November 17, 2023 • 39 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 76: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) It is time for the government of the United States to ban “X” – the social media site still primarily known as Twitter - and to terminate all government contracts with its owner.
Under Trump the government moved to ban TikTok as a security risk to the United States, so there is precedent for at least the attempt, because a process that has been accelerating for more than a year reached a climax Wednesday when owner Elon Musk answered a blatantly antisemitic tweet with the reply quote “you have said the actual truth.” Combined with surging anti-semitism throughout the website, and the use of Nazi hate speech and paraphrases of infamous Hitler quotes by the likely Republican candidate for president, the tinderbox of antisemitism has never been fuller or drier and Trump and Musk seem determined to light it ablaze – and with it, light ablaze the peace and security of this nation.
Musk’s bizarre running of the Twitter-X platform had already destroyed more than half its value and even more of its advertising. Yesterday afternoon, IBM announced it was pulling its already-scheduled ads for the next three months – the New York Times says that was a million dollars’ worth. Rather remarkably, as of the close of business yesterday The New York Times had not yet cancelled Musk’s scheduled appearance twelve days from now at a Times event it calls its “DealBook Summit” which it describes as the gathering of quote “the most consequential leaders in business, politics, and culture,” unquote… and, I guess, the most consequential leaders in antisemitism.
As the snowball rolling down the hill toward her reached speeds of about a thousand miles an hour, Musk’s hand-picked CEO Linda Yaccarino posted a comment at 3:45 PM Eastern that seemed crafted by the nation’s finest satirical comedians, or maybe Tim Robinson in the hot dog suit and the “We’re All Trying To Find The Guy Who Did This” meme. Quote: “X’s point of view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should STOP across the boad – I think that’s something we can and should all agree on. When it comes to this platform, X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination. There’s no place for it anywhere in the world – it’s ugly and wrong. Full stop.” If taken sincerely and literally, Yaccarino’s only possible next action would be… to suspend Elon Musk’s account.
Musk has gone down a path from which he cannot backtrack. Twitter-X – at least HIS version of it – must be banned, and government contracts and other agreements – local, state, national - with his other firms: Space-X, Tesla, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and xAI must be terminated. Today. There is no other option.
B-BLOCK (17:50) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The George Santos ethics investigation is in. He doesn't have any. Remarkable research that suggests the Republicans haven't ONCE needed his vote. Paul Pelosi's attacker is found guilty, as is a J6 insurrectionist that MAGA has convinced itself was actually a Black Lives Matter Antifa George Soros plant.(22:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: It's an ugly word and Caitlyn Jenner just proved she doesn't know how to spell it. It's the word "Congresswoman" and Trump Junior just proved he doesn't know how to pronounce it. And it may be the last words Charissa Thompson ever says as a sportscaster. The former Fox Sports football sideline reporter volunteers the startling information that several times she DIDN'T interview the coach at halftime and simply lied and made up what she thought he would've said. Unless...she made THAT story up too.
C-BLOCK (30:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: One James Thurber short story, above all others, is in the college textbooks and high school textbooks and middle school textbooks. And there's a reason for it: "The Night The Bed Fell."
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. It
is time for the government of the United States to
ban x, the social media site still primarily known as Twitter,
(00:29):
and to terminate all government contracts with its owner. Under Trump,
the government had moved to ban TikTok as a security
risk to the United States, so there is precedent for
at least the attempt. Because a process that has been
accelerating for more than a year reached a climax Wednesday,
then continued Thursday when owner Elon Musk answered a blatantly
(00:51):
anti Semitic tweet echoing the language of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter,
with a reply from him that read, quote, you have
said the actual truth. Combined with surging anti semitism throughout
the website and the use of Nazi hate speech and
paraphrases of infamous Hitler quotes by the likely Republican candidate
for president, the tinderbox of anti semitism, indeed of hatred
(01:16):
against races and religions of all kinds. The tinderbox has
never been fuller nor drier, and Trump and Musk seem
determined to light it ablaze and with it to light
ablaze the peace and the security of this nation. Ban
Twitter x now, and ban all government financial dealings with
(01:37):
Musk now before it is too late, and before the
burgeoning anti semitism of twitter x and Musk's endorsement by
extension of the mass shooting at the Pittsburgh Synagogue becomes
the sole purpose of that platform. As I said in
an extraordinary irony, the precedent for this begins with Trump's
(01:57):
moves against TikTok, including an executive order in twenty twenty,
and then a Biden Department of Justice investigation of TikTok
that began on March seventeenth of this year. The TikTok
ban is a separate issue, and I don't want to
mix it in here with the prospect of banning twitter x,
because in response to the appalling fan boying of Osama
(02:18):
bin Laden's hate screed against America and against Jewish people
on TikTok this week, at least, that was followed by
a meeting between TikTok executives and prominent Jewish figures, TikTok
might actually be trying to fix things on its site.
That remains to be seen. Twitter X, on the other hand,
(02:39):
is doing nothing and its madman owner Musk, seems to
have no awareness of the impact of his own diseased
and hateful mind, and he has attacked those who have
dared to criticize him about this. The post that turned
twitter x from a mere sewer to a sewer on fire,
belching toxic smoke read in part quote, Jewish communities have
(03:04):
been pushed the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites
that they claim to want people to stop using against them,
even though these are virtually word for word the sentiments
of the so called Tree of Life shooter, who murdered
eleven people, including Holocaust survivors, at a synagogue in twenty eighteen.
Musk replied, as noted quote, you have said the actual truth.
(03:27):
When criticized by the Anti Defamation lead, Musk doubled down.
I am deeply offended by ADL's messaging and any other
groups who pushed de facto anti white racism or anti
Asian racism, or racism of any kind. I'm sick of it.
Stop it now unquote. Musk's bizarre, self destructive running of
(03:51):
the twitter x platform had already destroyed more than half
of its value, and even more of its advertising. Then
yesterday afternoon, IBM announced it was pulling its already scheduled
ads for the next three months. The New York Times
says that was about a million dollars worth. Rather remarkably,
as of the close of business yesterday, the New York
Times had not yet canceled Musk's scheduled appearance twelve days
(04:14):
from now at a Times event that it calls its
deal Book Summit, which it describes as the gathering of quote,
the most consequential leaders in business, politics and culture unquote
and I guess the most consequential leaders in anti Semitism.
It seems impossible to believe that The Times will actually
(04:36):
permit Musk to participate in its branded event. He has
not only rendered Twitter x toxic, but the revulsion has
spread to his other companies. As the publication The Street
wrote last night, some prominent Tesla investors seemed to finally
be losing faith in the company's often controversial CEO. The
stockfell roughly four percent Thursday after Musk highlighted an anti
(05:00):
Semitic conspiracy theory, then issued a series of seemingly bigoted
tweets X The Future Fund partner Gary Black wrote, I
want to believe the CEO's attitudes and Tesla brand equity
are not linked, but my common sense tells me otherwise.
