, but then not believe him and in
fact hate him on Thursday night. My friend Scott McFarland
of CBS News reminded us on Twitter of one important
detail that Tucker Carlson ignored when he interviewed the Q
Shaman's first lawyer and did not even bring up when
he interviewed the Q Shaman's second lawyer last night, the
Q Shaman fired his first lawyer. In fact, I can
(09:34):
add that when in November twenty twenty one, Chansley fired
Albert Watkins, who on Fox was reliable Wednesday, but a
jerk Thursday when he fired Watkins and hired John Pierce A.
Kearney for countless January sixth defendants and the original attorney
for Kyle Rittenhouse. Chansley did so, claiming ineffective assistance of counsel,
(09:55):
referring to Watkins, his first lawyer, and that is when
that first lawyer, Watkins, denied Chansley had fired him, and
he Watkins and the second attorney, Pierce, had a public
verbal brawl over who was representing the q shaman. The
first attorney, Watkins had called Chansley and other defendants from
(10:15):
January sixth a string of offensive names. Quote they're all
effing short bus people. Quote these are people with brain damage.
Quote their effing retarded. Quote they're on the goddamned spectrum.
Watkins later insisted he only used those phrases to force
the court to get Chansley the psychological treatment he needed. Regardless,
(10:41):
Chansley then fired Albert Watkins, and that was sixteen months ago,
and he claimed ineffective assistance of counsel. The FBI and
the Capitol Police still insist all January sixth defendants had
all access to all security video, including the stuff that
Kevin McCarthy still inexplicably gave to Tucker Carlson the reality
(11:03):
of the Q Shaman's case and by the way, he's
now projected to be released from prison in July, and
Carlson did not mention that either. Is that Jacob Chansley's
first lawyer called him quote retarded with brain damage on
the goddamn spectrum and on a short bus, and Chansley
fired him. The easiest explanation for the Q Shaman's current
(11:25):
predicament is not a vast, labyrinthine governmental conspiracy that was
successfully utterly hidden from the world for two years and
that somebody as clever and cunning but as stupid as
Tucker Carlson alone has cracked and which proved somehow that
January sixth was a false flag. The easiest explanation is
(11:47):
that Chansley had a lousy lawyer, that Chansley didn't figure
this out for ten months, and that the new guy
also hasn't done crap for him in the sixteen months since.
Right now Fox and Tucker Carlson and Rupert Murdoch are
under water. God knows what else is in those dominion files,
(12:10):
or if or when that company will make more of
it public. The first three rounds suggest that its attorneys
have employed an unusual strategy of metaphorically publicly torturing the
defendance to litigation death and as evidenced, there are still
things being unearthed from the first three dominion document dumps.
Media Matters just found Carlson sending somebody that link to
(12:34):
the racist holocaust denier's column and insisting this is a
good piece. Media Matters also came up with an email
from CEO Suzanne Scott to the infamous Fox pr person
Irina Briganti, who is from personal experience, the scum of
the earth, and yet she seems to have been one
of the very few Fox executives with one lone principle
(12:57):
floating around in their brains. CEO Scott is clearly challenging
someone's assertion that it was quote unarguable that high profile
Fox voices fed the story that the election was stolen
and that January sixth was an important chance to have
the result overturned, and Scott, writing to Burgante, adds, quote,
please sends specifics if so brank Gante replied with just
(13:23):
a few specifics, at least forty nine of them. Forty
nine or more examples of Fox voices feeding the story
that the election was stolen, and that January sixth was
an important chance to have the result overturned. Forty nine
examples from Jeanine Piero and Maria Bardaromo and Mark Levin
(13:44):
and Sean Hannity. Fox quote News unquote is on the ropes.
Tucker Carlson is on the ropes. Both may very well
escape more or less intact Fox has before. It survived
the Roger Ales rape scandal. It survived the Bill o'right
(14:04):
harrassment scandals. It survived the Glenn Beck anti semitism scandal. However,
it survived the Glenn Beck anti semitism scandal by firing
Glenn Beck. It survived the Bill O'Reilly harrassment scandal by
firing Bill O'Reilly. It survived the Roger Ales rape scandal
(14:27):
by firing Roger Ales. If it survives the combined dominion
and January sixth video scandals, it will do so by
firing somebody still ahead of us in this edition of Countdown,
(14:58):
Hence that Trump may be indicted in New York. This
is not a flashback to any of the previous two years.
This is a new story. You'll see if there's any
weight to it. Lauren Bulbert brings a new meaning to
the title House Oversight Committee. The nitwit who boasted about
becoming a thirty six year old grandmother proves again other
than that she can't add and she does not remember
(15:20):
who the president was in the year twenty twenty. Jenna
Ellis faces up admits she misrepresented facts about the campaign
that very same year. And it is Friday's with Thurber.
And of all the Thurber stories, I'm going to read
you the one that was my father's favorite. I went
to Sullivan Tales of Thurber's childhood school. And it wasn't
(15:42):
just that it was my dad's favorite. It was literally,
and I know how very weird a flex this is.
It was literally the last thing my dad heard before
he died. That's happier than it sounds. Actually, that's next
This discountdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman. Postscripts to
(16:11):
the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions.
Date line New York In fact at the corner of
stop me and if you've heard this before, the New
York Times reporting Trump may face criminal charges in the
Stormy Daniels hush money case. Here, where were you and
what were you? Doing when you first heard that song.
(16:32):
The clue, as The Times phrases it, quote prosecutors offered
mister Trump the chance to testify next week before the
grand jury. Such offers almost always indicate an indictment is close.
Trump calmly responded in a seven or eight part social
media post and claimed hundreds of millions of Americans support him.
Date Line Colorado, one of Trump's hundreds of millions of lawyers,
(16:54):
has admitted to lying. Jenna Ellis heretofore, best known as
the canary in the Rudy Giuliani gas coal mine, has
been publicly sent after she swore a statement confessing that
she knowingly misrepresented the facts in some of her public
statements that the twenty twenty election had been stolen from trouble.
A lot of those statements on TV. Hey does Dominion
(17:16):
know about this? Dateline Capitol Hill. The sad reality is
that for the whole of the history of this country,
some people have run for Congress because they needed the work.
