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Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Today

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Speaker 1: would be a good day to convict Donald J. Trump.

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Speaker 1: The jury in his Stormy Daniel's hush money election interference

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Speaker 1: case may get the case as soon as this afternoon,

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Speaker 1: and then they could deliver the only verdict not materially

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Speaker 1: interfered with by a judge or judges that Trump himself appointed.

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Speaker 1: The country the world keeps emphasizing, in succession, the unprecedented

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Speaker 1: nature of Trump's indictment, of his arrest, of his arraignment,

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Speaker 1: of the mugshot, the trial, the artists sketches, the jury selection,

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Speaker 1: the defense, the witnesses, the objections, the fart naps, and

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Speaker 1: today the unprecedented nature of the closing statements. But for

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Speaker 1: some reason they leave out the other unprecedented reality that

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Speaker 1: our court system is rigged, that it is rigged by Trump.

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Speaker 1: For Trump, with three justices he put on the Supreme

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Speaker 1: Court until they die or resign, delaying and subverting justice

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Speaker 1: in those cases, and an unqualified former yoga correspondent for

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Speaker 1: the Miami Nuevo Herald he appointed to federal court brazenly

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Speaker 1: and openly stalling and trying to sabotage the espionage case

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Speaker 1: against him in that court. That is what is unprecedented

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Speaker 1: about the prosecution of Donald Trump. That his appointees are

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Speaker 1: interfering with the attempts to bring him to justice. And

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Speaker 1: we may never know if he appointed them only on

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Speaker 1: the assurance that they would do exactly what they are

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Speaker 1: doing now when and if it came to this. And

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Speaker 1: what Trump means when he says the New York District

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Speaker 1: Attorney Alvin Bragg's office and Justice Juan Merschan's courtroom are

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Speaker 1: rigged against him, what he means is they are rigged

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Speaker 1: against him because they are not rigged for him. And yes,

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Speaker 1: back to my first comment, I know that every day

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Speaker 1: is a good day to convict Donald J. Trump. This, however,

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Speaker 1: is the only one we're going to get for a

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Speaker 1: while because Judge Cannon, Justice Barrett, Justice Gorsic, and Justice

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Speaker 1: Kavanaugh might as well have offices in Trump Tower, oh

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Speaker 1: and Justice Alito and missus Alito, flag connoisseur and flag

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Speaker 1: pole expert, and much more about them. Presently, verdict would

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Speaker 1: be really unlikely today, but there seems to be a

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Speaker 1: belief that closing statements could easily be finished off before

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Speaker 1: court adjourns and realistically, we might get a verdict tomorrow,

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Speaker 1: especially if one or more jurors bibbed and acted and

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Speaker 1: performed and sneaked onto the jury even though they intended

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Speaker 1: to decide this case purely on the politics. I might

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Speaker 1: add four or against, because remember, if Trump is convicted

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Speaker 1: of anything, especially if it happens fast, he and his

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Speaker 1: cult will insist that's what happened. The option from the

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Speaker 1: other end of the spectrum that somebody made the proverbial

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Speaker 1: buttoned up lip gesture in the mirror and then talked

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Speaker 1: their way past the prosecutors and the judge, and they've

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Speaker 1: just been waiting to start voting not guilty, not guilty,

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Speaker 1: not guilty until the other jurors give up. That is

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Speaker 1: far more likely, because it only takes one to do that.

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Speaker 1: Although this is the right moment to remind you that

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Speaker 1: the four person duror B four hundred is not necessarily

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Speaker 1: a Fox News viewer, even though that was widely reported

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Speaker 1: during jury selection. He said during jury selection that he

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Speaker 1: reads the New York Times and the Daily Mail. He's

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Speaker 1: originally from Ireland. I guess that makes sense, And then

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Speaker 1: he said he gets the rest of his news from

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Speaker 1: MSNBC and Fox, and a reminder again that here in

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Speaker 1: New York City, Fox has owned its own station and

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Speaker 1: has since March nineteen eighty six aired programs called Fox

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Speaker 1: five News. They've never been liberal or anything, but they

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Speaker 1: did have the presence of mind to fire the infamous

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Speaker 1: Greg Kelly, now of Newsmax and Frankly, in New York,

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Speaker 1: the Fox five brand is literally a decade older than

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Speaker 1: the Fox News brand. A New Yorker says he gets

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Speaker 1: his news from Fox, he just as likely means the

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Speaker 1: local station. Also, not to bore you with unqualified analysis

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Speaker 1: about what the closing statements will punch or what the

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Speaker 1: jurors will decide with. I mean, we can all guess

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Speaker 1: what Trump's nut job lawyers are going to say if

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Speaker 1: we can still hear them over his snoring and his gas.

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Speaker 1: But actual experts seem to have built a consensus around

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Speaker 1: five essential legal issues for the jury. Fact Issue Number one,

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Speaker 1: Will the jurors believe Michael Cohen's version of events and

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Speaker 1: his core point, Sure, I lied. I lied for Trump.

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Speaker 1: He paid me to lie, especially since the only counter

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Speaker 1: witness to that, Cohen's sorta kind of ex attorney, self

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Speaker 1: immolated on the stand. Fact issue number two. Did Trump

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Speaker 1: pay Stormy Daniels one hundred and thirty thousand dollars to

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Speaker 1: keep quiet about the sex they had? Or did he

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Speaker 1: pay Stormy Daniels one hundred thirty thousand dollars to keep

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Speaker 1: her from spreading a lie about sex they did not have?

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Speaker 1: Fact issue number three not what was Trump paying about?

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Speaker 1: But why was he paying? Did they prove he was

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Speaker 1: paying to make sure voters didn't know Stormy Daniels' story

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Speaker 1: true or false before the election or was that some

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Speaker 1: sort of coincidence? Fact issue number four, The payoffs were

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Speaker 1: they made by Trump the company or Trump the private

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Speaker 1: amateur scumbag. It is a distinction without a difference, obviously,

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Speaker 1: But if somebody on the jury buys the defense theory

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Speaker 1: that these were private payments by dickwad J. Trump and

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Speaker 1: not payments from his corrupt company, they could talk themselves

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Speaker 1: into an excuse to acquit. In fact issue number last,

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Speaker 1: you pay Cohen, you call it a retainer and a

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Speaker 1: legal expense. He's a lawyer, he's doing legal related stuff.

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Speaker 1: But if the legal related stuff is itself illegal and

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Speaker 1: it's not a retainer because he didn't keep the money,

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Speaker 1: and you had both agreed in advance to cover it

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Speaker 1: up and call it a retainer. You actually completely and

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Speaker 1: utterly falsified the records, didn't you. With one last reminder

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Speaker 1: offered at face value only, there seems to be one

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Speaker 1: other consensus forming among lawyers and jury watchers and trial experts,

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Speaker 1: and it's this The reason Justice Juan Marshan has said

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Speaker 1: nothing about defendant Jay Trump's last ten or so violations

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Speaker 1: of the gag order as opposed to his first ten

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Speaker 1: or so violations of the gag order is that he

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Speaker 1: is in fact planning to tack time onto whatever sentence

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Speaker 1: results from the actual prosecution take care of the bill.

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Speaker 1: Then again, justice theory, but a useful one which might

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Speaker 1: explain why Marshan has bent himself over so far backwards.

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Speaker 1: Today would be a good day to convict Donald J. Trump.

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Speaker 1: There are a lot of possible responses to Israel bombing

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Speaker 1: the refugee tenth it forced Palestinians into in Rafa. One

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Speaker 1: would hope there has been an off the record message

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Speaker 1: to the others in the Israeli government from ours Netanyahu goes,

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Speaker 1: in fact, turn them over to the international Court and

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Speaker 1: stop trying to make the way the Nazis conducted war

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Speaker 1: the way you conduct war, or the United States cuts

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Speaker 1: off all support on say Monday, And there are a

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Speaker 1: lot of responses to congresswomen Talib and other Democrats and

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Speaker 1: progressives threatening President Biden because that has not happened yet

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Speaker 1: or has not happened publicly. But maybe this response will suffice.

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Speaker 1: Quote one thing I do is Trump told a room

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Speaker 1: full of donors in New York two weeks ago. Tonight,

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Speaker 1: per the Washington Post, any student that protests, I throw

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Speaker 1: them out of the country. You know, there are a

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Speaker 1: lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that,

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Speaker 1: they're going to behave it's a radical revolution. It has

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Speaker 1: to be stopped.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 1: If you get me elected, we're going to set that

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Speaker 1: movement back twenty five or thirty years. As always, with

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Speaker 1: a mentally declining psychotic like Trump, it's impossible to differentiate

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Speaker 1: the breadth of the threats from the pathology of his illnesses.

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Speaker 1: He clearly threatened to expel foreign students protesting against Israel.

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Speaker 1: I suppose he doesn't say that just protesting, but he

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Speaker 1: also threatened to expel American students protesting. He said, quote

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Speaker 1: any student that protests, I throw them out of the country.

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Speaker 1: This goes right to the essence of a point I've

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Speaker 1: been making since twenty sixteen, and that was reemphasized spectacularly

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Speaker 1: over the weekend by my friend since childhood, Will Bunch

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Speaker 1: that all of Trump's plans after seizing power involve actually

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Speaker 1: deploying the American mililitary against American civilians. Will's point, mine

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Speaker 1: in a piece I did for the BBC literally eight

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Speaker 1: years ago, was that to round up millions of immigrants,

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Speaker 1: you not only have to have concentration camps, but you

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Speaker 1: also have to have large masses of armed men to

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Speaker 1: suppress protests. Because guess what, when Trump says get out,

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Speaker 1: millions of people are not simply going to line up

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Speaker 1: and start marching towards the nearest border. Same for students,

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Speaker 1: same for students protesting the Middle East in any direction,

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Speaker 1: Same for civilians protesting mass deportations of immigrants. Trump's solution

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Speaker 1: is simple, shoot and kill them. Have the military shoot

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Speaker 1: and kill them. And that moment, we are living in

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Speaker 1: a military dictatorship. So when you hear about the Insurrection

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Speaker 1: Act and mass deportations and any student that protests, I

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Speaker 1: throw them out of the country, remember that you are

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Speaker 1: actually hearing about the gentle mild surface of Trump's plans,

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Speaker 1: and that beneath that gentle mild surface are piles of

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Speaker 1: dead American citizens in every city and state in this country.

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Speaker 1: Before we get to some much needed comic relief, it

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Speaker 1: was nice to know that Memorial Day yesterday was about Trump,

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Speaker 1: like last Christmas was about Trump, like Easter was about Trump,

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Speaker 1: like Mother's Day was about Trump. I suppose it is

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Speaker 1: encouraging that we can still summon both surprise and disgust

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Speaker 1: at his message, the one yesterday that began entirely inappropriately

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Speaker 1: and then went straight to hell from there. Happy Memorial

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Speaker 1: Day to all, he wrote, unaware it was a day

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Speaker 1: for remembering others, but of course in his world there

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Speaker 1: are no others, including the human scum that is working

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Speaker 1: so hard to droi our once great country. And then

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Speaker 1: he smeared a woman that he assaulted and another woman

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Speaker 1: he had to pay off, and he attacked a judge,

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Speaker 1: and he seemed to throw a homophobic smear at Anderson

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Speaker 1: Cooper and ended with a seeming threat against the judge

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Speaker 1: in the case that presumably goes to the jury today.