And wealth and investment manager Ross Gerber, whose fund owned
(05:20):
four hundred and twenty thousand shares of Tesla at the
last counting, reached the inevitable conclusion. He wrote that Musk
has now gone too far. He's like Trump now as
the snowball rolling down the hill toward her reached speeds
of about one thousand miles an hour. Musk's handpicked CEO,
(05:41):
Linda Yakarino, posted a comment at three forty five pm
Eastern that seemed to have been crafted by the nation's
finest satirical comedians, maybe Tim Robinson in his hot dog
suit in the middle of the We're all trying to
find the guy who did this meme, quoting Yakarino. X's
point of view has always been very clear that discrimination
(06:02):
by everyone should stop cross the board. I think that's
something we can and should all agree on when it
comes to this platform. X has also been extremely clear
about our efforts to combat anti Semitism and discrimination. There's
no place for it anywhere in the world. It's ugly
and wrong, full stop, unquote. If taken sincerely and literally,
(06:26):
Yakarino's only possible next action would be to suspend the
account of Elon Musk. As a gentile, I will note
that the phrase X has also been extremely clear about
our efforts to combat anti semitism and discrimination may also
be literally true. It has been extremely clear that it
(06:48):
has made no efforts to combat anti semitism and discrimination,
and it is rather incredibly bigger than anti semitism alone.
Twitter x is rife with other racism and other flavors
of religious hatred and other forms of discrimination at a
time when the concept stigmatizing, blaming and persecuting a generalized other,
(07:11):
and white supremacist thuggery, when these things are resurgent in
the United States and elsewhere. If Twitter x or other
private entities cannot force Musk to sell the platform immediately,
he leaves the government of the United States no other option.
In such a perilous time, Congress could act, individual states
(07:34):
could act as some have acted against TikTok. The President
could resort to his own executive order, or all branches
and all parties could work in concert. In a rare
and frankly rather easy display a bipartisanship. Musk has gone
down a path from which he cannot backtrack. Twitter X
(07:55):
at least his version of it must be banned, and
government contracts and other agreements local, state, and national with
his other firms SpaceX, Tesla, the boring company, Neuralink, and
Xai must be terminated. Today there is no other option
(08:18):
elsewhere another judge has proved incapable of seeing or proved
that he is deliberately ignoring the similar danger to the
peace and safety of the United States posed by the
Musk of politics Dementia J. Trump, a New York State
Appellate Division judge who identifies as a Democrat but was
appointed twenty five years ago by a Republican governor, has
(08:40):
joined the DC Court of Appeals in staying one of
the gag orders against Trump. This time it is the
gag order in the New York civil fraud case, during
which Trump has doxed Judge Arthur Engern's courtroom clerk and
fabricated a backstory for her to the benefit and pleasure
of his cult. Judge David Friedman said the order raised
(09:02):
constitutional and statutory rights at issue and state it until
the full State Appeals court panel can consider it a
week from Monday. Apart from Judge Friedman's cluelessness as to
the reality and imminence of the mortal danger to which
Trump subjects his targets, the most remarkable aspect to the
staying of this gag order and also the one imposed
(09:24):
by Judge Tanya Chutkin in the federal elections subversion trial,
is that, in response, Trump has shown for the first
time unexpected weakness. While celebrating his lawyer's manipulation of Judge Friedman.
In a social media post, Trump wrote about the quote
ridiculous and unconstitutional gag order not allowing me to defend
(09:46):
myself against him and his politically biased and out of
control Trump hating clerk. In the post, Trump names Andngron.
Trump names the Attorney General Lytitia James. He does not
name the clerk, even though there is nothing at the
moment preventing him from doing so. It has not been
noted widely, but since the DC Appeals Court stayed that
(10:08):
gag order in that case, Trump has barely mentioned the
judge or the Special Council or anybody else in that case.
It cannot be good judgment. Trump does not have good judgment,
it has to be fear. In another curious Trump legal twist,
he has been hoist with his own petard in the
New York City criminal case against him for falsifying business
(10:31):
records to hide hush money to Stormy Daniels. Trump's ambulance
chasers moved to dismiss that case. Manhattan da Alvin Bragg
has now replied by reconstructing Trump's words of self martyrdom
and using them against Trump. Quote. Defendant repeatedly suggests, begins
Bragg's filing that because he is a current presidential candidate,
(10:55):
the ordinary rules for criminal law and procedure should be
applied differently. Here. This argument is essentially an attempt to
evade criminal responsibility because defendant is politically powerful. Courts have
repeatedly rejected defendant's demands for special treatment and instead have
adhered to the core principle that the rule of law
(11:18):
applies equally to the power full as to the powerless.
Quote did you say that, mister District Attorney? What a guy?
I'm hoping that mister Bragg sent a copy of that
to Jack Smith. Judge Eileen Cannon, the former yoga and
Flamenco dancing correspondent of the Miami Nuevo Herald, has refused
(11:40):
to establish now a deadline for Trump to disclose which
classified materials he later intends to use in his defense
in the Florida case. Establishing the deadline now would increase
the chances of keeping the already tardy Florida trial schedule intact.
Judge Cannon says she will set that deadline in March
(12:01):
of next year, not four March of next year, but
in March of next year. The trial is supposed to
begin in May. Reporters covering that trial and legal experts
guess that we are now several months behind that schedule
and the thing can't possibly start before July. Clearly, Judge
(12:23):
Cannon has no intention of ever going back to covering
yoga and flamenco as another note of curiosity. As the
Trump circumspection in the wake of the staid gag order
seems strange, so does Special Counsel Smith's relative inactivity, some
might say inertness when it comes to delay after delay
(12:45):
sought by Trump and granted by the judge Trump appointed.
It's almost as if the Florida case is there is
a sidebar to the DC case and Smith isn't trying
to get other courts to overrule Judge Cannon in order
to foster some sense in Trump that his lawyers are
not idiots, and his strategy is not going to guarantee
(13:06):
his conviction in Washington and not guarantee that he will
die in prison and in hockey at least, this would
all be called a deeck on. One more thing to
add to Trump's paranoia, special council investigating the small collection
of mishandled classified documents in two locations connected to President Biden.
(13:27):
CNN quotes two sources close to that investigation as saying
that the investigation is complete and the Special Council, Robert Hurr,
is writing an extensive report and he is going to
charge nobody, nobody with nothing. Also of interest here to
(13:51):
continue the hockey imagery. George Santos is two thirds of
the way to a hat trick. After the ethics report
came in. He's saying he will not run for reelection.
What in waste? The negative sixteen thousand dollars campaign did
not raise in the third quarter, and momentum is building
towards expelling him, which would leave only the third option,
where he quits immediately, and there is startling new research
(14:15):
that the Republicans actually would not miss his vote. And
speaking of fraud, there is the sportscaster Crisa Thompson's startling
boast that some of her halftime off camera Network TV
interviews with football coaches never happened and she just made
(14:36):
the stuff up. It's shocking unless she also just made
that up. That's next. This iscountdown. This is countdown with
Keith Olberman. Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates,
(15:02):
some snarks, some predictions. Dateline. Washington House Ethics Committee report
is back. Surprise, surprise, surprise. George Santos doesn't have any
in response. Speaker Ugly Johnson has advised members to consider
whether or not to vote to expel him. Santos says
(15:23):
he will not run for reelection. He may try to
position that as a great moral stance for a change.
In fact, it probably has more to do with the
fact that his campaign fundraising for the third quarter of
this year was minus sixteen five hundred dollars. But most
interesting of all, the impeccable Philip Bump of The Washington
Post has researched all the Republican votes since they swore
(15:47):
Santos in Santos if that is his real name, and
guess what, the Republicans actually did not need him there
to pass anything, not even usual Republican time wasting stuff.
Quoting Phil Bump's calculation, there have been nearly six hundred
and seventy four votes this year, only ten resulted in
(16:09):
a one vote margin or in a tie. And while
that would theoretically mean that in those ten votes you
could say Santos's vote was essential in getting Republican stuff passed,
Bump found a surprising caveat. None of the amendments or
bills covered by those ten votes ever became law anyway.
