Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Because
Speaker 1: of the danger, because of the threats, because of his
Speaker 1: mental illnesses, because of his terrorism, because of the hate
Speaker 1: he has enabled and validated in this country, we sometimes
Speaker 1: forget that at his core, elderly first offender J Trump
Speaker 1: is a moron. The headline from his first return to
Speaker 1: the scene of the coup crime on January sixth was
Speaker 1: quoting Punchbawl News, Trump to House Republicans, Milwaukee, where we
Speaker 1: are having our convention is a horrible city. More on
Speaker 1: Trump's extraordinary self inflicted cluster f momentarily. But there was
Speaker 1: actually something bigger at those meetings in Washington, or at
Speaker 1: least there was supposed to be. Trump and Speaker Mike
Speaker 1: Johnson are cooking up a plot to somehow nullify Trump's
Speaker 1: thirty four convictions in the Stormy Daniels election interference case.
Speaker 1: What Trump intended to talk to them about, and who
Speaker 1: knows if he remembered, and who knows if the whole
Speaker 1: Milwaukee stuff and the Hannibal Lecter stuff and the rest
Speaker 1: of it was just a smoke screen to provide cover
Speaker 1: for this weight. I'm giving Trump way too much credit
Speaker 1: aren I. What Trump intended to talk to the House
Speaker 1: Republicans about was summarized by a May thirty first phone
Speaker 1: call reported by Politico. It took place hours after his
Speaker 1: conviction here in New York, in which he screamed and
Speaker 1: swore F bombs and S bombs and MF bombs into
Speaker 1: the phone that quote, we have to overturn this unquote
Speaker 1: At the other end, little mister holier than thou himself,
Speaker 1: the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, if that is
Speaker 1: your real name, and Johnson agreed with Trump, we have
Speaker 1: to overturn this. House Republicans are developing a series of
Speaker 1: schemes to somehow have the legislative branch retroactively overrule the
Speaker 1: judicial branch. Whatever the actual plan turns out to be,
Speaker 1: it will translate as somehow making Trump's conviction illegal and
Speaker 1: erasing it whatever they have in mind. That was what
Speaker 1: the Washington meeting yesterday was supposed to be about. Trump
Speaker 1: cannot be guilty because to be guilty is to be wrong,
Speaker 1: and Trump cannot accept that he is wrong. He cannot
Speaker 1: ever accept that he cannot function. If he tried to
Speaker 1: accept that the back of his head would blow off.
Speaker 1: There is no constitutional way to quote overturn this, none
Speaker 1: if the rest of the Constitution does not prevent such
Speaker 1: a thing. Article one, section nine makes it illegal to
Speaker 1: make a federal law that is ex post facto, that
Speaker 1: makes something retroactively illegal. Article one, section ten makes it
Speaker 1: illegal to make such a state law retroactive. That's not
Speaker 1: stopping them political reports. Johnson and Trump have spoken repeatedly
Speaker 1: since May thirty first about we have to overturn this,
Speaker 1: and Johnson is trying. Not only did holding the attorney
Speaker 1: general and contempt of Congress barely pass on Wednesday, but
Speaker 1: a bill to allow presidents charged at the state level
Speaker 1: to move their cases to federal court is still in
Speaker 1: committee after fifteen months. And anyway, it could not be retroactive.
Speaker 1: And even if it theoretically applied to the Georgia prosecution,
Speaker 1: guess what, it would not pass the Senate and it
Speaker 1: would not avoid a presidential veto. Oh, and it's un constitutional.
Speaker 1: A defunding of the special prosecutor is still being proposed,
Speaker 1: as if the DOJ couldn't get around that, and as
Speaker 1: if the special prosecutor in Washington has anything to do
Speaker 1: with the state case in New York, all of which
Speaker 1: would ordinarily be reassuring. They are tilting at windmills, except
Speaker 1: for the implications. For now, the implications are mostly a
Speaker 1: mental image of Trump and Johnson pinioned to a butterfly
Speaker 1: display arms and legs flailing in mid air, touching nothing.
Speaker 1: But the implications for a Trump Napoleonic return to power, well,
Speaker 1: those are far more ominous. If Trump is elected for
Speaker 1: Congress or the White House or somebody to overturn Trump's conviction,
Speaker 1: even then, his conviction in a state court, his conviction
Speaker 1: from last may to do that, they would have to
Speaker 1: overturn the Constitution. But of course they'd never try that.
Speaker 1: So now the fun stuff again. Punch Bowl News quote
Speaker 1: Trump to House Republicans, Milwaukee, where we are having our convention,
Speaker 1: is a horrible city, CNN. The former president called Milwaukee
Speaker 1: quote horrible. New York Times. Trump repeatedly disparaged the city
Speaker 1: of Milwaukee. Wisconsin Congress and Glenn Groffman, who was in
Speaker 1: the room. He was concerned about the election in Milwaukee.
Speaker 1: Groffman is wrong, says Wisconsin congresson Derrek van Orden, the
Speaker 1: one with the brain problem. Trump was specifically referring to
Speaker 1: the crime the crime rate in Milwaukee. You're both wrong,
Speaker 1: says Wisconsin congress and Bryan's Style. I was in the room, Trump,
Speaker 1: Tump did not say this. No, Wisconsin Congressman Brian's Style,
Speaker 1: you're wrong, he did say it, says Wisconsin Congressman Brian Style.
Speaker 1: He wasn't talking about the city. He was talking about
Speaker 1: specific issues in the city that Republican congressmen. Brian's style
Speaker 1: is a liar, says Brian Style. By the way, his
Speaker 1: name is spelled steel, as in stop the steel, stop
Speaker 1: the style. Three Wisconsin congressmen, four different stories, none of
Speaker 1: which successfully cover up what Trump said about Milwaukee. And Trump, well,
Speaker 1: he held another news conference, the kind where you don't
Speaker 1: take questions, so it's not really a news conference, is it?
Speaker 1: The kind where you simply blink so fast and so
Speaker 1: uncontrollably that it looks like you're sending Morse code. And
Speaker 1: Trump made it easy to figure out what he really
Speaker 1: told House Republicans. He said America is a bad democracy.
Speaker 1: He said the world scorns us. He said America is
Speaker 1: not special. So he trashed Milwaukee while trashing the rest
Speaker 1: of us.
Speaker 2: Right now, it's not special. Right now, it's being scorned
Speaker 2: and being used as an example of when they look
Speaker 2: at the crime on the streets, when they look at
Speaker 2: all of the problems that we have, they're using us
Speaker 2: as a bad example of democracy, and they're getting away
Speaker 2: with murder, and we're not going to let it happens.
Speaker 1: Back to the Milwaukee part Milwaukee, where Trump's fascist Republicans
Speaker 1: begin their convention a month from tomorrow, even if he
Speaker 1: is unavoidably detained at Rikers Island at the time. Milwaukee's mayor,
Speaker 1: Cavalier Johnson, responded by metaphorically kicking Trump in his tiny
Speaker 1: little cavalier Donald Trump, let's talk about things that he
Speaker 1: thinks are horrible. All of us live through his presidency.
Speaker 1: So right back at you, buddy. Good work, Mayor Johnson. Now,
Speaker 1: please can't until the Republican Convention's permits. Seems like a
Speaker 1: simple solution. It is very possible that Trump crapping over
Speaker 1: Milwaukee was not the worst thing he said, and not
Speaker 1: the most insane thing he said, and not the most
Speaker 1: self damaging thing he said yesterday. Also from a source
Speaker 1: in the room to punch bowl from Trump to House Republicans,
Speaker 1: close to exact quote, Nancy Pelosi's daughter is a wacko.