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Speaker 1: Quote Now, for Mayor Shaan, here is a follow up

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Speaker 1: on Trump's evil, nefarious promised that Putin will not release

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Speaker 1: Evan Gershkovich of The Wall Street Journal until and unless

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Speaker 1: Trump is elected. Bluntly, that at best makes Trump an

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Speaker 1: accessory to an international kidnapping, to say nothing of proving

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Speaker 1: that Trump has been providing aid and comfort to our enemies,

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Speaker 1: which is the legal definition of treason. And no, I

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Speaker 1: am not expecting Biden five months and a week till

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Speaker 1: the election to suddenly prosecute him for treason, although I

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Speaker 1: don't see as many downsides to that as the politicians

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Speaker 1: might thing to do. And what a surprise it's. Another

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Speaker 1: suggestion from Brian Boutler is for Biden to release publicly,

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Speaker 1: one way or the other, every last goddamned piece of

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Speaker 1: intel about Trump's active conspiracies with Putin and other foreign leaders,

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Speaker 1: just the ones in progress as we speak. Hold a

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Speaker 1: news conference, have a Senate Committee conduct to hearing, having

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Speaker 1: the head of Homeland and the CIA and anybody else

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Speaker 1: who has the time to show up. Just throw it

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Speaker 1: all out there, or parcel it out a little bit

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Speaker 1: at a time, week after week. Oh and see if

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Speaker 1: there's anything in there about his United Reich video or

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Speaker 1: Unified Reich video and the other fascist violence propaganda that

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Speaker 1: Trump distributes, and whether or not it is being produced

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Speaker 1: or promulgated by other countries. This is no time to

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Speaker 1: get weak at the knee over protocols and niceties. Trump

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Speaker 1: is a foreign agent. He is trying to take over

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Speaker 1: this country and end its democracy and use its military

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Speaker 1: to then kill his political opponents in the streets in

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Speaker 1: front of their homes. This is the war he chose.

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Speaker 1: Let us make sure that at its end there is

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Speaker 1: no further trace of him. And no, that was not

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Speaker 1: the comic relief. This is the comic relief. If you

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Speaker 1: tried to take the weekend off from all this, you

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Speaker 1: missed Trump getting his come uppance, not a big come uppance. Remember,

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Speaker 1: we are aiming for making sure that at its end

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Speaker 1: there is no trace of him. But he got booed

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Speaker 1: and humiliated and denied and nonplussed, and did I mention

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Speaker 1: he got booed in public, and crazier than all that,

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Speaker 1: crazier than imaginable, we are left in the impossible to

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Speaker 1: predict position of having to thank the people who did

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Speaker 1: it to him. The delegates to the presidential nominating Convention

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Speaker 1: of the Libertarian Party.

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Speaker 3: Now I think you should nominate me or at least

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Speaker 3: vote for me, and we should win together. You heard

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Speaker 3: those words nominate me or vote vote for me, because

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Speaker 3: the Libertarians want to vote for me, and most of

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Speaker 3: them will.

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Speaker 2: That's nige, that snid. Only if you want to win,

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Speaker 2: only if you want to win.

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Speaker 4: Maybe you don't want to win, Maybe you don't want

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Speaker 4: to win.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, dear Roy, Thank you. No, only do that

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Speaker 2: if you want to win. If you want to lose,

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Speaker 2: don't do that.

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Speaker 3: Keep getting you three percent every four years. Just some

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Speaker 3: of the things that make me a libertarian without even

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Speaker 3: trying to be one.

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Speaker 2: That's night.

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Speaker 1: Trump shortly thereafter claimed he had never sought the Libertarian nomination.

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Speaker 1: He claimed Republican party rules deny him the option of

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Speaker 1: accepting the nomination of other parties. This, in political language

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Speaker 1: is what is called a lie. He only revealed this

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Speaker 1: after repeatedly asking them to nominate him, then getting six votes,

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Speaker 1: then getting ruled ineligible by the Libertarians, who then cast

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Speaker 1: all of twenty two votes for Rkjor and disqualified him,

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Speaker 1: and then took eight hours to nominate the guy who

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Speaker 1: took two percent of the Georgia Senate vote two years ago,

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Speaker 1: forcing the Raphael Warnock herschel Walker runoff. And if that

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Speaker 1: was not comic relief enough, you may have noticed, as

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Speaker 1: I did, that Trump's aphasia or dementia or cte or

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Speaker 1: all of the above is now bad enough that he

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Speaker 1: literally could not form the word libertarian at the Libertarian convention.

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Speaker 1: He kept saying libertarian, liber liber liber like it was

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Speaker 1: a new form of Libya. Well, hell, maybe he can

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Speaker 1: get the nomination in Libya. And now to the breaking

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Speaker 1: news that you may have already heard, the flash apparently official,

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Speaker 1: there have been no new reports of insurrectionist flags flown

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Speaker 1: at any of Justice Alito's homes. Stunning, Okay, seriously, not

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Speaker 1: quite as stunning as the Washington Post trying to spin

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Speaker 1: the fact that yeah, yeah, yeah, we had the story

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Speaker 1: of that first flag, the upside down American flag appropriated

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Speaker 1: by the Stop the Steel paramilitary gang. We had that

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Speaker 1: story that it was flying at the Alito's home and Alexandria, Virginia,

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Speaker 1: between Trump's coup attempt on January sixth, twenty twenty one

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Speaker 1: and Biden's inauguration on January twentieth, twenty twenty one. But

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Speaker 1: we buried it. We chose not to run it, because

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Speaker 1: everybody decided Missus Martha and Alito. She put up the flag,

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Speaker 1: not Justice Alito, as if that was the message. The

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Speaker 1: flag conveyed Alito's house, Alito's flagpole, Alito's flag, alito flag,

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Speaker 1: run up the Alito flagpole to see who would salute. Oh,

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Speaker 1: it's that wacky Missus Alito added again. And of course

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Speaker 1: Missus Alito has no possible connection to her own husband

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Speaker 1: and the fact that he's on the you know, Supreme

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Speaker 1: Court thingy, what utter disqualifying dereliction of duty by the

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Speaker 1: Washington Post, which finally reported the story, having sat on

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Speaker 1: it for one thousand, two hundred and twenty two days,

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Speaker 1: having sat on it so long that the Supreme Court

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Speaker 1: reporter who originally found it has already retired, having sat

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Speaker 1: on it so long that nobody is asking now whether

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Speaker 1: the people actually made the editorial decision not to run it,

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Speaker 1: or the paper was pressured internally or externally not to

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Speaker 1: run it. Now they're running it as if they are

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Speaker 1: somehow adding value to the story. By the way, it

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Speaker 1: took them another nine days after The New York Times

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Speaker 1: broke the story to decide whether or not to run

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Speaker 1: their own story that they had two hundred and twenty

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Speaker 1: two days previously, and they're trying to sell it as

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Speaker 1: if they're reporting something that their readers should be happy

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Speaker 1: to see or proud of them more, and not the

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Speaker 1: fact that it rivals Their associate editor, Bob Woodwards equally

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Speaker 1: journalistically corrupt decision to sit on the tapes he got

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Speaker 1: of Trump in February twenty twenty, in which Trump accurately

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Speaker 1: foretold how truly nightmarish COVID would be and how fatally

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Speaker 1: Trump was intending to lie about it. I'll save this

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Speaker 1: for my book to quote its own story. This just

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Speaker 1: in Three years later, the Post reporter quote went to

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Speaker 1: the Alito's home to follow up on the tip about

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Speaker 1: the flag. He encountered the couple coming out of the house.

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Speaker 1: Martha an Alito, was visibly upset by his presence, demanding

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Speaker 1: that he get off my property. As he described the

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Speaker 1: information he was seeking, she yelled, it's an international signal

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Speaker 1: of distress. Alito intervened and directed his wife into a

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Speaker 1: car parked in their driveway, where they had been headed

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Speaker 1: on their way out of the neighborhood. The justice denied

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Speaker 1: the flag was hung upside down as a political protest,

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Speaker 1: saying it stemmed from a neighborhood dispute and indicating that

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Speaker 1: his wife had raised it. Martha an Alito then got

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Speaker 1: out of the car and shouted an apparent reference to

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Speaker 1: the neighbors. Ask them what they did, She said, yard

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Speaker 1: signs about the couple had been placed in the neighborhood.

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Speaker 1: After getting back in the car, she exited again and

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Speaker 1: then brought out from their residence a novelty flag, the

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Speaker 1: type that would typically decorate a garden. She hoisted it

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Speaker 1: up the flagpole. There is that better, she yelled. So

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Speaker 1: so so, not only was there an insurrectionist symbol hanging

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Speaker 1: from a Supreme Court justice's home, and again, this is

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Speaker 1: two weeks to the day after Trump tried to end

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Speaker 1: American democracy and exactly the same day we finally got

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Speaker 1: Biden safely inaugurated. Not only not only was there this

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Speaker 1: flag and the Washington Post knew about it, and clearly,

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Speaker 1: though he would later deny knowing anything about it, Justice

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Speaker 1: Alito on January twentieth, twenty twenty one, he knew all

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Speaker 1: about why it was there, and it was hanging there still.

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Speaker 1: But then there was this confrontation with Missus Justice Alito,

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Speaker 1: who is either nuts or impaired and nuts, or is

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Speaker 1: herself an insurrectionist, or is taking the fall for her husband,

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Speaker 1: or he the Supreme Court justice, is covering up for her,

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Speaker 1: and the Post says, Nope, Mope, mope, so you're here.

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Speaker 1: I agreed with Supreme Court reporter Bob Barnes and others

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Speaker 1: that we should not do a single slice story about

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Speaker 1: the flag because it seemed like the story was about

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Speaker 1: Martha and Alito and not her husband. That is Semaphore News,

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Speaker 1: quoting the former Post senior managing editor Cameron Barr Bar coincidence, coincidence.

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Speaker 1: Cameron Barr says this was his bad call, quoting again instead,

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Speaker 1: Bar said he suggested a story on the bitter neighborhood

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Speaker 1: dispute that Alito told them had prompted his wife to

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Speaker 1: raise the flag. They would use the flag itself, he thought,

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Speaker 1: as a detail in the story, but that story never

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Speaker 1: took shape. In retrospect, I should have pushed harder for

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Speaker 1: that story, Barr said in a phone interview with Semaphore Sunday.

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Speaker 2: I think.

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Speaker 1: You get a tip on or just before Inauguration day,

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Speaker 1: after an attempted coup that a Supreme Court justice, who

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Speaker 1: has skipped the inauguration, by the way, is waving an

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Speaker 1: insurrection flag over to his house. You go, he's there,

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Speaker 1: You talk to him. His wife threatens you, loses her

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Speaker 1: shit and starts saying stuff like ask them what they

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Speaker 1: did and even there is that better? And even though

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Speaker 1: they both insist this was just a neighborhood spat, she says,

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Speaker 1: it's an international signal distress. And you you.

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Speaker 4: You bury the story. Alito, I I am, I am

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Speaker 4: wait wait wait wait I I I Alito, Oh I

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Speaker 4: I Alito.

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Speaker 5: Oh, Nancy, I ya, these are the flags of Alito insurrection.

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Speaker 5: Appeal to heaven, Sam did Noah damn thing?

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Speaker 2: Why don't you ask them what they did?

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Speaker 5: I y y I am Martha and Alito, it's my flag,

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Speaker 5: It's my world.

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Speaker 2: I deny you access.

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Speaker 1: It's an international signal love distress. Thank you, Nancy Faust.

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Speaker 1: Also of interest here on this all new edition of

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Speaker 1: Countdown in memory of perhaps the most beloved man in

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Speaker 1: all of sports, Bill Walton, and so did Trump's father

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Speaker 1: once go up to one of his neighbors in Florida

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Speaker 1: and start praising Hitler. That's what they had on c

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Speaker 1: Span the other day. That's next. This is Countdown.

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Speaker 2: This is Countdown with Keith Oberman.

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Speaker 6: This is Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This

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Speaker 6: is Countdown with Keith Olberman.

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Speaker 1: And it's the Sports Central centered news desks sports News tonight.

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Speaker 1: He would certainly be upset with all of us being

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Speaker 1: this sad. Nobody loved playing his sport, Nobody loved being

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Speaker 1: a sportscaster life more than Bill Walton. His life ended

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Speaker 1: yesterday of cancer at the age of seventy one. Outside

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Speaker 1: of his family, it seemed few of even those closest

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Speaker 1: to him were where he was that sick. Until last week.

