Hour 2: Pop Culture Icons.

Pop Culture Icons.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here's more Minty in the morning with Larry Minty on
sevent ten wo r.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
It's gonna be a hot one today. Be careful if
he can stay inside. Hey might be a good excuse
not going to work today, especially if you work outside.
I hope you take precautions. Thanks for being with us today.
I know you have a lot of choices. Thanks for
listening to us and the Big Three. We haven't expanded
Big three because man, is there a lot going along today,
giz Laane, I said it again, Jilayne the Maxwell, you

(00:30):
don't pronounce the ass spills the beans. The convicted sex trafficker,
now serving a twenty year sentence in Florida, answered questions
for six hours about Jeffrey Epstein and his clients, which
are upsetting. The whole thing is upsetting to the women
who were victimized as teenagers.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
I think that to be told that suddenly she's being
brought to the table as a potential source of information
when she's previously been charged with perjury by the government
is very confusing and unsettling.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
But it sounds like there's going to be house hearings
on this right now, and hopefully that was victim Andi Farmer.
Hopefully she'll be able to come forward and set the
record straight. Former Congressman George Santos reports to prison today
after his plea for a pardon from Donald Trump. Well,
that failed. I don't think it made it to the president.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Unfortunately, gatekeepers have blockaded for ever getting to the president.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
The Trump administration is suing New York City for its
sanctuary city policy in the wake of a Customs and
Border Patrol agent being shot in the face by two assailants,
both who had long rap sheets since they came into
the country two years ago.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
He was arrested four different times in New York City
and because of the mayor's policies and sanctuary city policies,
was released back to do harm to people into individuals
living in this city. Make no mistake, this office is
in the hospital today fighting for his life because of
the policies of the mayor of the city.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yep. Mayor Adams is the first name, not the only name,
but the first name on the thirty seven page federal
lawsuit against the city. A young police officer in Suffolk
County is shot in the face while serving a search
warrant at the home of a murder suspect in North
Bay Shore.

Speaker 5 (02:23):
So I spoke to him a little while ago. He's
got a smile on his face. I think he's in
a lot of pain, but I think he understands that, yeah,
this could have gone a lot worse. So I think,
you know, he's happy to be alive, and we're happy
that he is alive.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
And the acting President of Columbia, Claire Shipment, explains the
university's decision to put an end to the DOJ investigation
of anti Semitism on the campus by paying a settlement
of two hundred and twenty million dollars.

Speaker 6 (02:51):
It doesn't cross the red lines that we laid out.
It protects our academic integrity that was of course essential
to us. And two, it does reset our relationship with
the federal government in terms of research funding one point
three billion dollars a year, billions in future funding.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, and Penn is settled too. This puts a lot
of pressure on Harvard. They're out there on an island.
Let's see what they are going to do. Now, Let's
get to Rob Astorino, host of The rab Astorino Show
on WOR Saturdays from four to five pm. Also the
host of Saturday agenda, and that's on from one to
three pm on Newsmax. He's got a busy Saturday. Former

(03:28):
Westchester County executive of course as well, Rob Astorino, Rob,
good morning to you. This Epstein thing is not going
to go away. If anything, it is getting bigger and
bigger and bigger of every day that goes by. How
does this end.

Speaker 7 (03:49):
Well?

Speaker 1 (03:49):
Be interesting, Larry, if yesterday's meeting with Maxwell turns into
some sort of reduced stay in a little prison area,
sues in or a little clemency or or something changes
because of what she gave. You know, I'm actually in Washington,
DC right now, and I was in We were out

(04:13):
dinner last night with a bunch of high ranking, let's
put it this way, high ranking White House officials, and
they all kind of roll their eyes on this, as
do a lot of other people. The media is consumed
by it. The Democrats are throwing everything at it because
it's the one thing that can, you know, throw the
Trump train off the track a little bit because of

