Speaker 1: What's desperately horny? My Saddam Hussein's best friend. I'm Robert
Speaker 1: Evans hosted Behind the Bastards, the only podcast whose host
Speaker 1: owns two kittens named Saddam Hussein and Saddam Hussein's best friend.
Speaker 1: And due to a severe veterinarian shortage in northern Oregon,
Speaker 1: uh still can't get them spade and neutered for another
Speaker 1: nine days. And Saddam Hussein's best friend is in heat
Speaker 1: and desperately trying to funk her brother. This has been
Speaker 1: an update for all of you. Maybe disclose that information now.
Speaker 1: She has been disclosing that she wants to funck to
Speaker 1: literally every living creature that gets near her. She had
Speaker 1: a microphone, she'd be saying the same time. She will
Speaker 1: not stop presenting it is. It has been a problem.
Speaker 1: We are keeping them away because I do not want
Speaker 1: incest kittens. Um although they may have been in ses,
Speaker 1: there's no way to know um in in sittence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like ks Robert, who has a lot of other voice
Speaker 1: on this podcast that people are here. Oh well, the
Speaker 1: only person I would ever have on to talk about
Speaker 1: kitten incest my friend Tom Rieman. Hey, Hi, what's up? No?
Speaker 1: I'm glad you got me on to talk about these cats.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be a three hour episode about my
Speaker 1: my cat's sex life. Um. Tom, you are the co
Speaker 1: founder of game Fully Unemployed, one of my favorite podcast
Speaker 1: networks host one of my most listened to shows, Fox
Speaker 1: Molder is a Maniac, Which is a beautiful breakdown of
Speaker 1: Fox Molder and what I would god damn ludaticious. Um yeah, Tom,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's really fascinating when you watch the show
Speaker 1: with that context, it changes the show. It truly does.
Speaker 1: You guys do a lot of great stuff, great movie
Speaker 1: reviews and m role playing games. People can find you
Speaker 1: Gamefully Unemployed on Patreon. Tom. You also are what an
Speaker 1: editor at Collider I'd forget what title, Senior editor of
Speaker 1: Features Collider, and you and I worked together for all
Speaker 1: of my twenties more or less at a little website
Speaker 1: called Cracked that pivoted to video and uh and went
Speaker 1: the way of the Dodo. We Got, We Got, We
Speaker 1: Got dragged to hell by Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah. I didn't
Speaker 1: come across a beautiful tweet earlier today that you'll appreciate, Tom.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear it. Great radio great radio. Yes,
Speaker 1: look for something. A Neil dash horse broke its legs,
Speaker 1: so we had to take it out back and help
Speaker 1: it pivot to video. Oh Tom, how are you doing today?
Speaker 1: I'm doing okay, I'm I'm doing pretty good. Thanks. Uh
Speaker 1: you know, how about how about you? How about yourself? Well, Tom,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the fact that there is a vast,
Speaker 1: incredibly well financed right wing media operation that is seemingly
Speaker 1: dedicated to pushing a violence civil conflict that leads to
Speaker 1: a death toll that's truly astronomical in this nation. Do
Speaker 1: you think about that a lot? So good? Right? So
Speaker 1: you're doing good, doing great? Uh? Yeah, no, I've tried
Speaker 1: to think about it less. But uh and in the
Speaker 1: past few months just I just was trying to take
Speaker 1: a break, but I'm getting plugged back into it. You
Speaker 1: sure are, It's uh yeah, god damn it. It's just
Speaker 1: it's just it doesn't seem like anything's gotten any better.
Speaker 1: It sure hasn't. It's fucking relentless. And there's this is
Speaker 1: the election. We're like, oh, thank god, and then nope
Speaker 1: that that didn't go away. Yeah, no, it turns out
Speaker 1: that you can't you can't vote these kinds of problems away.
Speaker 1: And today we're going to talk about where some of
Speaker 1: these problems started. Specifically, we're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: men who made right wing media, and particularly like right
Speaker 1: wing talk media. So today you've got guys like um,
Speaker 1: Stephen Crowder, Been Shapiro obviously, Tucker Carlson being the big
Speaker 1: the big Mama Jammy, people like Rush Limball, like like
Speaker 1: all of all three of those people, all four of
Speaker 1: those people you just name got picked dead last for
Speaker 1: Kickball for very different reasons, and they made it the
Speaker 1: entire world's problem. So all of these folks, you know
Speaker 1: some of they all they all do slightly different variations
Speaker 1: of the same thing. And they're not all you know,
Speaker 1: Rush is the only one who's like really a talk
Speaker 1: radio host, but they all have you know, podcasts and YouTube.
Speaker 1: They all do the equip the modern equivalent of talk
Speaker 1: radio and and of like, yeah, we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: basically the people who invented the media space that these
Speaker 1: guys all live in. Now, these are the very first
Speaker 1: right wing media personalities, um in a big way. So
Speaker 1: these are these are the people who um prepared the
Speaker 1: soil for all of the different you know kind of
Speaker 1: quasi fascist grifters we have today, and they are They're
Speaker 1: not all bastard in the traditional sense. Um, they're not
Speaker 1: all people who, on their own, if you didn't consider
Speaker 1: where everything went, would have qualified as best. Is there
Speaker 1: all I think unpleasant people? Um, but but I think
Speaker 1: what's interesting is how they how they start off and
Speaker 1: kind of where they end, Like the kind of people
Speaker 1: who inhabit this space at the beginning and the kind
Speaker 1: of people who inhabit it now. So this is gonna
Speaker 1: be a fun episode time. You're gonna listen to a
Speaker 1: lot of clips that you're just really gonna dislike. Um,
Speaker 1: so excited. Yeah, I'm so mad soon, Yeah you really are. So.
Speaker 1: One of the things that inspired this was coming across
Speaker 1: the fact that Tucker Carlson very recently alleged that the
Speaker 1: purpose of vaccine requirements in the military was to quote
Speaker 1: identify the sincere Christians in the ranks, the freethinkers, the
Speaker 1: men with high distosterone levels, and anybody else who doesn't
Speaker 1: love Joe Biden and make them leave immediately. Um is
Speaker 1: he talking? He's getting into high tis testosterone is low
Speaker 1: if you're getting vacs, that's so boys, shit not choking
Speaker 1: on your own rotting lungs is soy. It's it's become
Speaker 1: I mean it was, it's always been the case, but
Speaker 1: like in the past year or two, it's really become
Speaker 1: obvious that they just let him go on and say whatever.
Speaker 1: He just says, you didn't think it's Yeah, And I'm
Speaker 1: starting with Tucker because he's he's just off the fucking
Speaker 1: rails completely. And this is the end route of of
Speaker 1: the journey that we're going to trace the start of today. Um.
Speaker 1: And the thing that Tucker has been saying that most
Speaker 1: concerns me is he started sharing Great Replacement style conspiracy
Speaker 1: theaters which are alleging that Democrats planned to quote change
Speaker 1: the population of this country in order to maintain power.
Speaker 1: This is functionally the same argument Brenton Tarrant, the christ
Speaker 1: Church shooter, made in the manifesto he wrote before shooting
Speaker 1: fifty Muslim worshippers to death. Um. His manifest was titled
Speaker 1: The Great Replacements. The same argument that the yeah, I'm trying,
Speaker 1: I'm trying. I'm trying to remember my behind the bastards
Speaker 1: extended universe that all comes from the Turner diaries, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, doesn't come from the Turner Diaries was like
Speaker 1: big definitely was pushing that. But this goes back a
Speaker 1: while for for I mean that you could even draw
Speaker 1: a line to like the original Nazis and kind of
Speaker 1: some of the ship Hitler was saying about arian blood
Speaker 1: getting watered down from interbreeding and one for sure, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a big, big white nationalist talking point. And the
Speaker 1: fact that this good went from great replacement went from
Speaker 1: like fringe Nazi murderer manifesto in Night two thousand nineteen
Speaker 1: to Tucker Carlson talking to three million people on a
Speaker 1: major news network shows like how fast things go now
Speaker 1: and how how dangerous this all is. And I think
Speaker 1: it's important to start the stakes because it doesn't begin
Speaker 1: that way. The guys who start this kind of right
Speaker 1: wing media space. Um are the first guy we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk to, is in a lot always kind of pleasant. Um,
Speaker 1: at least compared to what came after. I don't think
Speaker 1: he saw that I would have gotten along with. But
Speaker 1: it don't believe you, it's it's it's weird. We'll see
Speaker 1: how you think. Um. Yeah, And where we discussed this
Speaker 1: is probably going to be these episodes with a nice
Speaker 1: companion to our two part on Rush Limbaugh with Mr
Speaker 1: Paul F. Tompkins. So you know, if you're if you're
Speaker 1: looking for a good four episodes spree to go together,
Speaker 1: listen to these two and then listen to those. Well
Speaker 1: you're sweet having a very long ship or on a
Speaker 1: road trip. So first guy we're talking about Tom is
Speaker 1: Joe Pine p Y in the Joe Pine was born
Speaker 1: in Chester, Pennsylvania, on December twenty two, nineteen twenty four.