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Speaker 1: Bill Walton was probably the most skilled center in basketball history. Injuries,

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Speaker 1: particularly and impossible to believe rash of stress fractures limited

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Speaker 1: him to only three NBA seasons in which he played

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Speaker 1: more than fifty eight games. In four seasons he couldn't

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Speaker 1: play at all in the other ten. He won two

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Speaker 1: league championships, one MVP award, he finished second in the

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Speaker 1: MVP in another year, and at the age of thirty three,

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Speaker 1: he won the award for sixth Man of the Year

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Speaker 1: Best Substitute. He centered the National champions at UCLA in

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Speaker 1: two of his three seasons. There, and as he entered

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Speaker 1: the NBA, it was conceded he was probably going to

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Speaker 1: eclipse Abdul Jabbar, Bill Russell, all of them. His feet

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Speaker 1: would not cooperate. Bill Walton finally retired at age thirty

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Speaker 1: five and went into broadcasting, where he was utterly unpredictable,

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Speaker 1: utterly delighted, utterly off the wall, NBA college, local, national,

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Speaker 1: some Chicago White Sox games, didn't matter what it was.

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Speaker 1: And everybody is heartbroken because yes, all that's true, but

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Speaker 1: more because everybody in sports, it seems, had met him,

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Speaker 1: and everybody he did meet had a story about Bill

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Speaker 1: Walton's kindness, generosity, fun and especially his support. I got

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Speaker 1: to Los Angeles and started working as a local sportscaster there.

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Speaker 1: On the morning of Labor Day, September two, nineteen eighty five,

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Speaker 1: I was in a state of complete disoriented shock, like

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Speaker 1: a permanent jet lag, and somebody decided that I should

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Speaker 1: begin my career at KTLA by getting up at like

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Speaker 1: seven o'clock in the morning and covering a bicycle race,

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Speaker 1: a professional bicycle race on the streets of Beverly Hills.

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Speaker 1: As if anybody watching a local newscast in LA, or

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Speaker 1: if anybody debuting as a sportscaster in LA wanted bicycle highlights,

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Speaker 1: or as if we could possibly shoot enough highlights to

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Speaker 1: make it even vaguely interesting, or tell who won. Well,

404
00:29:33,515 --> 00:29:35,915
Speaker 1: it was day one, so I was still cooperating with management.

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Speaker 1: We set up on Rodeo Drive amid a pretty good

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Speaker 1: crowd for a holiday morning. I had just tested my

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Speaker 1: microphone and I was wondering why it was not as

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Speaker 1: if anybody was going to show up whom my audience

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Speaker 1: would want me to interview, when a door opened behind

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Speaker 1: me and outstepped a man with bright, curly red hair,

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Speaker 1: six feet eleven inches tall, an unmistakable face, Bill Walton

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Speaker 1: of the Los Angeles Clippers. As he later told me,

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Speaker 1: he'd just gotten the call from his agent that he

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Speaker 1: was about to be traded to the Boston Celtics and

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Speaker 1: he was going to go out now to buy tape

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Speaker 1: to wrap his packing boxes in. I knew I had

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Speaker 1: to see if he would comment on this weird scene

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Speaker 1: playing out in front of us, and I started to

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Speaker 1: approach him when he looked at me, stopped and stared

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Speaker 1: and said, Hey, you're that CNN guy Channel eleven just hired.

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Speaker 1: And I said Channel five, and he said whatever, and

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Speaker 1: he then gave me a fantastic interview about this bicycle

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Speaker 1: race and who was in it, and he knew the

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Speaker 1: names of some of the competitors and how much he

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Speaker 1: enjoyed it and never missed it, and welcome to town

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Speaker 1: and good luck, and then off he went, signing a

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Speaker 1: few autographs as he did. A couple of minutes later,

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Speaker 1: another door opens and it's a man named Richard Blackwell,

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Speaker 1: hugely famous then fashion designer, writer, searingly obnoxious critic of

430
00:30:56,435 --> 00:31:00,915
Speaker 1: women's dresses. Mister Blackwell. Now he comes over to me

431
00:31:01,115 --> 00:31:03,995
Speaker 1: and he asks me what's going on, and we then

432
00:31:04,195 --> 00:31:06,075
Speaker 1: roll tape and I explain it to him on camera

433
00:31:06,115 --> 00:31:08,115
Speaker 1: and he says, a race in Beverly Hills. What do

434
00:31:08,155 --> 00:31:11,595
Speaker 1: they win the street? Now, I say to my producer,

435
00:31:11,915 --> 00:31:14,435
Speaker 1: we got mister Blackwell and Bill Walton. We could stand

436
00:31:14,435 --> 00:31:16,715
Speaker 1: here for five years. We can never get anything better

437
00:31:16,755 --> 00:31:21,635
Speaker 1: than these two guys. Let's go home now. Two years later,

438
00:31:21,795 --> 00:31:24,435
Speaker 1: I saw Bill Walton at the NBA Finals in Boston

439
00:31:24,795 --> 00:31:26,595
Speaker 1: and I go up to say hi, and he says,

440
00:31:26,755 --> 00:31:31,395
Speaker 1: you put me and mister Blackwell in that bicycle race story.

441
00:31:32,515 --> 00:31:34,515
Speaker 1: I don't think I saw Bill Walton in person more

442
00:31:34,595 --> 00:31:37,755
Speaker 1: than two or three times again in my life. But

443
00:31:37,795 --> 00:31:41,675
Speaker 1: I got letters and later emails from him, and voicemails

444
00:31:42,115 --> 00:31:44,755
Speaker 1: and phone calls and just hellos that he sent through

445
00:31:44,755 --> 00:31:49,915
Speaker 1: his play by play buddies encouraged me to keep doing it. Sports, news, politics, whatever.

446
00:31:51,835 --> 00:31:54,675
Speaker 1: Everybody mourning Bill Walton today is not just mourning a

447
00:31:54,715 --> 00:31:57,955
Speaker 1: friend close or distant, a friend for decades or a

448
00:31:57,955 --> 00:32:01,635
Speaker 1: friend for just today, decades ago. They are mourning the

449
00:32:01,755 --> 00:32:07,355
Speaker 1: chairman of their own fan club. I've never known anybody

450
00:32:07,555 --> 00:32:13,635
Speaker 1: who enjoyed your success for you more than Bill Walton did,

451
00:32:15,315 --> 00:32:40,915
Speaker 1: nor who tried to encourage you to keep doing it.

452
00:32:41,035 --> 00:32:43,355
Speaker 1: Still ahead of us on this all new edition of Countdown.

453
00:32:43,395 --> 00:32:49,155
Speaker 1: I graduated from college forty five years ago today, meaning

454
00:32:49,755 --> 00:32:51,995
Speaker 1: it's nearly forty five years now that I've had the

455
00:32:52,035 --> 00:32:55,035
Speaker 1: same recurring dream, the one in which I don't graduate

456
00:32:55,075 --> 00:32:59,435
Speaker 1: from college forty five years ago today. Since I was

457
00:32:59,515 --> 00:33:03,035
Speaker 1: taking twenty eight credits ten classes in my last semester,

458
00:33:03,315 --> 00:33:07,035
Speaker 1: there was a reason for this. But the weird thing is,

459
00:33:07,075 --> 00:33:09,715
Speaker 1: for decades it was a standard stress dream, but then

460
00:33:09,715 --> 00:33:13,995
Speaker 1: it turned into something entirely different. Next in things I

461
00:33:14,075 --> 00:33:17,515
Speaker 1: promised not to tell, but first. As ever, there are

462
00:33:17,555 --> 00:33:20,915
Speaker 1: still new more idiots to talk about. The daily roundup

463
00:33:20,915 --> 00:33:23,595
Speaker 1: of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens,

464
00:33:23,875 --> 00:33:29,275
Speaker 1: who constitute two days worst persons in the world, the

465
00:33:29,395 --> 00:33:33,915
Speaker 1: bronze worse. Whoever is running the campaign of Prime Minister

466
00:33:34,035 --> 00:33:40,115
Speaker 1: Rishi Sunach in the UK's snap parliamentary election on July fourth,

467
00:33:40,555 --> 00:33:43,875
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, whoever that is they want Sunak to lose.

468
00:33:44,955 --> 00:33:46,875
Speaker 1: You may remember that as he stepped out of ten

469
00:33:46,915 --> 00:33:49,755
Speaker 1: Downing Street to announce the election and begin his campaign,

470
00:33:49,955 --> 00:33:55,595
Speaker 1: it began to rain on him, pouring drenching rain. No canopy,

471
00:33:56,155 --> 00:34:00,675
Speaker 1: no umbrella, no towel, just him and puddles of water

472
00:34:00,835 --> 00:34:06,075
Speaker 1: on his coat. And it's gone downhill for there. One

473
00:34:06,115 --> 00:34:09,675
Speaker 1: of Sunak's first campaign stops was the Belfast Dockyards, from

474
00:34:09,715 --> 00:34:14,115
Speaker 1: which they launched Titanic. They let him announce that if

475
00:34:14,115 --> 00:34:17,115
Speaker 1: he's returned to office, he'll establish mandatory national service for

476
00:34:17,195 --> 00:34:20,595
Speaker 1: eighteen year olds. In another word, he wants to reinstitute

477
00:34:20,595 --> 00:34:24,195
Speaker 1: the military draft. They let him be questioned by two

478
00:34:24,275 --> 00:34:27,275
Speaker 1: workers at a factory, and then reporters went to get

479
00:34:27,315 --> 00:34:28,835
Speaker 1: the names of the workers, and it turned out the

480
00:34:28,835 --> 00:34:32,275
Speaker 1: workers they were not workers. They were local city councilors

481
00:34:32,275 --> 00:34:35,515
Speaker 1: from his own party. They took him to Wales, where

482
00:34:35,515 --> 00:34:37,915
Speaker 1: he asked local Wales voters if they were looking forward

483
00:34:37,955 --> 00:34:41,315
Speaker 1: to Wales playing in the twenty twenty four Euro Soccer Tournament,

484
00:34:41,315 --> 00:34:44,435
Speaker 1: except Whales did not qualify for the twenty twenty four

485
00:34:44,475 --> 00:34:47,515
Speaker 1: Euro Soccer Tournament. They let him be photographed at a

486
00:34:47,555 --> 00:34:51,955
Speaker 1: supermarket called Morrison's with his head plays perfectly where it

487
00:34:51,995 --> 00:34:55,555
Speaker 1: would obscure the R, the I and the S, so

488
00:34:55,675 --> 00:34:57,675
Speaker 1: his head in these pictures is framed by.

489
00:34:57,555 --> 00:35:00,915
Speaker 2: The word moron.

490
00:35:01,315 --> 00:35:04,235
Speaker 1: And now they've let him be photographed on a private

491
00:35:04,315 --> 00:35:09,515
Speaker 1: jet with his head framed by big signs reading exit.

492
00:35:11,235 --> 00:35:15,075
Speaker 1: The campaign is not yet a week old. The Bronx

493
00:35:15,235 --> 00:35:19,155
Speaker 1: worser Nick Fuentes, there's a lot to hate here. He's

494
00:35:19,195 --> 00:35:22,635
Speaker 1: a racist, he's an anti semini semit, he's a misogynist.

495
00:35:23,235 --> 00:35:25,435
Speaker 1: He has a smirk that makes the non violent want

496
00:35:25,435 --> 00:35:28,315
Speaker 1: to slap it off his face. But his worst quality

497
00:35:28,435 --> 00:35:32,555
Speaker 1: is his utter self unawareness. Nick Fuentes is trying to

498
00:35:32,635 --> 00:35:40,435
Speaker 1: enforce ethnic cleansing, racial purity on the Trump fascists Because

499
00:35:40,435 --> 00:35:46,675
Speaker 1: to Nick Fuentes, jd Vance Trump sickophant. Jd Vance Senator

500
00:35:46,715 --> 00:35:51,275
Speaker 1: of Ohio. Jd Vance is not white enough.

501
00:35:51,755 --> 00:35:56,795
Speaker 7: Jd Vance also has a non white wife, an Indian wife,

502
00:35:56,835 --> 00:36:01,115
Speaker 7: and a kid named Vivek. All his kids have Indian names,

503
00:36:02,595 --> 00:36:05,155
Speaker 7: So it's like, what exactly are we getting? And that's

504
00:36:05,195 --> 00:36:07,275
Speaker 7: not a dig at him just because I'm a racist

505
00:36:07,355 --> 00:36:09,955
Speaker 7: or something, but it's like, who is this guy?

506
00:36:10,035 --> 00:36:10,355
Speaker 2: Really?