Speaker 1: Her daughter told me, if things were different, Nancy and
Speaker 1: I would be perfect together. There's an age difference, though, Well,
Speaker 1: he's right about that. There is an age difference. Pelosi
Speaker 1: is eighty four, and Trump has begun to act like,
Speaker 1: you know how old he is. He's two hundred and six.
Speaker 1: Christine Pelosi, one of the Pelosi daughters, says, none of
Speaker 1: this is true. Nobody said this to him, Nobody's talked
Speaker 1: to him. I'm shocked. I'm shocked he had another hallucination,
Speaker 1: or he's lying about it, or he had a hallucination
Speaker 1: and is lying about it. I'm shocked, I tells you.
Speaker 1: But cutting through this, what did Trump actually just tell
Speaker 1: us here? Nancy Pelosi's daughter is a wacko. Her daughter
Speaker 1: told me, if things were different, Nancy and I would
Speaker 1: be perfect together. What he tells us he wants to
Speaker 1: sleep with Nancy Pelosi, that he wants to make her
Speaker 1: the fourth Missus, elderly first defender Jay Trump? What is
Speaker 1: the message? Why was that message delivered to Washington Republican leaders? Sir,
Speaker 1: this is a Senate. Also on a dryer topic, a
Speaker 1: series of reporters advise that Trump is now obsessed with
Speaker 1: tariffs on imported goods, all imported goods, and that he
Speaker 1: told Republicans in Washington yesterday at at least one of
Speaker 1: those meetings, that he wants so many tariffs that they
Speaker 1: could then discontinue all income taxes. Apart from the fact
Speaker 1: that that would turbocharge inflation, it would shift the tariff
Speaker 1: or tax burden to low income Americans. The economist Paul
Speaker 1: Krugman calculates that in order to bring to the Treasury
Speaker 1: the equivalent of what it now gets from income taxes,
Speaker 1: the average tariff would be the average would be one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty three percent, So like a four dollars
Speaker 1: Swiss toboler owned bar would cost nine dollars and thirty
Speaker 1: two cents. Could Trump's return to the scene of his
Speaker 1: coup crime have gone any worse yesterday? You bet. Trump's
Speaker 1: bizarre remark I played about how bad our democracy is,
Speaker 1: how other countries point to us as an example of
Speaker 1: bad democracy, his almost daily insistence that the Democrats are
Speaker 1: the threat to democracy, but He's not a threat to democracy.
Speaker 1: Clearly he did not get the memo. San Ansdannie O'Sullivan
Speaker 1: reported at the exact hour Trump was in with the
Speaker 1: House hostages that the Republican Party is trying to de
Speaker 1: emphasize the word democracy and to try to start getting
Speaker 1: people to call this country not a democracy but a republic. Now,
Speaker 1: this started years ago as an actual kind of philosophical debate,
Speaker 1: with of course, a voting suppression subject. I mean, the
Speaker 1: commoners do not get to vote in a republic. But
Speaker 1: as O'Sullivan notes, it has become now solely about neutralizing
Speaker 1: the claim that Trump is a threat to democracy. If
Speaker 1: there's no democracy, how could somebody be a threat to it?
Speaker 1: So Trump keeps saying the word democracy, and he's doing
Speaker 1: the opposite of what his enablers are trying to protect him.
Speaker 1: With the protectors who do not realize that the rest
Speaker 1: of us can also say Trump is a threat to
Speaker 1: the republic or and hear me out on this. I
Speaker 1: know it's outlandish, open your minds for just a second,
Speaker 1: hear me out. We could say Trump is a threat
Speaker 1: to America and one more of all the things in
Speaker 1: the world. For what's left of Trump's mind to fixate
Speaker 1: on how is this his choice? Sin? And reporting that
Speaker 1: to the Republicans, Trump once again invoked Hannibal Lecter. Nice guy,
Speaker 1: he said again he even had he said again a
Speaker 1: friend over for dinner, and that friend's name was Electro Shark. Seriously,
Speaker 1: there is an all encompassing reality at play here, and
Speaker 1: it comes into focus more clearly with every passing day.
Speaker 1: It is incumbent upon the Biden campaign and every legitimate
Speaker 1: new organization in this country to make this a central
Speaker 1: issue of this campaign. It may have no choice, but
Speaker 1: it does need to push the point to whatever degree
Speaker 1: he had not already done so previously. Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: losing his mind, and that means that metaphorically, the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: in the immortal and immortally terrifying phrase of the World
Speaker 1: War One General Eric van Ludendorff, the Republican Party is
Speaker 1: shackled to a corpse. Back to Trump and the courts,
Speaker 1: in this case, the Supreme Theocratic Court. Hey, it's our
Speaker 1: summer sale now accepting bribes at twenty percent off. It
Speaker 1: did not rule on Trump's imaginary Hannibal Lecter told me
Speaker 1: while we were in that horrible city Milwaukee yesterday, idea
Speaker 1: of presidential immunity. More Supreme Court rulings today. They did
Speaker 1: go nine nothing on the no brainer mifipristone case, ruling
Speaker 1: that the people who sued had no standing to sue.
Speaker 1: But the coverage of this that the Court protected the
Speaker 1: abortion pill yesterday again underscores how little American news organizations
Speaker 1: and employees understand about the topics they are covering. I
Speaker 1: understand how to edit the tape, and they understand how
Speaker 1: to light the shot correctly, but they don't understand to
Speaker 1: read past the third paragraph where it says there is
Speaker 1: a more substantial case again Smith of pristone coming to
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court within weeks, and there is, of course
Speaker 1: the prospect of using the nineteenth century Comstock Act to
Speaker 1: prevent shipping that drug, to say nothing of what a
Speaker 1: Trump dictatorship would do to it. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: in an irony of timing, as the court ruled, Gallup
Speaker 1: was issuing new polling showing that nearly one third of
Speaker 1: all American voters identify as single issue abortion voters. One
Speaker 1: third they will vote only for candidates who share their
Speaker 1: views on the legality and regulation of abortion. And guess what,
Speaker 1: eight percent will only vote for anti abortion candidates, but
Speaker 1: twenty three percent will only vote for pro choice candidates.
Speaker 1: Mister President, you should be able to do something with that.
Speaker 1: And you know what else, happened while the court was
Speaker 1: pretending it was some kind of I don't know, what's
Speaker 1: the term, to be, some kind of oh yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: While the court was pretending it was some kind of court,
Speaker 1: Harlan Crowe narked on that giant pile of shit with glasses.
Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, who still
Speaker 1: won't do anything about this, announced that in exchange for
Speaker 1: his committee ending its investigation as it pertains to Harlan Crow,
Speaker 1: Crow has turned over seven years of documents and information
Speaker 1: about Clarence Thomas, and in that info was revealed at
Speaker 1: least three more private jet trips that Crowe provided to
Speaker 1: Thomas that Thomas did not report. May twenty seventeen Missouri
Speaker 1: to Montana to Texas, March twenty nineteen, Washington to Georgia
Speaker 1: to Washington, June twenty twenty one, Washington to San Jose,
Speaker 1: and of course don't forget June twenty twenty four private
Speaker 1: bus provided by Harlan Crowe for Harlan Crow to throw
Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas under and two campaign notes. Quinnipiac polling, Trump
Speaker 1: leads Biden by a point among registered voters between the
Speaker 1: ages of eighteen and thirty four. According to exit polls,
Speaker 1: Biden won the young vote younger really it was eighteen
Speaker 1: to twenty nine's. In twenty twenty, he won that group
Speaker 1: by twenty four points. He is losing to a roughly
Speaker 1: equivalent group by one point. So where is the Biden ad?