Speaker 1: His dad problem two Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. Yeah, get it out
Speaker 1: of there. We don't need that state. It's like you
Speaker 1: look at that, You look at those those three pieces
Speaker 1: of information, like this is like a fifty fifty shot.
Speaker 1: This guy is gonna be Pennsylvania in the twenties and
Speaker 1: and a acember baby. Fuck that. His dad was a
Speaker 1: brickmaker and his mom was a mom, which was pretty
Speaker 1: much the only job most women could expect to work
Speaker 1: at that point in time and place. When Joe was little,
Speaker 1: his family moved to Atlantic City, which is like Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: but less fun and much sadder because it's on the
Speaker 1: East coast. Um, here's a good Bruce Springsteen's song about that.
Speaker 1: He had a difficult childhood, Joe had a pronounced stutter,
Speaker 1: and kids back then were even shitty about such things
Speaker 1: than they are today. He was bullied relentlessly. When Joe
Speaker 1: was eleven, he lost his younger brother to an auto accident,
Speaker 1: which was not uncommon in those days because cars didn't
Speaker 1: crumple and seat belts were but a fever dream in
Speaker 1: Ralph Nader's I. By the time Joe was a teenager,
Speaker 1: his family left Atlantic City, which is always a good decision,
Speaker 1: and moved back to Chester, which is a more questionable decision.
Speaker 1: That's all. It's all they knew. It's all they knew.
Speaker 1: We're gonna pile the family into our giant, unstoppable seat
Speaker 1: beltless car and drive back to Chester. He went to
Speaker 1: high school, and he joined the Marines in nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: which was a popular decision at the time. He joined
Speaker 1: as early as he possibly Yeah. For whatever reason, a
Speaker 1: lot of guys joined the military, and Night Team forty
Speaker 1: two must have been good ads sums about to happen. Um.
Speaker 1: He joined as the early like the first day he
Speaker 1: possibly could um and obviously, the US had decided to
Speaker 1: enter World War Two at this point. He was deployed
Speaker 1: against the Empire of Japan, and he fought in some
Speaker 1: of the war's worst battles across the South Pacific. Joe
Speaker 1: survived to the Battle of Okinawa, which is one of
Speaker 1: the like, like, one of the worst fights you could
Speaker 1: possibly have been in in that war, real, real bad
Speaker 1: battle Okinawa. Um. During that battle, a Japanese plane bombed
Speaker 1: the forward base he was stationed on, seriously injuring his knee.
Speaker 1: He returned home scarred and seasoned by heavy combat. Joe
Speaker 1: had won three Bronze Stars for valor in battle and
Speaker 1: a Purple Heart. So he definitely saw some ship. This
Speaker 1: is not one of like the draft dodgy right wing guys.
Speaker 1: This Ben Shapiro writing war fan fiction, like he went
Speaker 1: to war and got bombs dropped on his leg. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he saw some of the worst ship you could have
Speaker 1: seen in that particular conflict. Um. So he returns home
Speaker 1: real fucked up, probably with a headful of PTSD, but
Speaker 1: they didn't know PTSD was they. I'm assuming he just
Speaker 1: drank washed it down with cigarettes. Real headful of horny cats.
Speaker 1: When he got home. He didn't know precisely what he
Speaker 1: wanted to do with his life, but he was certain
Speaker 1: that it involved putting himself in front of people and
Speaker 1: entertaining them. In order to do that, he felt he
Speaker 1: would need to deal with his speech impediment first. Using
Speaker 1: his What led him to that decision, I don't relentlessly bullied,
Speaker 1: went to war, got bombed, his dead brother comes back.
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm gonna be an entertainer. I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: an entertainer. I'm gonna come from Yeah. We just don't
Speaker 1: know enough about his early life to know like what
Speaker 1: the funk was going on. Maybe he just wanted to
Speaker 1: show people my speech impediment doesn't define me. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I beat the Japanese, I can beat stuttering. Um So,
Speaker 1: using his g I Bill, Joe enrolled in a drama school.
Speaker 1: He forced himself through agonizing hours of live performances in
Speaker 1: front of his classmates to overcome his stutter. He locked
Speaker 1: himself away in his room and would perform hours and
Speaker 1: hours of speech drills every day, and eventually he did
Speaker 1: overcome his speech impediment. Once he graduated, Joe became a
Speaker 1: taxi driver in Chester. He continued to work on his
Speaker 1: speech while he was driving people around. Um Eventually, he
Speaker 1: decided he'd come far enough, and he started a career
Speaker 1: as a broadcaster by this point. The way the way
Speaker 1: you phrase that made it sound like he was doing
Speaker 1: like his speeches to his passengers. None, give me some notes.
Speaker 1: I got a tight five. I'm gonna run it by you.
Speaker 1: There's no seat. You are really dependent upon me. So
Speaker 1: he uh he, he does this, um and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: he decides he's he's finished by like late nineteen forty six. Um.
Speaker 1: Now again, nineteen forties radio is king. TV's coming around,
Speaker 1: But that's still not the number one way people get entertained.
Speaker 1: You're you're really Radio is is the top of the
Speaker 1: top of the world, and they assume it will be forever. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was able to convince a station manager in Lumberton,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, to give him a job on w t SB.
Speaker 1: The pay was twenty five dollars a week, which was
Speaker 1: not good money even back then, and he failed to
Speaker 1: stand out enough that he felt he had any hope
Speaker 1: of advancement. So after a year he returned home dejected,
Speaker 1: but Joe kept pushing until he got another job at
Speaker 1: w p w A in Brookhaven, Pennsylvania. He got into
Speaker 1: a vicious argument with his boss while still knew on
Speaker 1: the job and was quickly fired. Next he moved to
Speaker 1: w I L M of Wilmington, Delaware, where he was
Speaker 1: also quickly fired. Yeah, you get the feeling. He was
Speaker 1: not easy to work with at this point. Um Fully,
Speaker 1: email didn't exist, so these people couldn't tell each other
Speaker 1: about Joe. He moved back to Chester after this, and
Speaker 1: then the Kenosha next where he got a job with
Speaker 1: a new network called w I L P. His job
Speaker 1: in all of these places was very straightforward, introduced in
Speaker 1: play records with a minimum of fanfare. He was not
Speaker 1: being hired to be a personality. Was just fired from Dick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a big part of it. Um. He would
Speaker 1: riff a lot. He got in trouble in Kenosha, and
Speaker 1: I think he'd gotten in trouble before. He would riff
Speaker 1: on politics and current events, which was not what we
Speaker 1: were supposed to do at the time. So his bosses
Speaker 1: are like nobody, Nobody. People are tuning in to hear
Speaker 1: I don't know what the big music that the big bopper.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants you. Nobody gives a shit about what you
Speaker 1: have to say. Put on Shantilly lace and shut your
Speaker 1: fucking mouth. Smoke a cigarette. Um yeah. The kind of
Speaker 1: riffing that he thought was the future of radio was
Speaker 1: simply not done at the time. Commenters were part of
Speaker 1: the news department and jockeys were not. Disc Jockeys were
Speaker 1: there to entertain, and he'd been hired as a disc jockey.
Speaker 1: Um so, if you were going to be a commentator,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about the news, you didn't like give
Speaker 1: your opinion. You try to just kind of like read,
Speaker 1: you know, like the ap wire basically. Um. W l
Speaker 1: i P though took callins. Listeners could dial in and
Speaker 1: request songs, but Joe started insisting on asking his listeners
Speaker 1: what they thought about the political issues of the day,
Speaker 1: which was the first time anyone had ever really done
Speaker 1: that on radio, like take call ins, and he kind
Speaker 1: of forced the issue of making them political. One w
Speaker 1: l i P employee at the time recalled he wanted
Speaker 1: to chat with him, but in those days there was
Speaker 1: no way to put a phone line on the air.