Lauren Bobert just proudly announced that her sixteen year old
son had knocked up his girlfriend, so she will be
a thirty six year old grandmother. Looks like this was
(17:36):
the limit of her math skills. However, during a hearing
of the House Oversight Committee yesterday, she had a gotcha
moment with Director of the Office of Personnel Management, Kiran Ahuja,
except Bobert had a problem with a different subtraction question,
what is twenty twenty three minus three? You're not aware
of any employee taking something that one would consider a
(18:00):
vacation time and bringing their computer and maybe logging in
just a portion of that time or not at all.
We have more than twenty five percent of federal employees
not logging, not logging into work, and they're teleworking. Congressmoman,
I do take issue with the characterization that twenty five
percent of individuals are not logs in this leaked document
(18:20):
right here that we just submitted into you're the record.
You're basing that from twenty twenty, which is in the
last administration, and I can't speak to that. The Elite
document was from twenty twenty one. Moron and dateline the FBI,
Secret Service and US Attorney's offices here in New York.
It is apparent now all of human history divides neatly
(18:41):
into two nearly equal and distinct components. Those times when
there is a new George Santos scandal, and those times
when we all know there is about to be a
new George Santos scandal, we jumped the cusp yesterday when
Gustavo Riiro Treja, a Brazilian man, sent a sworn declaration
to those authorities that a credit card skimming operation in
(19:04):
Seattle for which he was convicted in twenty seventeen, was
masterminded by the man who calls himself George Santos. Treja
says Santos taught him how to skim card numbers off
ATMs and gave him the equipment to do that with.
Santos says it's not true. He adds he'll expand on
his denial in a moment, but first he just has
(19:25):
to make a quick run to the bank. Thank you,
(19:49):
Nancy Faust. By the way, I may have just embellished
the last part of that story. Ahead Fridays with Thurber
and the story of going to school at the turn
(20:11):
of the century in Columbus, Ohio, the turn of the
nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, when if you failed the
fourth grade, you stayed in the fourth grade, or a
year after year and decade after decade. I went to
Sullivant ahead first time for the daily round of the
miss Grants, Morons and Dunning kruegerfexpetiments who constitute today's worst
(20:34):
persons in the world. The Bronze Trump with great fanfare Axios,
one of those political websites for people who love politics
would have no idea what it has to do with
government or real life, has scooped the world. Trump is
coming out with another book next April twenty fifth, called
Letters to Trump. He is publishing the stuff that other
(20:58):
people wrote to him, letters from such up and coming
and current big names as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Princess Danna,
and Regis Philbin. I should point out that this may
require that I published the letter that Trump wrote to me.
It is from a decade ago. It is about my
coverage of my former employer, Ted Turner, and it underscores
(21:21):
what he thought of me. He was a fan, silly him.
One thing about Letters to Trump strikes me might actually
be important. Axios reports one of the letters was written
by Kim Jong Un. Does special counsel Jack Smith know this?
What kind of letter is he publishing? The Bronze Elon
(21:42):
Musk again. England's Independent reports that when he took over Twitter,
he asked many department managers in the company to nominate
their employees who they thought were best suited for promotion,
whereupon Musk fired all the managers and replaced them with
the employees they just nominated for promotion at lower salaries.
(22:04):
Of course, thank goodness, there have not been any quality
control problems at Twitter since then. But our winner the
host of the Patriot Barbie podcast. That's Patriot Barbie. This
is a woman who went on the Newsmax channel to
complain that another American crisis has happened to US News
that the actresses portraying Disney princesses at the Disney theme
(22:27):
parks don't want to wear corsets anymore. The host of
the Patriot Barbie podcast says, liberal women now do not
care about trying to look attractive, and ordinarily I would
not make a big deal out of this, except the
host of the Patriot Barbie podcast is a woman named
Lindsay Graham. Lindsay l I n d Sey. Just like
(22:53):
the Senator, it's the end of the week. I'm tired.
Just do your own jokes here, Lindsay No he's the
other one. Graham of the Patriot Barbie bodcast or a
podcast Today's Worst Person and to the number one story
(23:26):
on the Countdown and Friday's were Thurber. And I don't
know when I went to Sullivan became my father's favorite
Thurber story. I suspect it was in the hospital when
I was reading to him in the last six months
of his life. I know I read it to him
at least half a dozen times, the first five by
his request. The last time he did not request it,
(23:48):
in fact, and this is the most perverse kind of
compliment I think any writer has ever received. I read
this story to him. It was the last thing that
I read to him. In fact, it was the last
thing he did on earth, was to listen to this
story in a state of semi conscious. He waited till
the end of it. He took one deep, satisfied breath,
(24:09):
and he died. I don't recommend this, but I think
it does speak to the quality of the writing. I
went to Sullivant by James Thurber. I was reminded the
other morning by what I don't remember, and it doesn't
matter of a crisp September morning last year when I
went to the Grand Central to see a little boy
(24:31):
of ten get excitedly on a special coach that was
to take him to a boys school somewhere north of Boston.
He had never been away to school before. The coach
was squirming with youngsters. You could tell after a while
the novitiates shining and tremulous and a little odd from
the more aloof boys who had been away to school before.
(24:53):
But they were very much alike at first glance. There
was for me, in case you thought I was leading
up to that, no sharp feeling of old lost years
in the tense atmosphere of that coach, Because I never
went away to a private school when I was a
little boy. I went to Sullivant School in Columbus. I
thought about it as I walked back to my hotel.
(25:16):
Sullivant was an ordinary public school, and yet it was
not like any other I have ever known of. In
seeking an adjective to describe the Sullivant School of my
years nineteen hundred and eight, I can only think of tough.
Sullivant School was tough. The boys of Sullivant came mostly
(25:37):
from the region around Central Market, a poorish district with
many families of the laboring class. The school district also
included a number of homes of the upper classes, because
at the turn of the century one or two old
residential streets still lingered near the shouting and rumbling of
the market, reluctant to surrender their fine old houses to
the encroaching rabble of commerce and become as a last
(26:00):
they now have more vulgar business streets. I remember always,
first of all, the Sullivant baseball team. Most grammar school
baseball teams are made up of boys in the seventh
and eighth grades, or they were in my day, but
with Sullivant it was different. Several of its best players
were in the fourth grade, known to the teachers of
(26:22):
the school as the terrible fourth. In that grade you
first encountered fractions and long division, and many pupils lodged
there for years, like logs in a brook. Some of
(26:42):
the more able baseball players have been in the fourth
grade for seven or eight years then two. There were
a number of boys who had not been in the
class past the normal time, but were nevertheless deep into
their teams. They had avoided starting to school by eluding
the truant officer until they were ready to go into
long pants, but he always got them in the end.