(16:29):
Each one of them passed the House and then went
into conference with the Senate, where they all died. Bump
has also found out that as the year has gone by,
Santos has become a less reliable vote for Republicans, so
from the GOP point of view, instead of helping their
well oiled voting machine in Congress, he had become kind
(16:51):
of a drag. Sorry, thank you, Nancy Faust. And yes,
(17:41):
if Santos does resign, the likeliest successor to his seat
is Republican newcomer Katara ravashe Dateline San Francisco. Most of
them will never believe it, but another right wing conspiracy
theory just blew up. David de Pap has been found
guilty on both counts in his violent attack with a
(18:04):
hammer against Nancy Pelosi's husband after Depap broke into their
home hoping to kidnap and or torture and or assassinate her.
De Pap could face maximum sentences of thirty and twenty
years on the two convictions and Dateline Washington, another part
of the Tucker Carlson Maga January sixth conspiracy theory. No,
(18:27):
not the ghost busses thing, but rather the Antifa plant thing,
is again disproven. John Earl Sullivan, widely proclaimed to be
an informant or a plant or something, who said he
was just a citizen journalist, just a member of Black
Lives Matter who happened to record the shooting of the
terrorist Ashley Babbitt. He has been convicted on all counts,
(18:50):
including carrying a knife into the capitol. His lawyers may
have sealed his fate for him when they called another
quote citizen journalist unquote to testify on his behalf and
she played video of him shouting into a bullhorn, exhorting
the crowd to go into the Capitol and telling that crowd,
We're about to burn this spit down. Unclear how much
(19:12):
time he'll spend in the big House. Unclear how much
money he spent on those lawyers still ahead of us
(19:41):
on countdown Fridays with Thurber and the one of all
of his short stories that has been in middle and
junior high school and high school textbooks for eighty years,
The Night the Bed Fell first time for the daily
roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens
who constitute two days worst persons in the World. The
(20:03):
bronze to Caitlin jenn who responded to a Donald Trump
Junior post about how people of a certain age should
be able to use the R word. If you're not
clear what I mean by that, the R word is
a version of one of the words in the following
phrase fire retardant. Jenner responded to the Trump tweet quote,
(20:24):
I'll say it quote retarted unquote, she spelled it wrong.
R e T A r T ed like you were
a tart and now you're a tart again? What a tart?
The runner up. Well, why it's Trump Junior again in
his own right. His word of the day was Congresswoman.
(20:46):
I thank Ron Philipkowski for pointing this out. It's worth
listening to a couple of times from his video cast
as Junior tries to introduce Marjorie Taylor Green and gets
it wrong. I love this one. Congress rooman MTG. Marjorie
Taylor Green. We're gonna be talking to her new books.
I love this one. Congress Roman MTG. Marjorie Taylor Green, Friends,
(21:11):
Congress Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. But our winner
is Curisa Thompson, former football sideline reporter at Fox and
at this rate, former sports broadcaster. I did the baseball
equivalent of the sideline reporter job dugout reporter, I guess
for about twenty twenty five games for Fox Sports and
(21:32):
NBC from ninety seven through two thousand and I remember
once needing to get a reaction in the middle of
the game from Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and having to
literally crawl under a camera and then crawl through a
half door to get out of the Yankee Stadium dugout
and back towards where Selig was seated, So this was
kind of shocking. On a podcast, MS Thompson announced where
(21:56):
it actually is boasted that when tasked with doing some
of those I talked to coach Smith halftime reports. She
she didn't talk to coach Smith. She just she just
made it up.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
And I've said this before, so I haven't been fired
for saying it, but I'll say it again. I would
make up the report sometimes because a the coach wouldn't
come out at halftime or it was too late, and
I was like, I didn't want to screw up the report.
So I was like, I'm just going to make this
up because first of all, no coach is going to
get mad if I say, hey, we need to stop
hurting ourselves. We needed to be better on third down,
(22:32):
we need to stop turning the ball over quarterback. Yeah exactly,
and do a better job of getting off the field.
Like they're not going to correct me on that. I'm like,
it's fine, I'll just make.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Up the report now. In terms of the quality of
the journalistic content, Miss Thompson is entirely correct. The coach
rarely ever says anything. Maybe we do not need sideline reporters.
But then there's that one time when you talk to
him or to somebody and he says something like what
happened during a near riot at a playoff game at
(23:02):
Fenway Park in nineteen ninety nine? On Fox, I got
Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for my little report, and I
said something really deep, like what do you think, George?
And George said he thought that the Red Sox manager
Jimmy Williams had incited the crowd to riot. That was
a hell of a statement, and it basically became the
(23:22):
lead story that night and the next day. And I
didn't contribute anything more to that than asking George if
he would come on with me, and then asking him
the most generic question ever, But I asked him. You
can't not ask them and then say you ask them.
(23:42):
You can't make it up. The premise is you never
make it up, benell or trivial or meaningless. You can't
make it up, and you certainly can't then boast about
making it up. HARRISA. Thompson is the host of Thursday
Night Football on Amazon. Management there was asked by the
Sports Business Journal if she would address this or if
(24:04):
there be a suspension or something, and the answer came
back quote, she was telling the story from fifteen years ago. Unquote, Well,
we assume she was telling a story from fifteen years ago,
unless she made that up too, which is the point.
You say something like that, you kind of destroy the
presumption that you're not making stuff up all the time.
(24:25):
There are three other dimensions to this. The people who
did the podcast tweeted out the clip apparently proudly, and
then when the blowback occurred, they deleted it. The other
two dimensions to this I think are really mallid. At
least a dozen other women who still work as sideline reporters,
especially in football, were appalled at Thompson's revelation. They work hard,
(24:49):
the results, the goals, what they are there for. That's
not their decision, that's not their fault. They work hard,
they do what they're supposed to do. And Mike Freeman,
a veteran football reporter and an African American man, asked
a really dis disturbing, an important question. What if that
announcement I didn't interview the coach, I just made up
(25:10):
what he probably would have said. What if that had
been made by a sideline reporter who was also an
African American man? How quickly would he have been fired
and justifiably, you can't make it up. Amazon may not
be able to fire her. She didn't make it up
while she was working for them, But how do you
keep her on your broadcast when she's admitted to fabricating
(25:35):
a key element of all football broadcasts? Harisa, I wouldn't
worry too much about the next contract negotiation. Thompson two
days worse person in the world to say he had
no comments. I have argued before that James Thurber is
(26:05):
the greatest American humorist, and it dawns on me that
the argument is not unlike the idea that shohe Otani
of the Los Angeles Angels is almost automatically the most
valuable player in baseball each year because he is an
All Star hitter and an All Star pitcher in the
same body. James Thurber was a brilliant writer, and in
his spare time, it was an equally brilliant, almost avant
(26:28):
garde artist in the same body. His simple drawings to
pick the most complex of emotions and comedic situations. His
dogs are immortal, and then there were his captions. Well,
I can't do anything with his drawings in a podcast,
So I'll just read and I will read you now
in this episode, what is probably his most famous story
(26:50):
from my life in hard times, The Night the bedfell
James Thurber. I suppose that the high water mark of
my youth in Columbus, Ohio was the night the bed
fell on my father. It makes a better recitation unless,
as some friends of mine have said, one has heard
(27:11):
it five or six times, than it does a piece
of writing, For it is almost necessary to throw furniture around,
shake doors, and bark like a dog to lend the
proper atmosphere and verisimilitude to what is admittedly a somewhat
incredible tale. Still it did take place. It happened then
(27:32):
that my father had decided to sleep in the attic
one night, to be away where he could think. My
mother opposed the notion strongly, because she said the old
wooden bed up there was unsafe, It was wobbly, and
the heavy headboard would crash down on father's head in
case the bed fell and kill him. There was no
dissuading him, however, and at a quarter past ten, he
(27:55):
closed the attic door behind him and went up the narrow,
twisting stairs. We later heard Amina's creakings as he crawled
into bed. Grandfather, who usually slept in the attic bed
when he was with us, had disappeared some days before.