(04:34):
the successes he's had. But you know, they realize that
they got to do something just to stop this. But
and they keep being told nobody really cares. I mean,
most Americans don't give a crap about this at all,
and I think that's what you know, Trump kind of
did the other day until it got to the point
where you had some Republicans saying, you know, you know, transparency, transparency,

(04:58):
even though for four years not one Democrats that transparency,
transparency when Biden was in there on this or anything else.
But that's what it is. So I wonder what's going
to come out of the Maxwell meeting. That's the big question.
What she's going to get.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, what she's going to get is a huge question.
And I know the victims are watching that because they're
extremely upset, especially the ones that testified, because they said,
we came out of the hiding, we put our faces
and our names on the line to make sure she
went to prison. And they are very upset that a
deal might be made. And I'm sure you can imagine

(05:33):
their feeling on this.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
Oh yeah, no, I have a look at you had
someone commit suicide, right, and I know you're talking about Epstein, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey committed suicide over this. You have Epstein committed suicide,
whether he was helped or not. And then the tragedy
of all the girls and women who were trafficked, you know.
I mean, it's a horrible thing. But the other thing,

(05:55):
of course, is yeah, there's no list. I mean I
think that's pretty confirmed. It really is no list, per sEH.
And yes, Trump's name, like so many other names on
whatever you want to call it, simply because yeah, he
came into contact with Epstein, as did so many other people.
That doesn't mean literally anything, you know. So, but that's

(06:20):
but this is the chum in the water for the CNNs.
I'm still amazed. You know, I'll turn on CNN and
this is this is literally it's like wal to wall Epstein.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, but Rob, this was an unforced error. This is
their own fault.

Speaker 8 (06:33):
Yeah, no, I agree. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
So it's hard to blame the Democrats in the media
right now. And I get it. I've been doing that
as well. But when you go back to the beginning
of this, they said they were going to do it,
and then they didn't do it, and so and that's
the biggest problem. Pete Sessions said something interesting the other
day which I hadn't thought of. He said, there's no list.
There's no list, and and you understand that many of

(06:55):
the names can't come out there because it's just accusations.
Nothing's been proven in court. But there are videos, and
you can identify people in those videos in the act
of a crime. He wants them, he wants those names released.
I think he has a decent point.

Speaker 7 (07:12):
That's an interesting thing.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah, and again, remember the other part of this too
is some mutch of it is under steal, a grand
jury indictment or grand jury investigations, all those kind of
things are under sealed by a judge, and so there
are things that they are not permitted or have no
access to release anyway. But you're right. I mean, that's
the thing too. There's a lot of innocent people who

(07:33):
will get caught up in this for the wrong reasons.
And then there are people who probably did something who
are being somewhat protected because of this quandary, if.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
You will, right, because they're powerful people, and powerful people
get protected. But if they're on that video, they should
be outed. I don't care who they are, if they're
on that video, absolutely one p. Yeah, So maybe that's
where it's going to go. Well, let's talk about this
lawsuit that the doo jeah. I love this idea, and
I'm not sure why they didn't think of this before

(08:04):
to get the supremacy clause of the US Constitution and
use that to go after a sanctuary city policies. They're
going to start with New York, but I'm sure that
they this will affect every sanctuary city, and I think
what they're going to focus on is rikers that is
preventing them from following the law, no.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Question about it. I think they've dropped these lawsuits on
other cities as well. But politically, this probably does not
hurt Adams in a city like New York because again
it's it's overwhelmingly Democrat and the electric they thought he
was way too close to Trump. So a lawsuit by
the Trump administrate, a registration and attacks by the administration

(08:48):
on Adams doesn't necessarily hurt him politically in this period
of time that he's going into, even though he's trying
to work with them on an issue that the people
should agree on, like, yeah, that rapist there, that violent
criminal who doesn't belong here, who already has a rap sheet,
who has already been indicted, who should have been kicked out. Yeah,

(09:09):
we all agree that person should be gone. And yet
because we live in Sillyville in New York, we can't.
There's too many people who don't even agree with that policy.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, that's fascinating that it might help him. That you're
probably right on that. It's just that he's been so
namsy pamsy about the whole sanctuary city issuing. After a while,
it just gets sickening. Rob Astorino, host of The rab
Astorino Show on WOR Saturday is from four to five,
host of Saturday Agenda from one to three, and he's
that's on Newsmax, and he's the former Westchester County executive.