507
00:36:10,435 --> 00:36:12,915
Speaker 7: Do we really expect that the guy who has an

508
00:36:12,915 --> 00:36:15,875
Speaker 7: Indian wife and name their kid Vivek is going to

509
00:36:15,915 --> 00:36:17,275
Speaker 7: support white identity?

510
00:36:17,675 --> 00:36:21,275
Speaker 1: It will never occur to Nick Fuentes unless Trump triumphs

511
00:36:21,395 --> 00:36:23,635
Speaker 1: and we go fascist. It will never occur to him

512
00:36:23,795 --> 00:36:26,435
Speaker 1: until they are literally dragging him off by his feet.

513
00:36:27,115 --> 00:36:29,995
Speaker 1: That all his enabling of the virulence and the violence

514
00:36:30,035 --> 00:36:32,235
Speaker 1: will mean nothing in his own defense. That sooner or

515
00:36:32,275 --> 00:36:34,515
Speaker 1: later the Trumpists will look at him and look at

516
00:36:34,515 --> 00:36:39,075
Speaker 1: his name, and they'll say, Fuentes, what makes you all

517
00:36:39,195 --> 00:36:43,595
Speaker 1: think we think you are white? And then they'll drag

518
00:36:43,635 --> 00:36:47,635
Speaker 1: him off by his feet. But our winner, the worst,

519
00:36:47,795 --> 00:36:53,275
Speaker 1: Fred Trump. It's father we already know. He was arrested

520
00:36:53,315 --> 00:36:55,675
Speaker 1: during a public fight in Queens on Memorial Day of

521
00:36:55,755 --> 00:36:59,595
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty seven, a fight during a ku Klux Klan

522
00:36:59,755 --> 00:37:05,475
Speaker 1: March seven. Arrested at the ku klux Klan March. They

523
00:37:05,515 --> 00:37:09,635
Speaker 1: gave Fred Trump's address in the newspaper, but they did

524
00:37:09,635 --> 00:37:12,515
Speaker 1: not say whether he was fighting for the KKK or

525
00:37:12,555 --> 00:37:15,475
Speaker 1: against it, though the evidence suggests he was part of

526
00:37:15,515 --> 00:37:19,315
Speaker 1: the clan march. And see if this sounds familiar, the

527
00:37:19,355 --> 00:37:22,195
Speaker 1: clan passed around a flyer that read, liberty and democracy

528
00:37:22,195 --> 00:37:27,275
Speaker 1: have been trampled upon when native born protest Americans dare

529
00:37:27,275 --> 00:37:30,835
Speaker 1: to organize to protect one flag, the American flag, one school,

530
00:37:30,875 --> 00:37:37,035
Speaker 1: the public school, and one language, the English language, so

531
00:37:37,555 --> 00:37:39,235
Speaker 1: that we already knew about.

532
00:37:39,395 --> 00:37:39,755
Speaker 2: Then.

533
00:37:39,995 --> 00:37:44,595
Speaker 1: This happened on Washington Journal on c SPAN on Friday morning,

534
00:37:44,595 --> 00:37:48,075
Speaker 1: and the topic was your view of Trump's rhetoric. And

535
00:37:48,155 --> 00:37:50,835
Speaker 1: I don't know who this is, And they didn't say

536
00:37:50,835 --> 00:37:52,635
Speaker 1: it on c SPAN because you don't have to give

537
00:37:52,675 --> 00:37:56,115
Speaker 1: your name, and I don't know if he's lying. I

538
00:37:56,155 --> 00:37:58,395
Speaker 1: only know c SPAN followed up on this by doing

539
00:37:58,475 --> 00:37:59,675
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing about it.

540
00:37:59,715 --> 00:38:05,275
Speaker 8: But here you go, next, good money. Unless I just

541
00:38:05,315 --> 00:38:09,635
Speaker 8: want to refer that I'm a ninety two year old man,

542
00:38:09,715 --> 00:38:13,435
Speaker 8: and I will. I remember when Trump's father was in

543
00:38:13,435 --> 00:38:16,635
Speaker 8: our village and talked to me. I personally, he was

544
00:38:16,675 --> 00:38:21,835
Speaker 8: really a fan of Hitler. He'd said that dictatorship is

545
00:38:21,875 --> 00:38:24,315
Speaker 8: not as bad as people think. He says, one man

546
00:38:24,475 --> 00:38:28,155
Speaker 8: rule is better than having too many people trying to

547
00:38:28,195 --> 00:38:31,435
Speaker 8: bring their opinion up. And that was the same thing

548
00:38:31,555 --> 00:38:35,635
Speaker 8: his son days. He believes that dictatorship is the best

549
00:38:35,635 --> 00:38:38,555
Speaker 8: thing for this country. And sooner or later you're going

550
00:38:38,595 --> 00:38:41,555
Speaker 8: to wake up and believe when he becomes president, he'll

551
00:38:41,595 --> 00:38:45,515
Speaker 8: become a dictator. So America be aware, and I'll say

552
00:38:45,555 --> 00:38:47,155
Speaker 8: goodbye to America. Hello.

553
00:38:48,395 --> 00:38:54,115
Speaker 1: Kind of amazing, really, Fred Trump, the nut does not

554
00:38:54,435 --> 00:38:59,315
Speaker 1: fall far from the tree. Two days, Where's Where's Sudden?

555
00:39:00,555 --> 00:39:24,515
Speaker 1: And May twenty eighth, two thousand, twenty four. I did

556
00:39:24,555 --> 00:39:29,155
Speaker 1: not have the dream last night, but every other time

557
00:39:29,195 --> 00:39:33,515
Speaker 1: I've had the dream, it's been May twenty eighth, but

558
00:39:33,555 --> 00:39:39,435
Speaker 1: not twenty twenty four. May twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine,

559
00:39:39,635 --> 00:39:42,075
Speaker 1: to the number one story on the countdown in this

560
00:39:42,155 --> 00:39:49,955
Speaker 1: all new edition. And my only recurring dream of my life,

561
00:39:49,995 --> 00:39:56,915
Speaker 1: but I've had it a thousand times, two thousand times.

562
00:39:57,875 --> 00:40:01,155
Speaker 1: In the only recurring dream of my life, which I

563
00:40:01,155 --> 00:40:03,795
Speaker 1: have had a thousand times or two thousand times, it

564
00:40:03,915 --> 00:40:10,355
Speaker 1: is always the morning of May twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine.

565
00:40:10,635 --> 00:40:18,315
Speaker 1: Always it doesn't vary. Every other detail of the dream varies, updates,

566
00:40:19,155 --> 00:40:23,155
Speaker 1: adds in new details, adds in new life experiences, throws

567
00:40:23,195 --> 00:40:30,475
Speaker 1: in additional twists, seems more nightmarish, sometimes more annoying, sometimes

568
00:40:30,515 --> 00:40:36,595
Speaker 1: more comical, and lately more enjoyable. It's a very strange,

569
00:40:36,675 --> 00:40:41,275
Speaker 1: recurring dream, and it's always about the morning of May

570
00:40:41,355 --> 00:40:49,875
Speaker 1: twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine, graduation day at Cornell University,

571
00:40:51,115 --> 00:40:56,635
Speaker 1: and starting sometime that summer June, maybe certainly by the

572
00:40:56,795 --> 00:41:00,475
Speaker 1: end of that summer, I began to have this dream,

573
00:41:00,995 --> 00:41:04,675
Speaker 1: not more than once a once a week on average,

574
00:41:05,555 --> 00:41:09,475
Speaker 1: and usually under conditions of great pressure. And the dream

575
00:41:09,555 --> 00:41:13,835
Speaker 1: is not that complicated, although as I say, it updates

576
00:41:14,875 --> 00:41:17,035
Speaker 1: so that a version of the dream in nineteen seventy

577
00:41:17,115 --> 00:41:20,915
Speaker 1: nine would have been significantly different than the last time

578
00:41:20,915 --> 00:41:24,475
Speaker 1: I had the dream, probably earlier this year because the

579
00:41:24,555 --> 00:41:28,555
Speaker 1: frequency has fallen off. As I'll explain later, it's not

580
00:41:28,595 --> 00:41:33,795
Speaker 1: a violent dream. There are no monsters. There's just pressure

581
00:41:34,075 --> 00:41:37,235
Speaker 1: and stress, and it's always the same thing. And it

582
00:41:37,315 --> 00:41:41,035
Speaker 1: literally took me more than forty two forty three years

583
00:41:41,035 --> 00:41:43,035
Speaker 1: to figure out what was at the heart of it,

584
00:41:43,515 --> 00:41:45,555
Speaker 1: and for much of that time I had the assistance

585
00:41:45,595 --> 00:41:48,115
Speaker 1: of a professional. And this was not some sort of

586
00:41:48,195 --> 00:41:50,835
Speaker 1: crisis in which my life was being affected by this.

587
00:41:50,915 --> 00:41:53,115
Speaker 1: But it was just this same dream again and again

588
00:41:53,115 --> 00:41:57,155
Speaker 1: and again, and it got so ordinary that in it

589
00:41:57,235 --> 00:42:00,195
Speaker 1: sometimes characters would say to me, write this part down.

590
00:42:00,235 --> 00:42:09,075
Speaker 1: It's new. It's graduation morning. I am unexpectedly and delightfully

591
00:42:09,875 --> 00:42:14,115
Speaker 1: expected to graduate on time at Cornell University, even though

592
00:42:14,115 --> 00:42:17,795
Speaker 1: I missed an entire semester and had to cram literally

593
00:42:18,475 --> 00:42:22,275
Speaker 1: twenty eight credits into my last semester at the school

594
00:42:23,475 --> 00:42:25,835
Speaker 1: and pass all of my courses. I think it was

595
00:42:26,155 --> 00:42:30,515
Speaker 1: ten different courses. That includes one credit for being an

596
00:42:30,515 --> 00:42:33,595
Speaker 1: intern at a television station in New York the previous summer,

597
00:42:33,875 --> 00:42:39,515
Speaker 1: and an independent research program about comparing means of gathering

598
00:42:39,595 --> 00:42:43,755
Speaker 1: news at that station and my college radio station and

599
00:42:43,795 --> 00:42:46,875
Speaker 1: a news organization I worked for briefly in nineteen seventy eight.

600
00:42:47,875 --> 00:42:49,635
Speaker 1: There were a couple of one credit courses in there,

601
00:42:49,675 --> 00:42:51,955
Speaker 1: but there were at least seven classes that met and

602
00:42:51,995 --> 00:42:56,035
Speaker 1: I occasionally went to them. And I am to graduate,

603
00:42:57,035 --> 00:43:00,875
Speaker 1: and my parents are already at the arena, or in

604
00:43:00,915 --> 00:43:04,475
Speaker 1: this case, the field, Shellkoff Field, the football stadium at Cornell.

605
00:43:05,235 --> 00:43:08,675
Speaker 1: They're already there, and it's ten o'clock in the morning,

606
00:43:08,715 --> 00:43:11,635
Speaker 1: eleven o'clock in the morning, and somehow the phone rings

607
00:43:11,635 --> 00:43:14,995
Speaker 1: in my apartment. It's always the same place, two hundred

608
00:43:14,995 --> 00:43:19,915
Speaker 1: and seven Delaware Avenue, Ithica, New York, the ground floor

609
00:43:19,955 --> 00:43:22,675
Speaker 1: apartment in the old house there, with a very nice porch,

610
00:43:22,795 --> 00:43:26,555
Speaker 1: very nice place, all things considered. Bathroom was a little small.

611
00:43:28,835 --> 00:43:32,035
Speaker 1: You could sit in the bathroom and reach out and

612
00:43:32,195 --> 00:43:34,875
Speaker 1: answer the phone out in the living room. That's how

613
00:43:34,875 --> 00:43:40,715
Speaker 1: small the bathroom was. In any event, it's always that morning.