Speaker 1: Joe would say uh huh and and then tell the
Speaker 1: call the listeners what the callers said. So this is
Speaker 1: like this is the very first talk radio. He's just
Speaker 1: on the phone with them being like mmmm, alright, so
Speaker 1: here's what he said. Let me tell you what Dennis
Speaker 1: from just say, yeah, and you're like listening to almost
Speaker 1: dead air while he's listening to on the phone. But
Speaker 1: this is this is literally the birth of talk radio.
Speaker 1: This is the first time anybody does this, Joe Pine
Speaker 1: and he moves along eventually, and I'm gonna to explain
Speaker 1: that process. I'm going to read a quote from a
Speaker 1: write up in Smithsonian magazine. One caller objected to the
Speaker 1: young DJs pro union opinions. Do you know anything, sir,
Speaker 1: about the history of labor management relations, Pine asked the man.
Speaker 1: After a moment of dead air, he continued, no, you
Speaker 1: keep your voice down. Pine was an expert. Interrupted like
Speaker 1: this caller barely paused for breath listening. Pine had an idea.
Speaker 1: According to REGANI, who worked there, he held the phone
Speaker 1: receiver to his microphone. Now the caller was live on
Speaker 1: the air, and call in radio was born. Um, so
Speaker 1: that's nineteen forty nine and Kenosha Joe Pine in vinced
Speaker 1: call in radio by literally holding a phone up to
Speaker 1: the mic. In fairness, some random dude calling in to
Speaker 1: request Frankie Valley, who had very strong opinions about labor
Speaker 1: unions is who actually created it's guys such an ass all,
Speaker 1: I gotta put him on about it. That's a fair
Speaker 1: why you got to hear what a piece of ship
Speaker 1: this guy is. Let me invent a new discipline that
Speaker 1: will later ratchet the country towards violence. Was born in
Speaker 1: stupid anger, and it will kill us all with stupid
Speaker 1: and stupid anger. It will return. Yeah, perfect, What a
Speaker 1: beautiful way for that to get started. Honestly, And I
Speaker 1: love because this guy gives birth to right wing radio.
Speaker 1: But he the start of talk radio was him trying
Speaker 1: to defend like the right to unionize, which is that
Speaker 1: was I was not expecting that to be the issue,
Speaker 1: said it. I was like, really that you could be
Speaker 1: pretty conservative and pro union in those because it wasn't.
Speaker 1: It was more racist back then, obviously everything was, but
Speaker 1: politics in some ways was less dumb um it wasn't.
Speaker 1: It hadn't gotten to the point where it is with
Speaker 1: like the right wing left wing, Like conservatism is such
Speaker 1: a part of my like identity that like I I
Speaker 1: have this vested interest in like demonizing anything like you
Speaker 1: did have a lot of I mean, like like one
Speaker 1: of the union strongholds in the US for a long
Speaker 1: time was West Virginia. You know, like people like fought
Speaker 1: to the death for Union, said West Virginia with rifles. Um,
Speaker 1: and now it's Joe Mansion country. Uh so, well sorry
Speaker 1: West Virginia. UM. But like, yeah, the things were different
Speaker 1: than politically, is what I'm saying. And yeah, um so
Speaker 1: Joe was fired. H I think this kind of is
Speaker 1: part of what got him fired because his his boss
Speaker 1: at the station was like, he's supposed to be playing songs, Joe,
Speaker 1: what are you doing holding their phone to the goddamn microphone.
Speaker 1: Put on the goddamn reck, Put on the fucking twist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you want to get a rush limbox? Because that's
Speaker 1: how you get a limbo. This is how we get
Speaker 1: a limb. Put the phone down, put on the goddamn music.
Speaker 1: I don't want to listen to Stephen Crowder's heart surgery
Speaker 1: problems in twenty five year or forty five years, however
Speaker 1: many years, a hundred years, sixty years, whatever, too many
Speaker 1: years to arsh it's year. Nobody nobody is even alive anymore.
Speaker 1: No God, thank god. Um So, despite yeah, inventing call
Speaker 1: in radio, Joe's boss did not appreciate him he wanted
Speaker 1: someone to read ads and introduce songs. The two fought constantly.
Speaker 1: At one point, Joe demanded a raise, which led to
Speaker 1: a fight. Another w l I P host later recalled
Speaker 1: stumbling in on the melee Joe was yelling. She recalled,
Speaker 1: he had one hand on our boss's lapelle. He picked
Speaker 1: up a typewriter and threw it against the wall. Oh fuck,
Speaker 1: So that gives you a little bit of an idea
Speaker 1: of like why this guy keeps having problems with his coworkers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he almost said that was danger. He almost scored some
Speaker 1: points of me there because you were like, he picked
Speaker 1: up a type. I'm like, here we here, we go
Speaker 1: hit him in the fake all right, Well, fair compromise,
Speaker 1: all right. So he gets fired again, and he continues
Speaker 1: to move around frequently. You know, while he's going from
Speaker 1: radio station to radio station. He marries a beauty queen.
Speaker 1: He divorces here a year later because she gets sick
Speaker 1: of him. U he's working at w y l M.
Speaker 1: He starts a show called It's Your Nickel, so named
Speaker 1: because the nickel was the standard cost for a call
Speaker 1: on a pay phone. And this was the first, yeah,
Speaker 1: proper radio talk show it's your nickel. So he does
Speaker 1: get a job doing the thing that he invented, and
Speaker 1: that's that became a phrase like it's your dime or
Speaker 1: it's yourn or it's your dollar. Yeah, And I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's the he may have just been using
Speaker 1: because it was already like what people said. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he may have invented it. I have not
Speaker 1: done that research. Tom Um that someone at home. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: something something that sticks out to me about old Joe
Speaker 1: Pine is that he has trouble forming lasting relationships. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He goes from job the job. Marri's a woman, divorces
Speaker 1: her late like he seems like he might be impossible
Speaker 1: to be around. It does, and it also again, this
Speaker 1: is one of those black box of history things. I
Speaker 1: do kind of wonder how much of this is a PTSD,
Speaker 1: because that can make it real hard to get along
Speaker 1: with people and a hard to regulate your emotions. It
Speaker 1: might make you more likely to throw it to ypewriter.
Speaker 1: He did get bombed in one of the most notorious
Speaker 1: battles of World War two. Yeah, yeah, who knows. It's
Speaker 1: It's one of those things. It's like lead exposure, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure Joe Pint was also exposed to a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of lead. Like, you wonder how much of an
Speaker 1: impact did this have on like the way people were
Speaker 1: back then. We wonder how many people were just walking
Speaker 1: around poisoned and crazy like seventy years ago, just because
Speaker 1: that's the way it was. Yeah, I mean there's there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like pretty strong evidence that at
Speaker 1: least the lead exposure may have been part of why
Speaker 1: there was so much more violence back you know, even
Speaker 1: just like twenty something years ago. Um, because everybody was
Speaker 1: inhaling lead and eating lead off the walls. And I
Speaker 1: do want some delicious lead tom Um. Yeah, there's nothing
Speaker 1: that goes with like a nice breathe. Like you get
Speaker 1: a lead chip and you just dip it in a breath.
Speaker 1: That's a good Yeah. Nice meat mixes sweet and savory
Speaker 1: like a lead flight. Yeah, like a lead flight, like
Speaker 1: a flight of lead. I'm gonna start a lead stairant, Tom,
Speaker 1: I think you should. Yeah, lead in every food, Yeah,
Speaker 1: little lead bar, get the lead out. We'll call it
Speaker 1: a lead chicken in every pot. Now, Tom, you know
Speaker 1: who else will expose you to tremendous amounts of lead? Uh,
Speaker 1: the X Men Colossus. That that is probably accurate. I
Speaker 1: don't know as much about x Men as you, um,
Speaker 1: but the products and services that support this podcast certainly
Speaker 1: will expose you to lead. That is the only guarantee
Speaker 1: we make about our sponsors, every one of them filled
Speaker 1: with lead. It's powerful guarantee. We're back, UM. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to start this by letting my nothing my audience
Speaker 1: know that that our guest today, Tom Ryman, has a
Speaker 1: bit of a superpower, which is and everyone who knows
Speaker 1: you know is this Tom, Which is that when you
Speaker 1: when you whenever you mentioned a movie and you will
Speaker 1: talk about, like, you know that guy who was in
Speaker 1: the background and that in that scene in American Beauty,
Speaker 1: and you'll be like, oh, yeah, it's such and such,
Speaker 1: and this is the other films they were in. I've
Speaker 1: never known anybody who can do that the way that
Speaker 1: you can. It's yeah, I thought you were going to
Speaker 1: tell everybody about my optic blasts. So I'm glad. No,
Speaker 1: I'm keeping that a secret for when Rob a Bank. No,
Speaker 1: I've been, I've been. I don't know. I just I
Speaker 1: do that like I keep it encyclopedic record of of
Speaker 1: dates and like people in movies and stuff. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's it's uh, I'm probably somewhere on the spectrum. But
Speaker 1: just the thing I do, I don't know, it's almost
Speaker 1: a souper like it is kind of a superpower like
Speaker 1: it's it's really it's really fun. And it made like
Speaker 1: when we when we were all I mean I lived
Speaker 1: together with like half of the people we worked with.
