Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: five points behind Trump in the Fox News poll in March,
Speaker 1: is now two points ahead of Trump in the Fox
Speaker 1: News poll in June. A top Midwestern political reporter says
Speaker 1: the Trump campaign is now warning local media that it
Speaker 1: will vet all questions for Trump at the Republican Convention
Speaker 1: and only give access to Trump to those local outlets
Speaker 1: whose questions have been approved in advance and one week
Speaker 1: before the debate, As rumors continue to swirl that Trump
Speaker 1: will back out as soon as he can find some
Speaker 1: way to blame it on Biden. It is not only
Speaker 1: a certainty now that Robert Kennedy Junior will not be
Speaker 1: at the debate, but it's beginning to look like he
Speaker 1: is on far fewer state ballots than his campaign has
Speaker 1: been claiming. The Fox polling first, Trump has led the
Speaker 1: Fox Beacon Shaw poll every month since October. He was
Speaker 1: still ahead last month by a point. Trump also led
Speaker 1: Biden in the five candidate version of the Fox poll
Speaker 1: by five points in March, by six points last November,
Speaker 1: and Biden is now also ahead in that crowded field
Speaker 1: by one point. There are three remarkable internal numbers doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like much, but Fox says thirty two percent of
Speaker 1: its respondents now believe the economy is in excellent or
Speaker 1: good shape, and that is the high water mark for
Speaker 1: the entire Biden presidency. Fox also says voter confidence in
Speaker 1: Biden on the economy has swung wildly towards the president.
Speaker 1: They favor Trump by five points on the issue, but
Speaker 1: last month they favored Trump over Biden by thirteen points.
Speaker 1: And Fox's poll also suggests that seventy three percent of
Speaker 1: Black voters support Biden. Fox notes, I'll say that again.
Speaker 1: Fox notes that at this point in twenty twenty, their
Speaker 1: poll said he had the support of seventy nine percent
Speaker 1: of black voters and wound up hugely overperforming in that number,
Speaker 1: getting ninety one percent of the actual votes. So Fox
Speaker 1: says Biden has a slim lead over Trump among registered voters,
Speaker 1: and within that a three point swing in one month,
Speaker 1: a seven point swing in three months. He has an
Speaker 1: eight point swing towards Biden on the economy, and he
Speaker 1: has the highest approval on the economy he has ever had.
Speaker 1: So what is the headline sitting atop the Fox News
Speaker 1: website story about the Fox News poll now showing Biden
Speaker 1: ahead of Trump and surging. Quote Fox News poll Biden
Speaker 1: Trump matchup tilts toward one candidate. If their viewers and
Speaker 1: readers go to their homepage and they do not click through,
Speaker 1: they will assume Trump is surging in the polls, when
Speaker 1: in fact his support is ebbing away. Yes, it sure
Speaker 1: looks like the scene in Citizen Kane where Orson Wells
Speaker 1: loses the election and they have to choose which banner
Speaker 1: headlined to print on his newspaper, and they go with
Speaker 1: fraud at polls. But contrary to the other meme, you
Speaker 1: do have to give them credit. Fox is corrupt as hell,
Speaker 1: but they are really good at it. And as a
Speaker 1: PostScript to this, that seven point three months swaying to
Speaker 1: Biden represents perfect timing in one respect. Axios has now
Speaker 1: published this headline one Big Thing DEM's Fear Biden Loss
Speaker 1: over a piece insisting Biden is losing in every poll
Speaker 1: and has made no progress in any poll, and it
Speaker 1: trashes everything about the Biden campaign. And it quotes yet
Speaker 1: another disaffected semi conservative ex Democrat you were not sure
Speaker 1: was still alive, named Howard Wolfson, saying if the election
Speaker 1: were today, Biden would lose it, saying that Biden learned
Speaker 1: the wrong lessons about twenty twenty and twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: and is mistaken in hitting Trump on his convictions and
Speaker 1: his dictatorship. Says Biden only won in twenty twenty because
Speaker 1: Democrats coalesced to stave off Bernie Sanders, and the Axio
Speaker 1: story includes the phrase quote many senior Democrats, including some
Speaker 1: of President Biden's aides, doubt his theory for victory, which
Speaker 1: relies on voter fears about January sixth, political violence, democracy,
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump's character. And yet the Axios piece never
Speaker 1: actually says on what Biden should be running instead. And
Speaker 1: that's just the worst of the kind of peace that
Speaker 1: looks like it should have been narrated by a shivalant
Speaker 1: Sean Hannity. It gets posted, it's their lead story, and
Speaker 1: hours later outcomes of Fox poll showing Biden ahead and
Speaker 1: surging and even surging on the economy a week before
Speaker 1: the first debate, and there's more signs of Trump panic
Speaker 1: trading interview access to Trump in exchange for letting the
Speaker 1: campaign vet your questions to Trump ask a question about,
Speaker 1: of all things, the twenty twenty election and you're gone. Yes.
