May 19, 2023 • 34 mins
EPISODE 206: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44): SPECIAL COMMENT: “Republicans are back on the air,” Chris Licht’s boss said yesterday, 24 hours after Christiane Amanpour had politely vivisected Licht in front of all those new Columbia J-School grads.”Republicans weren’t on the air. During the McCarthy hearings, for those four days, we had 75 Republicans on the air. 41 went on us before they went on Fox. And the reason is…they are not going to get one more vote on Fox." And Trump is quote “the front-runner. He has to be on our network. We’re happy he’s coming on our network.”
And after spelling out CNN's new role as an advocacy network Republicans can use to find new votes, David Zaslav then says "advertisers...don't want to be part of an advocacy network,." Zaslav doubles down on his metaphorical suicide pact with Licht as their CNN strategy becomes clear: Increase advertising by decreasing viewership!
Plus the latest from inside the network on CNN In Crisis: Day 10. No retribution planned against Amanpour (yet); talks ongoing with Trump for a second event, maybe a second Town Hall; Erin Burnett and Anderson Cooper have officially fallen into fourth place behind NewsMax; and a new factor in this disaster. A week ago nearly 50% of stockholders voted AGAINST Zaslav's CEO compensation.
B-Block (21:41) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The Republican plan to...defund the Air Force? Dianne Feinstein's health, and the urgency for her to resign, both grow. And Wednesday Marjorie Taylor Scumbag Greene was joking in public with Jamaal Bowman and yesterday she was claiming his body language threatened her and she fell right into the "That Black Man was looking at me." (26:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: As we commemorate the anniversary of the Mt. St. Helens volcano, a tribute to the fill-in newscaster who insisted it killed a former president. Elon Musk makes an offer we can't refuse. And Ron DeSantis sure showed Disney! He owned the libs, and the libs now own $1,000,000,000.
C-Block (31:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Back to the first story of James Thurber I ever read aloud in front of people. Hilarious and deeply disturbing at the same time: "A Box To Hide In."
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
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. Republicans
are back on the air. Christ's boss said yesterday, twenty
(00:27):
four hours after Christian I'm on Poor had politely vivisected
Chris Lick in front of all those new Columbia J
School grads. Republicans weren't on the air during the McCarthy hearings.
For those four days. We had seventy five Republicans on
the air. Forty one went on us before they went
on Fox. And the reason is they are not going
(00:48):
to get one more vote on Fox. And Trump is
quote the front runner, he has to be on our network.
We're happy he's coming on our network. Thus did David Zaslav,
chairman of Warner Bros. Discovery and the man who inflicted
the challenged Chris lickt upon the network that used to
(01:09):
be CNN. Thus did he double down on his metaphorical
suicide packed with Chris lickt. Zaslav was speaking at a
media conference in New York. Blissfull announcing, quote, advertisers are
interested in CNN again. They don't want to be part
of an advocacy network. Unquote. While in the same breath
(01:30):
as you heard he was promoting CNN as an advocacy
network for Republicans for their hopes of getting re elected.
But of course this plan tout the fact that a
poll shows overall trust in your network is up by
eleven points, but omit the fact that that's last place
that overall trusted MSNBC is up by sixteen points in Fox,
(01:52):
by seventeen, in NBC by twenty three. Destroy your primetime
to build up your mornings, and then destroy your mornings
to build up your primetime. End the career of your
signature anchor Anderson Cooper and ended so quickly he's being
beaten in the ratings two nights running by Eric freaking
Bowling on Newsmax. Proclaim the rebirth of the old CNN
(02:13):
and then get called out in public by the symbol
of the old CNN in a'manport and especially increase advertising
by decreasing viewership. This plan has to work, and Chris
licked has to be right, because if Chris Lickt isn't
right and this plan doesn't work, then David Zaslav isn't right.
(02:41):
And if David Zaslav isn't right, he's up that creek.
Because last week half of the shareholders of Warner Bros'
Discovery voted that they are paying him too much as
it is, and a stock market expert quoted by Deadline
dot Com says that when firms hold those votes about
(03:02):
compensation for CEOs and the sea, the EO's compensation is
approved by anything less than seventy percent, that is quote
pretty dismal. So right now, even before everybody in the
world except David Zaslab and Chris Licht thought David Zaslab
and Chris Lickt had destroyed an expensive asset called CNN,
(03:22):
David zaz last chances of lasting that much longer at
Warner Bros. Discovery would have had to have been described
as quote pretty dismal. So the zaz Lav Lickt plan
has to work. The zaz Lab lick plan thus is working.
The Zaslav lickd plan is working very well. And if
(03:44):
it's not just Anderson Cooper falling to fourth place behind Newsmax,
it's also Aaron Burnett. And if that happens, you just say, well, no,
the advertisers are with us. And if your chief international
correspondent now disembowels Chris Lickt and your chief international investigative
correspondent and your Hong Kong anchor echo her and say
(04:06):
she's given a masterclass in journalism and about the danger
of both sides ism. You can just go on CNBC
and shout, we need to show both sides of every issue,
and you point at Caitlin Collins and never, never, never,
never admit the zaslav licked plan is a suicide pact.
(04:31):
When I was seven, my parents did something I had
never seen them do before. They bought new furniture. At
the age of thirty seven. My dad finally felt sure
enough about his toe hold at the corner of the
middle class, so he bought a dining room set. And
(04:52):
inside this unspeakable extravagance, there was something magical, something that
left the neighbors speechless. The new dining room chairs swiveled,
and one of our neighbors, I'll call her Gene, who
was the expert on dining room sets and drapes and
(05:15):
clothes and chairs that swiveled. She wasn't even jealous. Jean
just congratulated my parents and unashamedly admitted her envy of
the swivel chairs. And then came the day the dining
room set was delivered, and the manufacturer called and apologized
and said the chairs that swiveled, they had been delayed
(05:35):
a couple of weeks, so in the interim they were
loaning us the version of the same chairs, but they
didn't swivel. And Jeane heard about the delivery somehow and
came right over and looked at the brand new dining
room set and gushed. And she looked at the swivel
chairs that didn't swivel, and she said, may I like
they were Porsches. And she sat down and she said,
(05:57):
my God, swivel chairs. And even though they did not swivel,
she made them swivel. She picked them up and pretended
they were swivel, and she moved them. And she promised
herself out loud, someday soon she'd get swivel chairs that swiveled.