On those occasions, he was usually gone six or eight days,
and returned growling and out of temper with the news
(28:15):
that the Federal Union was run by a passel of blockheads,
and that the Army of the Potomac didn't have any
more chance than a fiddler's bitch. We had visiting us
at the time, a nervous first cousin of mine named
Briggs Beale, who believed that he was likely to cease
breathing when he was asleep. It was his feeling that
(28:35):
if he were not awakened every hour during the night,
he might die of suffocation. He had been accustomed to
setting an alarm clock to ring at intervals until morning,
but I persuaded him to abandon this. He slept in
my room, and I told him that I was such
a light sleeper that if anybody quit breathing in the
same room with me, I would wake instantly. He tested
(28:57):
me the first night, which I had suspected he would,
by holding his breath after my regular breathing, had convinced
him I was asleep. I was not asleep, however, and
called to him. This seemed to allay his fears a little,
but he took the precaution of putting a glass of
spirits of camphor on a little table at the head
(29:20):
of his bed in case I didn't arouse him. Until
he was almost gone. He said he would sniff the camphor.
A powerful reviver, Briggs was not the only member of
his family who had his crotchets. Old Aunt Melissa Belle,
who could whistle like a man with two fingers in
her mouth, suffered under the premonition that she was destined
(29:40):
to die on South High Street because she had been
born on South High Street and married on South High Street.
Then there was Aunt Sarah Schauf, who never went to
bed at night without the fear that a burglar was
going to get in and blow chloroform under her door
through a tube. To avert this calamity, for she was
(30:01):
in greater dread of anesthetics than of losing her household goods,
always piled her money, silverware, and other valuables in a
neat stack just outside her bedroom, with a note reading,
this is all I have, Please take it and do
not use your chloroform, as this is all I have.
Aunt Gracie's chauf also had a burglar phobia, but she
(30:21):
met it with more fortitude. She was confident that burglars
had been getting into her house every night for forty years.
The fact that she never missed anything was to her
no proof. To the contrary, She always claimed that she
scared them off before they could take anything by throwing
shoes down the hallway. When she went to bed, she
(30:42):
piled where she could get at them handily, all the
shoes there were about her house. Five minutes after she
had turned off the light, she would sit up in
bed and say hark. Her husband, who had learned to
ignore the whole situation as long ago as nineteen o three,
would either be sound asleep or pretend to be sound asleep.
(31:04):
In either case, he would not respond to her tugging
and pulling, so that presently she would arise, tiptoe to
the door, open it slightly, and heave a shoe down
the hall in one direction, and its mate down the
hall in the other direction. Some nights she threw them all,
some nights only a couple of pear. But I am
(31:26):
straying from the remarkable incidents that took place during the
night that the bed fell on father. By midnight we
were all in bed. The layout of the rooms and
the disposition of their occupants is important to an understanding
of what later occurred. In the front room upstairs, just
under father's attic bedroom, where my mother and my brother Hermann,
(31:47):
who sometimes sang in his sleep, usually marching through Georgia
or onward Christian soldiers briggs Beale and myself were in
a room adjoining this one. My brother Roy was in
a room across the hall from ours. Our bull terrier
Wrecks slept in the hall. My bed was an army cot,
one of those affairs which were made wide enough to
(32:08):
sleep on comfortably only by putting up flat, with the
middle section the two sides, which ordinarily hang down like
the sideboards of a drop leaf table. When these sides
are up, it is perilous to roll too far toward
the edge, for then the cot is likely to tip
completely over, bringing the whole bed down on top of
(32:28):
one with a tremendous banging crash. This, in fact, is
precisely what happened about two o'clock in the morning It
was my mother, who, in recalling the scene later first
referred to it as the night the bed fell on
your father. Always a deep sleeper and slow to arouse,
I had lied to Briggs. I was at first unconscious
(32:51):
of what had happened. When the ironcot rolled me onto
the floor and toppled over on me. It left me
still warmly bundled up and unheard, for the bed rested
above me like a canopy. Hence I did not wake up,
only reached the edge of consciousness and went back. The racket, however,
instantly awakened my mother in the next room, who came
to the immediate conclusion that her worst dread was realized.
(33:15):
The big wooden bed upstairs had fallen on father. She
therefore screamed, let's go to your poor father. It was
this shout, rather than the noise of my cot falling,
that awakened Herman in the same room with her, he
thought that mother had become, for no apparent reason, hysterical.
You're all right, Mama, he shouted, trying to calm her.
(33:37):
They exchanged shout for shout for perhaps ten seconds. Let's
go to your poor father, and you're all right. That
woke up Briggs. By this time I was conscious of
what was going on in a vague way, but did
not yet realize that I was under my bed instead
of on it. Briggs, awakening in the midst of loud
(34:00):
shouts of fear and apprehension, came to the quick conclusion
that he was suffolting, and that we were all trying
to bring him out. With a low moan, he grasped
the glass of camphor at the head of his bed,
and instead of sniffing it, he poured it over himself.
The room reeked of camphor. Ugh ah choked Briggs like
(34:23):
a drowning man, for he had almost succeeded in stopping
his breath under the deluge of pungent spirits. He leaped
out of bed and groped toward the open window, but
he came up against one that was closed. With his hand,
he beat out the glass, and I could hear it
crash and tinkle on the alleyway below. It was at
(34:43):
this juncture that I, in trying to get up, had
the uncanny sensation of feeling my bed above me foggy
with sleep. I now suspected, in my turn that the
whole uproar was being made in a frantic endeavor to
extricate me from what must be an unheard of and
perilous situation. Get me out of this, I bawled, Get
me out. I think I had the night irish belief
(35:05):
that I was entombed in a mine. Gas Briggs floundering
in his camphor by this time, my mother, still shouting,
pursued by Hermann, still shouting, was trying to open the
door to the attic in order to go up and
get my father's body out of the wreckage. The door
(35:26):
was stuck, however, and would not yield. Her frantic pulls
on it only added to the general banging and confusion.
Roy and the dog were now up, the one shouting questions,
the other barking. Father, farthest away and soundest sleeper of all,
had by this time been awakened by the battering on
the attic door. He decided that the house was on fire.
(35:49):
Oh comeing, okay, he wailed in a slow, sleepy voice.
It took him many minutes to regain full consciousness. My mother,
still believing he was caught under the bed, detected in
his I'm coming, the mournful, resigned note of one who
was preparing to meet his maker. He's dying, she shouted.
(36:09):
I'm all right, Briggs yelled to reassure her, I'm all right.
He still believed that it was his own closeness to
death that was worrying Mother. I found at last the
light switch in my room, unlocked the door, and Briggs
and I joined the others at the attic door. The dog,
who never did like Briggs, jumped for him, assuming that
(36:30):
he was the culprit in whatever was going on, and
Roy had to throw Rex and hold him. We could
hear Father crawling out of the bed upstairs. Roy pulled
the attic door open with a mighty jerk, and Father
came down the stairs, sleepy and irritable, but safe and sound.