Speaker 1: According to the political editor of the NBC television affiliate
Speaker 1: in Saint Louis, Mark Maxwell of Channel five KSDK, this
Speaker 1: is not some local liberal. This is a standard, play
Speaker 1: it straight local TV politics specialist. And what he said
Speaker 1: in an interview with Heartland Signal and It's radio station
Speaker 1: WCPO that they released viraly yesterday is probably not as
Speaker 1: shocking as it should be, given the fact that Trump
Speaker 1: has corrupted everything he's come close to, except perhaps the
Speaker 1: Visiting Nurse Association. It's not as shocking as it should
Speaker 1: be to hear this, but it's still pretty shocking.
Speaker 2: I planned to cover them were public a national convenition,
Speaker 2: Democratic national convention this summer. I have been hearing from
Speaker 2: some of my friends in local media who are also
Speaker 2: planning to be there from across the country that the
Speaker 2: Trump campaign is already trying to vet their questions, and
Speaker 2: they're saying, look, if you play nice, will might give
Speaker 2: you some airtime. You'll feel real important. You can talk
Speaker 2: to the former president and put them on your airwaves.
Speaker 2: But if you ask about the twenty twenty election, you're out.
Speaker 2: People that I'm hearing from are saying, like, well, that's bogus.
Speaker 2: We're not going to play ball like that. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not how this works. You don't get to screen
Speaker 2: our questions. But for as much as a bluster about
Speaker 2: twenty twenty being stolen all this, there're very sentence to us.
Speaker 1: You don't like the conflict, Mark Maxwell, KSDK Saint Louis.
Speaker 1: Why would they try to stop people from asking Trump
Speaker 1: about the twenty twenty election, Because when Trump is talking
Speaker 1: about the twenty twenty election, he is not talking about
Speaker 1: the economy, And going back to that Fox poll, his
Speaker 1: trust lead over Biden on the economy just dropped about
Speaker 1: sixty percent in one month. And when Trump is talking
Speaker 1: about the twenty twenty election, he is not talking about immigration,
Speaker 1: And again going back to the Fox pole, his trust
Speaker 1: lead over Biden on immigration dropped from thirteen points to
Speaker 1: nine points in one month. And the same Trump campaign
Speaker 1: bosses who Rick Wilson said day before yesterday are telling
Speaker 1: journalists off the record they can't control their candidate anymore.
Speaker 1: Are convinced that his edge is on the economy and
Speaker 1: on immigration, and he's pissing it away talking about the
Speaker 1: wrong election. Here, of course, is one other large reason
Speaker 1: they don't want Trump talking about twenty twenty to local
Speaker 1: TV reporters or anybody else, because when he does, he
Speaker 1: sounds even more crazy than usual. Ramin Setuda, the author
Speaker 1: of the new book on The Apprentice, with even more
Speaker 1: jaw droppers from his six different interviews with Trump, like
Speaker 1: how he confidently told me that Joan Rivers voted for
Speaker 1: him when he ran for president. Joan Rivers died on
Speaker 1: September fourth, twenty fourteen. And if, like me, you were
Speaker 1: thinking maybe maybe she voted for him in a primary
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, twenty twelve, didn't he start to run
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eleven, twenty twelve, Trump pulled out
Speaker 1: before the primary started. He also says that in one
Speaker 1: of his other interviews that his first interview with Trump
Speaker 1: was more than a month after Trump was thrown out
Speaker 1: of office. Quote, there was one day where Trump told
Speaker 1: me he needed to go upstairs to deal with Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: Unless that is a metaphor for the call of nature.