This wonderfully. And if she said, as God is my witness,
I'll never have chairs that don't swivel again, I wouldn't
(06:17):
have been a bit surprised. And my parents and I
held in our laughter until Jean left. And my parents
live the rest of their lives without ever telling her.
And David Zaslov is Gene, and so is christ Chris
Licked is also gene the chairs swivel. The chairs must swivel. Look,
(06:39):
let me swivel them for you. I will never admit
these chairs don't swivel. The plan is working. Having one
programming decision be the lead media story in the country
for ten days with no end in sight for the
ridicule means it's working. Falling behind newsbacks which looks like
it's filmed in somebody's damn basement means it's working. Pretending
to be restoring even handed journalism and then being humiliated
(07:01):
at Columbia Journalism School by our leading even hand and
the journalist means it's working.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
As God is my witness, It'll never not be working again.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Bottom line. If it's not working, and it's not, we
all know how this ends. When CNN falls to fifth
place or sixth behind I don't know the international news
in Welsh Channel, the people who decide whether or not
Zaslab is still CEO will tell him to fix this,
(07:36):
and he will fire Licked or shuttle him off somewhere
else in the company. And when that doesn't save CNN,
Warner Bros. Will Sell CNN off and somebody else will
have to try to rebuild it. And if Warner Bros.
Has lost too much money, or they realize Zaslav has
really screwed up that CNN thing, they will fire him.
(07:58):
By the way, if you have seen this guy Zaslab
on television where he's boasting about how fewer viewers means
more advertising money, or you've seen his picture online somewhere,
and you've said, I know this man. Where do I
know this man from? I know this man. He is
a dead ringer for Biff Tannin from Back to the Future,
(08:21):
Biff Tannin, Biff Tannin with glasses, David Zaslov evidently Biff
Tannon with glasses, but without any knowledge of the future.
So CNN in Crisis the Latest the day after Amen
For's speech at Columbia Jay School detached reasonable respectable defenestration
(08:43):
of Licht and by implication Zaslav. There was no great
rush to the podiums by CNN's lead figures, and why
would there be. Anderson Cooper has never been a journalist.
They hired him away from The Mole. He was the
host of The Mole, and last week he showed he
has never understood what his journalistic audience was watching for
when he got angry at them and yelled at them
(09:05):
for having had the audacity to question the people who
give him all that money. Aaron Burnett is not a journalist.
She was a Goldman Sachs and then she was a
business reporter, and on her first day anchoring at CNN,
she went to the Occupy Wall Street protest and she
sat down on the sidewalk and mocked something that she
didn't understand and was surprised when there was blowback, And honestly,
(09:29):
I think the CNN folks are just happy she did
not mock Christiane Amanpour on her show last night. Caitlin
Collins has never been a journalist. She was a Fox
News guest pushing the anti Semitic George Soros trope one
day for The Daily Caller and then standing in front
of the White House for CNN the next. And I'd
mentioned a few of the other non journalists for whom
(09:49):
Amanpours dignified and scornful evisceration of her new insect overlords
went right over their heads. But honestly, I don't know
who any of them are. In the wake of the
Zaslab stuff, I did hear too newsy things from inside
CNN yesterday, which as an organization sounds about as happy
(10:09):
a place right now as RMS Titanic. Only if the
crew of RMS Titanic knew in advance that they were
going to hit the iceberg, and they were so depressed
and disheartened that they knew about it in advance, but
they had given up trying to prevent it. I heard
that the evidence is vague, but it looks like Licked
(10:30):
or one of his henchmen continue to stay in touch
with the Trump people about another appearance of some kind
on CNN, maybe even another town hall, because the plan
is working. Secondly, I heard that while Lickty is furious
that Amman for his Columbia speech, he has actually had
the presence of mind not to do anything to her,
(10:53):
because he may never admit this even to himself, but
that is a battle that he would not only lose,
but would first end up in a walkout of huge
numbers of staff. Lick may try to avenge himself if later,
I am told, but only much much later, and as
mentioned before, he may not have much much later. And
I was thinking about parallels in TV history to what
(11:16):
Christian Amanpour did on Wednesday at Columbia, and I can
think of only two, one of great importance that went
I think the right word is tragically, and one that
was fairly trivial and not at all tragic. The fairly
trivial one. I gave the equivalent of the commencement speech
at Cornell in nineteen ninety one, and I dedicated it
to attacking television news, specifically my own program, and its
(11:40):
obsession with covering the Clinton Lewinsky story, especially even when
there were days and weeks that passed without any actual
news to cover. MSNBC did not retaliate against me in
any way, which was their way of retaliating against me,
because I was, in point of fact, trying to get
onto a different show, or get released from my contract,
(12:02):
or just get fired or something. And of course they
didn't do any of that, and my ratings went up
after my speech telling people not to watch the show,
so they made me stay another six months. However, Christian's
speech reminded me more in tone, if not in relative specificity,
to the one given on October fifteenth, nineteen fifty eight.
(12:26):
Edward R. Murrow stood up on that day before the
radio and television news Directors Association in Chicago and began
a speech with this just might do nobody any good.
He proceeded for nearly an hour to take the television
industry apart because it was so dedicated to spending money
(12:49):
on entertainment and not on news. And little did he
know he was living in the golden age of dedication
to news. Quote. Our history will be what we make it.
And if there are any historians about fifty or one
hundred years from now, he said, and there should be
preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks,
(13:11):
they will there find recorded in black and white, or
perhaps in color, evidence of decadence, escapism, and insulation from
the realities of the world in which we live. I
invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks
between the hours of eight and eleven PM Eastern time.
Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to
(13:34):
the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are,
it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual
ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods,
television in the main insulates us from the realities of
the world in which we live. If this state of
(13:56):
affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read
look now and pay later. I would send that to
Chris Lick, but I suspect his response would be Edward R.
Murrow was he named after the Murrow Award. Murrow ended
(14:16):
his nineteen fifty eight Chicago speech with this instrument television.
