January 10, 2023 • 47 mins
EPISODE 109: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: We're really doing "But Hillary's Emails" again, huh, CNN? Huh, NBC? Huh, CBS? Huh, New York Times? Huh, Washington Post? THE HELL WE ARE. CBS's website broke the story accurately ("Documents MARKED classified...found at Biden's think tank") and then Norah O'Donnell dropped the caveats and mitigations and tarted the story up. The Post bothsidesed and whataboutismed the Biden story, invoking Trump in the subhead. The Times comped Trump in Paragraph 5. And worst of all, an hour after CNN broke a genuinely important story: Special Counsel Jack Smith subpoenaing Rudy Giuliani in the Trump Post-Election "Save America PAC" Fundraising crimes, what did Anderson Cooper lead with? His network's own, important, resonating scoop? Nope. The Paste Eaters of CNN buried their own scoop - six nights before their Giuliani Documentary Series starts, too! - so television's longest-running failed marketing experience Anderson Cooper could alter the facts and mislead the nation by saying "Turns out the former president is not the only one with a classified documents problem. The CURRENT president has one as well." Sure, Coop. If a Swiss Army knife is the same as Jack The Ripper's Murder Weapon.
Fire. Them. All.
B-Block (20:02) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL PART 1: That "bronchial thing" turned out to be a sinus infection, but happily in September I brought you the career story that fits perfectly this descent into "But Her Emails 2". I would've just re-read it anyway: It was June 5, 1998, when I tried to quit as the anchor of MSNBC's top Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr show and two NBC News executives asked me to see an NBC official as part of a process to leave the network - except she turned out to be their leg-breaker and told me NBC versus me would be "David and Goliath" and NBC would crush me.
C BLOCK (33:35) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL PART 2: But it was even worse: she promised that if I quit, NBC would put my parents "out on the street." That's how closely Ken Starr forged the link between his live made-for-tv political reality show and the profits at all the networks.
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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 I Heart Radio.
So we're doing this again. Huh So we're doing Hillary
(00:27):
Clinton's emails again. Huh so we're doing Hillary's emails again.
How New York Times. So we're gonna claim shoplifting and
armed robbery with murder are the same thing again. A
Washington Post. So we're gonna hype trivia and very real
news again. Ha. CNN, so we're gonna falsify the actual stories.
(00:50):
So the TV version is sexier than the print version. Again, CBS.
Late yesterday, CBS News broke a legitimate, albeit likely to
be obscure story, which it headlined on its website, and
please listen carefully to its phrasing on the website. US
attorney reviewing documents marked classified from Joe Biden's vice presidency
(01:15):
found at Biden think tank. Correct documents marked classified real
classification level unknown if any, found at a Biden think tank,
not at his home, not in his possession, not in
his White House. The online CBS version emphasizes that about
(01:37):
ten documents with the classified markings on them were found
in November by Biden lawyers, who immediately notified the National
Archives that day and they were returned to the National
Archives the next day. The CBS televised version of that
as read by Nora O'Donnell, who I now regret to say,
began her television career on my first MSNBC show, Hyped
(02:02):
and Breathless. Quoting her SEEBS News has learned that the
Department of Justice is reviewing classified Obama Biden records. Shame
on you, Nora, and here come Hillary's emails. The New
York Times, the first comparison to the Trump wholesale nuclear
(02:22):
Kleptomania is in paragraph five. It is taken seriously. The
authors are Charlie Savage, Clan Thrush, and naturally Peter Baker.
I'm surprised you didn't hold it off for a book
for the year. Utter failure, New York Times, Utter failure.
And the Washington Post did worse in its sub headline
(02:45):
to this story, quote the case echoes the investigation into
Trump's Marilago documents. No it doesn't. If that's in the
print edition, recall all the papers and burn them and
fire everybody. The conservative Washington Examiner did a far more
(03:08):
fair report on this story than did the Washington Post.
Give it away to a charity, Jeff Bezos utter failure.
But for the journalistic train wreck of the night of
the year so far, for irresponsibility, for malpractice, for malfeas
(03:33):
it's for conservative ass kissing. Nothing compares to what CNN
did because, and this is extraordinary context and timing, at
about eight p m. CNN broke a real news story,
a tremendously important news story last night that Special Council
(03:55):
Jack Smith had opened an entirely new line of investigation
into Trump by subpoena ng Rudy Giuliani and a host
of other Trump henchmen and demanding that they turnover records
to a federal grand jury records about the scam Trump
ran after the election, the entire phony Save America pack
(04:19):
and assorted similar organizations, which conned thousands of stupid Americans
into donating to what they thought were recounts and legal
challenges on Trump's behalf. You got a coup, and then
on top of the coup, you got a grift. And
now the Special Council is subpoena NG over it. As
I pointed out in the Alderman Versus Trump series in November,
(04:43):
the fine print on the mailers from Trump's supposed campaign
Legal Defense Fund gave that game away quote. Contributions will
be allocated according to the following formula for the retirement
of general election debt to the r n c S
operating account. Giuliani peanut amid special Council investigation into Trump's fundraising,
(05:10):
It's got Giuliani, It's got Trump, It's got fundraising. Follow
the money, bring in Woodward and Bernstein. And not only
was CNN's Giuliani scoop their own story again, not only
was it outstanding and vitally important, but in the kind
of kiss metch that even somebody like the guy when
(05:31):
we worked together in MSNBC we all thought used to
eat paste. The new CNN hatchet chairman Chris lickt even
he could understand it, and even he would start dancing
in the hallways over the timing. On Sunday, CNN will
premiere a documentary series about Rudy Giuliani, a documentary series
about him. And here is an headline breaking exclusive scoop
(05:54):
about Rudy Giuliani that's fifty seven minutes old. So CNN's
nine PM Hour begins with a promo for the Giuliani series. Guliani,
What happened to America's mayor. Well, I can tell you that,
but good for you, And then they cut to the
body double for the late life Spencer Tracy Anderson Cooper
(06:16):
breaking news tops the Hour and I think for once,
CNN hype, Anderson Cooper, hype and journalism have aligned like
the stars when the moon is in the seventh House.
And then the world's longest running failed TV marketing experiment,
the master of the board delivery himself, Anderson Cooper in tones.
(06:40):
Turns out the former president is not the only one
with the classified documents problem. The current president has one
as well. I know because you listen to this that
you already know. You knew before I did that. All
American media people pretty much divide for me into two groups,
(07:01):
and two groups alone, those who should resign and those
who should be fired. But Anderson Cooper should resign for that,
and whoever wrote it for him should be fired at
whoever produced it should resign, and Chris Lick should go
eat more paste their own story, their own superb scoop.
(07:24):
They buried it so they could run with as naked, irresponsible,
and indefensible. An example of both sides is him and
what about is him, since well, the reason we mentioned them,
since Hillary's emails in the worst case scenario for the
sitting president of the United States, the documents in the
Biden think tank compared to the documents in Trump's glorified
(07:47):
All you can Eat Florida Golden Corral, the way my
Swiss army knife compares to Jack the rippers murder weapon.
For once, the assumed Mark Twain quote is a Mark
Twain quote. He really said this. The difference between the
(08:07):
almost right word and the right word is the difference
between the lightning bug and lightning. This is the difference
between the lightning bug, the Biden papers and lightning. Well,
Anderson Cooper doesn't understand that, and Anderson Cooper's producer doesn't
(08:29):
understand that, and Chris Licked doesn't understand that. And now,
after building up a journalistic monolith on the backs of
a thousand people in the nineteen eighties, of whom I
might rank as high as one thousand, now CNN doesn't
understand that. And online CNN added to its crimes it
(08:49):
quoted Kevin McCarthy. Oh really, they just found them now,
after all those years, Kevin McCarthy, Trump's whore who thanked
Trump after his election as Speaker of the House slash
hostage the way Dave Foley the Kids in the Whole
Comedy Troupe once portrayed and actress at an award ceremony,
saying she wanted to thank her agent and the producers
(09:11):
Sid and Marty, Sid Martinson, and she wanted to thank Hitler.
Turns out the former president who is not the only
one with a classified documents problem. The current president has
one as well. No, No, turns out Fox News is
not the only one with an alter the facts to
try to gin up the audience problem. CNN has won
(09:34):
as well, and The Times and The Washington Post and
CBS and an NBC News reporter named Ryan Nobles, who
scored a hat trick of incompetence. In one tweet, he wrote,
quote reports that President Biden took classified docs after leaving
(09:54):
as Vice president. Where does it say anywhere that anybody
even suggested Biden took these documents? Where does it say
that at Ryan Nobles? Where does it say that NBC News,
Where does it say that NBC News chairman saysar Conde.
Where does it say that NBC CEO Jeff Shell, who
(10:15):
reported that Joe Scarborough reported that Chuck Todd reported that
Ryan Nobles, who should be suspended for this tweet by itself,
then quoted the official Biden smearer of the new Congress.