Speaker 1: Based on the Washington Post story we headlined here the
Speaker 1: other day that Trump is floating a military draft, floating
Speaker 1: a mandatory military prep class and a mandatory military aptitude
Speaker 1: exam for every high school student for everybody eighteen or
Speaker 1: nineteen or twenty, or you don't graduate and your school
Speaker 1: doesn't get federal funds. We dropped this story because Trump
Speaker 1: lied and denied it. Secretary of Defense proposed this a draft.
Speaker 1: He proposed it under his own signature Inside Project twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, the Trump planned to turn the country into
Speaker 1: his dictatorship. Where are the other news stories about this?
Speaker 1: Where are the ads and comic relief? To save the moment?
Speaker 1: Newt Gingrich, who was basically celebrating his twenty sixth year
Speaker 1: of unemployment, went on Sean Hannity's propaganda prostitution show and
Speaker 1: announced that Vice President Kamala Harris is quote really shallow,
Speaker 1: uneducated and uneducatable person. I just want to double check here.
Speaker 1: Is that the same Newt Gingrich who once claimed five
Speaker 1: six years ago that the New York City subway system
Speaker 1: was used only by quote, elites said, the same Newt
Speaker 1: Gingrich who, before he got run out of Washington by
Speaker 1: the members of his own political party, back when he
Speaker 1: was still Speaker of the House, once decided that the
Speaker 1: following sequence of events would occur and let that be
Speaker 1: revealed to the veteran journalist Elizabeth Drew, who then mentioned
Speaker 1: it on Meet the Press that he would impeach Bill Clinton,
Speaker 1: and then the new president Al Gore, would pardon Bill Clinton,
Speaker 1: and then he would impeach Al Gore for pardoning Bill Clinton,
Speaker 1: and that would make guess who President of the United
Speaker 1: States the Speaker of the House. Oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: you know who the Speaker of the House was Newt Gingrich.
Speaker 1: That Newt Gingrich, And instead he impeached Clinton, and the
Speaker 1: impeachment lost by a landslide in the Senate. And the
Speaker 1: only person, after all of the impeaching business, the only
Speaker 1: person in the whole thing who wound up actually losing
Speaker 1: his job, was Newt Gingrich. That Newt Gingrich, the idiot,
Speaker 1: white trash, unemployable Nut Gingrich, That Newt gingriche calling the
Speaker 1: Vice President of the United States, calling anybody else in
Speaker 1: the world shallow and uneducated, that Newt Gangridge. Okay, just checking.
Speaker 1: Also of interest here, Oh no, Lauren Bobert's been caught
Speaker 1: illegally vaping in public again. Oh no, miss Bobert. This
Speaker 1: is exactly the way it started last time. Get a
Speaker 1: hold of yourself, or at least of some guys sitting
Speaker 1: next to you. That's next. This is Countdown. This is
Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Obleman still ahead of us on this
Speaker 1: all new edition of Countdown. An excerpt from James Thurber's
Speaker 1: only non fiction book, his profile of the founder of
Speaker 1: the New Yorker magazine, Harold Ross, which includes in the
Speaker 1: chapter I will read you a quoach from a New
Speaker 1: Yorker writer that is one of the five or ten
Speaker 1: best things I have ever heard said in human history.
Speaker 1: I hope I didn't oversell it first. That rarest events
Speaker 1: on a recorded program A. This just in from Puck News.
Speaker 1: It came in after I finished up the A Block.
Speaker 1: It reports that Trump has suddenly started taking prison as
Speaker 1: a serious possibility, dovetailing with what I did mention in
Speaker 1: the A block about this desperate plot to get Congress
Speaker 1: to overturn his conviction. Trump, quoting Puck News, has been
Speaker 1: peppering friends and as with more specific questions. In particular,
Speaker 1: I've been told he's been asking what kind of jail
Speaker 1: do you think they'll send me? To say? Is Shawshank
Speaker 1: still open? Tuck quotes CNN's Ellie Honig, who is wrong
Speaker 1: about forty to fifty percent of the time, that he
Speaker 1: Trump would literally go upstate, possibly at the Putnam County
Speaker 1: Correctional in Carmel, New York, near the Connecticut border between
Speaker 1: Mayopack and Brewster. My folks and I used to go
Speaker 1: to some kind of lake at Mayopack, possibly late Mayopack.
Speaker 1: Putnam Correctional is like halfway on the drive between here
Speaker 1: and ESPN. Hey wait, I never thought of that before.
Speaker 1: Halfway between here in ESPN. A new Thurber ahead, but first,
Speaker 1: as ever, there are still more new idiots to talk
Speaker 1: about the daily roundup of the men and women we
Speaker 1: celebrate as the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens
Speaker 1: who constitute today's worst persons. In the world, the Bronze
Speaker 1: the worst British Prime Minister Rishie Sunak well until July fourth,
Speaker 1: anyway or earlier, not one day, not one event in
Speaker 1: his snap election campaign has gone without disaster for him.
Speaker 1: Remember he announced the snap election and the moment he
Speaker 1: said it, it started to rain and he didn't even
Speaker 1: have a hat. Anyway. He was interviewed by the network
Speaker 1: ITV and he brought up how his parents had made
Speaker 1: a lot of sacrifices when he was a child to
Speaker 1: guarantee their priority for him education. And the interviewer knowing
Speaker 1: that Sunac went to a private boarding school and then
Speaker 1: another private school, and that his father was a doctor
Speaker 1: and his mom owned a pharmacy, and he did not
Speaker 1: grow a poor really middle class and the interviewer said like,
Speaker 1: what did you give up? And Sunak did not answer. Quote,
Speaker 1: we used to live in this tiny, old tumble down
Speaker 1: house with the great big holes in the roof. House.
Speaker 1: You were lucky to live in a house. We used
Speaker 1: to live in one room, all twenty six of us,
Speaker 1: no furniture off the floor was missing. We're all uttle
Speaker 1: together in one corner of for fear fool And you
Speaker 1: were lucky to have a room. We used to have
Speaker 1: to live in the corridor. We used to dream of
Speaker 1: living in a corridor. I had to get up in
Speaker 1: the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour
Speaker 1: before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison,
Speaker 1: work twenty nine hours a day down mill and pay
Speaker 1: mill owner for the permission to come to work. And
Speaker 1: when we got home, our dad would kill us and
Speaker 1: dance about on our graves singing allelujah. Oh and you
Speaker 1: try to tell the young people of today that they
Speaker 1: won't believe you. No, Rishie Sunac did not say that
Speaker 1: he did not do the famous Monty Python Marty Feldman
Speaker 1: comedy sketch, which is probably funnier in the original English.
Speaker 1: The Prime Minister instead explained that he was deprived as
Speaker 1: a child because quote, they will be all sorts of things.
Speaker 1: There'll be all sorts of things that I would have
Speaker 1: wanted as a kid that I couldn't have. Famously, sky TV,
Speaker 1: so that was something that we never had growing up. Actually,
Speaker 1: sky TV when Sunak was growing up was kind of
Speaker 1: like the British HBO when HBO had a lot of
Speaker 1: sports on it. Still, oh, you poor poor man, you
Speaker 1: must still cry yourself to sleep every night, Noice Guy TV.
Speaker 1: As a kid, did you sue your parents? Have you
Speaker 1: cut them off without any contact for the entirety of
Speaker 1: your adult life? Oh no, no, Sky TV. It's like
Speaker 1: they didn't feed you for five years. Oh, it would
Speaker 1: have been better if what dad would kill us in
Speaker 1: duns about our graves singing anelujah. I'll stop now, the
Speaker 1: runner up worser, Mark Penn, Oh no, I won't stop now.