This instrument can teach, It can illuminate, yes, and it
even can inspire. But it can do so only to
the extent that humans are determined to use it to
those ends. Otherwise it's nothing but wires and lights in
(14:41):
a box. October fifteenth, nineteen fifty eight. Edward R. Murrow
would be gone from CBS less than twenty seven months later,
but then again, that had been foretold. Within weeks after
he directed his see It Now program and directed it
against Senator Joe McCarthy, whom Christian Amanport invoked at Columbia,
(15:02):
not incidentally comparing the original coverage of McCarthy to the
coverage of Trump. After the end of that nineteen fifty
four TV season, Edward Armuro never again had a regularly
scheduled program on CBS, so Lastly, what's next here? Let
(15:23):
me circle back to where I started. David Zaslov is
delighted that Republicans are back on the air at CNN.
During the McCarthy hearings, for those four days, we had
seventy five Republicans on the air. Forty one went on
US before they went on Fox. It does not seem
to have occurred to him that his premise requires that
the old, moderate and skeptical CNN audience, which was not
(15:44):
very large to begin with, would keep watching this crap,
and that somehow the conservatives who have spent the last
ten days celebrating Trump's victory over CNN would suddenly respond
to that by watching CNN when he is not on it,
which they won't. But to return to my other point,
(16:05):
what's actually happening does not matter to zaslab Or licked.
That chair is gonna swivel goddamn it until the chair breaks,
of course, and the chair will only break when there
is a boycott, not an audience boycott that already started
and nobody even had to ask. CNN's ratings are already
down about ten percent from pre Trump town hall levels.
(16:28):
What is needed now is a boycott, But a boycott
buy Democratic politicians and office holders, if anything, could possibly
snap zaslab and licked out of their delusions that they
are presenting all voices and killing off the advocacy network,
when they are in fact emphasizing advocacy at the cost
(16:49):
of everything else. It would be if Democrats started to
view CNN for what it is now, not what it
might have been a year or more ago. The man
has just told you he is offering his television channel
two Republicans so they can convince non Fox viewers to
vote for them. You, the Democratic politician, are now being
(17:13):
invited to appear on an advertising channel for conservatives so
that conservatives can dunk on you. There is already one
of those called Fox. You would not go on that network.
Do not go on this one. Boycott CNN. Also of
(17:34):
note here you heard the audio yesterday. I played some
of it, Representatives Jamal Bowman and Marjorie Taylor, Barnie Rubble
White supremacist Karen Green verbally jousting on the steps of
the Capitol. It seemed to be mostly political theater. Green
was laughing shouting her talking points, smiling as Bowman was
(17:56):
laughing shouting his talking points. Smiling, she dare I say,
this looked almost huge. And then yesterday she revealed she
felt threatened by Congressman Bowman, and she felt when he
referred to her as a white supremacist, she felt as
(18:18):
if he had called her the N word, threatened by him.
If that sounds familiar, remember the woman in Central Park
who tried to make the cops believe that the African
American bird watcher was threatening her, with the unstated part
being gee, maybe the police will come here and shoot him.
(18:39):
And that's what Marjorie Taylor Barney rubble white supremacist Karen
Green is trying to do here. That's next. This is countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman. Postscripts to the news,
some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Date line, Washington.
(19:02):
Just when you thought we had reached the bottom of
the congressional barrel in terms of stupidity, Oh look, there's
another barrel beneath this barrel. The Texas Rep. Chip Roy
is upset about Pride declarations by the Air Force and
Pride Game night scheduled for June first, So he wants
to defund the air Force. Who's going to tell him
(19:24):
about how difficult it's going to be to fly without
the Air Force. Thank you, Nancy Faust, Dateline Washington. I
(19:57):
presume this stuff is being leaked to the newspapers to
increase empathy for Senator Dianne Feinstein, but I'm not sure
that's what it is actually increasing a series of news
outlets reporting that she didn't just have shingles these last
three months. It was on her face and it led
to paralysis and encephalitis. And as somebody who had simple shingles, again,
(20:17):
I get it, but encephalitis can cause serious confusion, and
maybe she should just retire now rather than further risk
her health and the ruination of her previously flawless reputation.
Also earlier yesterday, Senator Feinstein was asked about the encephalitis
and she said, no, she'd never had encephalitis. It was
just bad flu. Dayline, Washington. As I said before the break,
(20:42):
you heard this yesterday, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Green and Jamal
Bowman verbally jousting outside the Capitol and seeming to have
a little fun doing so.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Are you hanging by your friend?
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Nobody's hanging by a thread. You're a save the party?
Listen no more doing on, no more, no more test
sailing nonsense. Come on, now, save the party, We save America, save.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
The children, do something about guns.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Come on.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
That was captured on at least a dozen phone cameras,
and it seemed to be almost jovial if you assume
Green can feel human emotions. Today she presented an utterly
different story. Marjorie Taylor Green apparently realized that she had
missed an opportunity to point fingers at the big, scary
black man, so she went into full white supremacist Karen.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Jamal Bowman, shouting at the top of his lungs, cursing,
calling me a horrible not calling me a white supremacist,
which I take great offense to. That is like calling
a person of color the N word, which should never happen.
Calling me a white supremacist is equal to that, and
that is wrong. Jamal Bowman was down there cursing at me,
(22:01):
telling me to get the f out of there, and
he was leading the mob right outside the vehicle I
was sitting in. We have this all on video, and
then on the Capitol steps yesterday, he was the one
that approached me. Even CNN reported that yelling, shouting, raising
his voice. He has aggressive his physical mannerisms are aggressive,
(22:22):
and he just recently shoved Thomas Massey just outside the
House chamber. I think there's a lot of concern about
Jamal Bowman, and I am concerned about it. I feel
threatened by him. He not only let a bob mob.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
There out of her mind, manipulative, lying, hallucinating, endangering Bowmen
and men of color everywhere in this country. She has
no business in our government on March. The only reason
anybody would hesitate to call you a white supremacist is
you are the leading argument against there being anything supreme
(22:58):
about white people. Coming up sometimes on Fridays with Thurber,
I'm reading it just for your sake, but on some
of them, like this time, I would be reading this
(23:20):
one out loud, just for the catharsis a box to
hide in. Ahead first to daily round up with the
miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute
today's first persons in the world. The Bronze I'm gonna
leave her name out of this because she helped me
get my second job in broadcasting, and she really backed
me up there, and she wasn't a newscaster she was
(23:43):
just a music and radio executive. So but forty three
years ago yesterday, the Mount Saint Helen's volcano erupted in
Washington State, and the RKO Radio network was just getting
on its feet, and for whatever reason, RKO's program director
had to fill in as a newscaster that day. For months,
as the mountain in Washington State rumboled and gave warnings
(24:05):
of the impending disaster, an eighty three year old bootlegger
and prospector named Harry Truman became a media celebrity because
he would not leave the small motel he ran at
the foot of the mountain, Mount Saint Helen's Lodge, even
though all the guests had left. He said the threat
of eruption had been exaggerated. And then like the top
(24:26):
thirteen hundred feet of the mountain blew off forty three
years ago yesterday, and the whole place was covered with
volcano and lava and volcanic ash, and everything was destroyed.