James Comber also noticed Jimmy, I come from a town
(10:36):
full of skeletons in my closet. Comber, who has been
Chairman of the House Oversight Committee for nearly four days,
saying he's writing to the White House Council and the
National Archives asking for information, when both were already quoted
elsewhere before he asked, and Nobles and NBC and Comber
(10:56):
all left that out. Oh, and Nobles finished his trifecta
of negligence by neglecting as everybody else had as be
never resolved on the record charges from two thousand fifteen
by Chairman Comber's college girlfriend Marilyn Thomas that he hit
her repeatedly and that he threatened her life to her
own mother. Those accusations have been sitting there against Comer
(11:19):
since two thousand fifteen, and it's not only appropriate to
ask a sitting congressman about them, but since Comber is
now the Republicans inquisitor in chief, it's Torqueuamada. It is
essential to ask him where the inquisition of him is,
you know, for the sake of both sides, is um
(11:41):
NBC News. I was going to talk with what little
breath I have about how every mainstream reporter fell for
the weaponizing the government subcommittee that was in the rules
package last night, that none asked about or even referenced.
The lender letter that, as I mentioned in Monday's episode,
(12:02):
precludes that Kevin McCarthy Jim Jordan's vow to investigate and
impede ongoing criminal investigations. Ongoing criminal investigations, Oh like like
Giuliani getting subpoenaed by the Trump Special Council. Remember that story?
What was that months ago? No? Eight pm last night.
But instead of doing that, our little Hillary's email alumni
(12:25):
reunion meeting took disgusting precedence. We're really going to do
this again, Peter Baker, We're really going to do this again.
Norah O'Donnell, We're really going to do this again. Anderson Cooper.
(12:52):
But I would be nearly as bad as any of
them if I did not point out at one guy
and one organization and applaud Zeke Miller, Chief White House
correspondent Associated Press his lead on his wire news service.
(13:13):
The Justice Department is reviewing a batch of potentially classified
documents found in the Washington office space of President Joe
Biden's former institute, the White House said Monday. The AP
headline reflects those similar modifications of the versions with which
(13:37):
CNN and CBS and NBC in the Washington Post in
the New York Times goosed the story changed, the facts
changed the facts. The Associated Press, under the guise of
Mr Miller's great reporting rights in the next few graphs,
small number of documents with classified markings discovered ADS found
(14:01):
in a locked closet, adds Attorneys immediately alerted the White
House Council's Office, ADS National Archives took custody the next
day reporting. The implications and the timing are still mentioned
deeper in this story. They should be mentioned deeper in
the story, not in the headline, not when Anderson Cooper
and CNN bury their own scoop about Rudy Giuliani being
(14:22):
subpoenaed to try to gain an extra three thousand viewers,
which would be the high water mark for CNN for
the last six months. The AP also mentions Trump and
Comber later, the ap used proportion and truth, not just facts,
not supposition, not assumptions, not hype. So now we will
(14:46):
see how long until Kevin McCarthy or James Comer complains
about Zeke Miller and the Associated Press or NBC or
CNN do where Anderson Cooper does. Jackasses still ahead. If
(15:17):
you were with me yesterday, you know I have what
I called in Monday's episode a bronchial thing. Maybe you
hear it, Lord knows I feel it, especially now turns
out it's a sinus infection. It is not COVID, thankfully.
My negotiation with my doctor when his follows and don't
do the podcast tonight and I said half of it.
(15:38):
My doctor said a quarter of it, and I said
a third and she said deal. So when we continue
a story from the earliest days of the podcast, early September,
that seems completely apropos If it was not the day
that American political media, especially but not exclusively, American political
TV media lost its stole soul and started doing stuff
(16:01):
like we saw last night with the Biden story, was
not that day. It was that exact year it aired
originally after Ken's Starr died, and if you heard it.
I did not want to mislead you. It is a rerun,
but it really fits hand in glove with what CNN
and NBC and CBS and The Times and posted last
(16:21):
night about Hill Joe's do q me emails. It was
the day that I told the president of NBC News enough,
I want out of the machine you have used to
make money while the president is impeached as part of
a long shot coup attempt by Nuke Gingrich and Ken Starr.
And so the president of NBC News responded to my
moral stance by sending his leg breaker to blackmail me
(16:44):
to my face and threaten to put my parents out
on the street and let them starve there. If you
have not heard this story, it is worth your time.
But I did want to offer that little disclaimer. It
is rerun. That's next. This is countdown. So today's number
(17:18):
one story in the countdown is a little longer than usual,
and you're not hearing things. I am starting it a
little earlier than usual. It is still about my favorite topic,
and it is still about yesterday's story, Kenneth Star and
the damage this one man did to American society when
he passed away Tuesday, afternoon. I did not choose to
(17:38):
speak ill of the dead lightly, but I did do
so immediately and resolutely. And I was somewhat reinforced by
the fact that since hundreds of others made the same choice,
some of them very very proudly. Between what Star did
in and what he spawned in this country, and the
institutionalized rape scandal he covered up while president of a
(17:59):
major university, This was a bad man, you know the
public effect of that. Obviously, he enabled the entire Republican
theocratic Holier than Now baseline which animates the far right
their genuine belief that a liberals and Democrats are corrupt,
and so even if they haven't done corrupt things, they
are capable of doing corrupt things. Therefore, liberals must be
(18:22):
suppressed and purged, and their votes discounted, and be that
suppression and purging is a sacred cause, so those who
carry it out, conservatives and Republicans are entitled to break
any law or ignore any ethical standards. It is a
self fulfilling prophecy in which fascists can behave subhumanly yet
be confident to their bones of their moral superiority. They
(18:46):
haven't cheated, they have overcome. That is ken Stars public legacy.
His private legacy is the mess that American news media
remains in, particularly the curse that will, if not corrected,
kill us all both sides is um Chuck Todd disease,
(19:06):
Chris Licked disease New York Times at this Ohio diner,
disease that was put into effect by the scumbag Roger
Ales at Fox News. But it was Ken's Star who
gave it a veneer of respectability of we can't dismiss
these sleeves balls because even if they are sleeves balls,
(19:27):
they have public support and and and boy Bill Clinton
doesn't look good, does he. Instead of saying what American
News used to say to sleeves balls of any party
like Roger Ales, screw you. We are going to write
or broadcast about your perfidy every day until you die.
Do not challenge us. They looked at Ken's Stars read
thin persecution of Bill Clinton and said, well, no, they
(19:51):
found nothing in two months or six months or two years.
But what if they find something like tomorrow and and
it turns out we oppose them, we will get killed
by the right wing media. Screw the right wing media.
And worst yet, Star played American news media, especially TV,
especially especially cable TV, like the proverbial two dollar banjo
(20:13):
from the West Wing. No news in the Clinton Lewinsky scandal,
no problem. A quick phone call by Star or somebody
in his office or somebody connected to somebody in his
office to Lisa Myers at NBC or any of several
correspondents at CNN or ABC or CBS, or anybody literally
anybody at Fox. Tell the switchboard operator, and suddenly there
(20:35):
was breaking news about the Clinton Lewinsky scandal, and another
alleged victim was ready to do a tier on camera
interview which had already aired a dozen times on that network,
with hundreds of clips from it on every other network
before anybody realized that the alleged victim hadn't actually alleged anything.
It was putred and worse, it was profitably putrid. And
(21:01):
if you questioned it, if you said, excuse me, uh
keith in the back, that this isn't journalism, the other networks,
the other newspapers, invested in the story a real time
seven soap opera basically for free. Those other newspapers and
networks went to any lengths to attack you for daring
to question it and your own network. Well, that's why
(21:25):
I wanted to tell this story in full. I never
have told it before. Almost by accident, I had become
the face of the star Clinton Lewinsky story on actual
cable news, the stuff that wasn't Fox. And one day
I decided to get out. And the reaction at MSNBC
and NBC News and the NBC company was to prevent
(21:48):
me from getting out, to literally threaten my career, threatened
my income, threatened my future, threatened my family to try
to force me to keep pushing what Ken Starr was
cooking back in his meth lab. And until you were
in the middle of something like this, you can never
really imagine what television news executives will do for ratings
(22:10):
or money. I had already been in television for sixteen years.
I was already thirty nine years old. I had already
been through the grinding machinery of local news in Boston
and Los Angeles. I had already made my mark at
Sports Center, and I thought I had seen it all.
I had, not, however, seen Andy Lack, the president of
(22:32):
NBC News, nor had I imagined that he would actually
have an employee tried to blackmail me, to literally threaten
to bankrupt me and to bankrupt my parents and put
them as Lacks employee phrased it quote out on the street.
This was in the late spring of I had decided
(22:53):
I did not want to do the Nightly show anymore.
That was devoted to covering the Bill Clinton Monica Lewinsky story,
whether or not there was any story about it or not,
and especially since the network was devoted to portraying Lewinsky
as the worst thing that had happened in America since
the Civil War. The problem was the show. As I
did for Andy Lacks MSNBC in ninete, We're making millions
(23:16):
of dollars a week in profit and the rest of
MSNBC was losing money. Hand over fist. I wanted to
do something else, anything else inside NBC. Fine, outside NBC,
I get it. Stay in News Sure, back to Sports, Sure,
in New Yorkshire, in Los Angeles, whatever, anything except that show. So,
(23:40):
through his personnel, Vice president Elaina Nakhmanoff, came a message
from Andy Lack in May of nine. If you go
see our personnel consultant, Deborah Burne, and you talked to her, frankly,
we will consider letting you leave NBC, so I went
first off, Nakhmanoff told me on Friday afternoon in June,
(24:05):
some of us understand where you're coming from about the
madness of covering this scandal every night like this. I'll
skip the rest of my impression. That's what she sounded like.