Speaker 1: It cracked and you were always over and just the
Speaker 1: movie conversations with you and Dave were always a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of fun. Why I listened to your podcasts. Thanks
Speaker 1: Now we lived in your room, remember, Oh yeah you did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was up in the mountain. I was I was
Speaker 1: doing redacted things in the mountains and and mostly not
Speaker 1: home at that point in time, I'd forgotten about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, uh. The days of our lives like sand
Speaker 1: through the hourglass, tom So, like led through the hour glass,
Speaker 1: like led through the hour glass. So Joe Pine gets
Speaker 1: his first proper radio talk show, It's Your Nickel on
Speaker 1: w I l M. And again he's he's out of there,
Speaker 1: he's in there. I think this is like his second
Speaker 1: time working for them. Um and this article from the
Speaker 1: Broadcasters desktop resource makes it clear what kind of show.
Speaker 1: Joe ran the very first radio talk show quote. In
Speaker 1: his nightly introduction, he said, the mic is open. My
Speaker 1: name's Joe Pine. I guess you know yours the program.
Speaker 1: This program is dedicated to the free exchange of ideas
Speaker 1: and two differences of opinion. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: propose to have all the answers, but I do promise
Speaker 1: to talk about the things that interest you. So that's
Speaker 1: a nice little there's that free exchange of ideas. He did,
Speaker 1: I think kind of mean it as opposed to the
Speaker 1: people who say it today. I think they're naping him.
Speaker 1: But I'll play you some clips from his he did.
Speaker 1: He was, yeah, it's interesting. Um Now. The show did
Speaker 1: often become a shout a shout fest, with Pine definitely
Speaker 1: in control. No topic was sacred, from sex to religion
Speaker 1: to politics. But when he felt a listener had gone
Speaker 1: on for too long it was making no sense, he
Speaker 1: would make a rude remark, like you're sick and hang
Speaker 1: up on the post person, enduring Pine's abuse of rhetoric
Speaker 1: the challenge to the audience, many of whom tried to
Speaker 1: debate him before he hung up on them. His views
Speaker 1: tended to be quite conservative most of the time, and
Speaker 1: Pine seemed to dare his listeners to disagree with him.
Speaker 1: His style of arguing included using very derogatory terms. Known
Speaker 1: for being adept with words, his arsenal of insults and
Speaker 1: put downs became the stuff of legends. Among his best
Speaker 1: known were if your brains were dynamite, you couldn't blow
Speaker 1: your nose. There was also go gargle with razor blades
Speaker 1: and take your teeth out, put him in backwards and
Speaker 1: bite your throat. Jesus Christ, at least a man's creative.
Speaker 1: The third one is pretty nice. Yeah, I heard the
Speaker 1: other two. I'm like, yeah, there's are old standards and
Speaker 1: turn your teeth around. I'm like, oh yeah. So when
Speaker 1: he this is in nineteen fifty one too, while he's
Speaker 1: in the middle of changing Radio Forever, his old war
Speaker 1: injury flares up badly enough that surgeons have to amputate
Speaker 1: his left leg from the down. Um. So he's back
Speaker 1: in the studio with a prosthetic limb soon after, And
Speaker 1: while the fake leg was obvious to everyone who saw him,
Speaker 1: he never meant he or it did get mentioned on air.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that a bit, but he refused to
Speaker 1: mention it on air. Judging by his pro union views,
Speaker 1: Joe was at least one at one point at least
Speaker 1: more of a moderate than he became. But the longer
Speaker 1: he's on doing talk radio, he pulls further and further
Speaker 1: to the right. Um. In nineteen fifty three, he celebrated
Speaker 1: on air when the US electrocuted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, saying,
Speaker 1: we finally incinerated those commies. I hope it was slow
Speaker 1: and painful. Good. Uh, that's interesting that the longer I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're gonna make this connection. But the longer
Speaker 1: he's on the air, the more conservative he pulls. And
Speaker 1: I wonder could that be because having bad faith arguments
Speaker 1: to generate we call him Ray clicks now, but stoke
Speaker 1: controversy by needling people and by playing the devil's advocate
Speaker 1: just to get people heated and arguing to fuel ratings
Speaker 1: for his own show. Yeah, I I really don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that was an element of it, because because
Speaker 1: clearly he's going after controversy, he's going after rage kids.
Speaker 1: But also we'll talk about it. He was not always
Speaker 1: the guy you would expect um. That's that's yeah, so
Speaker 1: we're building that. So Joe had a keen understanding of
Speaker 1: how to communicate with the lowest common denominator in US politics.
Speaker 1: He told reporters, quite without shame, that radio was geared
Speaker 1: towards the mentality of thirteen year old kids, and then
Speaker 1: most Americans were politically apathetic and easy to persuade of
Speaker 1: just about anything. He claimed that he used shocking language
Speaker 1: and would make extreme allegations in order to get people
Speaker 1: to think. He told The l A Times that while
Speaker 1: his critics called him a hate monger, all he really
Speaker 1: did was encouraged stimulating dialogue. He see, he knows what
Speaker 1: he's doing. And I think that's a big part of
Speaker 1: like he gets more right wing in his because it's
Speaker 1: easier to kind of, like again, speak to the mentality
Speaker 1: of thirteen year old kids. If you're just like making
Speaker 1: these kind of reactionary arguments. He wants to piss people
Speaker 1: off so that they react and he gets a show
Speaker 1: out of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a part of it.
Speaker 1: That's not all of it, because he is When there
Speaker 1: were times when he would be challenged, and it kind
Speaker 1: of depended on how it was if he found someone interesting,
Speaker 1: even if they were coming in from a very different perspective,
Speaker 1: he would let them talk and sometimes very respectfully. So
Speaker 1: he was not well, he's he's the start, and he's
Speaker 1: doing a lot of unpleasant stuff. He's also not He's
Speaker 1: unequivocally a better person than Ben Shapiro, was what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: like right like, his goal in any given conversation wasn't
Speaker 1: just to own them. He would actually listen to people
Speaker 1: sometimes who are bringing up some pretty radical stuff. We'll
Speaker 1: get to that. Nineteen fifty seven, a little over after
Speaker 1: a little over six years on air, Joe left w
Speaker 1: y l M. This time it was his own choice.
Speaker 1: He was famous, at least locally, and his salary was
Speaker 1: forty two tho dollars a year, which is almost ten
Speaker 1: times the average salary form it's about four hundred grand
Speaker 1: a year in like modern dollars like. He was making
Speaker 1: real good money. This time, Joe left because his dreams
Speaker 1: had overgrown a very comfortable work in condition Um. He
Speaker 1: traveled to Riverside, California, and he got a job at
Speaker 1: a local radio station that quickly led to a TV
Speaker 1: job at kat l A and Los Angeles. He would
Speaker 1: later claim that his first TV show, which was essentially
Speaker 1: a filmed version of It's Your Nickel, had been a
Speaker 1: huge success. But the show lasted less than a year,
Speaker 1: and I found no clips of it anywhere. Um Joe
Speaker 1: moved back. Yeah, I'd be surprised if they're still there
Speaker 1: is a we have some clips of his the show
Speaker 1: that come next, came next, but it's because there's like
Speaker 1: a grassroots archival effort to like digitize all of the
Speaker 1: old tape master tapes. So after his first year in
Speaker 1: l A, Joe moves back across the country to Chester,
Speaker 1: where he works for a Philadelphia TV station for a
Speaker 1: first time for the for a short time, and then
Speaker 1: he goes back to w y l M for a
Speaker 1: little while. He licks his wounds. He's wounds. He seemed
Speaker 1: to know that a show like his, a political talk
Speaker 1: show where people could scream about politics to a mass audience,
Speaker 1: was the wave of the future and was going to
Speaker 1: be huge on television, but the world wasn't ready quite yet.