Speaker 1: In March twenty twenty one or later, Trump either thought
Speaker 1: he was still president of the United States and had
Speaker 1: to go deal with Afghanistan, or he thought he could
Speaker 1: get away with lying to a magazine editor and author
Speaker 1: that he was still president and had to go deal
Speaker 1: with Afghanistan, each of which either of which is you
Speaker 1: know nuts. The more you hear we are now still
Speaker 1: less than forty eight hours after Trump called President Biden
Speaker 1: Joe Bride. The more you hear, the more you listen
Speaker 1: to that story from Saint Louis that the Trump campaign
Speaker 1: wants to know the questions in advance, and the more
Speaker 1: you ask yourself, they only want to know the questions
Speaker 1: in advance. I mean, at Trump's rate of decline, they're
Speaker 1: going to start providing the reporters with the only questions
Speaker 1: they are allowed to ask him, or they may start
Speaker 1: just handing out tapes of Trump answering questions asked by himself. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what about the debate and would Kennedy sue to
Speaker 1: get into the debate, Well, this much is clear. The
Speaker 1: Washington Post has concluded there is no way Bob Kennedy
Speaker 1: meets the qualifications to be on the stage at CNN
Speaker 1: had quarters in Atlanta one week from tonight. The deal
Speaker 1: is presumptive nominee of one of the two major parties.
Speaker 1: You can be on stage, or you're in an outside
Speaker 1: party that's on enough state ballots to earn at least
Speaker 1: two hundred and seventy electoral votes, and you are getting
Speaker 1: fifteen percent or more in at least four respected national polls.
Speaker 1: Leaving aside the question whether or not there are four
Speaker 1: respected national polls, the Washington Post says, so far, if
Speaker 1: the RFK Junior campaign won all the states where he's
Speaker 1: actually on the ballot, he would get an electoral vote
Speaker 1: count of one hundred. That would be Delaware, Michigan, Oklahoma, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: and Utah, all of which say he has qualified. And
Speaker 1: California and Hawaii, where Kennedy is not yet on the
Speaker 1: ballot but is the presumptive nominee of smaller parties which
Speaker 1: have already begun the process of qualifying. Everywhere else, Robert F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy Junior says he is on the ballot. He is
Speaker 1: definitely wrong, and he may be lying. The Post reports
Speaker 1: that in California, Florida, Hawaii, South Carolina, and Texas, Kennedy
Speaker 1: has done some of the work, submitted ballot petitions or
Speaker 1: been nominated by a party that previously qualified in that state,
Speaker 1: but that he has not been officially certified yet in
Speaker 1: any of those This is how precarious, it is for
Speaker 1: Kennedy in Florida. In Florida, he has been nominated for
Speaker 1: president by the Reform Party, the Ross Parro Reform Party.
Speaker 1: Ross Parro the third party independent who helped sink the
Speaker 1: first George Bush in nineteen ninety two. Ross Perot died
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, and Ross Parrot's Reform Party died last
Speaker 1: year and it dropped off the ballot in Florida. They
Speaker 1: are trying to requalify and then in turn qualify Kennedy
Speaker 1: as the Reform Party candidate. Thing is said in Florida.
Speaker 1: So back to the immediate concern that the only way
Speaker 1: Kennedy will be at the debate is in spirit. Hell,
Speaker 1: I'll be at the debate in spirit. We'll be doing
Speaker 1: another live countdown podcast right after the debate on YouTube,
Speaker 1: just like the one the night of the State of
Speaker 1: the Union. But will Trump be there? And if he's there,
Speaker 1: will he really be? You know? There? Even The New
Speaker 1: York Times has put out a piece suggesting Trump is
Speaker 1: lowering expectations for his own success and what he's told
Speaker 1: his cult will be Biden's failure. And again, circling back
Speaker 1: to that Fox poll, they actually ask their registered voters
Speaker 1: who will win next Thursday, As if there has been
Speaker 1: anything resembling a consensus about who won a given presidential
Speaker 1: debate since Ronald Reagan. They are picking Trump, but only
Speaker 1: by fifty to forty five. Also asked how important several
Speaker 1: key issues are to voter's decisions on who to choose,
Speaker 1: and the vaguely phrased ones get basically ninety eight percent somewhat,
Speaker 1: very or extremely important. Like the candidate's leadership skills Are
Speaker 1: they somewhat, very or extremely important? The candidate's age and
Speaker 1: mental soundness are they very blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: You might as well ask if you will choose between
Speaker 1: them based on which one of them is the old
Speaker 1: white dude. But the answers to the how important to
Speaker 1: your vote is the candidate's performance in the debates, that's
Speaker 1: at least a little sharpened. I think it's fair to
Speaker 1: say nobody is rooting for their candidate to do an
Speaker 1: Ian McKellen into the orchestra pit. They expect their guy's
Speaker 1: performance to be at least intelligible. Thirty percent say that
Speaker 1: performance is extremely important to their vote, twenty five percent
Speaker 1: say very important, thirty one percent say somewhat important meeting
Speaker 1: that the eye don't give a crap about. The debate
Speaker 1: number is only thirteen percent. That's not a lot, And
Speaker 1: it again underscores a question being seriously asked behind the
Speaker 1: scenes at the Trump campaign and of course in public
Speaker 1: loudly and seriously pitched by the Trump campaign about Biden.