And so our program director, filling in is the newscaster
announced that, in addition to the destruction, that resident Harry
Truman had stayed and quote it is assumed the former
(24:46):
president died when the Volcano erupted runner up Elon Musk
lawsuit against him by six former Twitter employees, and one
of the plaintiffs, Joseph Killian, who had been in charge
of office design for Twitter, said that he tried to
convince Musk's venture capitalist pal Pablo that Musk really could
(25:07):
not get away with, you know, not paying the lease
on the company's San Francisco headquarters. Killian says, Mendoza told him.
This is in the lawsuit quote Elon told me he
would only pay rent over his dead body unquote deal.
But our winner Ron DeSantis, who supposedly told Donald owners
(25:27):
yesterday that he is running for the Republican presidential nomination,
running in those heels if you had not heard. Disney,
from which I am officially a retiree, if you can
believe that, and CEO Bob Iger, who I have known
since nineteen seventy nine, chose yesterday to reveal a slight
change in Disney plans relative to Florida. The one billion
(25:48):
dollar Disney office complex they were going to build in
Orlando and move the entire imagineering department there from California
and have two thousand new Florida jobs at an average
salary of a one hundred and twenty thousand dollars per canceled.
Everybody stays in, So sorry, Ronda, Florida.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Governor Ron did you also notice the Disney guy saying
they still have seventeen billion dollars they plan to spend
on Florida construction at Disney World in thirteen thousand new
Florida jobs.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
And now he says, I hope we're able to do that.
Dissentus today's worst person in.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
The world, including Lada.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
It's been a long week. And every time I find
myself thinking it's been a long week, I like to
turn to my book of James Thurber, and it's Fridays
with Thurber. And it's been a few fridays since I've
done any James Thurber. And so let's start at the beginning.
As I've mentioned many times, I read this story first
aloud in a class in college in nineteen seventy nine,
(27:07):
and a friend of mine came up to me and said,
you should forget that sportscasting thing. You should read Thurber
for a living, And I said, yeah, that'll ever happen.
This is, for some reason salvation for me. Catharsis and
every other emotion that is appropriate after it has been
a long week. A Box to Hide In by James Thurber.
(27:34):
I waited till the large woman with the awful hat
took up her sack of groceries and went out, peering
at the tomatoes and the lettuce on her way. The
clerk asked me what mine was. Have you got a box,
I asked, A large box. I want a box to
(27:57):
hide in. You want a box, he asked. I want
a box to hide in, I said. He said, you
mean a big box. I said, I meant a big box,
big enough to hold me. I haven't got any boxes,
he said, only cottons that cans come in. I tried
(28:17):
several other groceries and none of them had a box
big enough for me to hide in. There was nothing
for it but to face life out. I didn't feel strong,
and I'd had this overpowering desire to hide in a
box for a long time. Well, what do you mean
(28:37):
you want to hide in this box? One grocer asked me.
It's a form of escape. I told him, hiding in
a box. It circumscribes your worries in the range of
your anguish. You don't see people either, how the hell
do you eat when you're in this box? Asked the grocer.
I don't the hell do you get anything to eat?
(29:00):
I said, I had never been in a box and
didn't know, but that that would take care of itself. Well,
he said, finally, I haven't got any boxes, only some
pasteboard curtains that cans come in. It was the same
every place. I gave up when it got dark and
the groceries closed, and hid in my room again. I
(29:22):
turned out the light and lay on the bed. You
feel better when it gets dark. I could have hit
in a closet, I suppose, but people are always opening doors.
Somebody would find you in a closet. They would be startled,
and you'd have to tell them why you're in the closet.
Nobody pays attention to a big box lying on the floor.
(29:45):
You could stay in it for days and nobody'd think
to look in it, not even the cleaning woman. My
cleaning woman came the next morning and woke me up,
and I was still feeling bad. I asked her if
she knew where I could get a large box. How
(30:05):
big a box you want, she asked, I want a
box big enough for me to get inside of I said.
She looked at me with big dim eyes. There's something
wrong with her glands. She's awful, but she has a
big heart, which makes it worse. She's unbearable. Her husband
(30:26):
is sick, and her children are sick, and she is
sick too. I got to thinking how pleasant it would
be if I were in a box now and didn't
have to see her. I'd be in a box right
there in the room, and she wouldn't know. I wondered
if you had a desire to bark or laugh when
someone who doesn't know walks by the box you're in,
(30:46):
maybe she would have a spell with her heart. If
I did that would die right there. The officers and
the elevator man and mister Grammage would find us funny.
Dog gone thing happened at the building last night. The
doorman would say to his wife, HI led in this
woman to clean up ten f and she never come out.
See she's never in there more in an hour, but
(31:06):
she never come out. See. So when it got time
for me to go off duty, whis says to credit
who was on the elevator, I says, what the hell
you suppose happened to that woman? Cleans tenf. He says
he didn't know. He says he never seen her after
he took her up. So I spoke to mister Grammage
about it. I'm sorry to bother you, mister Grammage, I says,
but there's something funny about that woman cleans tenf. So
(31:28):
I told him. So he said we better have a look,
and we all three goes up and knots on the
door and rings the bells, seeing nobody answers, so he
said we'd have to walk in. So Credic opened the
door and we walked in and here was this woman
cleans the apartment, dead as a herring on the floor,
and the gentleman that lives there was in a box.