Speaker 1: For a few years, Joe continued to broadcast, but in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen sixties he decided the time was finally
Speaker 1: right and he moved back to l A. Where he
Speaker 1: got a job at k ABC and I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from the broadcasters desktop resource again. Once again, he polarized
Speaker 1: the audience, with some listeners and guests complaining he was
Speaker 1: too caustic, and others saying his candor was refreshing. But
Speaker 1: as in Wilmington's he had people talking about him and
Speaker 1: his show. From k ABC, he went over to k
Speaker 1: l a c in at nineteen sixty five doing the
Speaker 1: nine pm to midnight shift. Never want to avoid controversial guests,
Speaker 1: he put Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan
Speaker 1: on the air displeasure yeah, oh yeah, dope selearning the
Speaker 1: displeasure of the American Jewish Committee and a warning from
Speaker 1: the f c C. He also had guests, guests who
Speaker 1: believe it in eugenics, guests who were racists, guests with
Speaker 1: strange theories about past lives or UFOs, and the arguments continued.
Speaker 1: Controversy sold Joe salary balloon to two hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a year, which is nearly two million a year by
Speaker 1: modern standards. NBC, Yeah he's making it bang, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is soon. He's giving people like what Tucker Carlson
Speaker 1: and stuff. Now I will be fair when he has
Speaker 1: Nazis and KKK members on so that he can scream
Speaker 1: at them, like yeah, well that it's still like it's
Speaker 1: still but like there's it's still problematic, but it's not
Speaker 1: as problematic as it is today, where you have people
Speaker 1: affiliated with similar organisms. You're talking about how yeah, get
Speaker 1: the hell out of here. He was getting outrage clicks.
Speaker 1: But at least the the understanding was people are going
Speaker 1: to hate these night. At least that was like the understanding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least that was the understanding. Yeah. Again, you can
Speaker 1: still argue, and I think it is pretty irresponsible to
Speaker 1: do that, but at least the understanding was, like, funk
Speaker 1: these guys. Let's let's yell at him here, let's not
Speaker 1: let's hear him out. Yeah. NBC Radio Network started syndicating
Speaker 1: his show nationally in March of nineteen sixty six, and
Speaker 1: it was soon on more than two hundred stations around
Speaker 1: the country. He called what he did fist in the
Speaker 1: mouth Radio, and now that he was on a new
Speaker 1: time slot the mid morning rather than the night as
Speaker 1: he'd usually been before, his ratings exploded. This is generally
Speaker 1: thought to be due to the fact that being on
Speaker 1: earlier in the day, opened him up to a vast
Speaker 1: new audience of board housewives. People were titilated. One of
Speaker 1: his networks advertised the show in a full page newspaper spread,
Speaker 1: listing all the Nazis and klansmen and other pieces of
Speaker 1: ship he'd had on his show, and then concluding with
Speaker 1: you may agree or disagree with Joe Pine, you may
Speaker 1: scream in rage at some of his remarks, but you
Speaker 1: won't turn him off. Yeah, I mean, what's what's the
Speaker 1: intent of that day? Is that? Is that shaming me?
Speaker 1: Is that like, yeah, yeah, you feel bad? I do,
Speaker 1: but you will turn him off? Yeah? You motherfucker you
Speaker 1: unless you turn him off. What this motherfucker off the air?
Speaker 1: But we can't. You like goom too much. Just son
Speaker 1: of a bitch. We tried to lock him the doors.
Speaker 1: He just shows up inside somehow secret doors. So Joe
Speaker 1: was on both the radio and the TV, and his
Speaker 1: television show All Learn alone earned him more money per
Speaker 1: year than Mickey Mantle played playing made playing for the Yankees.
Speaker 1: So he's making like more than Mickey Mantle money. Now,
Speaker 1: professional sports players made less money in those days, but
Speaker 1: still he's he's raking it. In he was the top
Speaker 1: rated talk show host and the second largest market in
Speaker 1: the US. Yeah, it feels wrong that that. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you said, professional athletes made less money back then,
Speaker 1: But like he feels wrong that, like's I know who
Speaker 1: Mickey mantelists anyone? Shouldn't he make all the money? So
Speaker 1: from Smithsonian Magazine quote. At a time when TV's leading
Speaker 1: men included Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, Andy Griffith, and
Speaker 1: Captain Kangaroo, Pine was the medium's first shock jock, a
Speaker 1: firebrand who invited hippies, civil rights activists, and ku klux
Speaker 1: klansmen alike to take a hike or go gargle with
Speaker 1: razor blades. By the mid sixties, he was the most
Speaker 1: popular TV rate your Voice in America. Johnny Carson had
Speaker 1: more television viewers, but Pine, with a syndicated TV show
Speaker 1: and two hundred plus radio outlets, had an audience to rifle.
Speaker 1: Johnny's Life magazine called him sadistic, a barroom tough, but
Speaker 1: millions turned in to watch the fireworks. When a guest
Speaker 1: advocating free love set off a melee, Pines audience charged
Speaker 1: the set and knocked it flat One guest, the suave
Speaker 1: TV personality David Suskin, earned a chorus of booze for
Speaker 1: calling Pines program an orgy for morons. Host and guests
Speaker 1: both got a kick out of that. So it is
Speaker 1: like the first on air fight, Sringer. Yeah, yeah, he's
Speaker 1: also like Jerry Springer, the first Springs and um yeah Morton.
Speaker 1: We'll be talking about Morton later. Yeah. Um, like all,
Speaker 1: it's not just like Tucker Carlson the time they cracked
Speaker 1: every aspect of this really did he He's an important
Speaker 1: man to know about, Like he really Uh, he figured
Speaker 1: he was. Yeah, he figured some ship out most a
Speaker 1: bit shout. I wish no one had figured out, but
Speaker 1: he did figure it out. I can make millions if
Speaker 1: I put Nazis on the air. Yeah. Now, I think
Speaker 1: it's probably a better time to give you a better
Speaker 1: idea of how Joe sounded, because when you read it
Speaker 1: out the way I have put it together, it probably
Speaker 1: sounds like he's like a stereotypical modern shock jock. And
Speaker 1: while he was the prototype for that, his actual broadcasting
Speaker 1: style was much more subdued and witty. In this clip,
Speaker 1: Joe interviews an early vegan activist and what he called
Speaker 1: his beef box. Check it out. As you cannot hear
Speaker 1: the screams of a lamb in the slaughterhouse, you cannot
Speaker 1: hear the screams of your son on the battlefield. I
Speaker 1: I would like to ask you a meaningful question at
Speaker 1: this point. Are you a vegetarian? I am? Indeed? Do
Speaker 1: you ever eat tomatoes? I would say to you when
Speaker 1: the last three thousand years, man, imagine you a question?
Speaker 1: Do you ever eat tomatoes? Do you eat tomatoes? Of
Speaker 1: course I do you do? Do you know that there
Speaker 1: is now scientific proof that when you cut a tomato
Speaker 1: with screams, there is electrical there is a let a
Speaker 1: killer of tomatoes, and my friend tomato doesn't pay. The
Speaker 1: tomato feels no pain, and you're killing tomatoes blood does
Speaker 1: homado tomato? Guys, smild take alf Why are you gonna
Speaker 1: sing something? I would all right, this is a tomato stump.
Speaker 1: Uh as the animal dies, the slaughter of that animal,
Speaker 1: all right, that's probably enough of that. So yeah, what
Speaker 1: do you what do you think of? That was not
Speaker 1: what I was expecting. He sounds like Walter Cronkite and
Speaker 1: then he flips the funk out. Yeah, And then he
Speaker 1: flips the funk out, but he starts from this real
Speaker 1: low ed and he also does like he says, get off.
Speaker 1: But then the guy's like, well I want to sing,
Speaker 1: and he's like absolutely, please do. This is great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's going to be incredible content. And that clip was
Speaker 1: from six. Yeah, nineteen six feels extremely modern, especially like
Speaker 1: almost be on TV today his his extremely bad faith argument. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's all he's a he's a he's a trailblazer time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy can put this dude on TV right now
Speaker 1: and he would be the hottest thing. Yeah, it's amazing,
Speaker 1: and there's a level of almost um. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: different than the way they mock people today. Um, it's
Speaker 1: almost more. It's almost gentler um in a weird way.
Speaker 1: He's he's not he's not the same as what came after. Again,
Speaker 1: he's this weird mix of what we have today. And
Speaker 1: like Walter Cronkite, it's it's a fascinating, it's fascinating to
Speaker 1: just listen to his stuff. Um. When the civil rights
Speaker 1: movement kicked off, Joe devoted a tremendous amount of time
Speaker 1: to discussing the angry negro, which um it's more or
Speaker 1: less what you'd expect. In one episode, he brought on
Speaker 1: several militant black activists. I believe they were black panthers,
Speaker 1: and in a heated moment during the show. I've not
Speaker 1: been able to find this clip, but it's very famous.