My mother began to weep when she saw him. Rex
began to howl. What in the name of God is
(36:55):
going on here? Asked father. The situation was finally put
together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Father caught a cold
from prowling around in his bare feet, but there were
no other bad results. I'm glad, said Mother, who always
looked on the bright side of things, that your grandfather
(37:17):
wasn't here. I've done all the damage. I can do here.
I just was talking to Coach Smith at halftime and
(37:37):
thank you for listening. Countdown has come to you from
the Vin Scully Studios at the Old Women Broadcasting Empire
in New York. Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John
Phillip Chanelle arranged, produced, and performed most of our music.
Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on
the guitars, bass and drums, produced by Tko Brothers. See
that's why sometimes when I put in something that isn't true,
(38:00):
I put it in for comedic effect. I say I
made that part up. Other music, including other Beethoven tunes,
arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The
sports music is courtesy of ESPN, Inc. And it was
written by Mitch Warren Davis. And we call it the
Olderman theme from ESPN two. Now, the reason I say
we call it the Olderman theme from ESPN two is
(38:22):
it really didn't have a title. Our satirical and fifthy
musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium
organist ever. Debatable, but if you say that's not true,
you're wrong. Our announcer today was my friend Richard Lewis,
and he is a dear friend, so that's true. And
everything else was pretty much my fault, which has been
true about me since more or less nineteen sixty one.
(38:44):
That's countdown for this, the one thy forty sixth day
since dementia J Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Convict him now while
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is Tuesday. Bulletins
as the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(39:17):
Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. It
is time for the government of the United States to
ban x, the social media site still primarily known as Twitter,
(00:29):
and to terminate all government contracts with its owner. Under Trump,
the government had moved to ban TikTok as a security
risk to the United States, so there is precedent for
at least the attempt. Because a process that has been
accelerating for more than a year reached a climax Wednesday,
then continued Thursday when owner Elon Musk answered a blatantly
(00:51):
anti Semitic tweet echoing the language of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter,
with a reply from him that read, quote, you have
said the actual truth. Combined with surging anti semitism throughout
the website and the use of Nazi hate speech and
paraphrases of infamous Hitler quotes by the likely Republican candidate
for president, the tinderbox of anti semitism, indeed of hatred
(01:16):
against races and religions of all kinds. The tinderbox has
never been fuller nor drier, and Trump and Musk seem
determined to light it ablaze and with it to light
ablaze the peace and the security of this nation. Ban
Twitter x now, and ban all government financial dealings with
(01:37):
Musk now before it is too late, and before the
burgeoning anti semitism of twitter x and Musk's endorsement by
extension of the mass shooting at the Pittsburgh Synagogue becomes
the sole purpose of that platform. As I said in
an extraordinary irony, the precedent for this begins with Trump's
(01:57):
moves against TikTok, including an executive order in twenty twenty,
and then a Biden Department of Justice investigation of TikTok
that began on March seventeenth of this year. The TikTok
ban is a separate issue, and I don't want to
mix it in here with the prospect of banning twitter x,
because in response to the appalling fan boying of Osama
(02:18):
bin Laden's hate screed against America and against Jewish people
on TikTok this week, at least, that was followed by
a meeting between TikTok executives and prominent Jewish figures, TikTok
might actually be trying to fix things on its site.
That remains to be seen. Twitter X, on the other hand,
(02:39):
is doing nothing and its madman owner Musk, seems to
have no awareness of the impact of his own diseased
and hateful mind, and he has attacked those who have
dared to criticize him about this. The post that turned
twitter x from a mere sewer to a sewer on fire,
belching toxic smoke read in part quote, Jewish communities have
(03:04):
been pushed the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites
that they claim to want people to stop using against them,
even though these are virtually word for word the sentiments
of the so called Tree of Life shooter, who murdered
eleven people, including Holocaust survivors, at a synagogue in twenty eighteen.
Musk replied, as noted quote, you have said the actual truth.
(03:27):
When criticized by the Anti Defamation lead, Musk doubled down.
I am deeply offended by ADL's messaging and any other
groups who pushed de facto anti white racism or anti
Asian racism, or racism of any kind. I'm sick of it.
Stop it now unquote. Musk's bizarre, self destructive running of
(03:51):
the twitter x platform had already destroyed more than half
of its value, and even more of its advertising. Then
yesterday afternoon, IBM announced it was pulling its already scheduled
ads for the next three months. The New York Times
says that was about a million dollars worth. Rather remarkably,
as of the close of business yesterday, the New York
Times had not yet canceled Musk's scheduled appearance twelve days
(04:14):
from now at a Times event that it calls its
deal Book Summit, which it describes as the gathering of quote,
the most consequential leaders in business, politics and culture unquote
and I guess the most consequential leaders in anti Semitism.
It seems impossible to believe that The Times will actually
(04:36):
permit Musk to participate in its branded event. He has
not only rendered Twitter x toxic, but the revulsion has
spread to his other companies. As the publication The Street
wrote last night, some prominent Tesla investors seemed to finally
be losing faith in the company's often controversial CEO. The
stockfell roughly four percent Thursday after Musk highlighted an anti
(05:00):
Semitic conspiracy theory, then issued a series of seemingly bigoted
tweets X The Future Fund partner Gary Black wrote, I
want to believe the CEO's attitudes and Tesla brand equity
are not linked, but my common sense tells me otherwise.
And wealth and investment manager Ross Gerber, whose fund owned
(05:20):
four hundred and twenty thousand shares of Tesla at the
last counting, reached the inevitable conclusion. He wrote that Musk
has now gone too far. He's like Trump now as
the snowball rolling down the hill toward her reached speeds
of about one thousand miles an hour. Musk's handpicked CEO,
(05:41):
Linda Yakarino, posted a comment at three forty five pm
Eastern that seemed to have been crafted by the nation's
finest satirical comedians, maybe Tim Robinson in his hot dog
suit in the middle of the We're all trying to
find the guy who did this meme, quoting Yakarino. X's
point of view has always been very clear that discrimination
(06:02):
by everyone should stop cross the board. I think that's
something we can and should all agree on when it
comes to this platform. X has also been extremely clear
about our efforts to combat anti Semitism and discrimination. There's
no place for it anywhere in the world. It's ugly
and wrong, full stop, unquote. If taken sincerely and literally,
(06:26):
Yakarino's only possible next action would be to suspend the
account of Elon Musk. As a gentile, I will note
that the phrase X has also been extremely clear about
our efforts to combat anti semitism and discrimination may also
be literally true. It has been extremely clear that it
(06:48):
has made no efforts to combat anti semitism and discrimination,
and it is rather incredibly bigger than anti semitism alone.
Twitter x is rife with other racism and other flavors
of religious hatred and other forms of discrimination at a
time when the concept stigmatizing, blaming and persecuting a generalized other,
(07:11):
and white supremacist thuggery, when these things are resurgent in
the United States and elsewhere. If Twitter x or other
private entities cannot force Musk to sell the platform immediately,
he leaves the government of the United States no other option.