(31:53):
The cleaning woman kept looking at me. It was hard
to realize she wasn't dead. It's a form of escape,
I murmured, what say? She asked, Dully, you don't know
of any large packing boxes, do you? I asked, now,
(32:13):
I don't. She said, I haven't found one yet. But
I still have this overpowering urge to hide in a box.
Maybe it will go away, maybe I'll be all right,
maybe it will get worse. It's hard to say a
(32:36):
box to hide in by James Thurber. I've done all
the damage I can do here. Here are the credits.
Most of the music was arranged, produced and performed by
(32:58):
Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel, who are the Countdown
musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by Phillip Schhaneil, guitars,
bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman
theme from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch
(33:18):
Warren Davis and appears courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments
from Nancy Faust the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer was John Dean, and everything else is pretty much
my fault. So that's countdown for this the eight hundred
and sixty fourth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Don't
forget to keep arresting him while we still can. The
(33:42):
next scheduled countdown is Monday, and until then, I'm Keith Oldrimman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
with keith Oldreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(34:06):
you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Republicans
are back on the air. Christ's boss said yesterday, twenty
(00:27):
four hours after Christian I'm on Poor had politely vivisected
Chris Lick in front of all those new Columbia J
School grads. Republicans weren't on the air during the McCarthy hearings.
For those four days. We had seventy five Republicans on
the air. Forty one went on us before they went
on Fox. And the reason is they are not going
(00:48):
to get one more vote on Fox. And Trump is
quote the front runner, he has to be on our network.
We're happy he's coming on our network. Thus did David Zaslav,
chairman of Warner Bros. Discovery and the man who inflicted
the challenged Chris lickt upon the network that used to
(01:09):
be CNN. Thus did he double down on his metaphorical
suicide packed with Chris lickt. Zaslav was speaking at a
media conference in New York. Blissfull announcing, quote, advertisers are
interested in CNN again. They don't want to be part
of an advocacy network. Unquote. While in the same breath
(01:30):
as you heard he was promoting CNN as an advocacy
network for Republicans for their hopes of getting re elected.
But of course this plan tout the fact that a
poll shows overall trust in your network is up by
eleven points, but omit the fact that that's last place
that overall trusted MSNBC is up by sixteen points in Fox,
(01:52):
by seventeen, in NBC by twenty three. Destroy your primetime
to build up your mornings, and then destroy your mornings
to build up your primetime. End the career of your
signature anchor Anderson Cooper and ended so quickly he's being
beaten in the ratings two nights running by Eric freaking
Bowling on Newsmax. Proclaim the rebirth of the old CNN
(02:13):
and then get called out in public by the symbol
of the old CNN in a'manport and especially increase advertising
by decreasing viewership. This plan has to work, and Chris
licked has to be right, because if Chris Lickt isn't
right and this plan doesn't work, then David Zaslav isn't right.
(02:41):
And if David Zaslav isn't right, he's up that creek.
Because last week half of the shareholders of Warner Bros'
Discovery voted that they are paying him too much as
it is, and a stock market expert quoted by Deadline
dot Com says that when firms hold those votes about
(03:02):
compensation for CEOs and the sea, the EO's compensation is
approved by anything less than seventy percent, that is quote
pretty dismal. So right now, even before everybody in the
world except David Zaslab and Chris Licht thought David Zaslab
and Chris Lickt had destroyed an expensive asset called CNN,
(03:22):
David zaz last chances of lasting that much longer at
Warner Bros. Discovery would have had to have been described
as quote pretty dismal. So the zaz Lav Lickt plan
has to work. The zaz Lab lick plan thus is working.
The Zaslav lickd plan is working very well. And if
(03:44):
it's not just Anderson Cooper falling to fourth place behind Newsmax,
it's also Aaron Burnett. And if that happens, you just say, well, no,
the advertisers are with us. And if your chief international
correspondent now disembowels Chris Lickt and your chief international investigative
correspondent and your Hong Kong anchor echo her and say
(04:06):
she's given a masterclass in journalism and about the danger
of both sides ism. You can just go on CNBC
and shout, we need to show both sides of every issue,
and you point at Caitlin Collins and never, never, never,
never admit the zaslav licked plan is a suicide pact.
(04:31):
When I was seven, my parents did something I had
never seen them do before. They bought new furniture. At
the age of thirty seven. My dad finally felt sure
enough about his toe hold at the corner of the
middle class, so he bought a dining room set. And
(04:52):
inside this unspeakable extravagance, there was something magical, something that
left the neighbors speechless. The new dining room chairs swiveled,
and one of our neighbors, I'll call her Gene, who
was the expert on dining room sets and drapes and
(05:15):
clothes and chairs that swiveled. She wasn't even jealous. Jean
just congratulated my parents and unashamedly admitted her envy of
the swivel chairs. And then came the day the dining
room set was delivered, and the manufacturer called and apologized
and said the chairs that swiveled, they had been delayed
(05:35):
a couple of weeks, so in the interim they were
loaning us the version of the same chairs, but they
didn't swivel. And Jeane heard about the delivery somehow and
came right over and looked at the brand new dining
room set and gushed. And she looked at the swivel
chairs that didn't swivel, and she said, may I like
they were Porsches. And she sat down and she said,
(05:57):
my God, swivel chairs. And even though they did not swivel,
she made them swivel. She picked them up and pretended
they were swivel, and she moved them. And she promised
herself out loud, someday soon she'd get swivel chairs that swiveled.
This wonderfully. And if she said, as God is my witness,
I'll never have chairs that don't swivel again, I wouldn't
(06:17):
have been a bit surprised. And my parents and I
held in our laughter until Jean left. And my parents
live the rest of their lives without ever telling her.
And David Zaslov is Gene, and so is christ Chris
Licked is also gene the chairs swivel. The chairs must swivel. Look,
(06:39):
let me swivel them for you. I will never admit
these chairs don't swivel. The plan is working. Having one
programming decision be the lead media story in the country
for ten days with no end in sight for the
ridicule means it's working. Falling behind newsbacks which looks like
it's filmed in somebody's damn basement means it's working. Pretending
to be restoring even handed journalism and then being humiliated
(07:01):
at Columbia Journalism School by our leading even hand and
the journalist means it's working.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
As God is my witness, It'll never not be working again.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Bottom line. If it's not working, and it's not, we
all know how this ends. When CNN falls to fifth
place or sixth behind I don't know the international news
in Welsh Channel, the people who decide whether or not
Zaslab is still CEO will tell him to fix this,
(07:36):
and he will fire Licked or shuttle him off somewhere
else in the company. And when that doesn't save CNN,
Warner Bros. Will Sell CNN off and somebody else will
have to try to rebuild it. And if Warner Bros.