(27:05):
One or two of these fourth graders were seventeen or
eighteen years old, but the dean of the squad was
a tall, husky young man of twenty two who was
in the fifth grade. The teachers of the third and
fourth had got tired of having him around as the
years rolled along and had pushed him on. His name
was Dana Wainey, and he had a mustache. Don't ask
(27:29):
me why his parents allowed him to stay in school
so long. There were many mysteries at Sullivant that were
never cleared up. All I know is why he kept
on in school and didn't go to work. He liked
playing on the baseball team, and he had a pretty
easy time in class because the teachers had given up
asking him any questions at all years before. The story
(27:52):
was that he had answered but one question in the
seventeen years he had been going to classes at Sullivant,
and that what is one use of the comma the
COMMI Dana embarrassedly unsnarling his long legs from beneath a
desk much too low for him, is used to shoot
marbles with commies was our word for those cheap ten
(28:16):
for a cent marbles in case it wasn't yours. The
Sullivant School baseball team of nineteen hundred and five defeated
several high school teams in the city and claimed the
high school championship of the state, to which title it had,
of course, no technical right. I believe the boys could
have proved their moral right to the championship, however, if
(28:36):
they had been allowed to go out of town and
play all the teams they challenged, such as the powerful
Dayton and Toledo Nines. But their road season was called
off after a terrific fight that it occurred during one
game at Mount Sterling or Piqua or Zenia, I can't
remember which. Our first baseman, Dana Wayney, crowned the umpire
(29:00):
with a bat during altercation overcalled strike and the fight
was on. It took place in the fourth inning, so
of course the game was never finished. The battle continued
on down into the business section of the town and
raged for hours with much destruction of property. But since
sullimet was ahead of the time seventeen to nothing, there
could have been no doubt as to the outcome, nobody
(29:23):
was killed. All of us boys were sure our team
could have beaten Ohio State University that year, but they
wouldn't play us. They were scared. Wayney was by no
means the biggest or toughest guy on the Grammar School team.
He was merely the oldest, being about a year the
senior of Floyd, the center fielder who could jump five
(29:45):
feet straight into the air without taking a running start.
Nobody knew, not even the Board of Education, which once
tried to find out whether Floyd was Floyd's first name
or his last name. He apparently only had one. He
didn't have any parents, and nobody, including himself, seemed to
(30:06):
know where he lived. When teachers insisted that he must
have another name to go with Floyd, he would grow
sullen and ominous, and they would cease questioning him because
he was a dangerous scholar in his schoolroom brawl, as
mister Harrigan, the janitor found out one morning when he
was called in by a screaming teacher. All our teachers
(30:26):
were women to get Floyd under control after she had
tried to whip him, and he had begun to take
the room apart, beginning with the desks. Floyd broke into
small pieces the switch she had used on him. Some
said he also ate it. I don't know, because I
was home sick at the time with mumps or something.
(30:48):
Harrigan was a burly, iron muscle janitor, a man come
from a long line of coal shovelers, but he was
no match for Floyd, who had to be sure the
considerable advantage of being more aroused than mister Harrigan. When
their fight started. Floyd had him down and was sitting
on his chest in no time, and Harrigan had a
promise to be good and to say that's what I
(31:09):
get ten times before Floyd would let him up. I
don't suppose I would ever have got through Sullivant School
alive if it hadn't been for Floyd. For some reason,
he appointed himself my protector, and I needed one. If
Floyd was known to be on your side, nobody in
the school would dare be after you and chase you home.
(31:32):
I was one of the ten or fifteen male pupils
in Sullivant School who always are almost always knew their lessons,
and I believe Floyd admired the mental prowess of a
youngster who knew how many continents there were and whether
or not the sun was inhabited. Also, one time, when
it came to be my turn to read to the class,
(31:53):
we used to take turns reading American history aloud, I
came across the word ducane and knew how to pronounce it.
That charmed Floyd, who had been slouched in his seat
idly following the printed page of his worn and penciled textbook.
How you know that was Duquesne boy, he asked me
(32:13):
after class. I don't know, I said, I just knew it.
He looked at me with round eyes. Oh that's something
he said. After that word got around that Floyd would
beat the tar out of anybody that messed around with me.
I wore glasses from the time I was eight, and
I knew my lessons, and both of those things were
considered pretty terrible at Sullivant. Floyd had one idiosyncrasy though.