Speaker 1: Mark Penn the one time human being who now runs
Speaker 1: the Harvard Harris Pole and is a Trump deep state psychopath.
Speaker 1: So the next time you see the Harvard Harris Pole,
Speaker 1: you will understand what crap it is, because you'll understand
Speaker 1: what crap he is. After Jim Jordan weaponized the Judiciary
Speaker 1: Committee to smear the Attorney General Merrick Garland. As if
Speaker 1: one needed to smear Merrick Garland, this idiot and former
Speaker 1: human being, Mark Penn wrote quote is the most political
Speaker 1: and partisan attorney general in history. You know Bill Barr
Speaker 1: is still alive, He's going to be really offended by this.
Speaker 1: Garland is the most political and partisan attorney general in history.
Speaker 1: He's in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer a lawful,
Speaker 1: a legitimate subpoena for an audio tape that the transcript
Speaker 1: has been released, but he will likely throw it in
Speaker 1: the wastebasket while he prosecutes former Executive Department officials for
Speaker 1: less his response attack Congress. He should simply turn over
Speaker 1: the tape as the country has a right to see
Speaker 1: and hear it. Well, it's an audio tape, so you
Speaker 1: can go see it if you want to. Penn, Holy cow,
Speaker 1: We actually used to let this guy advise people like
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton and Ed Koch crying out lod I hope
Speaker 1: he's gotten a cat scan recently. Of course, Penn is
Speaker 1: just angry because everybody still blames him for blowing Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton's lead in the two thousand and eight Democratic primaries,
Speaker 1: largely because he did that by adopting a Republican style
Speaker 1: ad campaign that turned everybody off but our winner. Good
Speaker 1: Old Lauren Bobert, the most famous audience member in the
Speaker 1: history of the live stage version of Beetlejuice, was spotted
Speaker 1: on Wednesday night at the Annual Congressional Baseball Game. Was
Speaker 1: she playing? Oh no, she only goes bowling? No. Bobert
Speaker 1: was in the stands at Nationals Park in DC, wearing
Speaker 1: a maga hat to keep her brain from falling out,
Speaker 1: and vaping, vaping in the stands, which is against the
Speaker 1: smoking policy at Nationals Park. You might just recall I
Speaker 1: think I may have mentioned it. I don't think I
Speaker 1: cut it out of the show. That night that miss
Speaker 1: Bobert was escorted out of the live performance of Beetlejuice
Speaker 1: in Colorado for vaping during the performance and then for
Speaker 1: checking her dates performance. Evidently, at the Congressional ball game
Speaker 1: she was alone, although I hear that she attended because
Speaker 1: somebody told her there would be a lot of pine
Speaker 1: talk are at the game, which she could use to
Speaker 1: improve her grip. Lauren, what a pair of hands? Bobert?
Speaker 1: Two days, worst person. And it's Friday, so time for
Speaker 1: Fridays with Thurber. And it's interesting that, like many of
Speaker 1: the great writers in American and other nations histories, James
Speaker 1: Thurber never really wrote a book. Certainly not a novel,
Speaker 1: certainly not a comedic novel. His My Life in Hard
Speaker 1: Times is a series of embellished anecdotes. It's great, it's
Speaker 1: a great read, it's book length, it's not really one narrative.
Speaker 1: And when I say he never wrote a book. I mean,
Speaker 1: he never wrote a real fictional book. He did write
Speaker 1: a book, The Years with Ross, his profile, his interpretation
Speaker 1: of Harold Ross, who was the founder of the New
Speaker 1: Yorker magazine, and probably even with the perspective of an
Speaker 1: additional sixty years that James Thurber did not have in
Speaker 1: his life, still probably the least likely person you would
Speaker 1: have picked out of world history to have founded the
Speaker 1: New Yorker magazine. The book is called The Years with Ross.
Speaker 1: It was serialized in the Atlantic magazine, and the best part,
Speaker 1: including one of my favorite quotations in history in human history,
Speaker 1: was in the May nineteen fifty eight issue of The Atlantic,
Speaker 1: the seventh part of James Thurber's series The Years with
Speaker 1: Ross by James Thurber. So many people have told me
Speaker 1: that Harold Ross was a simple mechanism, and so many
Speaker 1: others have assured me that he was a complex character.
Speaker 1: It is small wonder that I dreamed the other night
Speaker 1: that he was both complified and simplicated. There are those
Speaker 1: who contend that the multiple editor of The New Yorker
Speaker 1: never stepped off the elevator on his office floor without
Speaker 1: putting on an invisible military uniform. He was accused of
Speaker 1: having a secret respect for rigid military discipline in spite
Speaker 1: of his waggish and scallow waggish experiences in the AEF.
Speaker 1: His frequent and profane denunciations of all top brass were
Speaker 1: supposed to cover a sneaking admiration for General Headquarters Red Tape.
Speaker 1: I can't go along with this, if only because I
Speaker 1: am unable to dispel the image of Ross as the
Speaker 1: jittery skipper of a schooner out of Coleridge, a ship's
Speaker 1: master with more than a dash of mutineer in him,
Speaker 1: When he is not that figure in my nightmares. He
Speaker 1: is an awe shocks farm boy from Colorado trying to
Speaker 1: land a nineteen hundred biplane in the middle of Fifth Avenue.
Speaker 1: When as Private H. W. Ross he was editor of
Speaker 1: The Stars and Stripes, the situation was more Comeric Opera
Speaker 1: than American Army. He was once put in the guardhouse
Speaker 1: for some insubordination by Captain Guy T. Visnisky, but he
Speaker 1: had to be released or the newspaper could not have
Speaker 1: been got out. As editor, he could give orders to
Speaker 1: Captain Franklin P. Adams and to Sergeant Alexander Wolcott, who
Speaker 1: once called him in Paris the best editor in the world.
Speaker 1: Where and how he finally learned his obsessive reverence for
Speaker 1: order and organization, nobody will ever know for sure. Although
Speaker 1: he was always scornful of American big business and big
Speaker 1: business men, he talked constantly of running this place like
Speaker 1: any other business office. He was vociferous in his contempt
Speaker 1: for the way most metropolitan newspapers were run by. And
Speaker 1: I always felt that his urge to tear down walls
Speaker 1: and set up a central desk was an unconscious tendency
Speaker 1: to create a vast city room with everyone in full
Speaker 1: sight of everyone else. I go on feeling this in
Speaker 1: the face of his continual scoffing at all things intramurally
Speaker 1: journalistic in any writer's copy. He didn't want any stories
Speaker 1: by reporters and ex reporters about their work on newspapers.
Speaker 1: It makes me self conscious, he would say. And he
Speaker 1: went so far once as to insist when I used
Speaker 1: city room in a talk story, that it'd be changed
Speaker 1: to the room where the reporters write their stories. Whatever
Speaker 1: the origin of his driving desire for order and organization
Speaker 1: may have been, it's satisfied two of his deepest needs.
Speaker 1: Something to keep trying for and something to keep grousing about.
Speaker 1: When I was in Columbus, Ohio, in the summer of
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty seven, on vacation and on my way out
Speaker 1: of job of running the magazine, I got a six
Speaker 1: word note from Andy White that read Thurber the new
Speaker 1: passing system. White the new passing system, typed on an
Speaker 1: enclosed piece of paper, went like this. White passes to Levick,
Speaker 1: who passes to Ross. I have no copy at hand,
Speaker 1: and it may be that I have left out one
Speaker 1: of the passes. Perhaps it went like this. White passes
Speaker 1: to Barnes, who passes to Levick, who passes to Ross.