In such a perilous time, Congress could act, individual states
(07:34):
could act as some have acted against TikTok. The President
could resort to his own executive order, or all branches
and all parties could work in concert. In a rare
and frankly rather easy display a bipartisanship. Musk has gone
down a path from which he cannot backtrack. Twitter X
(07:55):
at least his version of it must be banned, and
government contracts and other agreements local, state, and national with
his other firms SpaceX, Tesla, the boring company, Neuralink, and
Xai must be terminated. Today there is no other option
(08:18):
elsewhere another judge has proved incapable of seeing or proved
that he is deliberately ignoring the similar danger to the
peace and safety of the United States posed by the
Musk of politics Dementia J. Trump, a New York State
Appellate Division judge who identifies as a Democrat but was
appointed twenty five years ago by a Republican governor, has
(08:40):
joined the DC Court of Appeals in staying one of
the gag orders against Trump. This time it is the
gag order in the New York civil fraud case, during
which Trump has doxed Judge Arthur Engern's courtroom clerk and
fabricated a backstory for her to the benefit and pleasure
of his cult. Judge David Friedman said the order raised
(09:02):
constitutional and statutory rights at issue and state it until
the full State Appeals court panel can consider it a
week from Monday. Apart from Judge Friedman's cluelessness as to
the reality and imminence of the mortal danger to which
Trump subjects his targets, the most remarkable aspect to the
staying of this gag order and also the one imposed
(09:24):
by Judge Tanya Chutkin in the federal elections subversion trial,
is that, in response, Trump has shown for the first
time unexpected weakness. While celebrating his lawyer's manipulation of Judge Friedman.
In a social media post, Trump wrote about the quote
ridiculous and unconstitutional gag order not allowing me to defend
(09:46):
myself against him and his politically biased and out of
control Trump hating clerk. In the post, Trump names Andngron.
Trump names the Attorney General Lytitia James. He does not
name the clerk, even though there is nothing at the
moment preventing him from doing so. It has not been
noted widely, but since the DC Appeals Court stayed that
(10:08):
gag order in that case, Trump has barely mentioned the
judge or the Special Council or anybody else in that case.
It cannot be good judgment. Trump does not have good judgment,
it has to be fear. In another curious Trump legal twist,
he has been hoist with his own petard in the
New York City criminal case against him for falsifying business
(10:31):
records to hide hush money to Stormy Daniels. Trump's ambulance
chasers moved to dismiss that case. Manhattan da Alvin Bragg
has now replied by reconstructing Trump's words of self martyrdom
and using them against Trump. Quote. Defendant repeatedly suggests, begins
Bragg's filing that because he is a current presidential candidate,
(10:55):
the ordinary rules for criminal law and procedure should be
applied differently. Here. This argument is essentially an attempt to
evade criminal responsibility because defendant is politically powerful. Courts have
repeatedly rejected defendant's demands for special treatment and instead have
adhered to the core principle that the rule of law
(11:18):
applies equally to the power full as to the powerless.
Quote did you say that, mister District Attorney? What a guy?
I'm hoping that mister Bragg sent a copy of that
to Jack Smith. Judge Eileen Cannon, the former yoga and
Flamenco dancing correspondent of the Miami Nuevo Herald, has refused
(11:40):
to establish now a deadline for Trump to disclose which
classified materials he later intends to use in his defense
in the Florida case. Establishing the deadline now would increase
the chances of keeping the already tardy Florida trial schedule intact.
Judge Cannon says she will set that deadline in March
(12:01):
of next year, not four March of next year, but
in March of next year. The trial is supposed to
begin in May. Reporters covering that trial and legal experts
guess that we are now several months behind that schedule
and the thing can't possibly start before July. Clearly, Judge
(12:23):
Cannon has no intention of ever going back to covering
yoga and flamenco as another note of curiosity. As the
Trump circumspection in the wake of the staid gag order
seems strange, so does Special Counsel Smith's relative inactivity, some
might say inertness when it comes to delay after delay
(12:45):
sought by Trump and granted by the judge Trump appointed.
It's almost as if the Florida case is there is
a sidebar to the DC case and Smith isn't trying
to get other courts to overrule Judge Cannon in order
to foster some sense in Trump that his lawyers are
not idiots, and his strategy is not going to guarantee
(13:06):
his conviction in Washington and not guarantee that he will
die in prison and in hockey at least, this would
all be called a deeck on. One more thing to
add to Trump's paranoia, special council investigating the small collection
of mishandled classified documents in two locations connected to President Biden.
(13:27):
CNN quotes two sources close to that investigation as saying
that the investigation is complete and the Special Council, Robert Hurr,
is writing an extensive report and he is going to
charge nobody, nobody with nothing. Also of interest here to
(13:51):
continue the hockey imagery. George Santos is two thirds of
the way to a hat trick. After the ethics report
came in. He's saying he will not run for reelection.
What in waste? The negative sixteen thousand dollars campaign did
not raise in the third quarter, and momentum is building
towards expelling him, which would leave only the third option,
where he quits immediately, and there is startling new research
(14:15):
that the Republicans actually would not miss his vote. And
speaking of fraud, there is the sportscaster Crisa Thompson's startling
boast that some of her halftime off camera Network TV
interviews with football coaches never happened and she just made
(14:36):
the stuff up. It's shocking unless she also just made
that up. That's next. This iscountdown. This is countdown with
Keith Olberman. Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates,
(15:02):
some snarks, some predictions. Dateline. Washington House Ethics Committee report
is back. Surprise, surprise, surprise. George Santos doesn't have any
in response. Speaker Ugly Johnson has advised members to consider
whether or not to vote to expel him. Santos says
(15:23):
he will not run for reelection. He may try to
position that as a great moral stance for a change.
In fact, it probably has more to do with the
fact that his campaign fundraising for the third quarter of
this year was minus sixteen five hundred dollars. But most
interesting of all, the impeccable Philip Bump of The Washington
Post has researched all the Republican votes since they swore
(15:47):
Santos in Santos if that is his real name, and
guess what, the Republicans actually did not need him there
to pass anything, not even usual Republican time wasting stuff.
Quoting Phil Bump's calculation, there have been nearly six hundred
and seventy four votes this year, only ten resulted in
(16:09):
a one vote margin or in a tie. And while
that would theoretically mean that in those ten votes you
could say Santos's vote was essential in getting Republican stuff passed,
Bump found a surprising caveat. None of the amendments or
bills covered by those ten votes ever became law anyway.
(16:29):
Each one of them passed the House and then went
into conference with the Senate, where they all died. Bump
has also found out that as the year has gone by,
Santos has become a less reliable vote for Republicans, so
from the GOP point of view, instead of helping their
well oiled voting machine in Congress, he had become kind
(16:51):
of a drag. Sorry, thank you, Nancy Faust. And yes,
(17:41):
if Santos does resign, the likeliest successor to his seat
is Republican newcomer Katara ravashe Dateline San Francisco. Most of
them will never believe it, but another right wing conspiracy
theory just blew up. David de Pap has been found
guilty on both counts in his violent attack with a
(18:04):
hammer against Nancy Pelosi's husband after Depap broke into their
home hoping to kidnap and or torture and or assassinate her.
De Pap could face maximum sentences of thirty and twenty
years on the two convictions and Dateline Washington, another part
of the Tucker Carlson Maga January sixth conspiracy theory. No,
(18:27):
not the ghost busses thing, but rather the Antifa plant thing,
is again disproven. John Earl Sullivan, widely proclaimed to be
an informant or a plant or something, who said he
was just a citizen journalist, just a member of Black
Lives Matter who happened to record the shooting of the
terrorist Ashley Babbitt. He has been convicted on all counts,
(18:50):
including carrying a knife into the capitol. His lawyers may
have sealed his fate for him when they called another
quote citizen journalist unquote to testify on his behalf and
she played video of him shouting into a bullhorn, exhorting
the crowd to go into the Capitol and telling that crowd,
We're about to burn this spit down. Unclear how much
(19:12):
time he'll spend in the big House. Unclear how much
money he spent on those lawyers still ahead of us
(19:41):
on countdown Fridays with Thurber and the one of all
of his short stories that has been in middle and
junior high school and high school textbooks for eighty years,
The Night the Bed Fell first time for the daily
roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens
who constitute two days worst persons in the World. The
(20:03):
bronze to Caitlin jenn who responded to a Donald Trump
Junior post about how people of a certain age should
be able to use the R word. If you're not
clear what I mean by that, the R word is
a version of one of the words in the following
phrase fire retardant. Jenner responded to the Trump tweet quote,
(20:24):
I'll say it quote retarted unquote, she spelled it wrong.