Has lost too much money, or they realize Zaslav has
really screwed up that CNN thing, they will fire him.
(07:58):
By the way, if you have seen this guy Zaslab
on television where he's boasting about how fewer viewers means
more advertising money, or you've seen his picture online somewhere,
and you've said, I know this man. Where do I
know this man from? I know this man. He is
a dead ringer for Biff Tannin from Back to the Future,
(08:21):
Biff Tannin, Biff Tannin with glasses, David Zaslov evidently Biff
Tannon with glasses, but without any knowledge of the future.
So CNN in Crisis the Latest the day after Amen
For's speech at Columbia Jay School detached reasonable respectable defenestration
(08:43):
of Licht and by implication Zaslav. There was no great
rush to the podiums by CNN's lead figures, and why
would there be. Anderson Cooper has never been a journalist.
They hired him away from The Mole. He was the
host of The Mole, and last week he showed he
has never understood what his journalistic audience was watching for
when he got angry at them and yelled at them
(09:05):
for having had the audacity to question the people who
give him all that money. Aaron Burnett is not a journalist.
She was a Goldman Sachs and then she was a
business reporter, and on her first day anchoring at CNN,
she went to the Occupy Wall Street protest and she
sat down on the sidewalk and mocked something that she
didn't understand and was surprised when there was blowback, And honestly,
(09:29):
I think the CNN folks are just happy she did
not mock Christiane Amanpour on her show last night. Caitlin
Collins has never been a journalist. She was a Fox
News guest pushing the anti Semitic George Soros trope one
day for The Daily Caller and then standing in front
of the White House for CNN the next. And I'd
mentioned a few of the other non journalists for whom
(09:49):
Amanpours dignified and scornful evisceration of her new insect overlords
went right over their heads. But honestly, I don't know
who any of them are. In the wake of the
Zaslab stuff, I did hear too newsy things from inside
CNN yesterday, which as an organization sounds about as happy
(10:09):
a place right now as RMS Titanic. Only if the
crew of RMS Titanic knew in advance that they were
going to hit the iceberg, and they were so depressed
and disheartened that they knew about it in advance, but
they had given up trying to prevent it. I heard
that the evidence is vague, but it looks like Licked
(10:30):
or one of his henchmen continue to stay in touch
with the Trump people about another appearance of some kind
on CNN, maybe even another town hall, because the plan
is working. Secondly, I heard that while Lickty is furious
that Amman for his Columbia speech, he has actually had
the presence of mind not to do anything to her,
(10:53):
because he may never admit this even to himself, but
that is a battle that he would not only lose,
but would first end up in a walkout of huge
numbers of staff. Lick may try to avenge himself if later,
I am told, but only much much later, and as
mentioned before, he may not have much much later. And
I was thinking about parallels in TV history to what
(11:16):
Christian Amanpour did on Wednesday at Columbia, and I can
think of only two, one of great importance that went
I think the right word is tragically, and one that
was fairly trivial and not at all tragic. The fairly
trivial one. I gave the equivalent of the commencement speech
at Cornell in nineteen ninety one, and I dedicated it
to attacking television news, specifically my own program, and its
(11:40):
obsession with covering the Clinton Lewinsky story, especially even when
there were days and weeks that passed without any actual
news to cover. MSNBC did not retaliate against me in
any way, which was their way of retaliating against me,
because I was, in point of fact, trying to get
onto a different show, or get released from my contract,
(12:02):
or just get fired or something. And of course they
didn't do any of that, and my ratings went up
after my speech telling people not to watch the show,
so they made me stay another six months. However, Christian's
speech reminded me more in tone, if not in relative specificity,
to the one given on October fifteenth, nineteen fifty eight.
(12:26):
Edward R. Murrow stood up on that day before the
radio and television news Directors Association in Chicago and began
a speech with this just might do nobody any good.
He proceeded for nearly an hour to take the television
industry apart because it was so dedicated to spending money
(12:49):
on entertainment and not on news. And little did he
know he was living in the golden age of dedication
to news. Quote. Our history will be what we make it.
And if there are any historians about fifty or one
hundred years from now, he said, and there should be
preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks,
(13:11):
they will there find recorded in black and white, or
perhaps in color, evidence of decadence, escapism, and insulation from
the realities of the world in which we live. I
invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks
between the hours of eight and eleven PM Eastern time.
Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to
(13:34):
the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are,
it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual
ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods,
television in the main insulates us from the realities of
the world in which we live. If this state of
(13:56):
affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read
look now and pay later. I would send that to
Chris Lick, but I suspect his response would be Edward R.
Murrow was he named after the Murrow Award. Murrow ended
(14:16):
his nineteen fifty eight Chicago speech with this instrument television.
This instrument can teach, It can illuminate, yes, and it
even can inspire. But it can do so only to
the extent that humans are determined to use it to
those ends. Otherwise it's nothing but wires and lights in
(14:41):
a box. October fifteenth, nineteen fifty eight. Edward R. Murrow
would be gone from CBS less than twenty seven months later,
but then again, that had been foretold. Within weeks after
he directed his see It Now program and directed it
against Senator Joe McCarthy, whom Christian Amanport invoked at Columbia,
(15:02):
not incidentally comparing the original coverage of McCarthy to the
coverage of Trump. After the end of that nineteen fifty
four TV season, Edward Armuro never again had a regularly
scheduled program on CBS, so Lastly, what's next here? Let
(15:23):
me circle back to where I started. David Zaslov is
delighted that Republicans are back on the air at CNN.
During the McCarthy hearings, for those four days, we had
seventy five Republicans on the air. Forty one went on
US before they went on Fox. It does not seem
to have occurred to him that his premise requires that
the old, moderate and skeptical CNN audience, which was not
(15:44):
very large to begin with, would keep watching this crap,
and that somehow the conservatives who have spent the last
ten days celebrating Trump's victory over CNN would suddenly respond
to that by watching CNN when he is not on it,
which they won't. But to return to my other point,
(16:05):
what's actually happening does not matter to zaslab Or licked.