Speaker 1: If there was a Barnes, he has long since passed
Speaker 1: and been forgotten. Sometimes I wake up at night and
Speaker 1: chant to myself. White passes to Tinker, who passes to Evers,
Speaker 1: who passes the Chance who passes to Ross. This old system,
Speaker 1: indicating the official route for notes and comment from White's
Speaker 1: typewriter to Ross's desk, was one of one hundred similar
Speaker 1: systems devised by distraught executive editors in a feudal effort
Speaker 1: to set Ross's organization conscious mind at rest. These systems
Speaker 1: formed what Stanley Walker who later got involved in them,
Speaker 1: called the rigmaroles. The man who had thought up a
Speaker 1: way to reroot comments so that Ross wouldn't worry about
Speaker 1: it's getting lost between Andy's office and his was named
Speaker 1: William Levick. He lasted about as long as I had
Speaker 1: in the untenable job of mastermind and whipping boy to
Speaker 1: Harold Ross. Levick's final frantic response to the editor's demand
Speaker 1: for a method of keeping track of everything was an
Speaker 1: enormous sheet of cardboard six feet by four divided into
Speaker 1: at least eight hundred squares, with fine hand lettering in
Speaker 1: each of them, covering all phases of the scheduling of
Speaker 1: departments and other office rigmaroles. This complicated caricature of system,
Speaker 1: this concentration of all known procedural facts, hung on a
Speaker 1: wall of the talk meeting room until one day it
Speaker 1: fell down of its own weight. Ross had stared at
Speaker 1: it now and then without saying anything. When it crashed,
Speaker 1: he told his secretary, get rid of that thing. I
Speaker 1: suppose this was also what he said about a sign
Speaker 1: I made at the time and hung on a wall
Speaker 1: near the elevators. Alterations going on as usual during business.
Speaker 1: Bill Levick, one of the few men Ross always called
Speaker 1: by his first name in the office, had been a
Speaker 1: friend and colleague of the editor in his San Francisco
Speaker 1: newspaper days. He had greatly impressed Ross at that time
Speaker 1: by his calm and efficient direction of a staff of reporters.
Speaker 1: One night, when some disaster struck the city, Levick, as
Speaker 1: I remember it, had been night city editor of the paper.
Speaker 1: His calmness and efficiency, which had stood up under disaster,
Speaker 1: did not long stand up under Ross's continual badgering and heckling.
Speaker 1: After he gave up the hopeless task of trying to
Speaker 1: please Ross in the big job, he did not leave
Speaker 1: like most of the others, but became the art makeup man.
Speaker 1: He was unhappy in that role too, because he didn't
Speaker 1: like artists and thought most of their drawings were silly.
Speaker 1: You're the only cartoonists that can spell, he once told me. Sourly.
Speaker 1: A new Tottery Graybeard says he saw Levic one day
Speaker 1: in the office with tears in his eyes. Tears of
Speaker 1: fury or frustration were not infrequent in some of the
Speaker 1: men who worked for Ross, but Levick could be tough too,
Speaker 1: and his faint, gentle smile could turn cold when Ross
Speaker 1: backed him into a corner. One day, the editor went
Speaker 1: up in flames because of the similarity and proximity of
Speaker 1: two drawings in the front of the book, But instead
Speaker 1: of bawling Levick out himself, he sent his secondcretary to
Speaker 1: the makeup man with a sharp reprimand Levick took a
Speaker 1: swing at the fella, and when Ross sent the young
Speaker 1: man back with an even sharper message, knocked him down, resigned,
Speaker 1: went away, and was not seen again. Bill Levick died
Speaker 1: a few years later, somewhere in New Jersey, out of
Speaker 1: work and down on his luck. And I told Ross
Speaker 1: about it. He was genuinely saddened, and the news depressed
Speaker 1: him for days. I didn't treat him right, goddamn it,
Speaker 1: he told me. But he kept calling me sir, and
Speaker 1: standing there mocking me and grinning at me. He called
Speaker 1: me that sur thing. He called Wolcott foolish. He would say,
Speaker 1: foolish is late with his copy this week for shouts
Speaker 1: and murmurs. He kept saying, skeed for schedule and picks
Speaker 1: for drawings. All he cared about was his goddamn pianola rolls.
Speaker 1: He had millions of them. Anything else in his house.
Speaker 1: You don't play the p andol every night unless there's
Speaker 1: something the matter with you. He even edited the damn rolls,
Speaker 1: pasting them up with tissue paper, collaborating with guys like Beethoven.
Speaker 1: He was a good man. Now. I was fond of him.
Speaker 1: They didn't belong here. I thought of asking him, who does?
Speaker 1: But I just went away and left him with his
Speaker 1: memories and miseries. When a system fell down, Ross was
Speaker 1: usually dejected until he or somebody else thought up a
Speaker 1: new one. But once in a while the mutineer in
Speaker 1: him took over. He was gleeful if the falling down
Speaker 1: or pushing over of a system disturbed or tangled up
Speaker 1: the business department, those guys upstairs. Once, when a rebuilt
Speaker 1: typewriter I've been using broke down, I phoned the Underwood
Speaker 1: company at noon, ordered its most expensive machine, and charged
Speaker 1: it to the New Yorker. The typewriter, delivered at the
Speaker 1: office two hours later, was held up by the alert
Speaker 1: business office, and a deputy was sent to Ross with
Speaker 1: the complaint that I had got the machine without authorization
Speaker 1: or the signing of any requisition slips. The typewriter had
Speaker 1: been hidden from me in the art stock room, but
Speaker 1: an office boy told me where it was, and I
Speaker 1: went and got it. The whole illegal procedure delighted Ross.
Speaker 1: It's the only direct action there's been around here in years,
Speaker 1: he yelled at the nervous man from the business department,
Speaker 1: I'll okay it, and he grabbed pencil and paper and
Speaker 1: okayed it. When he found out that I was in
Speaker 1: the habit of going to the supply stock room, getting
Speaker 1: in with a pass key, and taking whatever I wanted paper,
Speaker 1: paper clips, typewriter ribbons, pencils, and wire baskets, he sauntered
Speaker 1: into my office and asked, how do you get your supplies?
Speaker 1: I told him, and he went away grinning. A monthly
Speaker 1: checkup by the business office had shown a discrepancy in
Speaker 1: supplies on hand, and again someone had complained to the editor,
Speaker 1: and he had suspected me. I was thwarted for a while,
Speaker 1: and the guys upstairs installed new locks on all the doors,
Speaker 1: But I smuggled the master key to a locksmith and
Speaker 1: had a dozen keys made from it. I told Ross
Speaker 1: about that myself, adding that I had given a few
Speaker 1: of the extra keys to girls I knew for souvenirs.
Speaker 1: Ross didn't believe that, even though it was true. The
Speaker 1: heartiest laugh of the mutinous Skipper came from the day
Speaker 1: I found out and told him that the master key
Speaker 1: to the former system of locks had been retained and
Speaker 1: hung on a hook beside the new one. I showed
Speaker 1: it to him. Attached to it was a small wooden
Speaker 1: plaque on which someone had printed in India ink master
Speaker 1: key and under that doesn't work. Ross told the story
Speaker 1: all over town. It represented to him not merely the
Speaker 1: bewilderment of some office boy, but the total inefficiency of
Speaker 1: the business department, which had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Speaker 1: After Levick came Arthur Samuels, out of an advertising agency
Speaker 1: with previous experience as a newspaper reporter and a magazine
Speaker 1: promotion man. Art Samuels, who had been a member of
Speaker 1: the Cottage Club and the Triangle Club in his Princeton days,
Speaker 1: was a close friend and idol of another Princeton man,
Speaker 1: Raoul Fleischmann. By the way, that was Ross's business partner.