So you're the good Sport Award winner for doing this today, Keith.
You'll like Deborah Burn. She's a certified social worker, and
she's done great things for us, saved a lot of
people who were in trouble. I don't mean ethical crises
(24:26):
like yours, Keith, I mean people passed out drunk at
their desks. Somehow, this did not reassure me. Elaine and
Akmanof then walked me through a labyrinth of hallways at
thirty Rock in New York to the office of this
Deborah Burn. She was a bespectacled, bent looking woman of
fifty sixty with badly dyed hair and a fiercely aggressive handshake.
(24:50):
She was not big, but frankly, I was not convinced
I could take her in a fight, and from the
get go her manner suggested it might just come to
that I am not an employee of NBC or MSNBC,
and I am not holding to them. Deborah Burn began,
I'll drop this impression too. I work on a contractual basis,
meaning I don't get ten percent of anything, and I
(25:12):
don't get money for attracting more business. It was clear
that whatever money they did give Deborah Burn, it did
not go to her office decorp. There were a dozen
filing cabinets, no windows, two lamps, her high back chair,
a metal desk, and the plane wooden chair at its
side on which I now sat. I'm not here to
be critical of NBC or MSNBC or Andy, like I'm
(25:34):
not here to be critical of you. I'm an impartial
observer and I'm simply here to help Elne enactment off.
The talent vice president was still with us in the room,
and Burn turned to her for the record. Elena, I
need you to describe the company's position about Keith's employment.
Keith understand, I'm sorry. Keith understands that if he chooses
not to work for NBC as NBC wants him to work,
(25:56):
he will have to face consequences. This was a completely
different Elene enactment off than the one I had just
talked to in her own office. Gone was the you're
the winner of the good Sport award crap. Obviously, we're
not going to release you from your contract, Keith. If
you want to be on the beach for two years
plus that remained on the contract, so be it. That's
(26:19):
his contract status, Deborah, with a crisp thanks. Debora Burne
now dismissed the vice president of NBC News. Burn produced
and opened and a probably large folder with my name
on it in in probably large letters, obviously written that
way so I could read it ostentatiously, shuffled quickly through
(26:39):
a hundred dissorted documents, got to a blank form of
some kind, and asked me to describe the circumstances that
had brought me into her office. I explained my conviction
that I had made a complete mistake into going into news,
at least the news we were doing on MSNBC, that
I missed sports actually, and that on top of that,
there now had emerged this new kind of news, which
(27:00):
I felt was against my ethics and my beliefs about
what I should be doing or what the media should
be doing. I threw in the word pollution a couple
of times. Deborah Burne did not look up at me
once all of media is becoming polluted in the way
you've described. She yanked off her glasses and stared at me,
not with anger, but with annoyance. You should learn how
(27:21):
to live with it. It It will be a lot easier
for everybody if you just do that. You're not a child.
Grow up. Maybe next time you'll learn to read the
contract before you sign it. I had to fight a smile,
and in fact I had to fight a laugh. This
was not some sort of counselor. This woman sitting across
from me was Andy Lax, enforcer. She would be breaking
(27:43):
my legs before we were done. I did read the
contract thoroughly, Miss Burne. This is not about the contract,
I calmed down. This is about my you know, morals.
Nobody else is not NBC's not Andy Lax, just mine.
I don't like the way the news industry is handling
this story. I have no delusion about being able to
(28:03):
change it. I don't even feel it's my responsibility to
try to change it. This is about about me and
my ethics and my incorrect choices relating to doing the
news or doing the sports. She put her glasses back on,
wrote a few notes chuckled as she did. So you
may indeed miss sports as you put it, and you
may feel that sincerely, but it's nonetheless an adolescent fantasy.
(28:26):
And as to the pollution of the media, that's also
part of this fantasy world you live in. You're grown
up now and you have to live with the consequences
of your action. You heard what Elena said. If you
try to break this contract, NBC will punish you severely.
This is David and Goliath here, Keith, and you're just
not seeing it. Well, this was something new. She was right,
(28:51):
I was not seeing it. But within minutes she would
define her vision of David and Goliath. She Andy Lack
Lana knockman Off and NBC News they were David and
Goliath would be my mom and dad. How she and
NBC threatened to literally put my folks on the street
(29:11):
when countdown continues. After this to the second half of
the top story, and in the wake of the death
of Kenneth Starr, how NBC News tried to threaten me
into continuing the nightly Ken Star, Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky
show that was making them millions and making me crazy.
(29:33):
In the year I take you back to June five
of that year, we are still in the office of
Deborah Burne, certified social worker, employee of NBC News or not,
depending on which way she told it. Somebody NBC News
president Andy lack and Vice president Lana and Ackmanoff had
asked me to see in hopes that it would help
(29:53):
me with the stress of doing the Clinton Show, and
if I did so, perhaps open away for me to
leave the program or even the network. This woman, Burne
had just said, if you try to break this contract,
NBC will punish you severely. This is David and Goliath here, Keith,
and you're just not seeing it. I started to reply
something about how I had come there in a gesture
(30:15):
of compromise, when she shouted me down. You'll have to
learn to compromise. She emphasized the word as if I
not only had not just said it, but as if
she had just invented it. This is what the company wants,
this is what the audience wants. And you signed this contract.
That's your responsibility. I've been an NBC employee for twenty years,
and they're very big, and they're very successful, and they
(30:37):
just won't sit idly by. This will be David Goliath,
and I'm very sorry to have to break it to you,
but you're not Goliath. I asked her why she had
just said she'd been an NBC employee for twenty years.
Two minutes after telling me she was not an NBC employee.
She wrote that down Otherwise, she just kept talking. Television
viewers are fickle, and if you're off the air for
(30:59):
two years, it'll be real difficult to get back on.
People will forget you. That's the real world now. Deborah
Burn paused and looked over away from me and at nothing,
and her tone changed. I have a daughter who isn't realistic.
She suddenly began to whisper, just like you. She lives
(31:20):
in a world of her own. She judges others and
moralizes to them too. She's tall, like you are too.
It's difficult for parents to have to look up at
their children and discipline them your height. Your height has
always made it difficult for your parents to discipline you.
Thus you remain a headstrong child. As disturbing as this
was getting, on one level, I really did think somebody
(31:42):
was going to pop out from between the file cabinets
and tell me I'd been punked, or that this was
candid camera or something. I patiently explained to this Deborah
Burn that I had not been born at my current height,
and that, in fact, my father was still taller than
I was until I got to college. But your mother
is short, she blurted, with great satisfaction. I need descriptions
(32:04):
of your parents, of their personalities, from my diagnosis, and
please stop giving me your obviously prepared answers. I started
to describe my parents. This ordinarily would take several days,
but I gave them the short version. She cut me off.
Father passive, of course, I said, no, no, that that
wasn't him at all, that he usually did what he
(32:24):
damned well pleased. This annoyed Deborah Burn. No, he's passive.
I can tell I'm a professional Keith. He didn't stand
up to your mother, did he. He never told her
to grow up her actor age, did he? That means
he was passive. And I could see her writing. She
was writing the word passive in big block letters on
one of the forms on which she had been putting
her notes. She detached it theatrically and stuck it onto
(32:47):
the large pile of documents and grabbed a fresh page
from a stack to her right, What about your parents finances?
I explained, they were both retired, so you take care
of them. I began to answer that they were both
extremely independent. She cut me off again. I said, so
you're responsible to them financially, don't evade me. My amusement
(33:07):
at what was obviously a deranged person began to be
overcome by anger. I swallowed both of these emotions and
explained that, yeah, I handled their finances, so you're their
sole financial support, just as a lane Enachminof's report to
me indicates. I thought, so, so you're the superstar in
the family, are you. I began to try to explain,
(33:31):
when Deborah Burne rose in her chair and leaned in
towards me and tell me, Keith, what exactly will your
parents do for money? What will keep them from being
out on the street when their precious superstar is blacklisted
from all of television. This purported social worker who worked
(33:53):
for NBC or did not work for NBC, or maybe both,
I could no longer keep it clear, went into detail
about the threat she was now making on behalf of
the General Electric Corporation BC, NBC News MSNBC, Andi Lack
and Eline enactment off and for all I knew, Matt
Lower and Tom broke off. Even if I just quit
(34:13):
the Clinton Lewinsky Show, indeed quit television, she said, NBC
would continue to enforce my contract and suspend me, so
not pay me on my contract, and then sue me
for the salary they had already paid me, then sue
me for the money they had spent on promoting the show,
then get a court order extending my contract indefinitely, and
(34:37):
then suspend me indefinitely. Let that sink in, she said,
then did not pause for even a second to let
me let that sink in. Instead, she burst out with this,
you have what I would classify as a Howard Stern
kind of personality. Remembering that I had met Howard on
a tour of Boston University in nineteen seventy four, I
(34:57):
actually had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing
at the image of a bunch of therapists at a
conference somewhere dryly discussing the parameters of the Howard Stern
kind of personality, dogmatic, unbending, presenting absolutely forceful opinions on
the air that no one has permitted to disagree with.