Speaker 1: During the show, he opens his desk drawer to show
Speaker 1: them his revolver and he threatens them with it on air. UM,
Speaker 1: so he we could, he could go off. He advocated
Speaker 1: bombing North Vietnam back to the Stone Age, obviously, UM,
Speaker 1: but he could also be a surprising man. And part
Speaker 1: became because he came from an era in which political
Speaker 1: figures could admit to learning something and changing their opinion,
Speaker 1: and in part because some of the issues that are
Speaker 1: now very aggressive are a lot less. We're a lot
Speaker 1: less settled in those days in terms of like how
Speaker 1: it was going to break down right or left. So
Speaker 1: he conducted an interview with Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown UM,
Speaker 1: and he started the interview by calling her a ding
Speaker 1: bat and then asked her to explain why girls should
Speaker 1: be considered equal to men in the workplace. But then
Speaker 1: he sat quietly while she gave her speech, like explaining
Speaker 1: her piece on women's liberation, and he applauded her at
Speaker 1: the end of it. Um, he was certainly more polite
Speaker 1: to women than towards men, and more polite to white
Speaker 1: people towards black people. But even when Uh, in interviewing
Speaker 1: people he clearly despised, Joe maintained an air that's just
Speaker 1: so much more congenial than what you see on TV today. Um.
Speaker 1: Here he is talking to Paul Krassner, a left wing
Speaker 1: magazine publisher who later went on to head High Times.
Speaker 1: So this is him talking with someone he fucking hates. Uh.
Speaker 1: Which deodorant does Lyndon Johnson use? Now? What does that mean?
Speaker 1: What is that? Paul Krassner? What is that? Which deodorant
Speaker 1: does Lyndon Johnson used? That's your front page head? Yes?
Speaker 1: Do you want to know which one by brand name? No?
Speaker 1: I want to know what is that? What is the
Speaker 1: what is the reason for that? Well? I think that
Speaker 1: the President of the United States is it such a
Speaker 1: height that people have a height height? He's put out
Speaker 1: such a pedestal that people have to realize that he
Speaker 1: is only a human being and does use a deodorant
Speaker 1: like you and me? And I'm a little worried about you.
Speaker 1: He's lighting a cigarette now, so yeah, that's like it's
Speaker 1: clearly again this is not somebody he particularly respects. But
Speaker 1: it's also like it's not a shouting debate. I guess
Speaker 1: this is what impresses, not impresses. Is the thing that
Speaker 1: that is interesting to me because like, you don't you
Speaker 1: don't have that kind of like congenial distaste. Is how
Speaker 1: it it feels watching them. Yeah, he feels more like
Speaker 1: Carson than like um A Tucker Carlson at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's the kind I wish I could find the
Speaker 1: thing the interview he does with those those black panthers
Speaker 1: where he shows them his revolver, because I've heard different
Speaker 1: descriptions of it, some that make it sound like he's
Speaker 1: threatening them with a gun, and some that make it
Speaker 1: sound like he's just like, well, I have a gun too,
Speaker 1: and like I really don't know I and I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know what the actual tone was in that.
Speaker 1: Either one is entirely possible based on what you've shown
Speaker 1: me exactly. Either one makes complete sense, like he's he's
Speaker 1: more polite, but he's still he's still oh for sure,
Speaker 1: faith arguments and it's like yeah, and the interview with
Speaker 1: Krassner got markedly less friendly after the ad break from
Speaker 1: Smithsonian magazine quote why do you print the most obscene words?
Speaker 1: Pine demanded, do you edit your magazine because you were
Speaker 1: an unwanted child, to which Krastner responds, no, Daddy. Their
Speaker 1: talk with Downhill from there. He asked me about my
Speaker 1: acne scars, says Krassner. Now five, that was a low blow.
Speaker 1: I said, let me ask you something. Do you take
Speaker 1: a your wooden leg before you make love to your wife?
Speaker 1: And it's jo dropped. According to Krassner, the audience gasped,
Speaker 1: while Pines producers averted their eyes and Mr Ki surrealistic.
Speaker 1: That's good TV. Though, right there, that's good TV. So
Speaker 1: the listeners know this cool was his clip sixty seventh
Speaker 1: sixties seven Yet do you your fake leg in the sixties? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Andy Griffith is the biggest name in entertainment, and this
Speaker 1: ship's on TV. Holy sh it, like you could see, like,
Speaker 1: and that's part of the other thing that's interesting. Like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess a lot of his audience, if not
Speaker 1: most of it, weren't right wing, Like a lot of
Speaker 1: them are probably people who would like guys like Paul Krassner,
Speaker 1: but like want to see ship like this on TV.
Speaker 1: Um people have these kind of like conversations, So talk
Speaker 1: to fucking anyone, um and he could surprise you. But
Speaker 1: before we get into that, Tom, you know what else
Speaker 1: is going to surprise? You know, the quality of the
Speaker 1: products and services that support this podcast would be a surprise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it will be a surprise. We're back, uh, and we're
Speaker 1: we're talking about what I think is one of the
Speaker 1: more surprising things I found. Um So, Joe Pine was
Speaker 1: one of the very first major media figures in the
Speaker 1: United States to platform a transgender woman discussing trans issues. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he did show in a way that is incredibly
Speaker 1: surprising for the time. This is from nineteen sixties six,
Speaker 1: um and I want to just play this. And the
Speaker 1: woman he's talking to, Christine Jorgenson, was like one of
Speaker 1: the very first super public transgender media figures, very famous,
Speaker 1: very famous. Um So, he's he's certainly not the first
Speaker 1: person to talk to her, but he's one of the
Speaker 1: first people the massive platform to sit down and have
Speaker 1: a long conversation with a transgender person in a a
Speaker 1: major outlet. And I think the tone of the conversation,
Speaker 1: given where we are now with the right wing on
Speaker 1: this issue, is going to be surprising to people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was our guests who first flushed the problems of
Speaker 1: transsexuals into the open. Christine Jorgensen was born a male.
Speaker 1: She was described in her high school annual as a
Speaker 1: clever lad. Later she became a private first class in
Speaker 1: the Army. Though outwardly a boy, Christine was sexually disturbed.
Speaker 1: The story of her later discovery and transformation electrified the world.
Speaker 1: It was the first chapter in a new outlook towards
Speaker 1: the transsexual phenomenon. And yet I can't believe that yours
Speaker 1: was the first operation of this type. It wasn't the
Speaker 1: first one was I think done somewhere in the area
Speaker 1: of nineteen twenty six or twenty seven there was a
Speaker 1: marvelous doctor in Germany called Magnus Hershfeldt who started the
Speaker 1: whole investigation to our in our modern age, let's put
Speaker 1: it that way. Before that, they may have been others,
Speaker 1: but I know not of them. Is this a legal
Speaker 1: operation in the United States? Yet? Oh? Yes, Oh, certainly
Speaker 1: you know they're doing it at Johns Hopkins now in
Speaker 1: bold more happens to be yes, and they're doing at
Speaker 1: the University of Minnesota Medical School, they've done five cases
Speaker 1: to the best of my knowledge, at University of California
Speaker 1: Medical School. How many people and you're a particular predicament
Speaker 1: do you think there are today? I mean, not those
Speaker 1: who have successfully assuming you have successfully bridged the gap,
Speaker 1: but how many were in that spot where they need this? Well,
Speaker 1: I could only judge by what I heard when from
Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins when I was in Baltimore several weeks ago,
Speaker 1: doctor Money and I did a television show together, and
Speaker 1: he's one of the doctors involved in Johns Hopkins and
Speaker 1: he asked me if he if I thought I knew
Speaker 1: how many? And I said, I don't have the vaguest
Speaker 1: idea And he said he according to his statistics, they
Speaker 1: should be thirty thousand transsexuals of both sides in the
Speaker 1: United States. To get it straight, at transsexual and transvestite
Speaker 1: differ in that the transvestite is addressing up type of homosexual.
Speaker 1: And you don't claim to be a homosexual, now I
Speaker 1: should say, you claim you're not a homosexual. Well, an
Speaker 1: interesting point if you say that if I was established
Speaker 1: and accepted by society for the first twenty six years
Speaker 1: of my life as a male. Then my emotional feelings
Speaker 1: during that period toward another male had to be considered
Speaker 1: a homosexual emotion in the eyes of society, although I
Speaker 1: never saw it that way in my own eyes. But again, Joe,
Speaker 1: may I correct something which has been very is very startling.