Speaker 7 (09:41):
Rob.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
Always good to talk to you. Thanks for your time.
You have a good weekend, Larry, Yeah, you have a
good show. Chows both of them on Newsmax and on WR. Well,
a final decision has been made on the New Jersey
Little leaguer who was told he couldn't play in a
championship game because he flipped a bat. We'll tell you
what happened next. Plus take us to see Kat Stevens

(10:04):
at the Beacon Theater at a twenty five Stay with
Us Live and another to hear his podcast anytime now.

Speaker 8 (10:12):
Back to Miny in the Morning on war Yes.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
And speaking of the iHeartRadio app, you can go there
to leave a talkback too. You look for seven to
ten WI the talkback area. There's a microphone, you push it,
you record, and you're on the air.

Speaker 9 (10:29):
The Attorney General of New York, Letitia James, says that
the federal agents are kidnapping people. Kidnapping is a crime.
So now what's happening is that you're people on talk
show saying that the federal agents are the criminals and
the illegal immigrants are not criminals because they say, well,
it's just a civil violation. So absolutely turning it on
their heads. The Attorney General should be disbarred for say anything.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
Oh, I agree with you one thousand percent. It's never
going to happen. So she's going to be voted out
of office. Hopefully that's the only way that she's going
to get kicked out of that job. She thought she
was going to be governor. How delusional she thought she
was going to be governor, and she's just embarrassed herself
time and time again. Hey, the AI voiced guy is back.

(11:13):
This time is Joe Biden.

Speaker 10 (11:14):
Good morning, Larry Joe Biden here. I know your listeners
are mostly Magus, but there's a few of my people
out there that listen. So I want to let you
know my new book is coming out soon and the
name of it is I Don't Rememoir.

Speaker 11 (11:27):
It'll be available very soon in Amazon and Whole Food stores.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
I Don't Rememoir. You love him, well, you haven't heard
from him for a couple of weeks, you know, maybe
a week and a half.

Speaker 7 (11:40):
The Feds need to make an example of the local
politicians in New York City. They need to go after
and arrest Mayor de Blasio, who expanded on the immigration
laws and sanctuary city laws. They need to go after
the city council members from Vicky Palladino because we like her,

(12:03):
but they need to make an example of these people.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Yeah, I love that, he said, except for Vicky Palladino.
We like her, isn't she great? I look forward to
talking Vicky all the time. I think you have to
come up with some crimes, you know, let the past
be in the past. At this point, I understand why
you're upset. But I love this this lawsuit by the
federal government against sanctuary cities, and I think they have

(12:30):
a great case. The supremacy law. They went too far
when they kept people out of prisons that's when they
impeded federal law. And so I think that Trump administration
may win this case and that would be huge in
getting ridy of sanctuary cities all across the country. Well,

(12:51):
justice has been served in the Little League controversy in
New Jersey right before the big game, right before or
we thought that Marco Rocko, what a great name, by
the way, best name ever is that? A baseball name
and a jersey name? Marco Roco. I don't know if

(13:11):
you remember, but last week? Was it last week or
earlier this week? It might have been earlier this week
time flies on the show, but it might have been
earlier this week. But there was a ruling against him
because he hit a home run, and man it was
a great home run. And as he's running the first base,
as a lot of major leaguers do, as a matter
of fact, as some of the Little League baseball players

(13:32):
on their video to promote Little League baseball, flip the
bat as they were running the first base. So he
did too. He flipped the bat as he's running to
first base, and they said that that broke the league rules.
By the way, nowhere in the league rules does it
talk about flipping a bat. Nowhere it says no horse play,