614
00:43:41,355 --> 00:43:44,715
Speaker 1: The light is exactly the same every time coming through

615
00:43:44,715 --> 00:43:48,555
Speaker 1: the window, and the phone wakes me up, and it's

616
00:43:48,595 --> 00:43:53,075
Speaker 1: the registrar's office or somebody else at Cornell. These details

617
00:43:53,115 --> 00:43:56,315
Speaker 1: are usually just skated by, and they're telling me that I,

618
00:43:56,475 --> 00:44:00,995
Speaker 1: in fact have not graduated. But I still can provided

619
00:44:01,195 --> 00:44:05,955
Speaker 1: I read five hundred pages of a book a history

620
00:44:05,995 --> 00:44:09,875
Speaker 1: book by noon, or submit a twenty five page paper

621
00:44:10,155 --> 00:44:18,075
Speaker 1: by noon, or take seven final exams by noon, or

622
00:44:18,115 --> 00:44:22,955
Speaker 1: attend twenty five sections of a biology class by noon.

623
00:44:24,795 --> 00:44:26,955
Speaker 1: It is the standard, and I know other people who've

624
00:44:26,955 --> 00:44:31,315
Speaker 1: had it, the standard non graduation dream. But the thing

625
00:44:31,395 --> 00:44:34,715
Speaker 1: about this dream is, as I say, it is always updated,

626
00:44:35,235 --> 00:44:38,915
Speaker 1: so that since It is clear to me the moment

627
00:44:38,955 --> 00:44:41,915
Speaker 1: that request comes in that I have to take seven

628
00:44:41,995 --> 00:44:44,555
Speaker 1: final exams by noon and it's already ten o'clock and

629
00:44:44,595 --> 00:44:46,195
Speaker 1: they each take an hour, and there's no way I'm

630
00:44:46,195 --> 00:44:49,675
Speaker 1: going to graduate on time. I'm going to have to

631
00:44:49,715 --> 00:44:52,835
Speaker 1: spend the summer going to summer school at Corneilla University.

632
00:44:52,875 --> 00:44:55,355
Speaker 1: And thus the jobs I have lined up, the job

633
00:44:55,395 --> 00:44:58,115
Speaker 1: prospects that in fact produced the job within a month

634
00:44:58,275 --> 00:45:00,555
Speaker 1: of my graduation, they're all going to go away because

635
00:45:00,595 --> 00:45:04,075
Speaker 1: I have to stay there to graduate. When it gets

636
00:45:04,115 --> 00:45:07,275
Speaker 1: more pressure filled, I in fact have to go back

637
00:45:07,355 --> 00:45:11,235
Speaker 1: and redo the entirety of my senior year at Cornell.

638
00:45:11,395 --> 00:45:14,115
Speaker 1: So now it's not the question of one course not

639
00:45:14,235 --> 00:45:18,115
Speaker 1: being completed or two or three, it's the entire year.

640
00:45:18,195 --> 00:45:21,155
Speaker 1: It's forty two credits. It's like a year and a

641
00:45:21,195 --> 00:45:26,035
Speaker 1: half's worth of school. There have been occasions where I've

642
00:45:26,035 --> 00:45:29,715
Speaker 1: had this dream where I am somehow both at Cornell

643
00:45:29,835 --> 00:45:34,835
Speaker 1: University and on ESPN, and I have to quit the

644
00:45:34,915 --> 00:45:38,275
Speaker 1: job at ESPN to go back to the start of

645
00:45:38,315 --> 00:45:41,715
Speaker 1: my collegiate career. So it's no longer just I have

646
00:45:41,795 --> 00:45:44,235
Speaker 1: to redo my senior year. I have to quit a

647
00:45:44,315 --> 00:45:47,915
Speaker 1: job and finish school and go back to the beginning.

648
00:45:47,955 --> 00:45:50,715
Speaker 1: I have to become a freshman again, because it's graduation

649
00:45:50,875 --> 00:45:53,835
Speaker 1: morning and I have not in fact graduated, even though

650
00:45:53,835 --> 00:45:55,675
Speaker 1: they have told me I was going to, and my

651
00:45:55,835 --> 00:46:00,715
Speaker 1: parents and my sister are sitting out there. The worst

652
00:46:00,875 --> 00:46:03,995
Speaker 1: one I ever had was in the waning days at MSNBC,

653
00:46:04,155 --> 00:46:06,835
Speaker 1: when I knew I could not do that show any longer,

654
00:46:06,875 --> 00:46:09,955
Speaker 1: and that they had violated my contract in so many

655
00:46:09,955 --> 00:46:11,915
Speaker 1: different ways that I could have spent the rest of

656
00:46:11,955 --> 00:46:15,955
Speaker 1: my life suing them multiple times for breach of contract,

657
00:46:16,755 --> 00:46:19,315
Speaker 1: or I could simply take the money and get out

658
00:46:19,315 --> 00:46:21,155
Speaker 1: and try to do it somewhere else, which is what

659
00:46:21,275 --> 00:46:25,835
Speaker 1: I did. But at the worst of that at MSNBC,

660
00:46:26,035 --> 00:46:28,475
Speaker 1: I woke up from this dream doing one of these.

661
00:46:30,075 --> 00:46:32,875
Speaker 1: Because in the dream, not only was I at MSNBC

662
00:46:33,075 --> 00:46:36,995
Speaker 1: doing countdown and on graduation day at Cornell on May

663
00:46:37,035 --> 00:46:39,155
Speaker 1: twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine, not only were these things

664
00:46:39,195 --> 00:46:42,875
Speaker 1: happening simultaneously, but because I had not and I think

665
00:46:42,915 --> 00:46:45,195
Speaker 1: in this case, there was some class that I had

666
00:46:45,435 --> 00:46:49,515
Speaker 1: successfully dropped, only they decided in retrospect I had failed

667
00:46:49,515 --> 00:46:51,755
Speaker 1: to drop the course. Therefore I had failed the course.

668
00:46:51,915 --> 00:46:54,275
Speaker 1: Therefore I had two more credits to it. Whatever it was,

669
00:46:55,515 --> 00:46:59,755
Speaker 1: I now had to quit the MSNBC job and go back,

670
00:46:59,915 --> 00:47:02,515
Speaker 1: not to the start of my college career, not to

671
00:47:02,555 --> 00:47:05,155
Speaker 1: the start of high school, but I had to resume

672
00:47:05,235 --> 00:47:07,995
Speaker 1: my education and do it all over again as a

673
00:47:08,035 --> 00:47:12,755
Speaker 1: twenty year old, beginning in the third grade. And the

674
00:47:12,875 --> 00:47:16,115
Speaker 1: dream ended with me walking into my third grade classroom

675
00:47:17,875 --> 00:47:22,475
Speaker 1: and seeing all of my third grade classmates. They certainly

676
00:47:22,555 --> 00:47:24,315
Speaker 1: looked like the ones that I was in school with.

677
00:47:24,355 --> 00:47:29,315
Speaker 1: Some of them I still know. There was Amy Farber,

678
00:47:29,915 --> 00:47:33,195
Speaker 1: there was my friend Pat Sinatra. They were all there,

679
00:47:33,195 --> 00:47:35,515
Speaker 1: and they were all kids, and I was an adult.

680
00:47:35,795 --> 00:47:39,555
Speaker 1: And the first most terrifying thing, the only true nightmare

681
00:47:39,795 --> 00:47:42,515
Speaker 1: of these nightmares or recurring dreams that I ever had,

682
00:47:44,395 --> 00:47:46,395
Speaker 1: I had to try to sit as a six foot

683
00:47:46,435 --> 00:47:49,275
Speaker 1: four inch adult in one of those school chairs.

684
00:47:51,755 --> 00:47:52,555
Speaker 2: And that's when.

685
00:47:52,395 --> 00:47:56,595
Speaker 1: They shot in the movie that is your nightmare zooms

686
00:47:56,635 --> 00:47:59,795
Speaker 1: out and you're a tiny little figure in a big picture,

687
00:47:59,915 --> 00:48:02,355
Speaker 1: screaming your head off because you've been stuck into one

688
00:48:02,355 --> 00:48:05,995
Speaker 1: of these chairs and you can never get out. So

689
00:48:06,075 --> 00:48:09,035
Speaker 1: the dream would constantly update over the decades wherever I

690
00:48:09,115 --> 00:48:11,235
Speaker 1: was working. I had to quit that job and go

691
00:48:11,355 --> 00:48:13,755
Speaker 1: back to depending on the amount of pressure on me

692
00:48:14,275 --> 00:48:17,035
Speaker 1: as far back as the third grade. Sometimes it would

693
00:48:17,075 --> 00:48:19,595
Speaker 1: be much easier. Sometimes it would be you forgot to

694
00:48:19,635 --> 00:48:23,075
Speaker 1: return these library books. You have to do it by noon,

695
00:48:23,115 --> 00:48:25,195
Speaker 1: or you don't graduate. It's like, well, here they are, okay,

696
00:48:25,235 --> 00:48:31,435
Speaker 1: you graduate. The reason that the dream had such staying power,

697
00:48:32,115 --> 00:48:34,235
Speaker 1: which was easy to figure out even the first time

698
00:48:34,275 --> 00:48:37,675
Speaker 1: I had it, was simply this. I did have twenty

699
00:48:37,675 --> 00:48:41,595
Speaker 1: eight credits in my last semester at Cornell, very simple process.

700
00:48:42,115 --> 00:48:45,275
Speaker 1: I the second half of my freshman year got sick.

701
00:48:45,915 --> 00:48:48,755
Speaker 1: It might have been a cold, it might have been mononucleosis.

702
00:48:48,795 --> 00:48:51,195
Speaker 1: We never quite figured out. But I didn't really want

703
00:48:51,195 --> 00:48:53,955
Speaker 1: to be at Cornell University. In January nineteen seventy six,

704
00:48:53,995 --> 00:48:55,795
Speaker 1: I had not had a good time as a freshman,

705
00:48:55,835 --> 00:48:58,675
Speaker 1: and I didn't really want to be there, including the

706
00:48:58,715 --> 00:49:02,715
Speaker 1: realization that at the age of just turned seventeen, I

707
00:49:02,835 --> 00:49:05,715
Speaker 1: really wasn't ready to be there. So I managed to

708
00:49:05,755 --> 00:49:09,115
Speaker 1: find a way out, whether it was a true serious

709
00:49:09,195 --> 00:49:13,235
Speaker 1: illness or just a cold that I milked. The next

710
00:49:13,235 --> 00:49:15,475
Speaker 1: thing I knew, my dad was coming up and rather

711
00:49:15,995 --> 00:49:19,635
Speaker 1: unhappily packing me into his car and taking me home.

712
00:49:20,275 --> 00:49:23,115
Speaker 1: Which is where I needed to be right then. However,

713
00:49:23,235 --> 00:49:25,235
Speaker 1: when it came to be my senior year, and I

714
00:49:25,275 --> 00:49:29,035
Speaker 1: had flourished at Cornell University and managed the radio station

715
00:49:29,195 --> 00:49:32,635
Speaker 1: and set myself up for this career and actually learned

716
00:49:32,675 --> 00:49:35,155
Speaker 1: how to manage my time, because that's what was good

717
00:49:35,195 --> 00:49:37,675
Speaker 1: about that university. It taught you that you were, in

718
00:49:37,675 --> 00:49:40,195
Speaker 1: fact going to have to punt on several unimportant things,

719
00:49:40,395 --> 00:49:42,435
Speaker 1: and you could not get an A plus on everything

720
00:49:42,435 --> 00:49:47,635
Speaker 1: in life. So going into my senior year, after my

721
00:49:47,995 --> 00:49:50,915
Speaker 1: fall schedule had been completed with the normal load of

722
00:49:50,955 --> 00:49:55,235
Speaker 1: fifteen or sixteen hours worth of credits, you know, five courses,

723
00:49:55,795 --> 00:49:58,195
Speaker 1: tough ones, couple of history classes, maybe a four credit

724
00:49:58,235 --> 00:50:00,555
Speaker 1: course here, maybe it was sixteen, my dad said, And

725
00:50:00,555 --> 00:50:03,435
Speaker 1: then I still had forty two credits to go. My

726
00:50:03,555 --> 00:50:08,435
Speaker 1: dad said, hey, I'm not paying for anything after next spring.