(32:38):
In the early nineteen hundreds, long, warm, furry gloves that
came almost your elbows were popular with boys, and Floyd
had one of the biggest pairs in school. He wore
them the year round. Dick Peterson was an either greater
figure on the baseball team and in the school than
Floyd was. He had a way in the classroom of
(32:59):
blurting out a long, deep, rolling be for no reason
at all. Once he licked three boys his own size
single handed, really single handed, for he fought with his
right hand and held a mandolin in his left hand
all the time. It came out uninjured. Dick and Floyd
(33:24):
never met in Mortal Kombat, so nobody ever knew which
one could beat, and the scholars were about evenly divided
in their opinions. Many a fight started among them after
school when the argument came up. I think school never
let out at Sullivant without at least one fight starting up,
and sometimes there was many as five or six raging
between the corner of Oak and sixth Streets and the
(33:46):
corner of Rich and Fourth Streets four blocks away. Now
and again, virtually the whole school turned out to fight
the Catholic boys of the Holy Cross Academy in Fifth
Street near town for no reason at all. In winter
with snowballs and ice balls, in other seasons with fifth
brick bats and clubs. Dick Peterson was always in the van, yelling, singing,
(34:11):
being whirling all the way around when he swung with
his right, or if he hadn't brought his mandolin his
left and missed. He made himself the pitcher on the
baseball team because he was the captain. He was the
captain because everybody else was afraid to challenge his self
election except Floyd. Floyd was too lazy to pitch, and
(34:32):
he didn't care who was captain because he didn't fully
incomprehend what that meant. On one occasion, when Earl Baddock,
a steam fitter's son, had shut out Mound Street School
for six innings without a hit, Dick took him out
of the pitcher's box and went in himself. He was
hit hard, and the other team scored, but it didn't
make much difference because the margin of Sullivan's victory was
(34:54):
so great. The team didn't lose a game for five
years to another grammar school. When Dick Peterson was in
the sixth grade, he got into a saloon brawl and
was killed. When I go back to Columbus, I always
walked past Sullivant School. I have never happened to get
there when classes were letting out, so I don't know
(35:15):
what the pupils are like. Now I am sure there
are no more Dick Peterson's and no more Floyd's, unless
Floyd is still going to school there. The playyard is
still entirely bare of grass and covered with gravel, and
the sycamore is still line the curve between the schoolhouse
fence and the Oak Street car line. A street car
(35:38):
line running past a schoolhouse is a dangerous thing as
a rule, but I remember no one being injured while
I was attending Sullivant. I do remember, however, one person
who came very near being injured. He was a motorman
on the Oak Street line, and once when his car
stopped at the corner of six to let off passengers,
he yelled at Chudy Davidson, who played a third base
(35:59):
on the ball team and was a member of the
Terrible Fourth, to get out of the way. Chuty was
fourteen years old, but huge for his age, and he
was standing on the tracks taking a chew of tobacco.
Come on down off at that con I'll not keep
locked off, said Shooty, and what I can only describe
as a sullivant tone of voice. The motorman waited until
(36:22):
Shooty moved slowly off the tracks. Then he went on
about his business. I think it was lucky for him
that he did. There were boys in those days. I
went to Sullivant by James Thurber. Thank you for listening.
(36:53):
Countdown has come to you from the studios of the
old Ruin Broadcasting Empire, High Top, its headquarters in the
Sports Capsule Building here in New York. Here are the credits.
Most of the music was arranged, produced and performed by
Brian Ray and John Philip Channel, who are the Countdown
musical directors. Produced by t Ko Brothers. All orchestration and
keyboards by John Philip Channel, guitarist, bass and drums by
(37:16):
Brian Ray. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed
by No Horns allowed. The sports music is the Aulderman
theme from ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren
Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust.
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was
Kenny Maine, and everything else is pretty much my fault.
(37:37):
So let's countdown for this the seven hundred and ninety
fourth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the
democratically elected government of the United States arrest him now
while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is Monday.
Until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alerman is a production
(38:09):
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. Tucker
Carlson's January sixth video gas Lighting Fail and his I
(00:25):
Hate Trump passionately text may prove to be the least
of his problems. Tucker Carlson praised and disseminated the work
of a racist Holocaust denier, and just two and a
half years ago, Media Matters for America found another text
in round three of the dominion lawsuit document dump, which
(00:46):
confirms Carlson is as they phrased it quote a reader
of a Holocaust denier who writes for the white nationalist
hub Tackie mag Media Matters discovered a text from Carlson
to an unidentified individual dated November seventeenth, twenty twenty, in
which Carlson sent that person a link to the taki
man site and added quote, this is a smart piece.
(01:09):
The author of that piece was David Cole, a far
right commentator who claims that Auschwitz was not an extermination
camp with Gash Chambers and who questions whether six million
Jews really died in the Holocaust. The piece Carlson texted
was not about Jewish people. It was about the quote
third worlding of Chico, California, and in white supremacist circles.
(01:31):
Third worlding is code for criticism of people of color
and other minorities, fitting because the site to which Tucker
Carlson linked, Takie Mag, has had stories headlined quote the
trouble with Blacks, quote America's black male problem, quote blacks
behaving badly in Memphis, and quote our de facto anti
(01:55):
white apartheid. The former managing editor of Takie Mag is
the white supremacist Richard Spencer, as in neo Nazi Richard
Spencer who got punched in the face the day of
Trump's inauguration. I know what you're saying. A white supremacist
reads and forwards a Holocaust denier and hosts a Russian
(02:16):
disinformation show on Fox. Quote news unquote. How is this newsworthy, Keith? Well,
it's newsworthy because it is not news, not to anybody
who liked me once worked with Tucker Carlson, nor anybody
paying attention to previous revelations about Tucker Carlson's racism and misogyny.
It's news because, at this most vulnerable moment in his career,
(02:38):
it reopens an entire, huge, ugly racist can of worms.
In twenty nineteen, this same watchdog group, Media Matters, dug
up the audio tapes of Carlson's regular appearances, which he
began in two thousand and six when he still worked
at MSNBC on a crass radio show called Bubba the
(03:00):
Love Sponge. On tape still posted on the Media Matters
is segment after segment in which Tucker Carlson makes racist
remarks in which Tucker Carlson makes sexist remarks. In which
Tucker Carlson makes remarks justifying statutory rape. On the show,
Carlson said about Barack Obama, quote, I don't know how
(03:20):
black he is, but I'm sure he's a good basketball player.
He later added, how is he black? For one thing?
He has one white parent, one black parent. I mean,
why isn't he white? On the show, Carlson dismissed iraqis
as quote semi literate primitive monkeys who quote don't use
toilet paper or forks. On that show, Carlson claimed to
(03:43):
criticize underage marriage, saying, in the case of statutory rape, however,
quote the rapist in this case has made a lifelong
commitment to live and take care of the person and
he later defended the cult leader and convicted child rapist
Warren Jeffs. Quote He's not accused of touching anybody. He's
accused of facilitating a marriage between a sixteen year old
(04:05):
girl and a twenty seven year old man. That's the accusation.