Speaker 1: What happens if Trump calls Biden Obama during the debate.
Speaker 1: What if Biden doesn't do any of the dubious things
Speaker 1: the right wing echo chamber has lied about. What if
Speaker 1: Trump starts talking about how in nineteen eighty eight he
Speaker 1: got voted for by Joan Rivers or Johnny Rivers or
Speaker 1: Doc Rivers Over the weekend in Detroit at the Black
Speaker 1: Church all the white people go to, Trump suggested he
Speaker 1: might deliberately lose the debate to make sure Joe Biden
Speaker 1: does not drop out of the campaign. Drop out, you know,
Speaker 1: to be replaced as the Democratic candidate by the former
Speaker 1: first Lady Joan Rivers. I'll be there. I'll be at
Speaker 1: the debate at least on YouTube. Also of interest, here,
Speaker 1: I already quoted Citizen Kane once and I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: it again. Fox had to pay Dominion Voting Systems seven
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty seven and a half million dollars to
Speaker 1: settle its lawsuit over Fox's lies about Dominion voting systems.
Speaker 1: But now a Fox host is insisting all the videos
Speaker 1: Fox has doctored and clipped and decontextualized, they are all
Speaker 1: legit and not doctored and not clipped and not decontextualized.
Speaker 1: And it's everybody else who is lying about Fox. The
Speaker 1: citizen Kane quote. If it was anybody else, I'd say
Speaker 1: that what's going to happen to you would be a
Speaker 1: lesson to you. Only you're gonna need more than one lesson,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna get more than one lesson. That's next.
Speaker 1: This is countdown.
Speaker 3: This is countdown with Keith Alberman. This is Sports Senate.
Speaker 3: Wait check that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith Alberman.
Speaker 1: In Sports Dateline, Birmingham, Alabama, the Negro League's Tribute Game
Speaker 1: will proceed as scheduled tonight. It is now not a
Speaker 1: salute to, but a memorial to the late Willie Mays.
Speaker 1: The San Francisco Giants playing the Saint Louis Cardinals at
Speaker 1: Rickwood Field in Birmingham, where Mays made his professional debut
Speaker 1: three quarters of a century ago. Fox has the telecast
Speaker 1: Fox could not be Bob Third to put an African
Speaker 1: American announcer or analyst in its announced booth. As the
Speaker 1: tributes continued to pour in four Mays, who died Tuesday
Speaker 1: afternoon at the age of ninety three, I did want
Speaker 1: to mention one snapshot of one small trivial moment in
Speaker 1: his career that illustrates something not being frequently mentioned in
Speaker 1: the descriptions of the extraordinary talents of Willie Mays, his
Speaker 1: extraordinary intelligence, how much he knew about the game. He
Speaker 1: played On the twenty fifth of July in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: seven at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, the Giants and
Speaker 1: the visiting New York Mets were scoreless. In the bottom
Speaker 1: of the third inning, Heyesiuss Alou and Bobby Ethridge of
Speaker 1: the Giants singled, and Willie Mays was up next, and
Speaker 1: he lined a sure two base hit, a double that
Speaker 1: scored Alu. But as Ethridge chugged into third base, Mays
Speaker 1: stunned everybody in the ballpark. He deliberately stopped at first base.