Imagine going on a date with Howard Stern. Oh, he
would be doing We'll be talking about himself. It would
(35:18):
be unbearable. You're like him on the air, and I
can see that who you are on the air is
who you are in life. Of course, I've never seen
your show. I don't have cable. Ever been married. I
had a slight case of whiplash, I recovered from the
non secutors, though, enough to explain that I had not
been married engaged again. No, I ever had a long
term relationship of any kind, I told her. I had.
(35:41):
Oh really, how long term? He said? Eleven years? And
when did that end? I calculated it had ended four
years previously to the month exactly. And you haven't had
an eleven year relationship since. I explained to her then,
as pleasantly as possible that I did not know of
any way of squeezing an eleven year long relationship into
(36:03):
four years, that the answer would have to be no.
I told you to stop giving your prepared answers right
then again, she switched tones and topics. How much do
you drink, she demanded, I said, I almost never drank.
She dropped her pen and stared at me again, Well
what does that mean? And I said, I believed I'd
(36:25):
had four glasses of wine during the current calendar year,
and it was June. She took the glasses off and
leaned in as far as she could without again rising
from her chair or falling off it. Well, then, how
much drug do you do? I told her, I'd never
used drug or drugs stronger than alcohol. And before I
(36:48):
could criticize her grammar, she got red and angry. Then
what's that smell on your breath? Look? You, you just
don't get this. Do you look at my telephone keys?
And I did as instructed, and I looked at an
ordinary black telephone, although given her manifest insanity, for all
I knew she would shortly reveal it was a direct
blind Elvis Presley. If I didn't want a black telephone
(37:11):
and I have a black telephone, I'll just have to
make the best of it, won't I, I said. I
thought she was holding up very well under the strain
of that disappointment. I instantly regretted the snydness of that remark,
because it was just going to make things worse. And then,
to my astonishment, she sat back in her chair, ran
her hand through her hair, and almost whispered thank you
for saying that. I appreciate it. The pause in the
(37:36):
storm did not last long. You're seeing a therapist, it
says here you've been discussing these so called ethical issues.
I said, we've made a lot of progress. Well, you
can't resolve the work matters without getting at the core problems,
which are obviously personal and family related, not to mention
the alcohol and the drug. So talking about work with
your therapist is probably not going to solve this to
(37:57):
the satisfaction of NBC. So I will need to talk
to your therapist. And I wanted you to sign a
release here and now permitting me to do so, unless
that is this therapist of yours is working towards making
you adjust to the facts that you signed this contract
and this is your job, and this is the real world,
and this is David and Goliath, and that's all there
is to it. And you're on the air tonight at
eight o'clock, and that's it now. She paused and stared
(38:20):
off into space again, like when she mentioned her daughter.
When I was in my early twenties, I was traveling
from Smith College to Montreal by train. She suddenly announced
my meeting with her went on for two hours. It
featured threats against my parents. It had her yelling at me,
(38:41):
it had her accusing me of using alcohol and drug
And yet this, this was the only point where I
really considered trying to make a break for the door.
The Montreal Canadians hockey team. We're on that train, very drunk,
very happy, very boastful of their conquests during their trips
to the various cities of their hockey league. And one
(39:02):
of them, I suspect, given your fantasy world interest in sports,
you may have heard of him, Boom boom jeoffrey On.
He came over and tried to pick me up. I
nodded robotically and began to wonder, if I suddenly leaped
from the wooden chair and did run out of her office,
would she continue to tell this story anyway? After I left.
We didn't talk of such things then, not in the
(39:23):
nineteen fifties, A married man, an athlete at all. Athlete. Now,
of course, if I was a reporter and this happened,
I'd have to report it. I'd put it on the news.
That's just the way the world has changed, the real world,
that is Keith. I suggested that at every news organization
for which I had worked. The code had been the
same that unless an incident involved the law or it
diminished a player's ability or availability in a game, we
(39:47):
in fact didn't report it. Like ESPN, I related a
story similar to her own that had occurred in Miami
at the past World Series. Well, she resumed indignantly, you
might have gotten away with that under an old contractor
in the sixties, where a hippie like you might have
fit in. But this isn't the sixties. This is the
real world of today, and you won't get away with
(40:08):
that kind of attitude under this contract or any other
contract in the future. You can even go back to
your precious sports and you'd soon find out about the
real world. Don't kid yourself, it'll be David and Goliath.
I said that the decision not to report the story
in Miami was made under this contract by executives from
NBC Sports. And now she sat bolt upright and slammed
(40:30):
her glasses back on her face. I can't get this
done in just one session, you know, definitely afraid that
she was about to recite another memory from the glorious
days of rail travel, I agreed to return the following Thursday,
knowing full well, as I said, so that I would
never come back to her office, even as a hostage
(40:51):
or in a body bag. Well, I don't know about you,
she said, as she opened her door. But I'm exhausted,
I told her. Indeed so was I, which was rather
unfortunate because now I had to go do to live
our ors of television. Yes, I guess you do. She
suddenly stared at my feet, then quickly up at my head,
(41:11):
as if she were estimating what size I took in caskets.
But you're so much taller than I am, so you'll
recover more quickly. MSNBC had arranged a car service to
take me out to the studios in New Jersey from
thirty Rock, and I spent the entire trip writing all
this down, pages and pages of notes and quotes and
(41:37):
boom boom Jeoffrey on and my own height at birth.
And I called my therapist on my phone, and I
asked her if there was a New York state number
that I could call to complain about a certified social
worker who seemed to be certifiable and who had just
threatened me. She gave me a number I called while
still in the car, and they said they had no
(42:00):
record of any social worker named Deborah burn When I
got to the MSNBC studios Insicaugous, New Jersey, now the
home of MLB Network of all things, I went to
my little office. I picked up a small microcassette tape
recorder that I kept in the desk there, and I
went in to see my executive producer, Phil Griffin. I
explained how this woman burn had threatened me, and I
(42:22):
mentioned that I had called the state social worker hotline
and appeared that Deborah Burne was operating without a license.
And as I did this, I kept flipping that mini
cassette machine from hand to hand until I was sure
Phil Griffin had gotten the implication. Completely phony on my part,
But like James Jones says in Field of Dreams, there
(42:43):
are rules here. No, there are no rules here. My
executive producer buried his head in his hands. Needless to say,
that Deborah burn thing had blown up in NBC space.
They went into a full fledged panic at the news
that she was not registered as a certified social worker,
and it turned out that was a clerical mistake. It
(43:03):
was her own clerical miss ache. She was registered, but
she was registered only under her maiden name, but for
the next few weeks NBC was completely on the defensive
about me. Soon they were promising to make me Tom
Broke cause air Apparent if I would only stay. I said, yeah,
but it says in Brian Williams contract that he's Tom
Broke as air Apparent. The executive in question laughed and said, no,
(43:27):
Brian only thinks it says in Brian Williams contract that
he's Tom Broke as air Apparent. It can be you
stick with the Lewinsky story. Oh, and layoff Ken's star.
I don't have to think that one through too long.
If they could make poor Brian think that he was
the heir Apparent when he wasn't, they could make me
think I was the air Apparent when I wasn't as well,
(43:50):
and that price laying off Ken Star. That was a
non starter. The stalemate continued for a few weeks until,
as I have related here previously, a friend in the
Sports division revealed that NBC had lied to me to
get me to sign my contract with them, that I
was not being paid as they had told me, primarily
by the News division, but by the Sports division. I
then met with Monica Lewinsky's first lawyer, Bill Ginsburg, discussed
(44:14):
suing NBC over such illegal negotiation tactics. Ginsburg thought just
leaking the fact that we had met would spring me.
Sure enough, about six weeks later, Lanna Enachmanoff suddenly called
my agent told her they were willing to sell my
contract to Fox Sports in Los Angeles. You be so,
do not doubt what television executives are willing to do
(44:35):
to protect their ratings and their profits, even in the
event of full fledged fascism. And do not doubt what
a zealot with even minimal skills at medium manipulation like
Ken Starr can do to the news you watch or
hear or read, even after he's dead. Also, most relevantly now,
as CNN's talent face the prospect of conforming to the
(44:59):
right wing party line, or suddenly finding themselves with a
conservative co host, or finding themselves unemployed, there's one more
MSNBC story to tell that is relevant. I went back
there in two thousand three and we did pretty well.
And then in two thousand and ten they began to
pressure me to change my tone and to add in
(45:19):
more diverse voices, and they did not mean women were
members of minority groups, or people like I had hired,
like Rachel Maddow. They meant conservative, diverse voices. That's when
I began to pack my bags to leave, and a
few months later I left, and then four years later
they asked me to come back as long as I
(45:39):
agreed to have a conservative co host. I passed. But
here's the problem. I don't know anybody else pressured in
those ways who has also passed. Not at CNN, not
at MSNBC, not anywhere else. Do not doubt what some
(45:59):
television talents are willing to do just to remain television
and talents. Countdown has come to you from the studios
will All Run Broadcasting Empire World Headquarters in the Sports
(46:21):
Capsule Building in New York. Thank you for listening. Here
the credits. Most of the music, including our theme from
Beethoven's Ninth, was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray
and John Philip Chanelle, who are the Countdown musical directors.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Shodel. Guitars based
on drums by Brian Ray, produced by t k O Brothers.