That's what they're calling felony rape. That's bullshit unquote. On
this show, Carlson went full misogyny. Quote. I mean, I
love women, but they're extremely primitive. They're basic. On this show,
Carlson Crassley attacked everyone from Hillary Clinton to Martha Stewart's
(04:26):
daughter to Oprah Winfrey quote. The rest of us have
been bullied into pretending that Oprah's great, that she doesn't
hate the penis, that she's not anti man unquote, and
on and on and on, and it will all go
under the spotlight anew because whether or not Tucker Carlson
(04:46):
remains on television at Fox quote news unquote, it is
undeniable that at that company, at Rippert Murdock's level and
around it. One of the ways out of the blowback
to the Kevin McCarthy January sixth tape fiasco and the
Murdoch News Corp. Fox crisis over the one point six
billion our dominion defamation suit and the paralyzing drip drip
(05:08):
drip of dominions awe inspiring legal filings. One of the
ways out Rupert Murdoch is considering is firing Tucker Carlson,
or firing Sean Hannity or Laura Ingram or CEO Suzanne
Scott or all of them. Tucker Carlson is on the ropes.
And suddenly there is a text of him from just
(05:29):
two and a half years ago telling someone close enough
to him to have his cell phone number that a
racist column written by a Holocaust denier is quote a
good piece. That was the last thing Tucker Carlson needed
Rupert Murdoch to know, because Rupert Murdoch has moved into
the mode in which he is the most dangerous, the
(05:51):
mode in which Rupert Murdoch is focused on one thing,
and one thing alone, saving Rupert Murdoch. And it is
not as if the holocaust denier racist link somehow erased
Tucker Carlson's other problems. While last night, Carlson largely backed
away from the January sixth story and particularly the January
(06:14):
sixth video story, and did so faster than Haraldo Rivera
got out of al Capone's vault and instead led his
show with a transphobic segment which he concluded that of
those honored on International Women's Day, quote, a lot of
them weren't actually women. They were lumpy looking dudes unquote.
Later Carlson came back to January sixth, but only to
(06:36):
that part of which which he has latched onto, which
has I am guessing resonated with his viewership. The saga
of Jacob Chansley, the so called Q Shaman, the guy
in the hat, the center point of Carlson's four days
of showing meaningless and not particularly interesting January sixth video,
(06:58):
including one night with just a few seconds of video
and two nights of reruns from the first night. Was
he ever more heated claims that this Jacob Chansley, this
Q Shaman, was railroaded and betrayed and scapegoaded, and so
he represents that gas lit reality of Carlson and the
other conspiracy theorists that all the insurrectionists were just in
(07:19):
Carlson's word, sightseers who were troubled that day by some
in his other word, hooligans. The Tucker Carlson pitch is
Chansley the Q Shaman was innocent. Therefore everybody on January
six was innocent. Therefore it was an FBI induced false flag.
Therefore the January six committee members are liars. Therefore they
(07:43):
must be investigated and prosecute. And therefore Trump is innocent
and must walk free. And therefore the videotape that showed
nothing proves all this. Carlson's gaslighting about Chansley had three
central components. The video of him walking nonchalantly, certainly non
(08:03):
violently around the Capitol that day, often shown with police
around him. Carlson showed that again last night, again insisting
the video proved Chansly was being escorted around the Capitol
by the police. That's his second major central point. This,
of course, is rather than the other explanation, which would
be that Chansly was not being escorted by police. Chansly
(08:26):
was being followed by police, police who were trying to
avoid escalation and violence. The third element in the Tucker
Carlson saga was the interview with Chansly's first lawyer, Albert
Watkins wis was on Wednesday night, in which Watkins claimed
he never saw any of that January sixth video before
(08:46):
nor did Chansly so that Chansly's guilty plea was a
miscarriage of justice and somehow needs to be overturned and
blah blah blah blah blah. Then last night, Chansly's current
lawyer appeared and he and Tucker Carlson slimed Chansley's first lawyer,
whom Carlson applauded and praised as a truth teller the
night before. Carlson's audience was to believe Chansley's first lawyer
(09:11):
on Wednesday night, but then not believe him and in
fact hate him on Thursday night. My friend Scott McFarland
of CBS News reminded us on Twitter of one important
detail that Tucker Carlson ignored when he interviewed the Q
Shaman's first lawyer and did not even bring up when
he interviewed the Q Shaman's second lawyer last night, the
Q Shaman fired his first lawyer. In fact, I can
(09:34):
add that when in November twenty twenty one, Chansley fired
Albert Watkins, who on Fox was reliable Wednesday, but a
jerk Thursday when he fired Watkins and hired John Pierce A.
Kearney for countless January sixth defendants and the original attorney
for Kyle Rittenhouse. Chansley did so, claiming ineffective assistance of counsel,
(09:55):
referring to Watkins, his first lawyer, and that is when
that first lawyer, Watkins, denied Chansley had fired him, and
he Watkins and the second attorney, Pierce, had a public
verbal brawl over who was representing the q shaman. The
first attorney, Watkins had called Chansley and other defendants from
(10:15):
January sixth a string of offensive names. Quote they're all
effing short bus people. Quote these are people with brain damage.
Quote their effing retarded. Quote they're on the goddamned spectrum.
Watkins later insisted he only used those phrases to force
the court to get Chansley the psychological treatment he needed. Regardless,
(10:41):
Chansley then fired Albert Watkins, and that was sixteen months ago,
and he claimed ineffective assistance of counsel. The FBI and
the Capitol Police still insist all January sixth defendants had
all access to all security video, including the stuff that
Kevin McCarthy still inexplicably gave to Tucker Carlson the reality
(11:03):
of the Q Shaman's case and by the way, he's
now projected to be released from prison in July, and
Carlson did not mention that either. Is that Jacob Chansley's
first lawyer called him quote retarded with brain damage on
the goddamn spectrum and on a short bus, and Chansley
fired him. The easiest explanation for the Q Shaman's current
(11:25):
predicament is not a vast, labyrinthine governmental conspiracy that was
successfully utterly hidden from the world for two years and
that somebody as clever and cunning but as stupid as
Tucker Carlson alone has cracked and which proved somehow that
January sixth was a false flag. The easiest explanation is
(11:47):
that Chansley had a lousy lawyer, that Chansley didn't figure
this out for ten months, and that the new guy
also hasn't done crap for him in the sixteen months since.
Right now Fox and Tucker Carlson and Rupert Murdoch are
under water. God knows what else is in those dominion files,
(12:10):
or if or when that company will make more of
it public. The first three rounds suggest that its attorneys
have employed an unusual strategy of metaphorically publicly torturing the
defendance to litigation death and as evidenced, there are still
things being unearthed from the first three dominion document dumps.