(13:53):
so you have to define flipping a bat as horse play?
Is that horseplay to you? Like when you say no
horse play, I think it's kids fighting with each other,
right rse play? Yes, yes, so I don't even think
it fits. And thank god that it was overturned the

(14:16):
Little League commission and they probably deal with this guy.
You know, that's a hard ass all the time that
they say to him, Oh, that's Ben again, you know
they Ben got involved in this again. And three hours
before a big game in the playoffs to see who
gets to go from the area to the Little League
World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, hours beforehand, Marco Rocko was

(14:41):
allowed to play. Now, if this was a movie, he
would hit the game ruinning home run in that game.
But alas they had to hit a game after four
innings because Marco Rocko's team was getting a shellacking in
the hadden't Field Little League. It was a Haddenfield Little

(15:03):
League team that was in uh the state playoffs to
see who gets to go to Williamsport ten ten to
nothing after four innings and they had to call the game.
They had to take out the Mercy rule. Yes, but
he could still be a big star. Yes, he could
still if the movie still end because it's oh, that's right,
this is the set up, this is the drama. It

(15:26):
makes it even better. Everybody's down and out and Marco Roco,
Marco Rocco comes to the comes. I was almost said,
Marco Rubio, I know you looked at me. You looked
at me, funny crash crash looked at me like I
was gonna say, I got it. I caught it in time.
It ended up being Marco Rupco. But Marco Rocko can

(15:48):
still be the hero in this huge comeback story. Marco,
We're all rooting for you because it's double elimination. They
get to play again and so perfect. Wow, let's all
go to the game. When is that? When's the next game?
I have to find out. I am not one hundred percent, Sorr.

Speaker 11 (16:04):
I assume it's not tonight because they played last night
and usually they give these is a break.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yeah, so we'll find out. Wow, wouldn't that be amazing?
You're right, though, this creates even more drama for the
great Marco Rockoory.

Speaker 8 (16:23):
Well, we have had.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
Several celebrity deaths in a short span and these are
people that did leave an imprint on pop culture, and
with that, I want to bring in Robert Thompson. He's
a professor of TV and popular culture at Syracuse University. Hey, Bob,
thanks for joining us again. I appreciate your time.

Speaker 8 (16:46):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
I want to play for you a talkback week got
I think which sums up the feelings of a lot
of people when they hear about these celebrity deaths.

Speaker 11 (16:55):
Malcolm Jamal Warner, Connie Francis, Chuck Mangione, Hulk Hogan, Ozzy Osbourne, Larry.
I don't know how old you are, but my youth
seems to be a figure in the far distance that
grows banker every day.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
How wonderful is that?

Speaker 11 (17:13):
Bob?

Speaker 8 (17:15):
Yeah? And you know, I know what that feels like,
because however old you are, you grow up with the
people who were you know, when you're a kid. The
people who are famous for singing in sports and TV
are what ten twenty years older than you. I'm sixty five,
so I'm getting to that period where everybody that was
big and stars and performing when I was ten years

(17:37):
old are reaching the end of their lives one way
or another.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Before we run through the people that died recently to
talk about what you believe the impact of those people
have on pop culture. Talk about what you just said,
the fact that all of these people that were a
big part of your lives, especially when you were younger,
when they passed, What does that mean to a person.

(18:02):
They Can that have a profound effect or is it
just the passing of time?

Speaker 8 (18:07):
Well, I mean, I think it can, and it depends
on how deep ones relationship were with any of these people.
And of course there are a lot of people who
developed very very strong relationships with people they've never met.
And it's not surprising. I remember how a bunch of
my students were really it seemed like on the verge

(18:28):
of having some serious emotional issues when Matthew Perry died.
And I think part of it is that they grew
up long after that show had been off the air,
but they watched it all the time. First it was
on all the time on cable, and then they were
watching it on streaming. So there's a sense that some
of these people a musician you listen to all the time,

(18:50):
or a TV show you watch a lot, you actually
spend more time with them than you do with many
of the people that you love deeply, and I think
there is a sense then when they go that there's
some sort of loss. However, there is a silver lining
to all of these celebrity passings is that they've all
lived in the electronic age and the performances they did