Oxygen came in a can. Other Beethoven selections have been
(46:43):
arranged and performed by no horns allowed. The sports music
which was not played today is the Ulderman theme from
ESPN two, and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis
courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments were by Nancy Faust,
except there weren't any today. She is, of course the
best baseball stadi of organist ever, and our announcer today
was nobody because we didn't play an announcement. But everything
(47:03):
else is pretty mu my fault. So that is countdown
for this the seven thirty eight day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Arrest him now while we still can. I'll
try to be back with a full new episode tomorrow.
The sinus infection, of course, has the final decision on
that until whenever. I'm Keith Olverman, good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
(47:27):
and wish me good luck. Countdown with Keith old Reman
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
(47:48):
from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
So we're doing this again. Huh So we're doing Hillary
(00:27):
Clinton's emails again. Huh so we're doing Hillary's emails again.
How New York Times. So we're gonna claim shoplifting and
armed robbery with murder are the same thing again. A
Washington Post. So we're gonna hype trivia and very real
news again. Ha. CNN, so we're gonna falsify the actual stories.
(00:50):
So the TV version is sexier than the print version. Again, CBS.
Late yesterday, CBS News broke a legitimate, albeit likely to
be obscure story, which it headlined on its website, and
please listen carefully to its phrasing on the website. US
attorney reviewing documents marked classified from Joe Biden's vice presidency
(01:15):
found at Biden think tank. Correct documents marked classified real
classification level unknown if any, found at a Biden think tank,
not at his home, not in his possession, not in
his White House. The online CBS version emphasizes that about
(01:37):
ten documents with the classified markings on them were found
in November by Biden lawyers, who immediately notified the National
Archives that day and they were returned to the National
Archives the next day. The CBS televised version of that
as read by Nora O'Donnell, who I now regret to say,
began her television career on my first MSNBC show, Hyped
(02:02):
and Breathless. Quoting her SEEBS News has learned that the
Department of Justice is reviewing classified Obama Biden records. Shame
on you, Nora, and here come Hillary's emails. The New
York Times, the first comparison to the Trump wholesale nuclear
(02:22):
Kleptomania is in paragraph five. It is taken seriously. The
authors are Charlie Savage, Clan Thrush, and naturally Peter Baker.
I'm surprised you didn't hold it off for a book
for the year. Utter failure, New York Times, Utter failure.
And the Washington Post did worse in its sub headline
(02:45):
to this story, quote the case echoes the investigation into
Trump's Marilago documents. No it doesn't. If that's in the
print edition, recall all the papers and burn them and
fire everybody. The conservative Washington Examiner did a far more
(03:08):
fair report on this story than did the Washington Post.
Give it away to a charity, Jeff Bezos utter failure.
But for the journalistic train wreck of the night of
the year so far, for irresponsibility, for malpractice, for malfeas
(03:33):
it's for conservative ass kissing. Nothing compares to what CNN
did because, and this is extraordinary context and timing, at
about eight p m. CNN broke a real news story,
a tremendously important news story last night that Special Council
(03:55):
Jack Smith had opened an entirely new line of investigation
into Trump by subpoena ng Rudy Giuliani and a host
of other Trump henchmen and demanding that they turnover records
to a federal grand jury records about the scam Trump
ran after the election, the entire phony Save America pack
(04:19):
and assorted similar organizations, which conned thousands of stupid Americans
into donating to what they thought were recounts and legal
challenges on Trump's behalf. You got a coup, and then
on top of the coup, you got a grift. And
now the Special Council is subpoena NG over it. As
I pointed out in the Alderman Versus Trump series in November,
(04:43):
the fine print on the mailers from Trump's supposed campaign
Legal Defense Fund gave that game away quote. Contributions will
be allocated according to the following formula for the retirement
of general election debt to the r n c S
operating account. Giuliani peanut amid special Council investigation into Trump's fundraising,
(05:10):
It's got Giuliani, It's got Trump, It's got fundraising. Follow
the money, bring in Woodward and Bernstein. And not only
was CNN's Giuliani scoop their own story again, not only
was it outstanding and vitally important, but in the kind
of kiss metch that even somebody like the guy when
(05:31):
we worked together in MSNBC we all thought used to
eat paste. The new CNN hatchet chairman Chris lickt even
he could understand it, and even he would start dancing
in the hallways over the timing. On Sunday, CNN will
premiere a documentary series about Rudy Giuliani, a documentary series
about him. And here is an headline breaking exclusive scoop
(05:54):
about Rudy Giuliani that's fifty seven minutes old. So CNN's
nine PM Hour begins with a promo for the Giuliani series. Guliani,
What happened to America's mayor. Well, I can tell you that,
but good for you, And then they cut to the
body double for the late life Spencer Tracy Anderson Cooper
(06:16):
breaking news tops the Hour and I think for once,
CNN hype, Anderson Cooper, hype and journalism have aligned like
the stars when the moon is in the seventh House.
And then the world's longest running failed TV marketing experiment,
the master of the board delivery himself, Anderson Cooper in tones.
(06:40):
Turns out the former president is not the only one
with the classified documents problem. The current president has one
as well. I know because you listen to this that
you already know. You knew before I did that. All
American media people pretty much divide for me into two groups,
(07:01):
and two groups alone, those who should resign and those
who should be fired. But Anderson Cooper should resign for that,
and whoever wrote it for him should be fired at
whoever produced it should resign, and Chris Lick should go
eat more paste their own story, their own superb scoop.
(07:24):
They buried it so they could run with as naked, irresponsible,
and indefensible. An example of both sides is him and
what about is him, since well, the reason we mentioned them,
since Hillary's emails in the worst case scenario for the
sitting president of the United States, the documents in the
Biden think tank compared to the documents in Trump's glorified
(07:47):
All you can Eat Florida Golden Corral, the way my
Swiss army knife compares to Jack the rippers murder weapon.
For once, the assumed Mark Twain quote is a Mark
Twain quote. He really said this. The difference between the
(08:07):
almost right word and the right word is the difference
between the lightning bug and lightning. This is the difference
between the lightning bug, the Biden papers and lightning. Well,
Anderson Cooper doesn't understand that, and Anderson Cooper's producer doesn't
(08:29):
understand that, and Chris Licked doesn't understand that. And now,
after building up a journalistic monolith on the backs of
a thousand people in the nineteen eighties, of whom I
might rank as high as one thousand, now CNN doesn't
understand that. And online CNN added to its crimes it
(08:49):
quoted Kevin McCarthy. Oh really, they just found them now,
after all those years, Kevin McCarthy, Trump's whore who thanked
Trump after his election as Speaker of the House slash
hostage the way Dave Foley the Kids in the Whole
Comedy Troupe once portrayed and actress at an award ceremony,
saying she wanted to thank her agent and the producers
(09:11):
Sid and Marty, Sid Martinson, and she wanted to thank Hitler.
Turns out the former president who is not the only
one with a classified documents problem. The current president has
one as well. No, No, turns out Fox News is
not the only one with an alter the facts to
try to gin up the audience problem. CNN has won
(09:34):
as well, and The Times and The Washington Post and
CBS and an NBC News reporter named Ryan Nobles, who
scored a hat trick of incompetence. In one tweet, he wrote,
quote reports that President Biden took classified docs after leaving
(09:54):
as Vice president. Where does it say anywhere that anybody
even suggested Biden took these documents? Where does it say
that at Ryan Nobles? Where does it say that NBC News,
Where does it say that NBC News chairman saysar Conde.
Where does it say that NBC CEO Jeff Shell, who
(10:15):
reported that Joe Scarborough reported that Chuck Todd reported that
Ryan Nobles, who should be suspended for this tweet by itself,
then quoted the official Biden smearer of the new Congress.
James Comber also noticed Jimmy, I come from a town
(10:36):
full of skeletons in my closet. Comber, who has been
Chairman of the House Oversight Committee for nearly four days,
saying he's writing to the White House Council and the
National Archives asking for information, when both were already quoted
elsewhere before he asked, and Nobles and NBC and Comber
(10:56):
all left that out. Oh, and Nobles finished his trifecta
of negligence by neglecting as everybody else had as be
never resolved on the record charges from two thousand fifteen
by Chairman Comber's college girlfriend Marilyn Thomas that he hit
her repeatedly and that he threatened her life to her
own mother. Those accusations have been sitting there against Comer
(11:19):
since two thousand fifteen, and it's not only appropriate to
ask a sitting congressman about them, but since Comber is
now the Republicans inquisitor in chief, it's Torqueuamada. It is
essential to ask him where the inquisition of him is,
you know, for the sake of both sides, is um
(11:41):
NBC News. I was going to talk with what little
breath I have about how every mainstream reporter fell for
the weaponizing the government subcommittee that was in the rules
package last night, that none asked about or even referenced.
The lender letter that, as I mentioned in Monday's episode,
(12:02):
precludes that Kevin McCarthy Jim Jordan's vow to investigate and
impede ongoing criminal investigations. Ongoing criminal investigations, Oh like like
Giuliani getting subpoenaed by the Trump Special Council. Remember that story?