Media Matters just found Carlson sending somebody that link to
(12:34):
the racist holocaust denier's column and insisting this is a
good piece. Media Matters also came up with an email
from CEO Suzanne Scott to the infamous Fox pr person
Irina Briganti, who is from personal experience, the scum of
the earth, and yet she seems to have been one
of the very few Fox executives with one lone principle
(12:57):
floating around in their brains. CEO Scott is clearly challenging
someone's assertion that it was quote unarguable that high profile
Fox voices fed the story that the election was stolen
and that January sixth was an important chance to have
the result overturned, and Scott, writing to Burgante, adds, quote,
please sends specifics if so brank Gante replied with just
(13:23):
a few specifics, at least forty nine of them. Forty
nine or more examples of Fox voices feeding the story
that the election was stolen, and that January sixth was
an important chance to have the result overturned. Forty nine
examples from Jeanine Piero and Maria Bardaromo and Mark Levin
(13:44):
and Sean Hannity. Fox quote News unquote is on the ropes.
Tucker Carlson is on the ropes. Both may very well
escape more or less intact Fox has before. It survived
the Roger Ales rape scandal. It survived the Bill o'right
(14:04):
harrassment scandals. It survived the Glenn Beck anti semitism scandal. However,
it survived the Glenn Beck anti semitism scandal by firing
Glenn Beck. It survived the Bill O'Reilly harrassment scandal by
firing Bill O'Reilly. It survived the Roger Ales rape scandal
(14:27):
by firing Roger Ales. If it survives the combined dominion
and January sixth video scandals, it will do so by
firing somebody still ahead of us in this edition of Countdown,
(14:58):
Hence that Trump may be indicted in New York. This
is not a flashback to any of the previous two years.
This is a new story. You'll see if there's any
weight to it. Lauren Bulbert brings a new meaning to
the title House Oversight Committee. The nitwit who boasted about
becoming a thirty six year old grandmother proves again other
than that she can't add and she does not remember
(15:20):
who the president was in the year twenty twenty. Jenna
Ellis faces up admits she misrepresented facts about the campaign
that very same year. And it is Friday's with Thurber.
And of all the Thurber stories, I'm going to read
you the one that was my father's favorite. I went
to Sullivan Tales of Thurber's childhood school. And it wasn't
(15:42):
just that it was my dad's favorite. It was literally,
and I know how very weird a flex this is.
It was literally the last thing my dad heard before
he died. That's happier than it sounds. Actually, that's next
This discountdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman. Postscripts to
(16:11):
the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions.
Date line New York In fact at the corner of
stop me and if you've heard this before, the New
York Times reporting Trump may face criminal charges in the
Stormy Daniels hush money case. Here, where were you and
what were you? Doing when you first heard that song.
(16:32):
The clue, as The Times phrases it, quote prosecutors offered
mister Trump the chance to testify next week before the
grand jury. Such offers almost always indicate an indictment is close.
Trump calmly responded in a seven or eight part social
media post and claimed hundreds of millions of Americans support him.
Date Line Colorado, one of Trump's hundreds of millions of lawyers,
(16:54):
has admitted to lying. Jenna Ellis heretofore, best known as
the canary in the Rudy Giuliani gas coal mine, has
been publicly sent after she swore a statement confessing that
she knowingly misrepresented the facts in some of her public
statements that the twenty twenty election had been stolen from trouble.
A lot of those statements on TV. Hey does Dominion
(17:16):
know about this? Dateline Capitol Hill. The sad reality is
that for the whole of the history of this country,
some people have run for Congress because they needed the work.
Lauren Bobert just proudly announced that her sixteen year old
son had knocked up his girlfriend, so she will be
a thirty six year old grandmother. Looks like this was
(17:36):
the limit of her math skills. However, during a hearing
of the House Oversight Committee yesterday, she had a gotcha
moment with Director of the Office of Personnel Management, Kiran Ahuja,
except Bobert had a problem with a different subtraction question,
what is twenty twenty three minus three? You're not aware
of any employee taking something that one would consider a
(18:00):
vacation time and bringing their computer and maybe logging in
just a portion of that time or not at all.
We have more than twenty five percent of federal employees
not logging, not logging into work, and they're teleworking. Congressmoman,
I do take issue with the characterization that twenty five
percent of individuals are not logs in this leaked document
(18:20):
right here that we just submitted into you're the record.
You're basing that from twenty twenty, which is in the
last administration, and I can't speak to that. The Elite
document was from twenty twenty one. Moron and dateline the FBI,
Secret Service and US Attorney's offices here in New York.
It is apparent now all of human history divides neatly
(18:41):
into two nearly equal and distinct components. Those times when
there is a new George Santos scandal, and those times
when we all know there is about to be a
new George Santos scandal, we jumped the cusp yesterday when
Gustavo Riiro Treja, a Brazilian man, sent a sworn declaration
to those authorities that a credit card skimming operation in
(19:04):
Seattle for which he was convicted in twenty seventeen, was
masterminded by the man who calls himself George Santos. Treja
says Santos taught him how to skim card numbers off
ATMs and gave him the equipment to do that with.
Santos says it's not true. He adds he'll expand on
his denial in a moment, but first he just has
(19:25):
to make a quick run to the bank. Thank you,
(19:49):
Nancy Faust. By the way, I may have just embellished
the last part of that story. Ahead Fridays with Thurber
and the story of going to school at the turn
(20:11):
of the century in Columbus, Ohio, the turn of the
nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, when if you failed the
fourth grade, you stayed in the fourth grade, or a
year after year and decade after decade. I went to
Sullivant ahead first time for the daily round of the
miss Grants, Morons and Dunning kruegerfexpetiments who constitute today's worst
(20:34):
persons in the world. The Bronze Trump with great fanfare Axios,
one of those political websites for people who love politics
would have no idea what it has to do with
government or real life, has scooped the world. Trump is
coming out with another book next April twenty fifth, called
Letters to Trump. He is publishing the stuff that other
(20:58):
people wrote to him, letters from such up and coming
and current big names as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Princess Danna,
and Regis Philbin. I should point out that this may
require that I published the letter that Trump wrote to me.