That chair is gonna swivel goddamn it until the chair breaks,
of course, and the chair will only break when there
is a boycott, not an audience boycott that already started
and nobody even had to ask. CNN's ratings are already
down about ten percent from pre Trump town hall levels.
(16:28):
What is needed now is a boycott, But a boycott
buy Democratic politicians and office holders, if anything, could possibly
snap zaslab and licked out of their delusions that they
are presenting all voices and killing off the advocacy network,
when they are in fact emphasizing advocacy at the cost
(16:49):
of everything else. It would be if Democrats started to
view CNN for what it is now, not what it
might have been a year or more ago. The man
has just told you he is offering his television channel
two Republicans so they can convince non Fox viewers to
vote for them. You, the Democratic politician, are now being
(17:13):
invited to appear on an advertising channel for conservatives so
that conservatives can dunk on you. There is already one
of those called Fox. You would not go on that network.
Do not go on this one. Boycott CNN. Also of
(17:34):
note here you heard the audio yesterday. I played some
of it, Representatives Jamal Bowman and Marjorie Taylor, Barnie Rubble
White supremacist Karen Green verbally jousting on the steps of
the Capitol. It seemed to be mostly political theater. Green
was laughing shouting her talking points, smiling as Bowman was
(17:56):
laughing shouting his talking points. Smiling, she dare I say,
this looked almost huge. And then yesterday she revealed she
felt threatened by Congressman Bowman, and she felt when he
referred to her as a white supremacist, she felt as
(18:18):
if he had called her the N word, threatened by him.
If that sounds familiar, remember the woman in Central Park
who tried to make the cops believe that the African
American bird watcher was threatening her, with the unstated part
being gee, maybe the police will come here and shoot him.
(18:39):
And that's what Marjorie Taylor Barney rubble white supremacist Karen
Green is trying to do here. That's next. This is countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman. Postscripts to the news,
some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Date line, Washington.
(19:02):
Just when you thought we had reached the bottom of
the congressional barrel in terms of stupidity, Oh look, there's
another barrel beneath this barrel. The Texas Rep. Chip Roy
is upset about Pride declarations by the Air Force and
Pride Game night scheduled for June first, So he wants
to defund the air Force. Who's going to tell him
(19:24):
about how difficult it's going to be to fly without
the Air Force. Thank you, Nancy Faust, Dateline Washington. I
(19:57):
presume this stuff is being leaked to the newspapers to
increase empathy for Senator Dianne Feinstein, but I'm not sure
that's what it is actually increasing a series of news
outlets reporting that she didn't just have shingles these last
three months. It was on her face and it led
to paralysis and encephalitis. And as somebody who had simple shingles, again,
(20:17):
I get it, but encephalitis can cause serious confusion, and
maybe she should just retire now rather than further risk
her health and the ruination of her previously flawless reputation.
Also earlier yesterday, Senator Feinstein was asked about the encephalitis
and she said, no, she'd never had encephalitis. It was
just bad flu. Dayline, Washington. As I said before the break,
(20:42):
you heard this yesterday, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Green and Jamal
Bowman verbally jousting outside the Capitol and seeming to have
a little fun doing so.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Are you hanging by your friend?
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Nobody's hanging by a thread. You're a save the party?
Listen no more doing on, no more, no more test
sailing nonsense. Come on, now, save the party, We save America, save.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
The children, do something about guns.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Come on.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
That was captured on at least a dozen phone cameras,
and it seemed to be almost jovial if you assume
Green can feel human emotions. Today she presented an utterly
different story. Marjorie Taylor Green apparently realized that she had
missed an opportunity to point fingers at the big, scary
black man, so she went into full white supremacist Karen.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Jamal Bowman, shouting at the top of his lungs, cursing,
calling me a horrible not calling me a white supremacist,
which I take great offense to. That is like calling
a person of color the N word, which should never happen.
Calling me a white supremacist is equal to that, and
that is wrong. Jamal Bowman was down there cursing at me,
(22:01):
telling me to get the f out of there, and
he was leading the mob right outside the vehicle I
was sitting in. We have this all on video, and
then on the Capitol steps yesterday, he was the one
that approached me. Even CNN reported that yelling, shouting, raising
his voice. He has aggressive his physical mannerisms are aggressive,
(22:22):
and he just recently shoved Thomas Massey just outside the
House chamber. I think there's a lot of concern about
Jamal Bowman, and I am concerned about it. I feel
threatened by him. He not only let a bob mob.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
There out of her mind, manipulative, lying, hallucinating, endangering Bowmen
and men of color everywhere in this country. She has
no business in our government on March. The only reason
anybody would hesitate to call you a white supremacist is
you are the leading argument against there being anything supreme
(22:58):
about white people. Coming up sometimes on Fridays with Thurber,
I'm reading it just for your sake, but on some
of them, like this time, I would be reading this
(23:20):
one out loud, just for the catharsis a box to
hide in. Ahead first to daily round up with the
miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute
today's first persons in the world. The Bronze I'm gonna
leave her name out of this because she helped me
get my second job in broadcasting, and she really backed
me up there, and she wasn't a newscaster she was
(23:43):
just a music and radio executive. So but forty three
years ago yesterday, the Mount Saint Helen's volcano erupted in
Washington State, and the RKO Radio network was just getting
on its feet, and for whatever reason, RKO's program director
had to fill in as a newscaster that day. For months,
as the mountain in Washington State rumboled and gave warnings
(24:05):
of the impending disaster, an eighty three year old bootlegger
and prospector named Harry Truman became a media celebrity because
he would not leave the small motel he ran at
the foot of the mountain, Mount Saint Helen's Lodge, even
though all the guests had left. He said the threat
of eruption had been exaggerated. And then like the top
(24:26):
thirteen hundred feet of the mountain blew off forty three
years ago yesterday, and the whole place was covered with
volcano and lava and volcanic ash, and everything was destroyed.