What was that months ago? No? Eight pm last night.
But instead of doing that, our little Hillary's email alumni
(12:25):
reunion meeting took disgusting precedence. We're really going to do
this again, Peter Baker, We're really going to do this again.
Norah O'Donnell, We're really going to do this again. Anderson Cooper.
(12:52):
But I would be nearly as bad as any of
them if I did not point out at one guy
and one organization and applaud Zeke Miller, Chief White House
correspondent Associated Press his lead on his wire news service.
(13:13):
The Justice Department is reviewing a batch of potentially classified
documents found in the Washington office space of President Joe
Biden's former institute, the White House said Monday. The AP
headline reflects those similar modifications of the versions with which
(13:37):
CNN and CBS and NBC in the Washington Post in
the New York Times goosed the story changed, the facts
changed the facts. The Associated Press, under the guise of
Mr Miller's great reporting rights in the next few graphs,
small number of documents with classified markings discovered ADS found
(14:01):
in a locked closet, adds Attorneys immediately alerted the White
House Council's Office, ADS National Archives took custody the next
day reporting. The implications and the timing are still mentioned
deeper in this story. They should be mentioned deeper in
the story, not in the headline, not when Anderson Cooper
and CNN bury their own scoop about Rudy Giuliani being
(14:22):
subpoenaed to try to gain an extra three thousand viewers,
which would be the high water mark for CNN for
the last six months. The AP also mentions Trump and
Comber later, the ap used proportion and truth, not just facts,
not supposition, not assumptions, not hype. So now we will
(14:46):
see how long until Kevin McCarthy or James Comer complains
about Zeke Miller and the Associated Press or NBC or
CNN do where Anderson Cooper does. Jackasses still ahead. If
(15:17):
you were with me yesterday, you know I have what
I called in Monday's episode a bronchial thing. Maybe you
hear it, Lord knows I feel it, especially now turns
out it's a sinus infection. It is not COVID, thankfully.
My negotiation with my doctor when his follows and don't
do the podcast tonight and I said half of it.
(15:38):
My doctor said a quarter of it, and I said
a third and she said deal. So when we continue
a story from the earliest days of the podcast, early September,
that seems completely apropos If it was not the day
that American political media, especially but not exclusively, American political
TV media lost its stole soul and started doing stuff
(16:01):
like we saw last night with the Biden story, was
not that day. It was that exact year it aired
originally after Ken's Starr died, and if you heard it.
I did not want to mislead you. It is a rerun,
but it really fits hand in glove with what CNN
and NBC and CBS and The Times and posted last
(16:21):
night about Hill Joe's do q me emails. It was
the day that I told the president of NBC News enough,
I want out of the machine you have used to
make money while the president is impeached as part of
a long shot coup attempt by Nuke Gingrich and Ken Starr.
And so the president of NBC News responded to my
moral stance by sending his leg breaker to blackmail me
(16:44):
to my face and threaten to put my parents out
on the street and let them starve there. If you
have not heard this story, it is worth your time.
But I did want to offer that little disclaimer. It
is rerun. That's next. This is countdown. So today's number
(17:18):
one story in the countdown is a little longer than usual,
and you're not hearing things. I am starting it a
little earlier than usual. It is still about my favorite topic,
and it is still about yesterday's story, Kenneth Star and
the damage this one man did to American society when
he passed away Tuesday, afternoon. I did not choose to
(17:38):
speak ill of the dead lightly, but I did do
so immediately and resolutely. And I was somewhat reinforced by
the fact that since hundreds of others made the same choice,
some of them very very proudly. Between what Star did
in and what he spawned in this country, and the
institutionalized rape scandal he covered up while president of a
(17:59):
major university, This was a bad man, you know the
public effect of that. Obviously, he enabled the entire Republican
theocratic Holier than Now baseline which animates the far right
their genuine belief that a liberals and Democrats are corrupt,
and so even if they haven't done corrupt things, they
are capable of doing corrupt things. Therefore, liberals must be
(18:22):
suppressed and purged, and their votes discounted, and be that
suppression and purging is a sacred cause, so those who
carry it out, conservatives and Republicans are entitled to break
any law or ignore any ethical standards. It is a
self fulfilling prophecy in which fascists can behave subhumanly yet
be confident to their bones of their moral superiority. They
(18:46):
haven't cheated, they have overcome. That is ken Stars public legacy.
His private legacy is the mess that American news media
remains in, particularly the curse that will, if not corrected,
kill us all both sides is um Chuck Todd disease,
(19:06):
Chris Licked disease New York Times at this Ohio diner,
disease that was put into effect by the scumbag Roger
Ales at Fox News. But it was Ken's Star who
gave it a veneer of respectability of we can't dismiss
these sleeves balls because even if they are sleeves balls,
(19:27):
they have public support and and and boy Bill Clinton
doesn't look good, does he. Instead of saying what American
News used to say to sleeves balls of any party
like Roger Ales, screw you. We are going to write
or broadcast about your perfidy every day until you die.
Do not challenge us. They looked at Ken's Stars read
thin persecution of Bill Clinton and said, well, no, they
(19:51):
found nothing in two months or six months or two years.
But what if they find something like tomorrow and and
it turns out we oppose them, we will get killed
by the right wing media. Screw the right wing media.
And worst yet, Star played American news media, especially TV,
especially especially cable TV, like the proverbial two dollar banjo
(20:13):
from the West Wing. No news in the Clinton Lewinsky scandal,
no problem. A quick phone call by Star or somebody
in his office or somebody connected to somebody in his
office to Lisa Myers at NBC or any of several
correspondents at CNN or ABC or CBS, or anybody literally
anybody at Fox. Tell the switchboard operator, and suddenly there
(20:35):
was breaking news about the Clinton Lewinsky scandal, and another
alleged victim was ready to do a tier on camera
interview which had already aired a dozen times on that network,
with hundreds of clips from it on every other network
before anybody realized that the alleged victim hadn't actually alleged anything.
It was putred and worse, it was profitably putrid. And
(21:01):
if you questioned it, if you said, excuse me, uh
keith in the back, that this isn't journalism, the other networks,
the other newspapers, invested in the story a real time
seven soap opera basically for free. Those other newspapers and
networks went to any lengths to attack you for daring
to question it and your own network. Well, that's why
(21:25):
I wanted to tell this story in full. I never
have told it before. Almost by accident, I had become
the face of the star Clinton Lewinsky story on actual
cable news, the stuff that wasn't Fox. And one day
I decided to get out. And the reaction at MSNBC
and NBC News and the NBC company was to prevent
(21:48):
me from getting out, to literally threaten my career, threatened
my income, threatened my future, threatened my family to try
to force me to keep pushing what Ken Starr was
cooking back in his meth lab. And until you were
in the middle of something like this, you can never
really imagine what television news executives will do for ratings
(22:10):
or money. I had already been in television for sixteen years.
I was already thirty nine years old. I had already
been through the grinding machinery of local news in Boston
and Los Angeles. I had already made my mark at
Sports Center, and I thought I had seen it all.
I had, not, however, seen Andy Lack, the president of
(22:32):
NBC News, nor had I imagined that he would actually
have an employee tried to blackmail me, to literally threaten
to bankrupt me and to bankrupt my parents and put
them as Lacks employee phrased it quote out on the street.
This was in the late spring of I had decided
(22:53):
I did not want to do the Nightly show anymore.
That was devoted to covering the Bill Clinton Monica Lewinsky story,
whether or not there was any story about it or not,
and especially since the network was devoted to portraying Lewinsky
as the worst thing that had happened in America since
the Civil War. The problem was the show. As I
did for Andy Lacks MSNBC in ninete, We're making millions
(23:16):
of dollars a week in profit and the rest of
MSNBC was losing money. Hand over fist. I wanted to
do something else, anything else inside NBC. Fine, outside NBC,
I get it. Stay in News Sure, back to Sports, Sure,
in New Yorkshire, in Los Angeles, whatever, anything except that show. So,
(23:40):
through his personnel, Vice president Elaina Nakhmanoff, came a message
from Andy Lack in May of nine. If you go
see our personnel consultant, Deborah Burne, and you talked to her, frankly,
we will consider letting you leave NBC, so I went
first off, Nakhmanoff told me on Friday afternoon in June,
(24:05):
some of us understand where you're coming from about the
madness of covering this scandal every night like this. I'll
skip the rest of my impression. That's what she sounded like.
So you're the good Sport Award winner for doing this today, Keith.
You'll like Deborah Burn. She's a certified social worker, and
she's done great things for us, saved a lot of
people who were in trouble. I don't mean ethical crises
(24:26):
like yours, Keith, I mean people passed out drunk at
their desks. Somehow, this did not reassure me. Elaine and
Akmanof then walked me through a labyrinth of hallways at
thirty Rock in New York to the office of this
Deborah Burn. She was a bespectacled, bent looking woman of
fifty sixty with badly dyed hair and a fiercely aggressive handshake.