R e T A r T ed like you were
a tart and now you're a tart again? What a tart?
The runner up. Well, why it's Trump Junior again in
his own right. His word of the day was Congresswoman.
(20:46):
I thank Ron Philipkowski for pointing this out. It's worth
listening to a couple of times from his video cast
as Junior tries to introduce Marjorie Taylor Green and gets
it wrong. I love this one. Congress rooman MTG. Marjorie
Taylor Green. We're gonna be talking to her new books.
I love this one. Congress Roman MTG. Marjorie Taylor Green, Friends,
(21:11):
Congress Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. But our winner
is Curisa Thompson, former football sideline reporter at Fox and
at this rate, former sports broadcaster. I did the baseball
equivalent of the sideline reporter job dugout reporter, I guess
for about twenty twenty five games for Fox Sports and
(21:32):
NBC from ninety seven through two thousand and I remember
once needing to get a reaction in the middle of
the game from Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and having to
literally crawl under a camera and then crawl through a
half door to get out of the Yankee Stadium dugout
and back towards where Selig was seated, So this was
kind of shocking. On a podcast, MS Thompson announced where
(21:56):
it actually is boasted that when tasked with doing some
of those I talked to coach Smith halftime reports. She
she didn't talk to coach Smith. She just she just
made it up.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
And I've said this before, so I haven't been fired
for saying it, but I'll say it again. I would
make up the report sometimes because a the coach wouldn't
come out at halftime or it was too late, and
I was like, I didn't want to screw up the report.
So I was like, I'm just going to make this
up because first of all, no coach is going to
get mad if I say, hey, we need to stop
hurting ourselves. We needed to be better on third down,
(22:32):
we need to stop turning the ball over quarterback. Yeah exactly,
and do a better job of getting off the field.
Like they're not going to correct me on that. I'm like,
it's fine, I'll just make.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Up the report now. In terms of the quality of
the journalistic content, Miss Thompson is entirely correct. The coach
rarely ever says anything. Maybe we do not need sideline reporters.
But then there's that one time when you talk to
him or to somebody and he says something like what
happened during a near riot at a playoff game at
(23:02):
Fenway Park in nineteen ninety nine? On Fox, I got
Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for my little report, and I
said something really deep, like what do you think, George?
And George said he thought that the Red Sox manager
Jimmy Williams had incited the crowd to riot. That was
a hell of a statement, and it basically became the
(23:22):
lead story that night and the next day. And I
didn't contribute anything more to that than asking George if
he would come on with me, and then asking him
the most generic question ever, But I asked him. You
can't not ask them and then say you ask them.
(23:42):
You can't make it up. The premise is you never
make it up, benell or trivial or meaningless. You can't
make it up, and you certainly can't then boast about
making it up. HARRISA. Thompson is the host of Thursday
Night Football on Amazon. Management there was asked by the
Sports Business Journal if she would address this or if
(24:04):
there be a suspension or something, and the answer came
back quote, she was telling the story from fifteen years ago. Unquote, Well,
we assume she was telling a story from fifteen years ago,
unless she made that up too, which is the point.
You say something like that, you kind of destroy the
presumption that you're not making stuff up all the time.
(24:25):
There are three other dimensions to this. The people who
did the podcast tweeted out the clip apparently proudly, and
then when the blowback occurred, they deleted it. The other
two dimensions to this I think are really mallid. At
least a dozen other women who still work as sideline reporters,
especially in football, were appalled at Thompson's revelation. They work hard,
(24:49):
the results, the goals, what they are there for. That's
not their decision, that's not their fault. They work hard,
they do what they're supposed to do. And Mike Freeman,
a veteran football reporter and an African American man, asked
a really dis disturbing, an important question. What if that
announcement I didn't interview the coach, I just made up
(25:10):
what he probably would have said. What if that had
been made by a sideline reporter who was also an
African American man? How quickly would he have been fired
and justifiably, you can't make it up. Amazon may not
be able to fire her. She didn't make it up
while she was working for them, But how do you
keep her on your broadcast when she's admitted to fabricating
(25:35):
a key element of all football broadcasts? Harisa, I wouldn't
worry too much about the next contract negotiation. Thompson two
days worse person in the world to say he had
no comments. I have argued before that James Thurber is
(26:05):
the greatest American humorist, and it dawns on me that
the argument is not unlike the idea that shohe Otani
of the Los Angeles Angels is almost automatically the most
valuable player in baseball each year because he is an
All Star hitter and an All Star pitcher in the
same body. James Thurber was a brilliant writer, and in
his spare time, it was an equally brilliant, almost avant
(26:28):
garde artist in the same body. His simple drawings to
pick the most complex of emotions and comedic situations. His
dogs are immortal, and then there were his captions. Well,
I can't do anything with his drawings in a podcast,
So I'll just read and I will read you now
in this episode, what is probably his most famous story
(26:50):
from my life in hard times, The Night the bedfell
James Thurber. I suppose that the high water mark of
my youth in Columbus, Ohio was the night the bed
fell on my father. It makes a better recitation unless,
as some friends of mine have said, one has heard
(27:11):
it five or six times, than it does a piece
of writing, For it is almost necessary to throw furniture around,
shake doors, and bark like a dog to lend the
proper atmosphere and verisimilitude to what is admittedly a somewhat
incredible tale. Still it did take place. It happened then
(27:32):
that my father had decided to sleep in the attic
one night, to be away where he could think. My
mother opposed the notion strongly, because she said the old
wooden bed up there was unsafe, It was wobbly, and
the heavy headboard would crash down on father's head in
case the bed fell and kill him. There was no
dissuading him, however, and at a quarter past ten, he
(27:55):
closed the attic door behind him and went up the narrow,
twisting stairs. We later heard Amina's creakings as he crawled
into bed. Grandfather, who usually slept in the attic bed
when he was with us, had disappeared some days before.
On those occasions, he was usually gone six or eight days,
and returned growling and out of temper with the news
(28:15):
that the Federal Union was run by a passel of blockheads,
and that the Army of the Potomac didn't have any
more chance than a fiddler's bitch. We had visiting us
at the time, a nervous first cousin of mine named
Briggs Beale, who believed that he was likely to cease
breathing when he was asleep. It was his feeling that
(28:35):
if he were not awakened every hour during the night,
he might die of suffocation. He had been accustomed to
setting an alarm clock to ring at intervals until morning,
but I persuaded him to abandon this. He slept in
my room, and I told him that I was such
a light sleeper that if anybody quit breathing in the
same room with me, I would wake instantly. He tested
(28:57):
me the first night, which I had suspected he would,
by holding his breath after my regular breathing, had convinced
him I was asleep. I was not asleep, however, and
called to him. This seemed to allay his fears a little,
but he took the precaution of putting a glass of
spirits of camphor on a little table at the head
(29:20):
of his bed in case I didn't arouse him. Until
he was almost gone. He said he would sniff the camphor.