Speaker 1: I Olderman should add, Raoul Fleischmann put the money up
Speaker 1: for the New Yorker to continue, and any friend and
Speaker 1: idol of Fleischman, who was the chief backer of the
Speaker 1: magazine was a target for Ross's slings and arrows and
Speaker 1: doomed from the start. Raoul once told me Art is
Speaker 1: one of the funniest men in the world on two martinis.
Speaker 1: When I mentioned this praise to Ross, he said, I
Speaker 1: guess I always got to parties when he was on
Speaker 1: his third or left before he finished his first. Samuels
Speaker 1: had taken over one of the largest New Yorker offices
Speaker 1: and furnished it with rugs, large handsome bridge lamps, and
Speaker 1: other fancy appointments that must have brought Ross's disapproving tongue
Speaker 1: out of his mouth when he first beheld this change.
Speaker 1: He himself liked a plain newspaper type office. I don't
Speaker 1: want to look like the editor of Vanity Fair. Samuels
Speaker 1: lasted until just after he came back from a six
Speaker 1: week leave in Europe. I learned later that Ross had
Speaker 1: intended to fire him while he was abroad, but he
Speaker 1: put it off until Art's ship was back in the
Speaker 1: harbor of New York. Then, just before Samuels disembarked, he
Speaker 1: got a telegram from Ross telling him he was through.
Speaker 1: Late that afternoon, the editor called me into his office.
Speaker 1: He was sitting with his head in his hands, and
Speaker 1: he said, Samuels was just in here bawling the holy
Speaker 1: hell out of me. No man would have fired him
Speaker 1: the way I did. I guess I could tell he
Speaker 1: had taken quite a verbal lashing, and he was to
Speaker 1: get others later. Hell and High Voices broke loose in
Speaker 1: his office when Jeffrey Heilman gave him a verbal going over,
Speaker 1: which no doubt Ross had coming to him. Some weeks
Speaker 1: after that, Ross held up a Hellman piece so long
Speaker 1: that Catherine White said to him one day at a
Speaker 1: talk meeting, why haven't you put the Heilman piece through?
Speaker 1: We all think it's very good. Ross turned this over
Speaker 1: in his mind for ten seconds and then said, he
Speaker 1: called me a liar, picking one of the least provocative
Speaker 1: of Jeffrey's descriptions of him. He bought the Heilman place
Speaker 1: that day. It was a basic fact of Ross's nature
Speaker 1: that he really respected. No man who didn't at one
Speaker 1: time or another fight back and yell him down. I
Speaker 1: had many a yelling bout with him in his office,
Speaker 1: but we always ended up on good, even affectionate terms.
Speaker 1: One day, ten years ago, he and William Shawn were
Speaker 1: trying to explain to me what they thought was the
Speaker 1: matter with a couple of pieces I had written in
Speaker 1: a series on soap operas, and Ross snapped out of
Speaker 1: his heart, no, out of his ulcers. Yes, if you
Speaker 1: could see, you would know what we mean. That sent
Speaker 1: me rocketing into the higher reaches of lurid damnation of
Speaker 1: all editors. He said he was sorry, and he was,
Speaker 1: but he never immediately got over the effects of one
Speaker 1: of our yelling spells. That noon, I was having lunch
Speaker 1: at the Algonquin with my wife and daughter, then sixteen,
Speaker 1: when Ross came over to our table. We talked amiably
Speaker 1: for a while, and then he spurted something happens to
Speaker 1: Jim once a month that makes him carry on like
Speaker 1: a woman. This indelicate illusion was remarkable in a man
Speaker 1: as self conscious as a choir boy in the presence
Speaker 1: of women, and embarrassed to death if anyone then made
Speaker 1: a reference to the functional. My daughter had met him
Speaker 1: first when she was only nine, and he was in
Speaker 1: one of his most blustery moods. I asked her afterward
Speaker 1: what she thought of him, and she said, he's gruff,
Speaker 1: but I'm not afraid of him. She might have been
Speaker 1: speaking for her sex. In general, thorn Smith doesn't properly
Speaker 1: belong in any New Yorker, or for that matter, any
Speaker 1: other category. But he underwent a stretch of torture, both
Speaker 1: give and take, as a member of the staff. During
Speaker 1: the winter of nineteen twenty nine nineteen thirty. I had
Speaker 1: brought him in and introduced him to Ross, saying that
Speaker 1: he had given up an advertising job to write a book.
Speaker 1: It must have been the stray lamb and found himself
Speaker 1: unable to get work. Thorn Smith, straight out of Wonderland,
Speaker 1: looked like a cousin of the White Rabbit and completely befuddled.
Speaker 1: Harold Ross, the editor, took him on, though mainly I
Speaker 1: am sure, because he had ed did a service magazine
Speaker 1: during World War One, a Navy publication called Broadside. The
Speaker 1: two men disparate, if there were ever a disparity, talked
Speaker 1: about the stars and stripes and a mutual acquaintance who
Speaker 1: had been on the wartime army gas attack. Everything went
Speaker 1: wrong though, between Ross and thorn who once didn't show
Speaker 1: up for a week. You ought to know where he is.
Speaker 1: Ross told me he's your responsibility. I said that Smith
Speaker 1: was God's responsibility. Not mine or any man's. When he
Speaker 1: finally did appear, Ross said, why didn't you telephone and
Speaker 1: say you're sick. Thorn had a lovely answer to that.
Speaker 1: The telephone was in the hall, and there was a
Speaker 1: draft The New Yorker had in a special file at
Speaker 1: that time, a snack of profiles that needed editing before
Speaker 1: they could be used, and Smith had been given an
Speaker 1: office and told to try his hand at fixing them up.
Speaker 1: It didn't work out. He can't use a typewriter, or
Speaker 1: if he can, he won't, Ross told me. And then,
Speaker 1: with dramatic voice and gestures, he sits out there writing
Speaker 1: on fool's cap with a quill pen by candlelight. I asked,
Speaker 1: you have me there, said Ross, Where the hell did
Speaker 1: you find him? Anyway? I didn't find him, I said,
Speaker 1: God sent him to you. Smith departed soon after that
Speaker 1: to join the other poor little lambs who had gone astray.
Speaker 1: It was only the other day I found out that
Speaker 1: he had once written on fool's cap, but with modern
Speaker 1: fountain pen, an entire talk department which was never used.
Speaker 1: Ross must have put him up to that. Secretly, I
Speaker 1: counted among my sorrows and literature's losses that his talk
Speaker 1: department is nowhere to be found. James m. Kin was
Speaker 1: a puzzle to Ross, who all men puzzled him to
Speaker 1: some degree, but thorn Smith and jim Kin were much
Speaker 1: too much for his understanding. We called him dizzy Jim.
Speaker 1: An old timer told me recently, you were daffy Jim.