It is from a decade ago. It is about my
coverage of my former employer, Ted Turner, and it underscores
(21:21):
what he thought of me. He was a fan, silly him.
One thing about Letters to Trump strikes me might actually
be important. Axios reports one of the letters was written
by Kim Jong Un. Does special counsel Jack Smith know this?
What kind of letter is he publishing? The Bronze Elon
(21:42):
Musk again. England's Independent reports that when he took over Twitter,
he asked many department managers in the company to nominate
their employees who they thought were best suited for promotion,
whereupon Musk fired all the managers and replaced them with
the employees they just nominated for promotion at lower salaries.
(22:04):
Of course, thank goodness, there have not been any quality
control problems at Twitter since then. But our winner the
host of the Patriot Barbie podcast. That's Patriot Barbie. This
is a woman who went on the Newsmax channel to
complain that another American crisis has happened to US News
that the actresses portraying Disney princesses at the Disney theme
(22:27):
parks don't want to wear corsets anymore. The host of
the Patriot Barbie podcast says, liberal women now do not
care about trying to look attractive, and ordinarily I would
not make a big deal out of this, except the
host of the Patriot Barbie podcast is a woman named
Lindsay Graham. Lindsay l I n d Sey. Just like
(22:53):
the Senator, it's the end of the week. I'm tired.
Just do your own jokes here, Lindsay No he's the
other one. Graham of the Patriot Barbie bodcast or a
podcast Today's Worst Person and to the number one story
(23:26):
on the Countdown and Friday's were Thurber. And I don't
know when I went to Sullivan became my father's favorite
Thurber story. I suspect it was in the hospital when
I was reading to him in the last six months
of his life. I know I read it to him
at least half a dozen times, the first five by
his request. The last time he did not request it,
(23:48):
in fact, and this is the most perverse kind of
compliment I think any writer has ever received. I read
this story to him. It was the last thing that
I read to him. In fact, it was the last
thing he did on earth, was to listen to this
story in a state of semi conscious. He waited till
the end of it. He took one deep, satisfied breath,
(24:09):
and he died. I don't recommend this, but I think
it does speak to the quality of the writing. I
went to Sullivant by James Thurber. I was reminded the
other morning by what I don't remember, and it doesn't
matter of a crisp September morning last year when I
went to the Grand Central to see a little boy
(24:31):
of ten get excitedly on a special coach that was
to take him to a boys school somewhere north of Boston.
He had never been away to school before. The coach
was squirming with youngsters. You could tell after a while
the novitiates shining and tremulous and a little odd from
the more aloof boys who had been away to school before.
(24:53):
But they were very much alike at first glance. There
was for me, in case you thought I was leading
up to that, no sharp feeling of old lost years
in the tense atmosphere of that coach, Because I never
went away to a private school when I was a
little boy. I went to Sullivant School in Columbus. I
thought about it as I walked back to my hotel.
(25:16):
Sullivant was an ordinary public school, and yet it was
not like any other I have ever known of. In
seeking an adjective to describe the Sullivant School of my
years nineteen hundred and eight, I can only think of tough.
Sullivant School was tough. The boys of Sullivant came mostly
(25:37):
from the region around Central Market, a poorish district with
many families of the laboring class. The school district also
included a number of homes of the upper classes, because
at the turn of the century one or two old
residential streets still lingered near the shouting and rumbling of
the market, reluctant to surrender their fine old houses to
the encroaching rabble of commerce and become as a last
(26:00):
they now have more vulgar business streets. I remember always,
first of all, the Sullivant baseball team. Most grammar school
baseball teams are made up of boys in the seventh
and eighth grades, or they were in my day, but
with Sullivant it was different. Several of its best players
were in the fourth grade, known to the teachers of
(26:22):
the school as the terrible fourth. In that grade you
first encountered fractions and long division, and many pupils lodged
there for years, like logs in a brook. Some of
(26:42):
the more able baseball players have been in the fourth
grade for seven or eight years then two. There were
a number of boys who had not been in the
class past the normal time, but were nevertheless deep into
their teams. They had avoided starting to school by eluding
the truant officer until they were ready to go into
long pants, but he always got them in the end.
(27:05):
One or two of these fourth graders were seventeen or
eighteen years old, but the dean of the squad was
a tall, husky young man of twenty two who was
in the fifth grade. The teachers of the third and
fourth had got tired of having him around as the
years rolled along and had pushed him on. His name
was Dana Wainey, and he had a mustache. Don't ask
(27:29):
me why his parents allowed him to stay in school
so long. There were many mysteries at Sullivant that were
never cleared up. All I know is why he kept
on in school and didn't go to work. He liked
playing on the baseball team, and he had a pretty
easy time in class because the teachers had given up
asking him any questions at all years before. The story
(27:52):
was that he had answered but one question in the
seventeen years he had been going to classes at Sullivant,
and that what is one use of the comma the
COMMI Dana embarrassedly unsnarling his long legs from beneath a
desk much too low for him, is used to shoot
marbles with commies was our word for those cheap ten
(28:16):
for a cent marbles in case it wasn't yours. The
Sullivant School baseball team of nineteen hundred and five defeated
several high school teams in the city and claimed the
high school championship of the state, to which title it had,
of course, no technical right. I believe the boys could
have proved their moral right to the championship, however, if
(28:36):
they had been allowed to go out of town and
play all the teams they challenged, such as the powerful
Dayton and Toledo Nines. But their road season was called
off after a terrific fight that it occurred during one
game at Mount Sterling or Piqua or Zenia, I can't
remember which. Our first baseman, Dana Wayney, crowned the umpire
(29:00):
with a bat during altercation overcalled strike and the fight
was on. It took place in the fourth inning, so
of course the game was never finished. The battle continued
on down into the business section of the town and
raged for hours with much destruction of property. But since
sullimet was ahead of the time seventeen to nothing, there
could have been no doubt as to the outcome, nobody
(29:23):
was killed. All of us boys were sure our team
could have beaten Ohio State University that year, but they
wouldn't play us. They were scared. Wayney was by no
means the biggest or toughest guy on the Grammar School team.
He was merely the oldest, being about a year the
senior of Floyd, the center fielder who could jump five
(29:45):
feet straight into the air without taking a running start.