Speaker 1: No injury, no stumble, no hesitation, no misreading of the play,
Speaker 1: no fear of the outfielder's arm. He just turned a
Speaker 1: double into a single. And he explained later that he
Speaker 1: had done so deliberately, that he had turned a double
Speaker 1: into a single so that first base would not be open, unoccupied,
Speaker 1: and so the Mets would not then walk the next
Speaker 1: Giants hitter, the slugger Jim ray Hart, so that the
Speaker 1: Mets pitcher Jack Fisher could pitch instead to first baseman
Speaker 1: Jack Hyatt, who hit after Heart did. Mays said, he
Speaker 1: knew that Heart hit Fisher very well. Now this is
Speaker 1: pre internet in nineteen sixty seven. This is pre pitcher
Speaker 1: versus hitter matchup data. This is almost pre scouting. Willie
Speaker 1: Mays just knew that Hart hit this pitcher, Jack Fisher,
Speaker 1: real well. And because first base was not open, the
Speaker 1: Mets did not intentionally walk Hart, and Heart promptly hit
Speaker 1: a three run homer off Jack Fisher, and the Giants
Speaker 1: wound up winning five to four. If you look it
Speaker 1: up now, you will find out that lifetime this Jim
Speaker 1: ray Hart hit three thirty nine lifetime in sixty two
Speaker 1: plate appearances against Jack Fisher, the highest that Heart hit
Speaker 1: against any pitcher he faced more than forty five times
Speaker 1: in his career, and before we could look that up somewhere,
Speaker 1: Willie Mays knew that. So yes, the catch, the home runs,
Speaker 1: the stolen bases, the ability to judge what was going
Speaker 1: to happen next, Yes, all of it valid and to
Speaker 1: be remembered forever about Willy Mays. But the fact that
Speaker 1: Willy Mays turned his double into a single so that
Speaker 1: Jim ray Hart would get to hit against the pitcher
Speaker 1: he hit really well, and Jim ray Hart hit the
Speaker 1: home run that guaranteed the Giant's victory. That's who Willy
Speaker 1: Mays really was. Eight line in Toronto, Ontario, in Canada.
Speaker 1: Infielder Justin Turner of the Blue Jays, generally speaking, one
Speaker 1: of the more thoughtful of baseball's players, has had one
Speaker 1: of the worst ideas of all time. Appearing on the
Speaker 1: Foul Territory TV streaming show, mister Turner was asked what
Speaker 1: he would do if they let him be commissioner for
Speaker 1: a day, and he has suggested expanding baseball to thirty
Speaker 1: two teams, scrapping the current American and National League formats,
Speaker 1: and rearranging things so that the World Series every year
Speaker 1: would be an Eastern team versus a Western team. The
Speaker 1: television audience for the Baseball World Series peaked in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight. It was an average of forty four million
Speaker 1: viewers per game. Last year, the average was just under
Speaker 1: five million viewers per game, so the audience is about
Speaker 1: one tenth what it was in nineteen seventy eight, even
Speaker 1: though the population is one third larger than it was
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy eight. Why did the World Series die?
Speaker 1: A thousand reasons, but one of them shows up in
Speaker 1: what happened to the ratings Starting about nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: The Braves and the Yankees still got twenty five million
Speaker 1: viewers per game that year. Then the next season they
Speaker 1: began interleague play. Teams from the American League and the
Speaker 1: National League had never faced each other except in exhibitions
Speaker 1: or in the World Series since the American League opened
Speaker 1: for business in nineteen oh one. The point was the
Speaker 1: teams and the leagues were distinct. The World Series was
Speaker 1: utterly novel, and it was that thing that all sports
Speaker 1: leagues try to fabricate today, an actual organic rivalry between
Speaker 1: everybody who followed the American League and everybody who followed
Speaker 1: the National League. Most American League fans hated the National League,
Speaker 1: or at least disrespected it, and vice versa. This was
Speaker 1: true because, well, I'll give you this example. When my
Speaker 1: grandfather died in nineteen eighty seven, he died hating the
Speaker 1: American League. He would watch the World Series and the
Speaker 1: All Star Game and route against the American League team.