Speaker 1: I think that a transvest type they have proven statistically
Speaker 1: that of them are hetero sexual. Now this is even
Speaker 1: more interesting than ever in people who men who dress
Speaker 1: up in women's clothing are really, by the world standards normal. Wow.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's what I expect. It surprising, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know he does. He does say heavens to Betsy
Speaker 1: when she's she's talking about the different, but he's like
Speaker 1: the terminology. Again, this is nineteen sixty seven. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: let's say it is like, sure, okay, Joe, like he's
Speaker 1: actually like, okay, what's the proper term? What's the difference?
Speaker 1: That like explained what your experiences all about gendering her properly?
Speaker 1: Be very surprising? Yet wow, yeah, I I didn't. And
Speaker 1: I talked to a transgender friend of mine about this,
Speaker 1: and she did point out that Christine Jorgensen had some
Speaker 1: like kind of pretty anti gay attitudes. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that was going on here, and one of
Speaker 1: the things that made her acceptable is that like she
Speaker 1: was like, well, I'm not going to be like people
Speaker 1: like me won't be homosexual if we get to transition,
Speaker 1: because then it's yeah. And I didn't really catch that
Speaker 1: when I listened to the interview. Um, but I can
Speaker 1: see how that could have been an element here, although
Speaker 1: when he brings up homosexuality, I didn't note anything aggressive
Speaker 1: in it, Like he was just kind of asked for
Speaker 1: clarification about yeah, but not in this. I'm sure he
Speaker 1: I'm sure he was right, yeah, there's way yeah, But
Speaker 1: but so not the interview I would have expected. And
Speaker 1: it it I think it says less about him than
Speaker 1: it just does about how the issue had not been
Speaker 1: politicized at this point, like the existence of transgender people
Speaker 1: had not been politicized to the extent that it is now,
Speaker 1: even though was much more dangerous to consider transitioning back then. Um.
Speaker 1: It also there was not the kind of political um
Speaker 1: rancor behind It's just a fascinating piece of history. Um
Speaker 1: and evidence that like Joe Pine again, you could be
Speaker 1: a right wing firebrand on TV and encounter something you
Speaker 1: didn't understand and like learn about it on air without
Speaker 1: it being a like a thing. Yeah. Do you think
Speaker 1: that's a product of him being like a genuinely curious person,
Speaker 1: like if I want to learn new things, etcetera. Or
Speaker 1: is that more of a product of what you were
Speaker 1: saying about the issue where it wasn't clear which side
Speaker 1: of the political spectrum the issue was going to fall on,
Speaker 1: so he didn't want to go as hard as he
Speaker 1: normally would had the issue been more firmly settled on
Speaker 1: one side. I don't know. I've heard people theorize that
Speaker 1: part of why he was very polite and liked Christine
Speaker 1: Jorgensen is that she was a veteran like him, and
Speaker 1: he had just that kind of like respector like, well,
Speaker 1: whatever else about this person we fought in the same
Speaker 1: war together. I think some of it's also, I think
Speaker 1: the attitude and like the way people presented themselves like
Speaker 1: he was. He was a guy who was raised in
Speaker 1: a specific time where if people present themselves a specific way,
Speaker 1: you treat them a specific way, right, And I think
Speaker 1: people who kind of like Joe Krab or Krastner, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a left wing hippie type, and
Speaker 1: so he did not feel the need to be respectful.
Speaker 1: Christine like presented as like a very kind of like boogie,
Speaker 1: upper middle class white woman, and he treated her with
Speaker 1: respect as a result. The same was true of some
Speaker 1: other women he interviewed who he had a disagreement with.
Speaker 1: So I think some of it may just be that
Speaker 1: just like there was more of like a well, regardless
Speaker 1: of your feelings, if somebody presents in this way, if
Speaker 1: they if they match kind of our expectations of upper
Speaker 1: class white people behavior, you treat them with a certain
Speaker 1: level of respect and regard because that's just how we are. Um. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a fascinating time, fascinating time capsule. Um.
Speaker 1: And that was I think maybe the longest clip we've
Speaker 1: ever played on this show. But I just I was
Speaker 1: really surprised when I came across that learning this is like,
Speaker 1: this is the guy who gave mental birth to Rush
Speaker 1: Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson. Yeah, not the interview you would expect.
Speaker 1: As a last treat. I have one more thing I
Speaker 1: want to play for you, a segment from Joe Show
Speaker 1: where he talks with Anton LaVey, head of the Church
Speaker 1: by you're gonna have a good time with this one. Popcorn. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you get Anton LaVey on the TV, and you know
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a good one. And how do you
Speaker 1: make your living as a counselor sorcerer, practicing wizard, shaman, warlock,
Speaker 1: whatever you wish to call it. You're also a man
Speaker 1: which a warlock, well, a male which is considered a warlock,
Speaker 1: a male witch, but not a white witch, not like
Speaker 1: some of these people that have been on various shows
Speaker 1: that bend over backwards trying to convince everyone how good
Speaker 1: they are. They never performed black magic, only white magic.
Speaker 1: I think this is make that man disappear out of
Speaker 1: the dock. Out of the dock. Why should I want to?
Speaker 1: Because we have somebody else coming up. Of course I
Speaker 1: can't make him disappear because I am naturally cast in
Speaker 1: the mold of a human being, and I think less
Speaker 1: human and more meph to me, Thank you, sir, I
Speaker 1: called him a Devil's complimented. It's just remarkable to me.
Speaker 1: But degree the degree to which Anton LaVey looks like
Speaker 1: Joe Kuchin from Command and Conquer, the guy who played Kine,
Speaker 1: they're the same. Maybe Kane was Anton LaVey. That's my
Speaker 1: command and conquer theory. That's gonna be very funny. He doesn't.
Speaker 1: He looks. He looks like the villain in every f
Speaker 1: M V computer game. It's amazing. Where an ambulant. He's
Speaker 1: such a dummy. Every time he goes on TV. It's
Speaker 1: so funny, Like, no, I can't make that guy to
Speaker 1: speak white magic, white magic? Here you doing aunt? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I have to side with Joe on this one. But
Speaker 1: he got a magic here you up to magic? Are
Speaker 1: you gonna do? Yeah. By the late nineteen sixties, Joe
Speaker 1: was a very wealthy man. He drove drove a Rolls
Speaker 1: Royce and when he parked at the studio he was
Speaker 1: so frightened it would be vandalized that he had his
Speaker 1: network higher security guard to watch the car while he
Speaker 1: was on the air, man, what are you doing? Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? On paper? In many ways he
Speaker 1: sounded like the same kind of guy that many right
Speaker 1: wing media grifters are today. But the things he the
Speaker 1: thing he had that they all lacked is a sense
Speaker 1: of charm. There's a level of class that you get
Speaker 1: with Joe that just like is completely absent from everyone
Speaker 1: who follows. Yeah, it's it's it's more the more we
Speaker 1: hear of him. I had said he sounds like Cronkite earlier,
Speaker 1: but he really sounds more like like Carson or like
Speaker 1: a talk show most where it's like he can be
Speaker 1: warm and supportive until he's not, and then he'll turn
Speaker 1: on you and kind of ridicule you, but in a
Speaker 1: in a polite way. I can see how a lot
Speaker 1: of people who disagreed profoundly with Joe Pine could enjoy
Speaker 1: listening to his show in a way that like I
Speaker 1: cannot with Tucker Carlson or nobody's like nobody like hate
Speaker 1: watches for enjoyment Tucker Carlson. It's just too like horrifying,
Speaker 1: like nobody does that with Ben Shapiro or whatever. No,
Speaker 1: no, no no, that's an assignment. That's not something that is
Speaker 1: an assignment, that is that is a that is conflict journalism,
Speaker 1: like you are taking on pain. I'm looking at something
Speaker 1: nodding people could like enjoy like you enjoy, Like why
Speaker 1: I recommend watching him talk to Anton LaVey, it's a yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's legitimately fun just to do real ship
Speaker 1: heads just tugging it up in the six daies. At
Speaker 1: one point he had at one point he had Harlane
Speaker 1: listen on as a guest. Now, Harlan Ellison's quite a fellow.