(19:15):
and that's how we experienced them were recorded. So it
was very sad when Michael Jackson died, when Elvis Presley died,
but we still have enormous bodies of work. We can
still listen to it. There are many people that were gone.
Most of the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers were

(19:36):
long gone before many people discovered them, and they can
still watch all their movies and all of that. So,
you know, when we talk about famous people from the
nineteenth century, when they died, only memories were left of
their performances. Now, you know, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, we

(19:57):
can still listen to them right now.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
If we want to, yeah, or see interview. Now it's
pervasive of the internet. Now we can see, you know,
interviews with them, we can see stories about their lives.

Speaker 8 (20:09):
Coincidence, just two days before Malcolm Jamal Warner died, I
was teaching my TV history class, my summer class, and
we had gotten to the eighties and I had played
that very first episode of The Cosby Show where Doctor
Huxtable teaches the kid the value of money using a

(20:30):
monopoly game, one of the most exquisitely executed scenes in
all of sitcom history. And of course, as we watched that,
Malcolm Jamal Warner was thirteen years old all over again.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
What about people like Ozzy Osbourne and people like Hulk
Hogan that were really, you know, fringe celebrities because they
weren't always in the mainstream, but then they forced them
way their way into the mainstream. Do they have the
same profound effects?

Speaker 8 (21:00):
Yeah, Well, of course some people before they forced themselves.
I mean, some people were enormous fans when they were fringe,
the Black Sabbath fan, the Ozzy Osbourne fan. While there
were many radio stations still refusing to play these guys
and critics were saying it's noise and all of that
kind of thing, there was a dedicated fan base that

(21:23):
had emerged by that time. But it is interesting, how so, yes,
I think the answer to that to your question is yes.
In the case of Ozzy Osbourne, he did have this.
He was an enormously famous person, had been recording stuff,
and people had known about him since the nineteen sixties.
But it is interesting how that MTV show, which debuts

(21:47):
almost exactly at the six month anniversary of nine to eleven,
it was March of two thousand and two, and that
did bring Ozzy Osbourne to an entirely new population of people.
They'd heard about and they'd heard the story of their
bat biting and Prince of Darkness and all of that.
But that MTV show The Osbourne's, which is kind of

(22:09):
designed to evoke Ozzy and Harriet, a suburban sitcom, completely
repackaged Ozzy Osbourne as this kind of baffled but really
lovable kind of a guy, the huggable Azzy, even though
every other word had to be beeped. It sounded like
listening to a telegraph message when you watch that show,

(22:30):
which was actually kind of hilarious, but he was totally repositioned.
It was as though we took heavy metal, which was
dangerous and bloody and all of that kind of stuff
and completely domesticated it. For all of the weirdness of
the relationships on that show, it seemed like every bit
as loving a family as leave it to Beaver or

(22:53):
Ozzie and Harriet.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
That's exactly right. That was extremely well said. Ozzy Osbourne
became a character. He he wasn't just the character that
dressed like the devil on stage and had that incredible
voice singings music that your parents hated. He became a dad.
I mean sort of like Overnight. That was a It

(23:16):
was an extremely powerful reality show and gave gave birth
to so many.

Speaker 8 (23:19):
Many Yeah, yeah, you're asolutely right. And it was practically
every night Overnight that that show hit big, that brought
flocks of people back to MTV who had not watched
MTV since flocks of seagulls were on the playlist and
just watching I mean, of course we knew him as

(23:41):
this heavy metal all that stands for and he spent
most of the episodes stepping in the piles left by
the multiple dogs that were there and trying to figure
out how to make the remote control work.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
Robert Thompson enjoyed talking to you, Professor of TV and
Popular Culture at Syracuse. You knowsity. Thanks for spending some
time with us this morning and making us laugh. Appreciate it.