Speaker 1: It seems that Cain liked to work on the floor
Speaker 1: where there was a lot of room, and used to
Speaker 1: put the talk department together down there. He once lifted
Speaker 1: high the hearts of Andy and Catherine White at a
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving Day dinner at his apartment by putting the turkey
Speaker 1: platter and all on the floor and carving it blandly,
Speaker 1: going on with the story he was telling, and he
Speaker 1: told stories exceeding well. Jim Kaine was not at The
Speaker 1: New Yorker long, only a few months, but the memory
Speaker 1: of him has not dwindled there. When he got the
Speaker 1: hell out, he didn't want to see Ross or The
Speaker 1: New Yorker ever. Again, I don't blame him for leaving
Speaker 1: any mention of it out of the piece about him
Speaker 1: and Who's who he had been on The Baltimore American,
Speaker 1: The Baltimore Sun, The New York world, and he was
Speaker 1: at on one time a professor of journalism at Saint
Speaker 1: John's College in Annapolis, where he had been born. Cain
Speaker 1: must have known Ross in France when he was editor
Speaker 1: of the seventy ninth Divisions Lorraine Cross. Jim is a
Speaker 1: big man, and Ross was always a little wary of
Speaker 1: big men. Once, when he got into a hassle with
Speaker 1: Joel Sayer over a projected profile on Ross's detective friend
Speaker 1: Raymond Schindler, they editor said to me, Jesus, your friend
Speaker 1: Sayir is a big guy. My researches and reflections have
Speaker 1: turned up the interesting truth that of all the miracle men,
Speaker 1: all were short of physical stature, except Cain and Ralph Ingersoll,
Speaker 1: and maybe one or two others out of the more
Speaker 1: than thirty. I am over six feet myself, but when
Speaker 1: Ross and I tangled, I weighed only one fifty. I
Speaker 1: have reached one eighty six. Now, await alas, I'll never
Speaker 1: be able to throw around in Ross's office during a
Speaker 1: monthly yelling spell. In nineteen thirty one, my daughter had
Speaker 1: about seven months to go before she was born. When
Speaker 1: her mother and I bought a house a mile outside
Speaker 1: Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and Ross pretended to be frightened when
Speaker 1: he heard about my plans to live in the country. Timid,
Speaker 1: as usual about taking up personal matters with a man
Speaker 1: face to face, he assigned Cain the task of trying
Speaker 1: to dissuade me from moving out of the city. Jim
Speaker 1: had approached the subject gingerly in my office, saying only
Speaker 1: a couple of sentences that I recognized at once as
Speaker 1: bearing the stamp of a Ross panic. When he suddenly
Speaker 1: stood up and said, this is none of my business
Speaker 1: or Ross's either. I'm sorry I mentioned it. Live where
Speaker 1: you want to and the way you want to. One
Speaker 1: day Jim had sent on to Ross some manuscript of
Speaker 1: which the editor could make neither head nor tail. He
Speaker 1: sent it back to Cain with a memo attached that
Speaker 1: is still in existence. It read, what is the signifigance
Speaker 1: of it all? Anyway? That is the misspelling of significance
Speaker 1: as I remembered it for twenty five years. But as
Speaker 1: you will see, I was wrong. Just before Jim left,
Speaker 1: he had the memo framed in leather and presented to
Speaker 1: his successor, Bernard A. Bergman, who still has it. I
Speaker 1: wrote him a few weeks ago to check the spelling
Speaker 1: of the big word, and got this reply sign ig
Speaker 1: if a and ce sick. Harold Ross's spelling was often grotesque.
Speaker 1: He was always looking up words, he questioned in copy
Speaker 1: he was reading, but he never seemed to doubt his
Speaker 1: own accuracy. In all the years I knew him, he
Speaker 1: never got prodigal right. He spelled it prodigal and pronounced
Speaker 1: it as if it were spelled prod goal. It was
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty four, to get back to Jim Caine
Speaker 1: that he brought out The Postman Always Rings twice. I
Speaker 1: once asked Ross if he had read it, and he said,
Speaker 1: wouldn't be my kind of stuff. I have no doubt
Speaker 1: that if he had started reading it, he would have
Speaker 1: put it down, thus becoming the only reader in the
Speaker 1: country able to do that. He didn't even try to
Speaker 1: read a Farewell to Arms and dismiss that novel with
Speaker 1: I understand the hero keeps getting in bed with women,
Speaker 1: and the war wasn't fought that way. I have a
Speaker 1: recent letter from Bernard Bergmann about Ross that ends he
Speaker 1: was a great man. I wish I could have been
Speaker 1: close to him, but I never was. Bergmann lasted almost
Speaker 1: two years beginning in nineteen thirty one. He quit because
Speaker 1: Francis Bellamy had appeared on the scene, and Burgee was
Speaker 1: wise enough to realize the newcomer was to become the
Speaker 1: new genius. The old ritual firing and hiring was about
Speaker 1: to begin once more after Bellamy disappeared in his time
Speaker 1: and turn he smoked cigars was Ross's epitaph for this victim.
Speaker 1: The editor phoned Bergman, who had just left the Philadelphia Record,
Speaker 1: and tried to get him to come back. He rambled
Speaker 1: on in his loud voice about the job of editorial
Speaker 1: publishing whenever that meant, and the rebirth of his conviction
Speaker 1: that Bergmann could handle certain tough problems in the office.
Speaker 1: Bergmann said, that's just what I was doing, and he laughed,
Speaker 1: and Ross laughed too, and they both hung up laughing. Bergmann,
Speaker 1: like me, went to Ohio State, helped edit the Daily Lantern,
Speaker 1: and was a reporter on the Columbus Dispatch. We had
Speaker 1: been friends since nineteen fifteen, and I persuaded Ross to
Speaker 1: hire him to supervise the talk of the town. Ross
Speaker 1: had finally found out after years of hit and miss
Speaker 1: what manner of man and writer I was. But I
Speaker 1: don't think he ever knew anything about Bergmann. A man's
Speaker 1: past dropped away and his life began anew when he
Speaker 1: went to work for the New Yorker. Bergie had been
Speaker 1: a regimental sergeant major in World War One, a newspaper
Speaker 1: reporter and editor, and a New York press agent. In
Speaker 1: high school in Chillicothe, Ohio, nearly fifty years ago, Bergmann
Speaker 1: organized a four piece orchestra to play for Saturday night
Speaker 1: dances at the Knights of Pytheas Club. His clarinetist Bergmann
Speaker 1: played the violin and played it well, was a youngster
Speaker 1: named Theodore Friedman, whom Bergmann paid two dollars and a
Speaker 1: half a night until he let him go because he
Speaker 1: jazzed up everything, did funny things with a plug hat,
Speaker 1: and disconcerted the other boys. A decade later, Theodore Friedman,
Speaker 1: alias Ted Lewis was earning one hundred and ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a week the Palace, the Zigfield Follies, the Zigfield Roof,
Speaker 1: and Bergmann was his press agent for a long time.
Speaker 1: Starting about nineteen twenty eight, Bergie had contributed to Talk
Speaker 1: of the Town the best items and suggestions of any outsider,
Speaker 1: and when Ross asked me, after the vanishing of Ingersoll,
Speaker 1: Raymond Holden, Ogden, Nash and several others, if I knew
Speaker 1: a good man for talk. I brought Bergmann in and
Speaker 1: he was hired. I had asked Ross to promised me
Speaker 1: that he would not elevate Bergmann to the Genius chair,
Speaker 1: and he said he wouldn't, but he did. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give Bergmann a crack at that job, he told me.