727
00:50:08,635 --> 00:50:12,915
Speaker 1: Have a nice semester. And I was like what he said, Yeah, Yeah,

728
00:50:13,275 --> 00:50:15,115
Speaker 1: If you don't graduate on time next spring, I'm not

729
00:50:15,115 --> 00:50:17,115
Speaker 1: going to pay for a dime of it, You're on

730
00:50:17,155 --> 00:50:21,795
Speaker 1: your own. So that meant that I was starting that

731
00:50:21,835 --> 00:50:28,955
Speaker 1: semester with fifteen credits and I needed twenty seven in

732
00:50:29,035 --> 00:50:34,275
Speaker 1: the spring. As it worked out, I took twenty eight.

733
00:50:34,955 --> 00:50:37,275
Speaker 1: And also because I had missed the second half of

734
00:50:37,315 --> 00:50:40,955
Speaker 1: my freshman year, I had all sorts of freshman mandatory

735
00:50:41,115 --> 00:50:43,395
Speaker 1: classes that I had to take that I had not taken,

736
00:50:43,435 --> 00:50:45,195
Speaker 1: that I had dropped out of, that I was taking

737
00:50:45,235 --> 00:50:47,835
Speaker 1: when I had been an actual freshman in nineteen seventy six,

738
00:50:49,035 --> 00:50:52,835
Speaker 1: and I being in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences,

739
00:50:52,875 --> 00:50:56,035
Speaker 1: which is where the Communications department was and is at Cornell.

740
00:50:56,675 --> 00:50:58,715
Speaker 1: Those were all science classes. So I had to take

741
00:50:58,755 --> 00:51:05,995
Speaker 1: a freshman biology, freshman chemistry, freshman physics, and one leftover

742
00:51:06,155 --> 00:51:09,635
Speaker 1: freshman English creative writing class. That one was not too

743
00:51:09,715 --> 00:51:13,235
Speaker 1: much trouble, but I had other history classes to take.

744
00:51:13,315 --> 00:51:17,275
Speaker 1: I had to take literally seven active classes, and I

745
00:51:17,355 --> 00:51:22,475
Speaker 1: think maybe it was eight, and there were two independent

746
00:51:22,555 --> 00:51:25,475
Speaker 1: study classes. There's a lot of classes, and guess what,

747
00:51:26,315 --> 00:51:28,355
Speaker 1: I lost track of a lot of them, and I

748
00:51:28,515 --> 00:51:31,435
Speaker 1: double scheduled things because in those pre computer days, there

749
00:51:31,475 --> 00:51:34,315
Speaker 1: was no way for them to stop you from registering

750
00:51:34,315 --> 00:51:36,835
Speaker 1: for a course that required you to be at a

751
00:51:36,955 --> 00:51:39,755
Speaker 1: lab at three o'clock in the afternoon for a science

752
00:51:39,755 --> 00:51:43,155
Speaker 1: class and at a section for a history class at

753
00:51:43,155 --> 00:51:45,115
Speaker 1: three point thirty in the afternoon. You could do that

754
00:51:46,275 --> 00:51:50,155
Speaker 1: who's going to know. I was later told that at

755
00:51:50,155 --> 00:51:54,235
Speaker 1: the sections, the discussion sections with the teaching assistant for

756
00:51:54,315 --> 00:51:58,355
Speaker 1: the class in biology, which was an environmental class, the

757
00:51:58,395 --> 00:52:00,875
Speaker 1: ecology class which I took, because there was no real

758
00:52:00,955 --> 00:52:03,355
Speaker 1: lab to adjust papers to write, and I could always

759
00:52:03,355 --> 00:52:07,915
Speaker 1: write a paper fast. I knew that I would never

760
00:52:07,955 --> 00:52:10,715
Speaker 1: be in that section. I'd never make it because I

761
00:52:10,755 --> 00:52:12,795
Speaker 1: had to be at the chemistry lab at exactly the

762
00:52:12,795 --> 00:52:15,475
Speaker 1: same time. And they used to when they would hand

763
00:52:15,475 --> 00:52:18,075
Speaker 1: the papers back, which I would turn in in various

764
00:52:18,115 --> 00:52:21,955
Speaker 1: ways through friends or going right to the teaching assistant's

765
00:52:21,955 --> 00:52:24,795
Speaker 1: office and handing the paper in. They would hand the

766
00:52:24,795 --> 00:52:29,795
Speaker 1: papers back and they'd get, you know, NETHERI, and NETHERI

767
00:52:29,835 --> 00:52:32,115
Speaker 1: would grab his paper, and then they go Oaks, and

768
00:52:32,155 --> 00:52:34,155
Speaker 1: Oaks would grab his paper, and then they go Oberman,

769
00:52:34,195 --> 00:52:35,915
Speaker 1: and the whole class would erupt in laughter because I

770
00:52:35,955 --> 00:52:39,515
Speaker 1: was never there. But I had no other choice. If

771
00:52:39,515 --> 00:52:42,235
Speaker 1: I did not take those credits, those twenty eight credits

772
00:52:42,275 --> 00:52:45,755
Speaker 1: as a senior, which about was about double the average,

773
00:52:45,955 --> 00:52:48,035
Speaker 1: I was not going to have any money coming in,

774
00:52:48,235 --> 00:52:49,475
Speaker 1: and I was not going to have a job, and

775
00:52:49,515 --> 00:52:50,435
Speaker 1: I was going to have to stay in at the

776
00:52:50,515 --> 00:52:51,675
Speaker 1: New York and somehow I was going to have to

777
00:52:51,675 --> 00:52:55,475
Speaker 1: make my own living without having a job, and I

778
00:52:55,515 --> 00:52:57,755
Speaker 1: did not want to do this. So I remember in

779
00:52:57,795 --> 00:53:00,235
Speaker 1: the fall of nineteen seventy eight, facing this, I went

780
00:53:00,275 --> 00:53:04,235
Speaker 1: in and submitted my class schedule for the spring of

781
00:53:04,315 --> 00:53:10,435
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine to my advisor, Professor Russell Martin, who taught,

782
00:53:10,475 --> 00:53:15,275
Speaker 1: among other things, parliamentary procedure, which was a surprisingly fun class,

783
00:53:15,955 --> 00:53:19,195
Speaker 1: if you can imagine such a thing. And he looked

784
00:53:19,195 --> 00:53:21,635
Speaker 1: at this and he went, do you have twenty eight credits?

785
00:53:21,675 --> 00:53:21,875
Speaker 2: Here?

786
00:53:22,395 --> 00:53:24,875
Speaker 1: Professor Martin looked a little like John Connolly, the former

787
00:53:24,875 --> 00:53:28,875
Speaker 1: governor of Texas who was with JFK when the Kennedy

788
00:53:28,875 --> 00:53:31,595
Speaker 1: assassination occurred. I never stopped thinking about that when I

789
00:53:31,595 --> 00:53:35,995
Speaker 1: would sit there and visit with him. And he said,

790
00:53:37,115 --> 00:53:39,595
Speaker 1: you know, you can't take twenty eight credits. There's a

791
00:53:39,675 --> 00:53:42,715
Speaker 1: university rule against that. The maximum is, I believe eighteen.

792
00:53:43,835 --> 00:53:46,595
Speaker 1: I said, no, you're wrong about that. He said, that's right.

793
00:53:46,875 --> 00:53:49,315
Speaker 1: I've been here teaching for twenty five years, and you're

794
00:53:49,715 --> 00:53:52,195
Speaker 1: going to tell me I'm wrong. I said, well, I

795
00:53:52,235 --> 00:53:56,195
Speaker 1: did look at this before I submitted my application for

796
00:53:56,275 --> 00:54:00,115
Speaker 1: these classes for the coming semester. So he said, just

797
00:54:00,395 --> 00:54:03,315
Speaker 1: hang on, picked up the phone and dialed the College,

798
00:54:03,395 --> 00:54:07,915
Speaker 1: the College of Agri Culture and Life Sciences registrar and Hi, Bernice, Yeah,

799
00:54:07,955 --> 00:54:09,995
Speaker 1: it's Russ Martin. Listen, I've got a I've got a

800
00:54:10,035 --> 00:54:12,835
Speaker 1: student here thinks he can take twenty eight credits in this.

801
00:54:13,555 --> 00:54:16,595
Speaker 1: I told him about the about the college's limit on

802
00:54:16,595 --> 00:54:21,955
Speaker 1: the Well, what do you mean there's no limit? What

803
00:54:21,955 --> 00:54:23,635
Speaker 1: what do you mean there's no limit? Well, of course

804
00:54:23,675 --> 00:54:27,075
Speaker 1: there's a limit. There has to be. I've been telling

805
00:54:27,075 --> 00:54:29,755
Speaker 1: them there's a Well we're going to bring this up

806
00:54:29,795 --> 00:54:30,595
Speaker 1: at the next meeting.

807
00:54:30,755 --> 00:54:31,035
Speaker 2: Click.

808
00:54:32,115 --> 00:54:33,715
Speaker 1: And he looked at me and he and he saw

809
00:54:33,755 --> 00:54:37,195
Speaker 1: the smile on my face, and he said, don't, don't, don't, don't.

810
00:54:37,955 --> 00:54:39,915
Speaker 1: I have another call to make. And now he called

811
00:54:40,035 --> 00:54:42,155
Speaker 1: the University Registrar's Office.

812
00:54:43,395 --> 00:54:43,635
Speaker 2: RNA.

813
00:54:44,075 --> 00:54:47,955
Speaker 1: Russ Martin, listen, I've got another one of these overachievers

814
00:54:47,955 --> 00:54:50,635
Speaker 1: here who thinks he's going to take twenty eight credits.

815
00:54:50,635 --> 00:54:53,115
Speaker 1: And I told him about the university rule of prohibiting

816
00:54:53,155 --> 00:54:57,555
Speaker 1: the number of What do you mean there's no rule? Well,

817
00:54:57,595 --> 00:54:59,275
Speaker 1: God damn it, We're going to talk about this at

818
00:54:59,315 --> 00:55:01,355
Speaker 1: the next meeting. And he hung the phone up on

819
00:55:01,515 --> 00:55:05,915
Speaker 1: RNA and He looked at me and he said, you're insane,

820
00:55:06,795 --> 00:55:09,955
Speaker 1: but I have to sign this. There's no limit. Don't

821
00:55:09,995 --> 00:55:12,715
Speaker 1: come to me when you crack up next spring.

822
00:55:12,795 --> 00:55:13,395
Speaker 2: Don't do it.

823
00:55:13,995 --> 00:55:15,715
Speaker 1: I said, I have no choice. My father's not going

824
00:55:15,755 --> 00:55:18,675
Speaker 1: to pay for anything after next spring. I have to

825
00:55:18,715 --> 00:55:26,195
Speaker 1: get out on time. I have job prospects. So comes

826
00:55:26,235 --> 00:55:31,555
Speaker 1: the next spring and somehow I balance everything out and

827
00:55:31,715 --> 00:55:34,875
Speaker 1: I take the Ecology class and I know going into

828
00:55:34,875 --> 00:55:40,155
Speaker 1: the final that the paper that we submitted would decide

829
00:55:40,155 --> 00:55:43,915
Speaker 1: whether or not I graduated, or at least how I

830
00:55:43,955 --> 00:55:45,955
Speaker 1: did in that class. It came down to two classes,

831
00:55:46,235 --> 00:55:48,835
Speaker 1: one history class that I kind of mailed in a

832
00:55:48,875 --> 00:55:52,315
Speaker 1: four credit class, and I knew the final I was

833
00:55:52,355 --> 00:55:54,235
Speaker 1: going to pass it or fail it on a very

834
00:55:54,355 --> 00:55:57,795
Speaker 1: narrow basis, maybe a couple of points on a fifteen

835
00:55:57,835 --> 00:56:00,035
Speaker 1: point essay on a one hundred and fifty point exam.

836
00:56:00,075 --> 00:56:04,235
Speaker 1: But the Ecology final was really tough. And I was

837
00:56:04,275 --> 00:56:06,435
Speaker 1: one of those test takers who would race through a

838
00:56:06,475 --> 00:56:08,955
Speaker 1: final exam that you got two hours to take, and

839
00:56:08,995 --> 00:56:10,835
Speaker 1: I'd get it done in thirty five minutes because I

840
00:56:10,915 --> 00:56:13,715
Speaker 1: believed in what you remember at first was probably the

841
00:56:13,715 --> 00:56:16,795
Speaker 1: correct answer. Get it done, Get it done, as fast

842
00:56:16,835 --> 00:56:18,755
Speaker 1: as possible, if you want to go back and correct it.