Speaker 1: He would mock the American League New York Yankees. He
Speaker 1: would insist they played in the weaker league than did
Speaker 1: his National League New York Mets. His hatred in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven owed to something that had happened in July
Speaker 1: of nineteen o three. He was a little boy then,
Speaker 1: when the star shortstop of his National League New York Giants,
Speaker 1: George Stacey Davis, jumped to the Chicago White Sox of
Speaker 1: the brand new American League that had been in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh two. In nineteen oh three, Davis jumped back to
Speaker 1: the New York Giants, but as part of the peace
Speaker 1: settlement between the warring leagues that happened right about then,
Speaker 1: Davis was ordered back to Chicago. Grandpa was still angry
Speaker 1: about what they did to his Giants. Eighty four year
Speaker 1: years later. Hatreds like that were inherited, cultivated, cherished, maintained.
Speaker 1: My mother became a New York Yankees fan entirely because
Speaker 1: her father, my grandfather, was pissed off by that. You
Speaker 1: may try to create rivalries that resemble that in any sport,
Speaker 1: in any time. In fact, they form only from true hatred.
Speaker 1: It was Coke versus Pepsi. It was Ford versus Chevrolet.
Speaker 1: It was forgive me, Republican versus Democrat. And then Baseball
Speaker 1: stopped keeping the leagues separate, stopped making the World Series
Speaker 1: the battle the only battle between the leagues, and it
Speaker 1: suddenly didn't mean that much. Interleague play began in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven. That nineteen ninety six World Series audience had
Speaker 1: been twenty five million viewers a game. Within four years,
Speaker 1: they were down to eighteen million per game. Since two
Speaker 1: thousand and four, when the Red Sox played and finally won,
Speaker 1: the average has been more than twenty million viewers a
Speaker 1: game only once. It was last as many as fourteen
Speaker 1: million six years ago. If you want to make the
Speaker 1: World Series live again, you have to make it interesting
Speaker 1: to fans whose personal teams are not playing in it.
Speaker 1: That used to be everybody, because you were a fan
Speaker 1: of a team, but also a fan of a league
Speaker 1: that may not be salvageable. It may be too late.
Speaker 1: But what baseball should do is eliminate interleague play immediately
Speaker 1: and see if it can bring the league versus league
Speaker 1: rivalry back to life. And if that doesn't work, try
Speaker 1: something else stupid, like East versus West, or alphabetical order
Speaker 1: versus numerical Who knows what? Because Grandpa wasn't just still
Speaker 1: angry about George Stacey Davis eighty four years later, he
Speaker 1: was also convinced that the National League played real baseball,
Speaker 1: but that the American League was not only weak and bad,
Speaker 1: but that it was fixed, fixed so that the Yankees
Speaker 1: would win the pennant nearly every year. You can't buy
Speaker 1: that kind of devotion from customers. The crazy has to
Speaker 1: be organic. Sorry, justin Turner, Baseball has been steadily eliminating
Speaker 1: the crazy, and it has made its world series small.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Nancy Fowl still ahead of us on this
Speaker 1: edition of Countdown. It's hot here, I mean it's not
Speaker 1: that hot. It's hotter in a lot of other places here,
Speaker 1: and it's only going to get hotter. And there was
Speaker 1: a nice strong wind here yesterday and that is often
Speaker 1: the difference between life and death in this city above
Speaker 1: ground anyway, not in the subways. In the subways where
Speaker 1: it's always hellish, and when they say the real feel
Speaker 1: is ninety two degrees, I flashback to the relatively recent
Speaker 1: past here when not all of our subway cars had
Speaker 1: air conditioning, and that in turn reminds me of the
Speaker 1: morning I got into one of those non air conditioned
Speaker 1: subway cars after having had a few years the day
Speaker 1: and the night before like forty beers coming up in
Speaker 1: things I promise not to tell. But first there are
Speaker 1: still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup
Speaker 1: of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens,
Speaker 1: who we celebrate as today's worst persons in the world.
Speaker 1: Lebrons worse. And this is going to piss off a
Speaker 1: lot of reporters. David Carr, the former media reporter and
Speaker 1: long form writer of the New York Times. This is
Speaker 1: kind of unfair because he's dead. He died in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: He died in the Times newsroom. But I was surprised
Speaker 1: to have just discovered that Georgetown University held an event
Speaker 1: this week honoring Carr's memory. In which David Carr was
Speaker 1: saluted by a room full of former colleagues and other journalists.