Speaker 1: I think he can run the magazine. Don't say anything
Speaker 1: about it, though, cause I haven't told him yet. I
Speaker 1: left the room, giving the door a good slam. I
Speaker 1: hated to lose the man who had brought to talk
Speaker 1: facts and anecdotes about a dozen New Yorkers whose careers
Speaker 1: fascinated Harold Ross, the g whiz guy. They included Jake Volk,
Speaker 1: the building wrecker, Lewis Marshall, an eccentric millionaire lawyer who
Speaker 1: rode to work on the L train and back home
Speaker 1: on the subway, George and Ira Gershwin, and George Grause,
Speaker 1: the German artist with whom Bergmann and I once had dinner. Grasse,
Speaker 1: I told Ross wanted to meet the New Yorker artist
Speaker 1: whose work began where the other cartoonists left off, well
Speaker 1: did he, Ross asked, He meant me, I said, shyly, hogwash,
Speaker 1: said Ross, who didn't believe a word of it. The
Speaker 1: day that Ross promoted Bergmann, I sat outside his office
Speaker 1: and eavesdropped. Bergmann got the works, the whole rigmarole from
Speaker 1: you gotta hold the artist's hands through. I'm, by god
Speaker 1: gonna keep sex out of this office to I want
Speaker 1: to run this place like any other business office. I
Speaker 1: got up in disgust, went to the men's room and
Speaker 1: put up the window because it was a hot day.
Speaker 1: I heard the door open and closed behind me, but
Speaker 1: I didn't see what it was. Then I went out
Speaker 1: and met Bergmann coming down the hall. Ross's secretary just
Speaker 1: came in and said, you were going to kill yourself
Speaker 1: in the men's room, he told me. Ross turned to
Speaker 1: me and said, that's my life. Do something about it.
Speaker 1: Bergmann had one great failure and at least one great
Speaker 1: triumph at the New Yorker. His failure lay in his
Speaker 1: inability to build a fake partition by means of which
Speaker 1: Ross could get to the men's room unseen and ungreeted
Speaker 1: in the halls. Nobody else could have designed such a
Speaker 1: crazy partition either, and the dilemma wasn't solved until someone
Speaker 1: suggested he have a lavatory built just off his office. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll be damned, Ross must have said when this simple
Speaker 1: way out of embarrassment was presented to his astonished mind.
Speaker 1: The lavatory was installed, and it not only saved Ross
Speaker 1: the torture of being spoken to by employees, but it
Speaker 1: eliminated uncomfortable dialogue with writers and editors in the men's room.
Speaker 1: As an aside, here comes the line I mentioned one
Speaker 1: of my favorite quote in human history. I hope you're
Speaker 1: ready to resume. Once standing trow to trow with John Mosher,
Speaker 1: Ross grumbled, why aren't you writing any more casuals? Because
Speaker 1: I have lost the slight fancy that sustained me. Mosher
Speaker 1: explained it was the kind of Mosher retort that left
Speaker 1: Ross flabbergasted, and he was miserable when he had nothing
Speaker 1: to say. Bergman's great triumph was the hiring of Alvid Johnston,
Speaker 1: and I'll let him retell that story himself. When I
Speaker 1: first took over the me job managing editor, Ross said
Speaker 1: he had been trying to get Alva Johnston to come
Speaker 1: full time to the New Yorker for a long while,
Speaker 1: but Alva always refused, said he was too old to
Speaker 1: change his field. He was a reporter and he didn't
Speaker 1: want to take a chance on magazines. Ross said to
Speaker 1: me that if I could get Alva to come to
Speaker 1: the New Yorker, that's all I'd ever have to do.
Speaker 1: How much did you offer him, I asked, Oh, we
Speaker 1: never discussed salary. Ross said, well, let's offer him three
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a week. I said, uh, that's double what
Speaker 1: he's getting on the New Harold Tribune. And I said,
Speaker 1: if we offer him a lot of money, he just
Speaker 1: won't be able to turn it down. Bergmann, you're a genius.
Speaker 1: Ross said, I never thought of offering him money. So
Speaker 1: I made a date with Alba. I told him we
Speaker 1: guarantee him three hundred dollars a week. I can still
Speaker 1: see Alba turning pale, standing up and saying, gee, I
Speaker 1: have to think that over. I went back to Ross
Speaker 1: and told him we got Alva. We had to That incident,
Speaker 1: certainly important in the history of The New Yorker, showed
Speaker 1: Ross's occasional naive and charming impracticality. Although he was the
Speaker 1: world's greatest quoted words are Bergmann's. Harold Ross's laws of
Speaker 1: Bergmann was William Randolph Hurst's gain, where the former New
Speaker 1: Yorker editor was hired to build up the New York
Speaker 1: Americans Daily March of Events page, known to the printers
Speaker 1: as the Highbrow Page. And build it up he did.
Speaker 1: A Few months later, Ross ran into him somewhere and said,
Speaker 1: you're causing a lot of excitement at the New Yorker
Speaker 1: and worry too, I guess, but keep it up. I
Speaker 1: like it. I don't see how he could have liked it,
Speaker 1: because Bergmann had signed up, among others, for one or
Speaker 1: two columns a week, Bob Benchley, Frank Sullivan, Clarence Day,
Speaker 1: Ogden Nash, and Jim Kaine. He also got stuff from H. L.
Speaker 1: Menken and Oliver Herford, which Ross would have liked for
Speaker 1: The New Yorker. I did some columns for the Highbrow
Speaker 1: Page and quite a lot of drawings. The appearance of
Speaker 1: my drawings there caused Ross to pass the buck to
Speaker 1: someone who passed someone else, who passed it to Catherine White,
Speaker 1: who wrote me a note asking me if I had
Speaker 1: not broken my New Yorker contract by not first letting
Speaker 1: the art meeting see my drawings for the New York American.
Speaker 1: The New Yorker, in fact, had seen them all and
Speaker 1: turned them all down. I passed this fact to Catherine,
Speaker 1: who passed it to someone else, who passed it to
Speaker 1: someone who passed it to Ross. My drawings ceased appearing
Speaker 1: in The American when Bergmann got a note from old
Speaker 1: Hurst himself which read, stop running those dogs on your page.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have them peeing on my cheapest rug. In
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four, the Old Man stopped Cane's columns too,
Speaker 1: over Bergmann's protest that Jim was one of the best
Speaker 1: and most popular American writers. Hearst's final note on this
Speaker 1: matter read, get rid of Cain. I thought Abel had
Speaker 1: done it. Sorry he failed the years with Ross, wherein
Speaker 1: I learned that someone in the same millennium in which
Speaker 1: I lived said the phrase I had lost the slight
Speaker 1: fancy that sustains me. I've done all the damage I
Speaker 1: can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown. Musical directors
Speaker 1: Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel arranged, produced and performed
Speaker 1: most of our music. Mister Ray was on guitars, bass
Speaker 1: and drums, and mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards, and
Speaker 1: it was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some
Speaker 1: of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed.
Speaker 1: The sports music is the Ulderman theme from ESPN two,
Speaker 1: written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our
Speaker 1: satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the
Speaker 1: best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer was my friend
Speaker 1: Larry David, and everything else was pretty much my fault.
Speaker 1: So that's countdown for this, the one hundred and forty
Speaker 1: sixth day on till the twenty twenty four presidential election,
Speaker 1: and the two hundred and fifty fifth day since convicted
Speaker 1: fell in first time elderly offender Donald Trump's first attempted
Speaker 1: coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Speaker 1: Use the July eleventh sentencing hearing, use the mental health system,
Speaker 1: use presidential immunity if it happens, to stop him from
Speaker 1: doing it again while we still can. The next scheduled
Speaker 1: countdown is Tuesday. I'll leave a caveat that it might
Speaker 1: not happen. Two of the dogs are going in for
Speaker 1: dentals on Monday, and I may be focused entirely on
Speaker 1: them for the whole day, but I'll try to put
Speaker 1: something out on Tuesday morning. Boltons is the news warrants
Speaker 1: till the next one. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon,
Speaker 1: good night, and I have lost the slight fancy that
Speaker 1: sustains me. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.