Speaker 8 (24:04):
It was my pleasure. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Let's talk more about these celebrity deaths, because there's a
nagging belief that these deaths always happen in threes. Any
truth to that? WR National Correspondent Rory O'Neil has some
surprising examples. Next, this is meant in the morning on
wor so be honest, right, Yeah, Yeah, there's a celebrity death,

(24:27):
a big celebrity death, and then there's another one a
couple days later. How many times have you said, Okay,
who's the third one going to be? I said it
this week before hul Cogan. Now I feel guilty you
kill Hulk Cogan.

Speaker 4 (24:42):
You know, I'm sorry, but I did it, and I
knew when I said it, I was like, I shouldn't
say that.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
But then luckily Chuck Mancioni also died, so it came
in fours. So now you don't have to feel guilty Anymoreking, Yeah,
it kind of broke the rule, right then. But yeah,
so of course we've all done that. And being the
intrepid reporter that he is, Rory O'Neil WO R National
Correspondent has been digging into this. Is it myth or

(25:12):
is it really based on something? Rory?

Speaker 11 (25:15):
We go to you for the answer, Well, it may
be based on something. And I also add, you could
put Connie Francis into this recent mix, so we'd be
at five and then uh oh, this could be two
groups of threes. So oh you mean no one, thanks
for that, right, always leave that out there. No, But look,

(25:36):
we think that this whole idea, you brought it up.
This Why do we think celebrities die in threes? Maybe
it's because of the day the music died nineteen fifty nine,
Richie Allen, the Big Bopper and Buddy Holly killed in
that plane crash. So we think that maybe that's why
we see these deaths in threes. But it's also been
pretty common over the years. I mean, you go back

(25:57):
to what David Bowie, Alan Rickman and husband of Celine
Dion all died within a few days back in January
of twenty sixteen. In December of sixteen, Alan Thick, George
Michael and Carrie Fisher as well. They all died a
few days apart. I think Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher's mom,
also died a couple days after Carrie Fisher. The big

(26:18):
one for me was back in two thousand and nine,
Ed McMahon died in June of two thousand and nine.
Two days later, both on the same day, Michael Jackson
and Farah Fawcett died.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
Man, that's pretty incredible, or is it something that we
want to believe in, so we've go back in history
to find times that it happens so that we can
make it true.

Speaker 11 (26:41):
Is there a pattern or are we fitting it to
a pattern?

Speaker 1 (26:44):
Right?

Speaker 11 (26:44):
Yeah, I mean that's sort of the unknown here and
you can and now there are so many celebrities these
days as well. Okay, they sort of counter or whatever
it may have been, because it seems when you add
the Internet and sports people and other figures out there,
it's not necessarily movie stars anymore. It's a broader list. No,
there was another one that New Yorkers may appreciate July

(27:05):
of twenty twenty. Kellie Preston, the actress and the wife
of John Travolta. She died a couple days later Naya
Rivera from Glee, and then Regis Philbin also died that
same time in July of twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
So if there's two celebrity deaths, people then either think
there's going to be another one or they go searching
for another one, maybe number three, Yeah, to make the three.
And it sounds like it's a it's some kind of
myth that's out there that everybody wants to be true,
and so they make it true.

Speaker 11 (27:35):
Well, and then what is it with us all sharing
this stuff on Facebook and Instagram as quickly as possible
when we hear someone dies? Why do we all have
to share it instantly and be the first to let
everyone know some terrible news.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Well, that's that's the case with everything, any type of news.
Everybody wants to be the first to get on internet,
you know why. They want clicks a bit though, Yeah,
that's true. There is nothing like an old bit. Rory O'Neil,
thanks so much. Good to talk to you again. Have
a great weekend.

Speaker 11 (28:01):
Thanks Clari, you too.

Speaker 8 (28:02):
Well.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
We keep talking about it. This will be a third
or fourth time for bringing it up. The Epstein story
just dominates the news, so you can't get away from it.
What's next in that story? We're going to talk with
Rick Klin, ABC News Washington Bureau Chief