843
00:56:19,115 --> 00:56:22,515
Speaker 1: In this one, I was not sure. There were a

844
00:56:22,635 --> 00:56:25,355
Speaker 1: lot of multiple choice questions, and I really didn't see

845
00:56:25,395 --> 00:56:30,875
Speaker 1: a pattern to them. The professor, who was a definition

846
00:56:31,035 --> 00:56:34,275
Speaker 1: of ecology in the nineteen seventies had a full beard,

847
00:56:34,355 --> 00:56:36,275
Speaker 1: and for all I knew of bird's nest in it.

848
00:56:36,995 --> 00:56:40,035
Speaker 1: And he handed back our term papers in the middle

849
00:56:40,795 --> 00:56:43,395
Speaker 1: of this, and I just finishing this thing up and

850
00:56:43,515 --> 00:56:45,795
Speaker 1: ready to hand it in at an hour fifteen, half

851
00:56:45,835 --> 00:56:48,675
Speaker 1: an hour behind my normal pace, very worried about whether

852
00:56:48,755 --> 00:56:51,395
Speaker 1: or not I had done all I could do. And

853
00:56:51,475 --> 00:56:55,395
Speaker 1: he hands back the term paper and written up at

854
00:56:55,395 --> 00:57:01,315
Speaker 1: the top in red bick pen fourteen circle see me.

855
00:57:02,235 --> 00:57:04,475
Speaker 1: And I'm looking at this, and it's one of the

856
00:57:04,515 --> 00:57:06,955
Speaker 1: few moments in which I in my entire life where

857
00:57:06,955 --> 00:57:09,315
Speaker 1: I have questioned, am I alive or am I dead?

858
00:57:09,835 --> 00:57:13,075
Speaker 1: Am I awake? Or am I dreaming? Am I about

859
00:57:13,115 --> 00:57:17,035
Speaker 1: to die? I looked at this and went fourteen in

860
00:57:17,115 --> 00:57:19,155
Speaker 1: my head. Because we're in a final examine, you're not

861
00:57:19,195 --> 00:57:21,395
Speaker 1: allowed to scream, even though that's what I wanted to do.

862
00:57:21,675 --> 00:57:23,675
Speaker 2: Fourteen fourteen.

863
00:57:24,635 --> 00:57:26,795
Speaker 1: As it turned out, I went through every answer on

864
00:57:26,875 --> 00:57:30,275
Speaker 1: that goddamned ecology final to the point where they had

865
00:57:30,315 --> 00:57:33,235
Speaker 1: to take they had to pull the exam out of

866
00:57:33,315 --> 00:57:35,675
Speaker 1: my hands. I'm holding on too, let me.

867
00:57:35,635 --> 00:57:37,035
Speaker 2: Just come thrun one more time.

868
00:57:38,075 --> 00:57:41,275
Speaker 1: I staggered out into the brilliant sunlight of a beautiful

869
00:57:41,315 --> 00:57:44,955
Speaker 1: Ithaca morning and waiting for me in the lobby outside

870
00:57:44,995 --> 00:57:49,395
Speaker 1: of the exam room, which was in a hall called Roberts.

871
00:57:49,475 --> 00:57:52,715
Speaker 1: Roberts Hall was built in the year ten sixty six.

872
00:57:53,035 --> 00:57:55,075
Speaker 1: It was the oldest building I'd ever been in in

873
00:57:55,115 --> 00:57:58,195
Speaker 1: my life. And there is this professor with his bird's

874
00:57:58,315 --> 00:58:00,595
Speaker 1: nest beard, and I'm just going to go up to

875
00:58:00,715 --> 00:58:02,795
Speaker 1: him and hit him in the face. He given me

876
00:58:02,835 --> 00:58:05,995
Speaker 1: a fourteen. My plans are ruined. There is no way

877
00:58:05,995 --> 00:58:08,755
Speaker 1: I'm going to graduate on May twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine.

878
00:58:08,835 --> 00:58:12,355
Speaker 1: It's not going to happen because if this goddamn ecology test,

879
00:58:12,595 --> 00:58:16,715
Speaker 1: because I had to take a goddamn tocology class, because

880
00:58:16,835 --> 00:58:18,995
Speaker 1: to become a broadcaster, I had to take a series

881
00:58:19,035 --> 00:58:21,195
Speaker 1: of science classes because I was going to get a

882
00:58:21,195 --> 00:58:25,475
Speaker 1: Bachelor of Science in Communication Arts. And there he is,

883
00:58:25,515 --> 00:58:28,115
Speaker 1: and I'm about to swing at him, and he's smiling

884
00:58:28,195 --> 00:58:30,315
Speaker 1: at me. So no, I really want to take a

885
00:58:30,475 --> 00:58:33,115
Speaker 1: swing at him, and he says, hey, I'm glad I

886
00:58:33,155 --> 00:58:35,275
Speaker 1: saw you. I wanted to explain why I didn't give

887
00:58:35,315 --> 00:58:39,795
Speaker 1: you the fifteenth point. And I looked at him and

888
00:58:39,795 --> 00:58:42,515
Speaker 1: I went, what did you say? He said, yeah, I

889
00:58:42,875 --> 00:58:44,915
Speaker 1: gave you the fourteen right, And I said, see me, See,

890
00:58:44,955 --> 00:58:47,635
Speaker 1: I like this whole idea that you had about ecology

891
00:58:47,715 --> 00:58:52,515
Speaker 1: and about extinction, and that the paper was about extinction.

892
00:58:52,595 --> 00:58:58,475
Speaker 1: I had one idea about extinction. Maybe maybe the extinction

893
00:58:58,515 --> 00:59:01,875
Speaker 1: of other animals was part of human evolution. Maybe these

894
00:59:01,915 --> 00:59:07,995
Speaker 1: things were not accidentally connected, but actual functions of each other.

895
00:59:08,235 --> 00:59:10,235
Speaker 1: It's not a bad idea. I had to turn it

896
00:59:10,315 --> 00:59:13,675
Speaker 1: into twenty pages of an exam of a history paper,

897
00:59:13,755 --> 00:59:16,435
Speaker 1: of a paper about acology, and I didn't know enough,

898
00:59:16,435 --> 00:59:19,195
Speaker 1: and it was kind of I ran through six or

899
00:59:19,235 --> 00:59:22,315
Speaker 1: eight shovels and he'd given me fourteen out of fifteen.

900
00:59:22,315 --> 00:59:23,995
Speaker 1: I had no idea, because of course I hadn't been

901
00:59:24,035 --> 00:59:25,955
Speaker 1: at the section where he said that the exam would

902
00:59:25,955 --> 00:59:28,275
Speaker 1: be graded on a one to fifteen basis. So I

903
00:59:28,435 --> 00:59:30,355
Speaker 1: just heard him say I got a fourteen out of

904
00:59:30,355 --> 00:59:32,795
Speaker 1: fifteen meeting I probably got a B in this class.

905
00:59:32,875 --> 00:59:35,555
Speaker 1: And I gave him a kiss and walked out into

906
00:59:35,595 --> 00:59:40,075
Speaker 1: the sunshine and got drunk. One down, one to go

907
00:59:40,315 --> 00:59:44,075
Speaker 1: the history final, and again sitting there, think, okay, this

908
00:59:44,115 --> 00:59:47,155
Speaker 1: is going to be five points. And now comes the

909
00:59:47,195 --> 00:59:49,715
Speaker 1: week in which they grade the exams and you find

910
00:59:49,715 --> 00:59:52,595
Speaker 1: out whether or not you graduate. And as of Friday,

911
00:59:52,955 --> 00:59:55,995
Speaker 1: I had called several times to find out if they

912
00:59:55,995 --> 00:59:58,515
Speaker 1: had all the results in, because I had to pass

913
00:59:58,595 --> 01:00:01,275
Speaker 1: all these courses or I would not graduate on time

914
01:00:01,555 --> 01:00:05,275
Speaker 1: for Monday, May twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine. It is

915
01:00:05,355 --> 01:00:08,555
Speaker 1: now what Friday, May twenty fifth, and my dad calls

916
01:00:08,595 --> 01:00:10,835
Speaker 1: me at the college radio station and he says, are

917
01:00:10,875 --> 01:00:13,675
Speaker 1: you graduating? And I said, I don't know yet. I'll

918
01:00:13,715 --> 01:00:15,435
Speaker 1: find out. I mean, we're not coming up there on

919
01:00:15,515 --> 01:00:20,635
Speaker 1: Monday just to see you not graduate. I said, fine,

920
01:00:20,675 --> 01:00:23,275
Speaker 1: I'll call him again. And I called him again, and

921
01:00:23,315 --> 01:00:26,395
Speaker 1: this is what I get. Yes, that's the name again.

922
01:00:26,435 --> 01:00:29,595
Speaker 1: And I said to Olberman, OLB, just a moment. Woman

923
01:00:29,635 --> 01:00:31,755
Speaker 1: puts the phone down. For all I know, it's the

924
01:00:31,755 --> 01:00:35,315
Speaker 1: same woman Professor Martin had called last fall. Woman puts

925
01:00:35,315 --> 01:00:37,075
Speaker 1: the phone down so I can hear it better than

926
01:00:37,115 --> 01:00:39,715
Speaker 1: if she were holding it up to her conversation in

927
01:00:39,755 --> 01:00:43,155
Speaker 1: the background, I hear, gladys, Yeah, do me a check

928
01:00:43,195 --> 01:00:51,795
Speaker 1: on Olberman? Did he graduate? No? Bone, that's my heart bone? No, no, no, no, no, no,

929
01:00:52,035 --> 01:00:56,755
Speaker 1: not Oberman, ob not her. This is the guy Olb.

930
01:00:57,795 --> 01:01:00,555
Speaker 1: I didn't know there was somebody named Oberman in my

931
01:01:00,715 --> 01:01:06,075
Speaker 1: class in my school. That's how little I went. Oh lb,

932
01:01:06,395 --> 01:01:10,395
Speaker 1: Yes that one Keith Theodore. Yes, yes, the guy in

933
01:01:10,435 --> 01:01:12,195
Speaker 1: the radio station who thinks he's funny.

934
01:01:13,355 --> 01:01:17,075
Speaker 2: Right, No you sure?

935
01:01:17,435 --> 01:01:20,355
Speaker 1: No again? Now my life is flashed in front of

936
01:01:20,355 --> 01:01:25,155
Speaker 1: me twice in about a minute and a half. Can't

937
01:01:25,195 --> 01:01:27,875
Speaker 1: imagine why I would have had dreams based on this reality.

938
01:01:28,755 --> 01:01:34,995
Speaker 2: No you sure? History? Okay?

939
01:01:35,315 --> 01:01:35,595
Speaker 1: Where?

940
01:01:36,075 --> 01:01:36,435
Speaker 2: Okay?

941
01:01:36,475 --> 01:01:36,875
Speaker 8: All right?

942
01:01:37,595 --> 01:01:42,075
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I'll tell him. All right, you passed? You

943
01:01:42,155 --> 01:01:46,515
Speaker 1: graduate on Monday? What you graduate on Monday? I said,

944
01:01:46,555 --> 01:01:49,195
Speaker 1: what was all that about? No, in history, we couldn't

945
01:01:49,235 --> 01:01:51,595
Speaker 1: find the history final the history score you got to

946
01:01:51,755 --> 01:01:53,995
Speaker 1: you gotta se minus in history. You did, we very

947
01:01:53,995 --> 01:01:56,035
Speaker 1: well in the final exam. We just didn't have it

948
01:01:56,035 --> 01:01:58,315
Speaker 1: connected yet. No, you're you're you're you're good, you're you

949
01:01:58,715 --> 01:02:01,075
Speaker 1: You've made it fairly fairly. It was close, but you're

950
01:02:01,155 --> 01:02:05,635
Speaker 1: you're out, you're at you're graduating. Congratulations, Thank you.