(24:50):
She was not big, but frankly, I was not convinced
I could take her in a fight, and from the
get go her manner suggested it might just come to
that I am not an employee of NBC or MSNBC,
and I am not holding to them. Deborah Burn began,
I'll drop this impression too. I work on a contractual basis,
meaning I don't get ten percent of anything, and I
(25:12):
don't get money for attracting more business. It was clear
that whatever money they did give Deborah Burn, it did
not go to her office decorp. There were a dozen
filing cabinets, no windows, two lamps, her high back chair,
a metal desk, and the plane wooden chair at its
side on which I now sat. I'm not here to
be critical of NBC or MSNBC or Andy, like I'm
(25:34):
not here to be critical of you. I'm an impartial
observer and I'm simply here to help Elne enactment off.
The talent vice president was still with us in the room,
and Burn turned to her for the record. Elena, I
need you to describe the company's position about Keith's employment.
Keith understand, I'm sorry. Keith understands that if he chooses
not to work for NBC as NBC wants him to work,
(25:56):
he will have to face consequences. This was a completely
different Elene enactment off than the one I had just
talked to in her own office. Gone was the you're
the winner of the good Sport award crap. Obviously, we're
not going to release you from your contract, Keith. If
you want to be on the beach for two years
plus that remained on the contract, so be it. That's
(26:19):
his contract status, Deborah, with a crisp thanks. Debora Burne
now dismissed the vice president of NBC News. Burn produced
and opened and a probably large folder with my name
on it in in probably large letters, obviously written that
way so I could read it ostentatiously, shuffled quickly through
(26:39):
a hundred dissorted documents, got to a blank form of
some kind, and asked me to describe the circumstances that
had brought me into her office. I explained my conviction
that I had made a complete mistake into going into news,
at least the news we were doing on MSNBC, that
I missed sports actually, and that on top of that,
there now had emerged this new kind of news, which
(27:00):
I felt was against my ethics and my beliefs about
what I should be doing or what the media should
be doing. I threw in the word pollution a couple
of times. Deborah Burne did not look up at me
once all of media is becoming polluted in the way
you've described. She yanked off her glasses and stared at me,
not with anger, but with annoyance. You should learn how
(27:21):
to live with it. It It will be a lot easier
for everybody if you just do that. You're not a child.
Grow up. Maybe next time you'll learn to read the
contract before you sign it. I had to fight a smile,
and in fact I had to fight a laugh. This
was not some sort of counselor. This woman sitting across
from me was Andy Lax, enforcer. She would be breaking
(27:43):
my legs before we were done. I did read the
contract thoroughly, Miss Burne. This is not about the contract,
I calmed down. This is about my you know, morals.
Nobody else is not NBC's not Andy Lax, just mine.
I don't like the way the news industry is handling
this story. I have no delusion about being able to
(28:03):
change it. I don't even feel it's my responsibility to
try to change it. This is about about me and
my ethics and my incorrect choices relating to doing the
news or doing the sports. She put her glasses back on,
wrote a few notes chuckled as she did. So you
may indeed miss sports as you put it, and you
may feel that sincerely, but it's nonetheless an adolescent fantasy.
(28:26):
And as to the pollution of the media, that's also
part of this fantasy world you live in. You're grown
up now and you have to live with the consequences
of your action. You heard what Elena said. If you
try to break this contract, NBC will punish you severely.
This is David and Goliath here, Keith, and you're just
not seeing it. Well, this was something new. She was right,
(28:51):
I was not seeing it. But within minutes she would
define her vision of David and Goliath. She Andy Lack
Lana knockman Off and NBC News they were David and
Goliath would be my mom and dad. How she and
NBC threatened to literally put my folks on the street
(29:11):
when countdown continues. After this to the second half of
the top story, and in the wake of the death
of Kenneth Starr, how NBC News tried to threaten me
into continuing the nightly Ken Star, Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky
show that was making them millions and making me crazy.
(29:33):
In the year I take you back to June five
of that year, we are still in the office of
Deborah Burne, certified social worker, employee of NBC News or not,
depending on which way she told it. Somebody NBC News
president Andy lack and Vice president Lana and Ackmanoff had
asked me to see in hopes that it would help
(29:53):
me with the stress of doing the Clinton Show, and
if I did so, perhaps open away for me to
leave the program or even the network. This woman, Burne
had just said, if you try to break this contract,
NBC will punish you severely. This is David and Goliath here, Keith,
and you're just not seeing it. I started to reply
something about how I had come there in a gesture
(30:15):
of compromise, when she shouted me down. You'll have to
learn to compromise. She emphasized the word as if I
not only had not just said it, but as if
she had just invented it. This is what the company wants,
this is what the audience wants. And you signed this contract.
That's your responsibility. I've been an NBC employee for twenty years,
and they're very big, and they're very successful, and they
(30:37):
just won't sit idly by. This will be David Goliath,
and I'm very sorry to have to break it to you,
but you're not Goliath. I asked her why she had
just said she'd been an NBC employee for twenty years.
Two minutes after telling me she was not an NBC employee.
She wrote that down Otherwise, she just kept talking. Television
viewers are fickle, and if you're off the air for
(30:59):
two years, it'll be real difficult to get back on.
People will forget you. That's the real world now. Deborah
Burn paused and looked over away from me and at nothing,
and her tone changed. I have a daughter who isn't realistic.
She suddenly began to whisper, just like you. She lives
(31:20):
in a world of her own. She judges others and
moralizes to them too. She's tall, like you are too.
It's difficult for parents to have to look up at
their children and discipline them your height. Your height has
always made it difficult for your parents to discipline you.
Thus you remain a headstrong child. As disturbing as this
was getting, on one level, I really did think somebody
(31:42):
was going to pop out from between the file cabinets
and tell me I'd been punked, or that this was
candid camera or something. I patiently explained to this Deborah
Burn that I had not been born at my current height,
and that, in fact, my father was still taller than
I was until I got to college. But your mother
is short, she blurted, with great satisfaction. I need descriptions
(32:04):
of your parents, of their personalities, from my diagnosis, and
please stop giving me your obviously prepared answers. I started
to describe my parents. This ordinarily would take several days,
but I gave them the short version. She cut me off.
Father passive, of course, I said, no, no, that that
wasn't him at all, that he usually did what he
(32:24):
damned well pleased. This annoyed Deborah Burn. No, he's passive.
I can tell I'm a professional Keith. He didn't stand
up to your mother, did he. He never told her
to grow up her actor age, did he? That means
he was passive. And I could see her writing. She
was writing the word passive in big block letters on
one of the forms on which she had been putting
her notes. She detached it theatrically and stuck it onto
(32:47):
the large pile of documents and grabbed a fresh page
from a stack to her right, What about your parents finances?
I explained, they were both retired, so you take care
of them. I began to answer that they were both
extremely independent. She cut me off again. I said, so
you're responsible to them financially, don't evade me. My amusement
(33:07):
at what was obviously a deranged person began to be
overcome by anger. I swallowed both of these emotions and
explained that, yeah, I handled their finances, so you're their
sole financial support, just as a lane Enachminof's report to
me indicates. I thought, so, so you're the superstar in
the family, are you. I began to try to explain,
(33:31):
when Deborah Burne rose in her chair and leaned in
towards me and tell me, Keith, what exactly will your
parents do for money? What will keep them from being
out on the street when their precious superstar is blacklisted
from all of television. This purported social worker who worked
(33:53):
for NBC or did not work for NBC, or maybe both,
I could no longer keep it clear, went into detail
about the threat she was now making on behalf of
the General Electric Corporation BC, NBC News MSNBC, Andi Lack
and Eline enactment off and for all I knew, Matt
Lower and Tom broke off. Even if I just quit
(34:13):
the Clinton Lewinsky Show, indeed quit television, she said, NBC
would continue to enforce my contract and suspend me, so
not pay me on my contract, and then sue me
for the salary they had already paid me, then sue
me for the money they had spent on promoting the show,
then get a court order extending my contract indefinitely, and
(34:37):
then suspend me indefinitely. Let that sink in, she said,
then did not pause for even a second to let
me let that sink in. Instead, she burst out with this,
you have what I would classify as a Howard Stern
kind of personality. Remembering that I had met Howard on
a tour of Boston University in nineteen seventy four, I
(34:57):
actually had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing
at the image of a bunch of therapists at a
conference somewhere dryly discussing the parameters of the Howard Stern
kind of personality, dogmatic, unbending, presenting absolutely forceful opinions on
the air that no one has permitted to disagree with.
Imagine going on a date with Howard Stern. Oh, he
would be doing We'll be talking about himself. It would
(35:18):
be unbearable. You're like him on the air, and I
can see that who you are on the air is
who you are in life. Of course, I've never seen
your show. I don't have cable. Ever been married. I
had a slight case of whiplash, I recovered from the
non secutors, though, enough to explain that I had not
been married engaged again. No, I ever had a long
term relationship of any kind, I told her. I had.
(35:41):
Oh really, how long term? He said? Eleven years? And
when did that end? I calculated it had ended four
years previously to the month exactly. And you haven't had
an eleven year relationship since. I explained to her then,
as pleasantly as possible that I did not know of
any way of squeezing an eleven year long relationship into
(36:03):
four years, that the answer would have to be no.