And so our program director, filling in is the newscaster
announced that, in addition to the destruction, that resident Harry
Truman had stayed and quote it is assumed the former
(24:46):
president died when the Volcano erupted runner up Elon Musk
lawsuit against him by six former Twitter employees, and one
of the plaintiffs, Joseph Killian, who had been in charge
of office design for Twitter, said that he tried to
convince Musk's venture capitalist pal Pablo that Musk really could
(25:07):
not get away with, you know, not paying the lease
on the company's San Francisco headquarters. Killian says, Mendoza told him.
This is in the lawsuit quote Elon told me he
would only pay rent over his dead body unquote deal.
But our winner Ron DeSantis, who supposedly told Donald owners
(25:27):
yesterday that he is running for the Republican presidential nomination,
running in those heels if you had not heard. Disney,
from which I am officially a retiree, if you can
believe that, and CEO Bob Iger, who I have known
since nineteen seventy nine, chose yesterday to reveal a slight
change in Disney plans relative to Florida. The one billion
(25:48):
dollar Disney office complex they were going to build in
Orlando and move the entire imagineering department there from California
and have two thousand new Florida jobs at an average
salary of a one hundred and twenty thousand dollars per canceled.
Everybody stays in, So sorry, Ronda, Florida.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Governor Ron did you also notice the Disney guy saying
they still have seventeen billion dollars they plan to spend
on Florida construction at Disney World in thirteen thousand new
Florida jobs.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
And now he says, I hope we're able to do that.
Dissentus today's worst person in.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
The world, including Lada.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
It's been a long week. And every time I find
myself thinking it's been a long week, I like to
turn to my book of James Thurber, and it's Fridays
with Thurber. And it's been a few fridays since I've
done any James Thurber. And so let's start at the beginning.
As I've mentioned many times, I read this story first
aloud in a class in college in nineteen seventy nine,
(27:07):
and a friend of mine came up to me and said,
you should forget that sportscasting thing. You should read Thurber
for a living, And I said, yeah, that'll ever happen.
This is, for some reason salvation for me. Catharsis and
every other emotion that is appropriate after it has been
a long week. A Box to Hide In by James Thurber.
(27:34):
I waited till the large woman with the awful hat
took up her sack of groceries and went out, peering
at the tomatoes and the lettuce on her way. The
clerk asked me what mine was. Have you got a box,
I asked, A large box. I want a box to
(27:57):
hide in. You want a box, he asked. I want
a box to hide in, I said. He said, you
mean a big box. I said, I meant a big box,
big enough to hold me. I haven't got any boxes,
he said, only cottons that cans come in. I tried
(28:17):
several other groceries and none of them had a box
big enough for me to hide in. There was nothing
for it but to face life out. I didn't feel strong,
and I'd had this overpowering desire to hide in a
box for a long time. Well, what do you mean
(28:37):
you want to hide in this box? One grocer asked me.
It's a form of escape. I told him, hiding in
a box. It circumscribes your worries in the range of
your anguish. You don't see people either, how the hell
do you eat when you're in this box? Asked the grocer.
I don't the hell do you get anything to eat?
(29:00):
I said, I had never been in a box and
didn't know, but that that would take care of itself. Well,
he said, finally, I haven't got any boxes, only some
pasteboard curtains that cans come in. It was the same
every place. I gave up when it got dark and
the groceries closed, and hid in my room again. I
(29:22):
turned out the light and lay on the bed. You
feel better when it gets dark. I could have hit
in a closet, I suppose, but people are always opening doors.
Somebody would find you in a closet. They would be startled,
and you'd have to tell them why you're in the closet.
Nobody pays attention to a big box lying on the floor.
(29:45):
You could stay in it for days and nobody'd think
to look in it, not even the cleaning woman. My
cleaning woman came the next morning and woke me up,
and I was still feeling bad. I asked her if
she knew where I could get a large box. How
(30:05):
big a box you want, she asked, I want a
box big enough for me to get inside of I said.
She looked at me with big dim eyes. There's something
wrong with her glands. She's awful, but she has a
big heart, which makes it worse. She's unbearable. Her husband
(30:26):
is sick, and her children are sick, and she is
sick too. I got to thinking how pleasant it would
be if I were in a box now and didn't
have to see her. I'd be in a box right
there in the room, and she wouldn't know. I wondered
if you had a desire to bark or laugh when
someone who doesn't know walks by the box you're in,
(30:46):
maybe she would have a spell with her heart. If
I did that would die right there. The officers and
the elevator man and mister Grammage would find us funny.
Dog gone thing happened at the building last night. The
doorman would say to his wife, HI led in this
woman to clean up ten f and she never come out.
See she's never in there more in an hour, but
(31:06):
she never come out. See. So when it got time
for me to go off duty, whis says to credit
who was on the elevator, I says, what the hell
you suppose happened to that woman? Cleans tenf. He says
he didn't know. He says he never seen her after
he took her up. So I spoke to mister Grammage
about it. I'm sorry to bother you, mister Grammage, I says,
but there's something funny about that woman cleans tenf. So
(31:28):
I told him. So he said we better have a look,
and we all three goes up and knots on the
door and rings the bells, seeing nobody answers, so he
said we'd have to walk in. So Credic opened the
door and we walked in and here was this woman
cleans the apartment, dead as a herring on the floor,
and the gentleman that lives there was in a box.
(31:53):
The cleaning woman kept looking at me. It was hard
to realize she wasn't dead. It's a form of escape,
I murmured, what say? She asked, Dully, you don't know
of any large packing boxes, do you? I asked, now,
(32:13):
I don't. She said, I haven't found one yet. But
I still have this overpowering urge to hide in a box.
Maybe it will go away, maybe I'll be all right,
maybe it will get worse. It's hard to say a
(32:36):
box to hide in by James Thurber. I've done all
the damage I can do here. Here are the credits.
Most of the music was arranged, produced and performed by
(32:58):
Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel, who are the Countdown
musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by Phillip Schhaneil, guitars,
bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman
theme from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch
(33:18):
Warren Davis and appears courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments
from Nancy Faust the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer was John Dean, and everything else is pretty much
my fault. So that's countdown for this the eight hundred
and sixty fourth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Don't
forget to keep arresting him while we still can. The
(33:42):
next scheduled countdown is Monday, and until then, I'm Keith Oldrimman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
with keith Oldreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(34:06):
you get your podcasts.
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