Nobody knew, not even the Board of Education, which once
tried to find out whether Floyd was Floyd's first name
or his last name. He apparently only had one. He
didn't have any parents, and nobody, including himself, seemed to
(30:06):
know where he lived. When teachers insisted that he must
have another name to go with Floyd, he would grow
sullen and ominous, and they would cease questioning him because
he was a dangerous scholar in his schoolroom brawl, as
mister Harrigan, the janitor found out one morning when he
was called in by a screaming teacher. All our teachers
(30:26):
were women to get Floyd under control after she had
tried to whip him, and he had begun to take
the room apart, beginning with the desks. Floyd broke into
small pieces the switch she had used on him. Some
said he also ate it. I don't know, because I
was home sick at the time with mumps or something.
(30:48):
Harrigan was a burly, iron muscle janitor, a man come
from a long line of coal shovelers, but he was
no match for Floyd, who had to be sure the
considerable advantage of being more aroused than mister Harrigan. When
their fight started. Floyd had him down and was sitting
on his chest in no time, and Harrigan had a
promise to be good and to say that's what I
(31:09):
get ten times before Floyd would let him up. I
don't suppose I would ever have got through Sullivant School
alive if it hadn't been for Floyd. For some reason,
he appointed himself my protector, and I needed one. If
Floyd was known to be on your side, nobody in
the school would dare be after you and chase you home.
(31:32):
I was one of the ten or fifteen male pupils
in Sullivant School who always are almost always knew their lessons,
and I believe Floyd admired the mental prowess of a
youngster who knew how many continents there were and whether
or not the sun was inhabited. Also, one time, when
it came to be my turn to read to the class,
(31:53):
we used to take turns reading American history aloud, I
came across the word ducane and knew how to pronounce it.
That charmed Floyd, who had been slouched in his seat
idly following the printed page of his worn and penciled textbook.
How you know that was Duquesne boy, he asked me
(32:13):
after class. I don't know, I said, I just knew it.
He looked at me with round eyes. Oh that's something
he said. After that word got around that Floyd would
beat the tar out of anybody that messed around with me.
I wore glasses from the time I was eight, and
I knew my lessons, and both of those things were
considered pretty terrible at Sullivant. Floyd had one idiosyncrasy though.
(32:38):
In the early nineteen hundreds, long, warm, furry gloves that
came almost your elbows were popular with boys, and Floyd
had one of the biggest pairs in school. He wore
them the year round. Dick Peterson was an either greater
figure on the baseball team and in the school than
Floyd was. He had a way in the classroom of
(32:59):
blurting out a long, deep, rolling be for no reason
at all. Once he licked three boys his own size
single handed, really single handed, for he fought with his
right hand and held a mandolin in his left hand
all the time. It came out uninjured. Dick and Floyd
(33:24):
never met in Mortal Kombat, so nobody ever knew which
one could beat, and the scholars were about evenly divided
in their opinions. Many a fight started among them after
school when the argument came up. I think school never
let out at Sullivant without at least one fight starting up,
and sometimes there was many as five or six raging
between the corner of Oak and sixth Streets and the
(33:46):
corner of Rich and Fourth Streets four blocks away. Now
and again, virtually the whole school turned out to fight
the Catholic boys of the Holy Cross Academy in Fifth
Street near town for no reason at all. In winter
with snowballs and ice balls, in other seasons with fifth
brick bats and clubs. Dick Peterson was always in the van, yelling, singing,
(34:11):
being whirling all the way around when he swung with
his right, or if he hadn't brought his mandolin his
left and missed. He made himself the pitcher on the
baseball team because he was the captain. He was the
captain because everybody else was afraid to challenge his self
election except Floyd. Floyd was too lazy to pitch, and
(34:32):
he didn't care who was captain because he didn't fully
incomprehend what that meant. On one occasion, when Earl Baddock,
a steam fitter's son, had shut out Mound Street School
for six innings without a hit, Dick took him out
of the pitcher's box and went in himself. He was
hit hard, and the other team scored, but it didn't
make much difference because the margin of Sullivan's victory was
(34:54):
so great. The team didn't lose a game for five
years to another grammar school. When Dick Peterson was in
the sixth grade, he got into a saloon brawl and
was killed. When I go back to Columbus, I always
walked past Sullivant School. I have never happened to get
there when classes were letting out, so I don't know
(35:15):
what the pupils are like. Now I am sure there
are no more Dick Peterson's and no more Floyd's, unless
Floyd is still going to school there. The playyard is
still entirely bare of grass and covered with gravel, and
the sycamore is still line the curve between the schoolhouse
fence and the Oak Street car line. A street car
(35:38):
line running past a schoolhouse is a dangerous thing as
a rule, but I remember no one being injured while
I was attending Sullivant. I do remember, however, one person
who came very near being injured. He was a motorman
on the Oak Street line, and once when his car
stopped at the corner of six to let off passengers,
he yelled at Chudy Davidson, who played a third base
(35:59):
on the ball team and was a member of the
Terrible Fourth, to get out of the way. Chuty was
fourteen years old, but huge for his age, and he
was standing on the tracks taking a chew of tobacco.
Come on down off at that con I'll not keep
locked off, said Shooty, and what I can only describe
as a sullivant tone of voice. The motorman waited until
(36:22):
Shooty moved slowly off the tracks. Then he went on
about his business. I think it was lucky for him
that he did. There were boys in those days. I
went to Sullivant by James Thurber. Thank you for listening.
(36:53):
Countdown has come to you from the studios of the
old Ruin Broadcasting Empire, High Top, its headquarters in the
Sports Capsule Building here in New York. Here are the credits.
Most of the music was arranged, produced and performed by
Brian Ray and John Philip Channel, who are the Countdown
musical directors. Produced by t Ko Brothers. All orchestration and
keyboards by John Philip Channel, guitarist, bass and drums by
(37:16):
Brian Ray. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed
by No Horns allowed. The sports music is the Aulderman
theme from ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren
Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust.
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was
Kenny Maine, and everything else is pretty much my fault.
(37:37):
So let's countdown for this the seven hundred and ninety
fourth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the
democratically elected government of the United States arrest him now
while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is Monday.
Until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alerman is a production
(38:09):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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