I told you to stop giving your prepared answers right
then again, she switched tones and topics. How much do
you drink, she demanded, I said, I almost never drank.
She dropped her pen and stared at me again, Well
what does that mean? And I said, I believed I'd
(36:25):
had four glasses of wine during the current calendar year,
and it was June. She took the glasses off and
leaned in as far as she could without again rising
from her chair or falling off it. Well, then, how
much drug do you do? I told her, I'd never
used drug or drugs stronger than alcohol. And before I
(36:48):
could criticize her grammar, she got red and angry. Then
what's that smell on your breath? Look? You, you just
don't get this. Do you look at my telephone keys?
And I did as instructed, and I looked at an
ordinary black telephone, although given her manifest insanity, for all
I knew she would shortly reveal it was a direct
blind Elvis Presley. If I didn't want a black telephone
(37:11):
and I have a black telephone, I'll just have to
make the best of it, won't I, I said. I
thought she was holding up very well under the strain
of that disappointment. I instantly regretted the snydness of that remark,
because it was just going to make things worse. And then,
to my astonishment, she sat back in her chair, ran
her hand through her hair, and almost whispered thank you
for saying that. I appreciate it. The pause in the
(37:36):
storm did not last long. You're seeing a therapist, it
says here you've been discussing these so called ethical issues.
I said, we've made a lot of progress. Well, you
can't resolve the work matters without getting at the core problems,
which are obviously personal and family related, not to mention
the alcohol and the drug. So talking about work with
your therapist is probably not going to solve this to
(37:57):
the satisfaction of NBC. So I will need to talk
to your therapist. And I wanted you to sign a
release here and now permitting me to do so, unless
that is this therapist of yours is working towards making
you adjust to the facts that you signed this contract
and this is your job, and this is the real world,
and this is David and Goliath, and that's all there
is to it. And you're on the air tonight at
eight o'clock, and that's it now. She paused and stared
(38:20):
off into space again, like when she mentioned her daughter.
When I was in my early twenties, I was traveling
from Smith College to Montreal by train. She suddenly announced
my meeting with her went on for two hours. It
featured threats against my parents. It had her yelling at me,
(38:41):
it had her accusing me of using alcohol and drug
And yet this, this was the only point where I
really considered trying to make a break for the door.
The Montreal Canadians hockey team. We're on that train, very drunk,
very happy, very boastful of their conquests during their trips
to the various cities of their hockey league. And one
(39:02):
of them, I suspect, given your fantasy world interest in sports,
you may have heard of him, Boom boom jeoffrey On.
He came over and tried to pick me up. I
nodded robotically and began to wonder, if I suddenly leaped
from the wooden chair and did run out of her office,
would she continue to tell this story anyway? After I left.
We didn't talk of such things then, not in the
(39:23):
nineteen fifties, A married man, an athlete at all. Athlete. Now,
of course, if I was a reporter and this happened,
I'd have to report it. I'd put it on the news.
That's just the way the world has changed, the real world,
that is Keith. I suggested that at every news organization
for which I had worked. The code had been the
same that unless an incident involved the law or it
diminished a player's ability or availability in a game, we
(39:47):
in fact didn't report it. Like ESPN, I related a
story similar to her own that had occurred in Miami
at the past World Series. Well, she resumed indignantly, you
might have gotten away with that under an old contractor
in the sixties, where a hippie like you might have
fit in. But this isn't the sixties. This is the
real world of today, and you won't get away with
(40:08):
that kind of attitude under this contract or any other
contract in the future. You can even go back to
your precious sports and you'd soon find out about the
real world. Don't kid yourself, it'll be David and Goliath.
I said that the decision not to report the story
in Miami was made under this contract by executives from
NBC Sports. And now she sat bolt upright and slammed
(40:30):
her glasses back on her face. I can't get this
done in just one session, you know, definitely afraid that
she was about to recite another memory from the glorious
days of rail travel, I agreed to return the following Thursday,
knowing full well, as I said, so that I would
never come back to her office, even as a hostage
(40:51):
or in a body bag. Well, I don't know about you,
she said, as she opened her door. But I'm exhausted,
I told her. Indeed so was I, which was rather
unfortunate because now I had to go do to live
our ors of television. Yes, I guess you do. She
suddenly stared at my feet, then quickly up at my head,
(41:11):
as if she were estimating what size I took in caskets.
But you're so much taller than I am, so you'll
recover more quickly. MSNBC had arranged a car service to
take me out to the studios in New Jersey from
thirty Rock, and I spent the entire trip writing all
this down, pages and pages of notes and quotes and
(41:37):
boom boom Jeoffrey on and my own height at birth.
And I called my therapist on my phone, and I
asked her if there was a New York state number
that I could call to complain about a certified social
worker who seemed to be certifiable and who had just
threatened me. She gave me a number I called while
still in the car, and they said they had no
(42:00):
record of any social worker named Deborah burn When I
got to the MSNBC studios Insicaugous, New Jersey, now the
home of MLB Network of all things, I went to
my little office. I picked up a small microcassette tape
recorder that I kept in the desk there, and I
went in to see my executive producer, Phil Griffin. I
explained how this woman burn had threatened me, and I
(42:22):
mentioned that I had called the state social worker hotline
and appeared that Deborah Burne was operating without a license.
And as I did this, I kept flipping that mini
cassette machine from hand to hand until I was sure
Phil Griffin had gotten the implication. Completely phony on my part,
But like James Jones says in Field of Dreams, there
(42:43):
are rules here. No, there are no rules here. My
executive producer buried his head in his hands. Needless to say,
that Deborah burn thing had blown up in NBC space.
They went into a full fledged panic at the news
that she was not registered as a certified social worker,
and it turned out that was a clerical mistake. It
(43:03):
was her own clerical miss ache. She was registered, but
she was registered only under her maiden name, but for
the next few weeks NBC was completely on the defensive
about me. Soon they were promising to make me Tom
Broke cause air Apparent if I would only stay. I said, yeah,
but it says in Brian Williams contract that he's Tom
Broke as air Apparent. The executive in question laughed and said, no,
(43:27):
Brian only thinks it says in Brian Williams contract that
he's Tom Broke as air Apparent. It can be you
stick with the Lewinsky story. Oh, and layoff Ken's star.
I don't have to think that one through too long.
If they could make poor Brian think that he was
the heir Apparent when he wasn't, they could make me
think I was the air Apparent when I wasn't as well,
(43:50):
and that price laying off Ken Star. That was a
non starter. The stalemate continued for a few weeks until,
as I have related here previously, a friend in the
Sports division revealed that NBC had lied to me to
get me to sign my contract with them, that I
was not being paid as they had told me, primarily
by the News division, but by the Sports division. I
then met with Monica Lewinsky's first lawyer, Bill Ginsburg, discussed
(44:14):
suing NBC over such illegal negotiation tactics. Ginsburg thought just
leaking the fact that we had met would spring me.
Sure enough, about six weeks later, Lanna Enachmanoff suddenly called
my agent told her they were willing to sell my
contract to Fox Sports in Los Angeles. You be so,
do not doubt what television executives are willing to do
(44:35):
to protect their ratings and their profits, even in the
event of full fledged fascism. And do not doubt what
a zealot with even minimal skills at medium manipulation like
Ken Starr can do to the news you watch or
hear or read, even after he's dead. Also, most relevantly now,
as CNN's talent face the prospect of conforming to the
(44:59):
right wing party line, or suddenly finding themselves with a
conservative co host, or finding themselves unemployed, there's one more
MSNBC story to tell that is relevant. I went back
there in two thousand three and we did pretty well.
And then in two thousand and ten they began to
pressure me to change my tone and to add in
(45:19):
more diverse voices, and they did not mean women were
members of minority groups, or people like I had hired,
like Rachel Maddow. They meant conservative, diverse voices. That's when
I began to pack my bags to leave, and a
few months later I left, and then four years later
they asked me to come back as long as I
(45:39):
agreed to have a conservative co host. I passed. But
here's the problem. I don't know anybody else pressured in
those ways who has also passed. Not at CNN, not
at MSNBC, not anywhere else. Do not doubt what some
(45:59):
television talents are willing to do just to remain television
and talents. Countdown has come to you from the studios
will All Run Broadcasting Empire World Headquarters in the Sports
(46:21):
Capsule Building in New York. Thank you for listening. Here
the credits. Most of the music, including our theme from
Beethoven's Ninth, was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray
and John Philip Chanelle, who are the Countdown musical directors.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Shodel. Guitars based
on drums by Brian Ray, produced by t k O Brothers.
Oxygen came in a can. Other Beethoven selections have been
(46:43):
arranged and performed by no horns allowed. The sports music
which was not played today is the Ulderman theme from
ESPN two, and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis
courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments were by Nancy Faust,
except there weren't any today. She is, of course the
best baseball stadi of organist ever, and our announcer today
was nobody because we didn't play an announcement. But everything
(47:03):
else is pretty mu my fault. So that is countdown
for this the seven thirty eight day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Arrest him now while we still can. I'll
try to be back with a full new episode tomorrow.
The sinus infection, of course, has the final decision on
that until whenever. I'm Keith Olverman, good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
(47:27):
and wish me good luck. Countdown with Keith old Reman
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
(47:48):
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