Speaker 1: At the time, he was a Los Angeles Free Press columnist,
Speaker 1: and he's now a legendary dead sci fi author, the
Speaker 1: author if I have no mouth, but I must scream
Speaker 1: and some other. The way you phrase that made it
Speaker 1: sound like he's legendarily dead, he is. He is a
Speaker 1: lot of people. I mean, Harlan Ellison was a famous
Speaker 1: missing throp. He made a lot of enemies and politically
Speaker 1: was pretty much the opposite of Joe Pine, although in
Speaker 1: terms of being unpleasant, they were both very unpleasant people. Famously,
Speaker 1: Harlan Ellison called Joe a hustler and a bully, but
Speaker 1: noted that he was very sharp. Quote. I thought I'd
Speaker 1: go on his show and beat him at his own game,
Speaker 1: but I blew it. I spent my time talking about
Speaker 1: the issue civil liberties and all that, and he talked
Speaker 1: about America. The trouble with Pine was that he was
Speaker 1: really really good at what he did now, and that
Speaker 1: that does get to like, yeah, you're ever gonna Win
Speaker 1: talking about the issues with these guys. That's not and
Speaker 1: you can only get Joe to listen when it wasn't
Speaker 1: something he saw as an issue. I think that's why
Speaker 1: his why that interview with Jorgensen went the way it did,
Speaker 1: is because it wasn't a political issue to his curiative interest.
Speaker 1: To me, she was curious, this isn't this isn't real,
Speaker 1: This is just some flighty nonsense, you know, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think he was treating it like nonsense.
Speaker 1: He was treating it like he was just learning a
Speaker 1: new science. Fate. It wasn't political, it was not. He
Speaker 1: definitely didn't treat it the same way he was treating
Speaker 1: um the High Time orient On Levey. But I feel
Speaker 1: like he probably considered them in the same bucket of like, well,
Speaker 1: this isn't this is like a personal interest story, this isn't.
Speaker 1: Definitely in the same idea. He clearly respected her more
Speaker 1: than he did any either of them, But yes, I
Speaker 1: think it was the same kind of like, well, this
Speaker 1: is not a political thing, this is this is personal interest.
Speaker 1: This is just something that people are going to be
Speaker 1: fascinated by. That. I can also, like you can you
Speaker 1: can you can create a kind of like fantastic title
Speaker 1: for it. You know, it's something that will that will
Speaker 1: get people get eyeballs on the screen. Um. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine, Joe started having trouble breathing. He was diagnosed
Speaker 1: with with lung cancer. For years, he had jokingly called
Speaker 1: his cigarettes coffin nails, and you saw him light up
Speaker 1: at least one. He was always smoken um, your government
Speaker 1: issue cigarettes. He had repeatedly promised that he would never
Speaker 1: give up smoking, but he quit after getting his diagnosis.
Speaker 1: It didn't help when he got too sick to drive
Speaker 1: to the studio. He hosted his show from his home,
Speaker 1: making him a trailblazer in yet another way. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was the first first to yeah yeah yeah. At the
Speaker 1: very end of his life, he lay in his bed
Speaker 1: ranting about the Peace Corps because they wanted to in
Speaker 1: the war in Vietnam. He died in nineteen seventy at
Speaker 1: age forty five. Thank you, comrades. Wow, yeah forty five.
Speaker 1: That dude was forty five. That dude was mainlining cigarettes
Speaker 1: his tire red life. From the time he was fourteen.
Speaker 1: He was probably spoken six packs a day. I want
Speaker 1: the listeners to understand that this motherfucker looks like in
Speaker 1: these clips we watch, he looks like he's at least
Speaker 1: sixty eight. Yeah, like he looks so old. I mean,
Speaker 1: in fairness, some of that's World War two. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's like a joke on the Internet where it's like, man,
Speaker 1: people who were like thirty eight in in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: it's like they were on door. Um, but like yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: forty five. He's now yeah, younger than Oh, what's the guy,
Speaker 1: the funny man. All the ladies like him? He's the
Speaker 1: aunt man. What's his fucking aunt man? Paul Paul, Paul
Speaker 1: Rud's older than Joe Pine died at Now Paul Read
Speaker 1: is older than Joe Pine ever was and looks half
Speaker 1: And when Paul Rudd is seventy, he won't look as
Speaker 1: old as Joe Pine looked. At this dude looks older
Speaker 1: than yea um. The Smithsonian magazine lays out how directly
Speaker 1: his influence led to the creation of some of the
Speaker 1: most influential careers in modern right wing media. Quote. One
Speaker 1: of pines protegees, the controversial radio shouter Bob Grant, followed
Speaker 1: his mentor Pine as a talk show shatter in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles before moving to New York, where Grant paved the
Speaker 1: way for his successor at w a BC, Sean Hannity.
Speaker 1: Hannity had first gained national attention subbing for Rush Limbaugh,
Speaker 1: another Bob Grant fan. When Grant died in two thousand
Speaker 1: and thirteen, Hannity hailed him as one of the greatest
Speaker 1: pioneers of controversial, opinionated talk radio. Grant, in turn, had
Speaker 1: acknowledged his debt to the founder of in your Face talk.
Speaker 1: Even Vice President Mike Pence, who hosted a right wing
Speaker 1: talk show in Indiana in the nineteen nineties, was a
Speaker 1: successor of Pines. According to Harlan Ellison, who admired pine
Speaker 1: shrewdness while loathing his politics. I've appeared on that sort
Speaker 1: of show all over the country. They call it controversy,
Speaker 1: but they're all about vilification and hostility, and their motto
Speaker 1: is pot model is Pine. And Pine is again an
Speaker 1: odd figure for me, because when I first started reading
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff about him, calling him a bully,
Speaker 1: I expected a different kind of bully than the video's reveal.
Speaker 1: He's absolutely a bully, but he's subtler than the ones
Speaker 1: we see today. I found a column in the Saturday
Speaker 1: Evening Post from the nineteen sixties where a left wing
Speaker 1: reviewer tries to explain his appreciation for the Joe Pine show. Quote.
Speaker 1: After watching one of these shows, and it does not
Speaker 1: matter whether I loathed the guest, to the host or both,
Speaker 1: I feel somehow drained and less misanthropic. Not long ago,
Speaker 1: for example, I had a terrible day. I had a migraine,
Speaker 1: and my daughter sliced your finger with a razor blade,
Speaker 1: and I got a rejection slip, and a cop gave
Speaker 1: me a speeding ticket, my third this year, which means
Speaker 1: that I will probably lose my license. And in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: that is like being a functional paraplegic. That night, I
Speaker 1: watched Joe Pine. His guests included a lady who complained
Speaker 1: that television sportscasters never carried drag racing results, a man
Speaker 1: who blamed the current racial unrest on Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: and a veteran who said we ought to drop the
Speaker 1: big bomb on Vietnam. The vets said he did not
Speaker 1: fight World War Two. To throw this one away. It
Speaker 1: turned out that he had been in v mailman. I
Speaker 1: was outside the zoo looking in again. Life did not
Speaker 1: seem so bad after all. I went to bed and slept.
Speaker 1: Well that what's going on in that guy's life? Though? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is honest. We had lost his license, his daughter
Speaker 1: cut Yeah wait, wait, you had access to razor blades.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna blades or it was a different time, Tom,
Speaker 1: I'm sure he was giving her cigarettes to this down.
Speaker 1: This guy's life was already shaky. Uh for the show
Speaker 1: Pine show came to the picture. But yeah you can like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the appreciation you could have for Joe Pine if
Speaker 1: you weren't in the cult part of what makes him
Speaker 1: different from what came later, and in part to Tom,
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about what came later, but for
Speaker 1: right now, we need to talk about the ship. You've
Speaker 1: got to plose. Oh geez, all right, well um yeah,
Speaker 1: if you uh, I've got a Patreon, if you ever
Speaker 1: patreon dot com, slash game employed, you can uh find
Speaker 1: our podcast net words to me and David bell Um,
Speaker 1: but also from Cracked. We do a bunch of shows
Speaker 1: every week. We do. We just watched hype cast. We
Speaker 1: do Uh Fox Bolder is a maniac. Tom and Jeff
Speaker 1: Watch Batman, Star Trek, the next few, Durama, a bunch
Speaker 1: of great shows you can check out there. Um also
Speaker 1: do writing over at Collider um and for some more
Speaker 1: news uh and for one night Dred hot Dog. So
Speaker 1: you can look at all of those things. Check it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, all right, and you can you know, you
Speaker 1: can go to hell. That's right, go to hell. When
Speaker 1: you get to hell, tell Joe Pine that Roberts sent it.
Speaker 1: Tell Joe Pine Robert since you, and then kick him
Speaker 1: in the nuts and scream the name Rush Limbaugh. He
Speaker 1: won't know what you're saying. He died decades before that
Speaker 1: man was relevant. I feel like in the hell they
Speaker 1: just make you listen to clips of everything. Lives on
Speaker 1: this episode are repeat. We haven't even gotten to the back.
Speaker 1: Wait for part two. Yo,