951
01:02:05,675 --> 01:02:06,115
Speaker 2: Very much.

952
01:02:06,195 --> 01:02:08,275
Speaker 1: You're welcome, have a nice weekend. Say hi to your

953
01:02:08,315 --> 01:02:12,115
Speaker 1: folks for me. And I said okay, and then just

954
01:02:12,155 --> 01:02:15,275
Speaker 1: went out and got drunk again. Called my dad, I said, hey,

955
01:02:15,315 --> 01:02:20,875
Speaker 1: guess what. I graduated. So on graduation morning, they kept

956
01:02:20,915 --> 01:02:23,235
Speaker 1: passing around bottles of champagne and they did not get

957
01:02:23,355 --> 01:02:26,315
Speaker 1: past me. And I graduated. And there was a whole

958
01:02:26,355 --> 01:02:29,195
Speaker 1: thing where a girl I was interested in who didn't

959
01:02:29,235 --> 01:02:33,555
Speaker 1: graduate on time because she failed sex roles. She failed

960
01:02:33,555 --> 01:02:36,795
Speaker 1: a class called sex roles. She was expected to graduate

961
01:02:36,835 --> 01:02:39,275
Speaker 1: with honors, and she failed a class called sex roles.

962
01:02:39,515 --> 01:02:41,115
Speaker 1: And I was telling this to a friend of mine

963
01:02:41,155 --> 01:02:43,675
Speaker 1: who'd been away looking for a job that week and

964
01:02:43,835 --> 01:02:48,515
Speaker 1: senior week, we were walking together in the procession for graduation.

965
01:02:49,075 --> 01:02:53,395
Speaker 1: I totally unexpected, and I'm telling her the story and

966
01:02:53,435 --> 01:02:56,435
Speaker 1: it's one of those She's standing right behind me, isn't she?

967
01:02:56,875 --> 01:03:00,395
Speaker 1: And the girl who failed the class in sex roles,

968
01:03:00,595 --> 01:03:03,955
Speaker 1: which led us all to gleefully enjoy the fact that

969
01:03:03,995 --> 01:03:06,875
Speaker 1: she had failed this. She stood behind me and heard

970
01:03:06,875 --> 01:03:10,035
Speaker 1: me bad mouthing her, and she said, you've deserved this

971
01:03:10,155 --> 01:03:12,795
Speaker 1: for a long time, and she hit me. She slapped

972
01:03:12,795 --> 01:03:16,555
Speaker 1: me on graduation morning, and my glasses went flying into

973
01:03:16,555 --> 01:03:19,475
Speaker 1: the bushes, and then she stormed off to try to

974
01:03:19,475 --> 01:03:23,195
Speaker 1: figure out how to deal with the fact that she

975
01:03:23,315 --> 01:03:27,875
Speaker 1: had not graduated on time and I had, and my

976
01:03:27,995 --> 01:03:32,035
Speaker 1: friend Carol, Carol Hebb, the greatest natural talent in broadcasting

977
01:03:32,075 --> 01:03:35,355
Speaker 1: I have ever met in my life, said, you know,

978
01:03:35,995 --> 01:03:40,035
Speaker 1: you're an unusual guy, but as long as she's running around,

979
01:03:40,675 --> 01:03:44,395
Speaker 1: you never have to worry about actually being kind of crazy,

980
01:03:44,675 --> 01:03:48,075
Speaker 1: because you're not crazy compared to her. And I should

981
01:03:48,075 --> 01:03:51,515
Speaker 1: have proposed to Carol on the spot. So we graduate,

982
01:03:52,235 --> 01:03:56,595
Speaker 1: and I drink, and we get done, and my father

983
01:03:56,675 --> 01:03:58,955
Speaker 1: and mother and sister come up and congratulate me, and

984
01:03:58,995 --> 01:04:03,795
Speaker 1: I hand my dad the diploma and say, here's your receipt,

985
01:04:04,795 --> 01:04:08,595
Speaker 1: and I rip off my cap and my gown before

986
01:04:08,595 --> 01:04:10,955
Speaker 1: they can get a picture of me in it. There's

987
01:04:10,995 --> 01:04:15,755
Speaker 1: one picture of me standing with Carol before the whole ceremony,

988
01:04:16,795 --> 01:04:19,195
Speaker 1: and I don't remember when I did the rest of

989
01:04:19,195 --> 01:04:21,395
Speaker 1: the week. I stayed in Ethica, New York for some reason,

990
01:04:21,395 --> 01:04:23,675
Speaker 1: with friends, and then went home and went looking for

991
01:04:23,755 --> 01:04:27,795
Speaker 1: my job, having graduated. And then the dream started somewhere

992
01:04:27,835 --> 01:04:31,595
Speaker 1: along the line, somewhere in the days and weeks beyond

993
01:04:31,715 --> 01:04:35,315
Speaker 1: May twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine, in which I did

994
01:04:35,315 --> 01:04:39,035
Speaker 1: not graduate and did not get the job. And I

995
01:04:39,115 --> 01:04:41,475
Speaker 1: assume I don't remember ever having the dream in which

996
01:04:41,515 --> 01:04:48,635
Speaker 1: I get slapped by that one girl, but every other

997
01:04:48,835 --> 01:04:52,635
Speaker 1: kind of psychological torture that could occur occurs, and gradually,

998
01:04:52,715 --> 01:04:55,995
Speaker 1: as I said, they became, these dreams became not disturbing

999
01:04:56,035 --> 01:05:02,155
Speaker 1: at all, but mostly kind of familiar. The last time

1000
01:05:02,195 --> 01:05:03,955
Speaker 1: I had it a few years ago, it finally dawned

1001
01:05:03,955 --> 01:05:05,795
Speaker 1: on me why I was still having it when there

1002
01:05:06,035 --> 01:05:08,995
Speaker 1: weren't stresses, and when there weren't things to worry about,

1003
01:05:09,035 --> 01:05:13,675
Speaker 1: when I had graduated and become a fairly respected alumnus

1004
01:05:13,715 --> 01:05:16,035
Speaker 1: of Cornell University, which you never would have been on

1005
01:05:16,075 --> 01:05:18,995
Speaker 1: in a million years. On May twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine,

1006
01:05:21,395 --> 01:05:26,595
Speaker 1: I finally realized what it was. And since I said

1007
01:05:26,595 --> 01:05:30,835
Speaker 1: this to my therapist that day, that I realized why

1008
01:05:30,875 --> 01:05:33,555
Speaker 1: I kept having this dream. Why when it was no

1009
01:05:33,675 --> 01:05:36,755
Speaker 1: longer an issue of stress. It wasn't kind of stress

1010
01:05:36,835 --> 01:05:40,835
Speaker 1: burned into the retinas of my mind. It was it

1011
01:05:40,915 --> 01:05:44,395
Speaker 1: was just a dream I kept having. Why Why did

1012
01:05:44,435 --> 01:05:47,115
Speaker 1: you keep having this dream through your thirties and forties

1013
01:05:47,155 --> 01:05:49,835
Speaker 1: and fifties and into your sixties. And finally, one day

1014
01:05:49,875 --> 01:05:53,275
Speaker 1: I woke up kind of smiling from having had the

1015
01:05:53,355 --> 01:05:55,115
Speaker 1: dream again for the first time in a couple of months,

1016
01:05:55,155 --> 01:05:57,635
Speaker 1: and it dawned on me. Now the dream had become

1017
01:05:59,795 --> 01:06:04,315
Speaker 1: a positive because in the dream, I was twenty years old,

1018
01:06:05,715 --> 01:06:10,915
Speaker 1: and the older you get, unless some true trauma inflicted

1019
01:06:10,955 --> 01:06:14,955
Speaker 1: you at that age, there is almost nothing about the

1020
01:06:15,115 --> 01:06:18,795
Speaker 1: thought that you might actually turn into twenty years old again.

1021
01:06:19,115 --> 01:06:22,715
Speaker 1: That is unpleasant. Even not graduating on the day you're

1022
01:06:22,715 --> 01:06:25,235
Speaker 1: supposed to graduate, and you've been told you're going to graduate,

1023
01:06:25,475 --> 01:06:29,235
Speaker 1: even that is better. At least, just all of your

1024
01:06:29,355 --> 01:06:32,915
Speaker 1: joints don't hurt at sixty five years old or even

1025
01:06:32,995 --> 01:06:36,595
Speaker 1: thirty five years old. And finally that became the reason

1026
01:06:36,715 --> 01:06:39,075
Speaker 1: that I was having the dream. It was just nostalgia

1027
01:06:39,115 --> 01:06:43,235
Speaker 1: for being twenty years old last time I had the dream,

1028
01:06:43,595 --> 01:06:46,675
Speaker 1: the dream in which I am thrown back to May

1029
01:06:47,075 --> 01:06:55,635
Speaker 1: twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine, the day I didn't didn't

1030
01:06:56,275 --> 01:07:14,315
Speaker 1: graduate in seven semesters from Cornell. I've done all the

1031
01:07:14,355 --> 01:07:16,635
Speaker 1: damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown

1032
01:07:16,715 --> 01:07:20,075
Speaker 1: musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel arranged, produced,

1033
01:07:20,115 --> 01:07:22,835
Speaker 1: and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on

1034
01:07:22,875 --> 01:07:25,955
Speaker 1: the guitars, bass and drums, and mister Shaneale handled orchestration

1035
01:07:25,995 --> 01:07:30,515
Speaker 1: and keyboards produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some

1036
01:07:30,555 --> 01:07:33,875
Speaker 1: of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged and performed by the

1037
01:07:33,875 --> 01:07:37,195
Speaker 1: group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Lderman

1038
01:07:37,275 --> 01:07:40,675
Speaker 1: theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy

1039
01:07:40,715 --> 01:07:45,275
Speaker 1: of ESPN inc our satirical and pithy musical comments. My

1040
01:07:45,515 --> 01:07:50,355
Speaker 1: accompanyist Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our

1041
01:07:50,355 --> 01:07:53,515
Speaker 1: announcer today is my friend Howard Feineman. Everything else was

1042
01:07:53,715 --> 01:07:56,195
Speaker 1: pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the

1043
01:07:56,235 --> 01:07:59,475
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty third day until the twenty twenty

1044
01:07:59,515 --> 01:08:03,795
Speaker 1: four presidential election, but two and thirty eighth day since

1045
01:08:03,875 --> 01:08:07,275
Speaker 1: Dictator j'ms first attempted coup against the democratically elected government

1046
01:08:07,315 --> 01:08:10,715
Speaker 1: of the United States. Use the legal system, use the

1047
01:08:10,755 --> 01:08:13,675
Speaker 1: mental health system, use presidential immunity if it happens, use

1048
01:08:13,755 --> 01:08:18,115
Speaker 1: the not regularly given elector objection option to stop him

1049
01:08:18,395 --> 01:08:24,595
Speaker 1: from doing it again while we still can. The next

1050
01:08:24,635 --> 01:08:28,435
Speaker 1: scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletin says the news warrants till then.

1051
01:08:28,475 --> 01:08:32,955
Speaker 1: I'm Keith Olruman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and

1052
01:08:33,995 --> 01:08:36,555
Speaker 1: well ask part of it A good luck?

1053
01:08:50,435 --> 01:08:52,515
Speaker 2: A yeah.

1054
01:08:54,035 --> 01:08:58,835
Speaker 5: These are the flags of Alito Insurrection, appeal to have

1055
01:08:59,075 --> 01:09:00,915
Speaker 5: and send in Noah, damn thing.

1056
01:09:01,555 --> 01:09:07,275
Speaker 2: Why don't you ask them what they did? I Yi yi,

1057
01:09:08,955 --> 01:09:14,075
Speaker 2: I am Martha and Alito. It's my flag, it's my world.

1058
01:09:14,115 --> 01:09:15,715
Speaker 2: I deny you access.

1059
01:09:15,955 --> 01:09:21,955
Speaker 1: It's an international signal of distress. Countdown with Keith Olreman

1060
01:09:22,115 --> 01:09:26,595
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,

1061
01:09:26,755 --> 01:09:30,795
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

1062
01:09:30,835 --> 01:09:31,715
Speaker 1: your podcasts.