A powerful reviver, Briggs was not the only member of
his family who had his crotchets. Old Aunt Melissa Belle,
who could whistle like a man with two fingers in
her mouth, suffered under the premonition that she was destined
(29:40):
to die on South High Street because she had been
born on South High Street and married on South High Street.
Then there was Aunt Sarah Schauf, who never went to
bed at night without the fear that a burglar was
going to get in and blow chloroform under her door
through a tube. To avert this calamity, for she was
(30:01):
in greater dread of anesthetics than of losing her household goods,
always piled her money, silverware, and other valuables in a
neat stack just outside her bedroom, with a note reading,
this is all I have, Please take it and do
not use your chloroform, as this is all I have.
Aunt Gracie's chauf also had a burglar phobia, but she
(30:21):
met it with more fortitude. She was confident that burglars
had been getting into her house every night for forty years.
The fact that she never missed anything was to her
no proof. To the contrary, She always claimed that she
scared them off before they could take anything by throwing
shoes down the hallway. When she went to bed, she
(30:42):
piled where she could get at them handily, all the
shoes there were about her house. Five minutes after she
had turned off the light, she would sit up in
bed and say hark. Her husband, who had learned to
ignore the whole situation as long ago as nineteen o three,
would either be sound asleep or pretend to be sound asleep.
(31:04):
In either case, he would not respond to her tugging
and pulling, so that presently she would arise, tiptoe to
the door, open it slightly, and heave a shoe down
the hall in one direction, and its mate down the
hall in the other direction. Some nights she threw them all,
some nights only a couple of pear. But I am
(31:26):
straying from the remarkable incidents that took place during the
night that the bed fell on father. By midnight we
were all in bed. The layout of the rooms and
the disposition of their occupants is important to an understanding
of what later occurred. In the front room upstairs, just
under father's attic bedroom, where my mother and my brother Hermann,
(31:47):
who sometimes sang in his sleep, usually marching through Georgia
or onward Christian soldiers briggs Beale and myself were in
a room adjoining this one. My brother Roy was in
a room across the hall from ours. Our bull terrier
Wrecks slept in the hall. My bed was an army cot,
one of those affairs which were made wide enough to
(32:08):
sleep on comfortably only by putting up flat, with the
middle section the two sides, which ordinarily hang down like
the sideboards of a drop leaf table. When these sides
are up, it is perilous to roll too far toward
the edge, for then the cot is likely to tip
completely over, bringing the whole bed down on top of
(32:28):
one with a tremendous banging crash. This, in fact, is
precisely what happened about two o'clock in the morning It
was my mother, who, in recalling the scene later first
referred to it as the night the bed fell on
your father. Always a deep sleeper and slow to arouse,
I had lied to Briggs. I was at first unconscious
(32:51):
of what had happened. When the ironcot rolled me onto
the floor and toppled over on me. It left me
still warmly bundled up and unheard, for the bed rested
above me like a canopy. Hence I did not wake up,
only reached the edge of consciousness and went back. The racket, however,
instantly awakened my mother in the next room, who came
to the immediate conclusion that her worst dread was realized.
(33:15):
The big wooden bed upstairs had fallen on father. She
therefore screamed, let's go to your poor father. It was
this shout, rather than the noise of my cot falling,
that awakened Herman in the same room with her, he
thought that mother had become, for no apparent reason, hysterical.
You're all right, Mama, he shouted, trying to calm her.
(33:37):
They exchanged shout for shout for perhaps ten seconds. Let's
go to your poor father, and you're all right. That
woke up Briggs. By this time I was conscious of
what was going on in a vague way, but did
not yet realize that I was under my bed instead
of on it. Briggs, awakening in the midst of loud
(34:00):
shouts of fear and apprehension, came to the quick conclusion
that he was suffolting, and that we were all trying
to bring him out. With a low moan, he grasped
the glass of camphor at the head of his bed,
and instead of sniffing it, he poured it over himself.
The room reeked of camphor. Ugh ah choked Briggs like
(34:23):
a drowning man, for he had almost succeeded in stopping
his breath under the deluge of pungent spirits. He leaped
out of bed and groped toward the open window, but
he came up against one that was closed. With his hand,
he beat out the glass, and I could hear it
crash and tinkle on the alleyway below. It was at
(34:43):
this juncture that I, in trying to get up, had
the uncanny sensation of feeling my bed above me foggy
with sleep. I now suspected, in my turn that the
whole uproar was being made in a frantic endeavor to
extricate me from what must be an unheard of and
perilous situation. Get me out of this, I bawled, Get
me out. I think I had the night irish belief
(35:05):
that I was entombed in a mine. Gas Briggs floundering
in his camphor by this time, my mother, still shouting,
pursued by Hermann, still shouting, was trying to open the
door to the attic in order to go up and
get my father's body out of the wreckage. The door
(35:26):
was stuck, however, and would not yield. Her frantic pulls
on it only added to the general banging and confusion.
Roy and the dog were now up, the one shouting questions,
the other barking. Father, farthest away and soundest sleeper of all,
had by this time been awakened by the battering on
the attic door. He decided that the house was on fire.
(35:49):
Oh comeing, okay, he wailed in a slow, sleepy voice.
It took him many minutes to regain full consciousness. My mother,
still believing he was caught under the bed, detected in
his I'm coming, the mournful, resigned note of one who
was preparing to meet his maker. He's dying, she shouted.
(36:09):
I'm all right, Briggs yelled to reassure her, I'm all right.
He still believed that it was his own closeness to
death that was worrying Mother. I found at last the
light switch in my room, unlocked the door, and Briggs
and I joined the others at the attic door. The dog,
who never did like Briggs, jumped for him, assuming that
(36:30):
he was the culprit in whatever was going on, and
Roy had to throw Rex and hold him. We could
hear Father crawling out of the bed upstairs. Roy pulled
the attic door open with a mighty jerk, and Father
came down the stairs, sleepy and irritable, but safe and sound.
My mother began to weep when she saw him. Rex
began to howl. What in the name of God is
(36:55):
going on here? Asked father. The situation was finally put
together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Father caught a cold
from prowling around in his bare feet, but there were
no other bad results. I'm glad, said Mother, who always
looked on the bright side of things, that your grandfather
(37:17):
wasn't here. I've done all the damage. I can do here.
I just was talking to Coach Smith at halftime and
(37:37):
thank you for listening. Countdown has come to you from
the Vin Scully Studios at the Old Women Broadcasting Empire
in New York. Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John
Phillip Chanelle arranged, produced, and performed most of our music.
Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on
the guitars, bass and drums, produced by Tko Brothers. See
that's why sometimes when I put in something that isn't true,
(38:00):
I put it in for comedic effect. I say I
made that part up. Other music, including other Beethoven tunes,
arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The
sports music is courtesy of ESPN, Inc. And it was
written by Mitch Warren Davis. And we call it the
Olderman theme from ESPN two. Now, the reason I say
we call it the Olderman theme from ESPN two is
(38:22):
it really didn't have a title. Our satirical and fifthy
musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium
organist ever. Debatable, but if you say that's not true,
you're wrong. Our announcer today was my friend Richard Lewis,
and he is a dear friend, so that's true. And
everything else was pretty much my fault, which has been
true about me since more or less nineteen sixty one.
(38:44):
That's countdown for this, the one thy forty sixth day
since dementia J Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Convict him now while
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is Tuesday. Bulletins
as the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(39:17):
Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
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