Speaker 1: Let me state at the outset that I've never heard
Speaker 1: anybody who worked with him who said anything except that
Speaker 1: David Carr was the best mentor in the world, That
Speaker 1: he was a singular influence in their success, that he
Speaker 1: was a constant inspiration and support. And I don't doubt
Speaker 1: any of that, not for a moment, nor that his
Speaker 1: recovery from addiction was inspirational and heroic. And he was
Speaker 1: such a crack addict at one point that he once
Speaker 1: left his newborn twins in a freezing car and they
Speaker 1: were underweight because his girlfriend was also an addict. He
Speaker 1: left them in a freezing car so he could go
Speaker 1: buy and use more drugs. That's how bad it was.
Speaker 1: And he overcame. That journalists can celebrate a good man,
Speaker 1: an inspiration, a friend. That's not what I'm criticizing. But
Speaker 1: please do not do what they also did, which was
Speaker 1: to celebrate David Carr as a good journalist. I noticed
Speaker 1: this when he died in February twenty fifteen. The grief
Speaker 1: and the plaudits filled social media and touched my heart.
Speaker 1: There were dozens, probably hundreds, and they were all reporters
Speaker 1: and colleagues. There was not one one word from anyone,
Speaker 1: as near as I could tell, not one word from
Speaker 1: anybody that David Carr had reported on or written about.
Speaker 1: Often that happens. People tell tough truths and are hated
Speaker 1: for telling the tough truths. It's happened to me every
Speaker 1: once in a while. But that's not what happened here.
Speaker 1: That happened here because David Carr constantly violated the most
Speaker 1: basic premises of journalism. He did a story on me
Speaker 1: for The Times in twenty eleven. I was warned by
Speaker 1: people he had written about before, don't let him talk
Speaker 1: to you. He's already written the piece in his head.
Speaker 1: It was three thousand words. I guess it was okay.
Speaker 1: I remember not liking it when it came out. I
Speaker 1: read it again the other day and it was it
Speaker 1: was kind of foolish. They spent some money on a
Speaker 1: cartoon of me. The cartoon looked nice, the publicity was
Speaker 1: great when I needed it for a new show on
Speaker 1: a new network. But the point is, when the article
Speaker 1: was written, NBC had just breached my contract and we
Speaker 1: had settled that with an agreement full of non disparagement
Speaker 1: clauses and non disclosure agreements. Blah blah blah. They couldn't
Speaker 1: trash me. I couldn't trash them. There was an arbitrator
Speaker 1: who oversaw this, who eventually find NBC like one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars for violating it for disparaging me anyway. And
Speaker 1: I had also left to start a rival news organization
Speaker 1: at Current TV and then as now, NBC likes to
Speaker 1: dirty people up when they leave NBC, and they were
Speaker 1: going to dirty me up. And I told David carr
Speaker 1: All this. Some of it I told him on the record,
Speaker 1: and some of it I couldn't tell him about then,
Speaker 1: and he even put it in the piece. He even
Speaker 1: inadvertently may have identified one of his anonymous sources for
Speaker 1: this story. He wrote of MSNBC's president, who was notorious
Speaker 1: for calling up New York writers The Post and The
Speaker 1: Daily News and The Times and offering them off the
Speaker 1: record comments. He wrote quote Phil Griffin was president of
Speaker 1: MSNBC did not return calls or emails requesting a comment.
Speaker 1: Employees of MSNBC were prevented from speaking on the record
Speaker 1: by non disclosure agreements signed when Olderman left and by
Speaker 1: the way, at that point, it was a violation of
Speaker 1: the non disclosure agreement to acknowledge there was a non
Speaker 1: disclosure agreement. NBC violated it even telling him that. And
Speaker 1: note his use of that word on the record, because
Speaker 1: David Carr granted at least one NBC employee the right
Speaker 1: to say anything they wanted off the record about me,
Speaker 1: which actually is fine except in one set of circumstances,
Speaker 1: except if there's one problem. Whoever he talked to lied
Speaker 1: to him. Carr wrote that I isolated myself in my
Speaker 1: office to avoid people. No, I was isolating myself in
Speaker 1: my office to write an hour's worth of scripts. He
Speaker 1: wrote that I might have felt slighted, underappreciated, and ignored MSNBC.
Speaker 1: That never happened. I felt a lot of things there,
Speaker 1: but never I've never felt a ignored. I often felt
Speaker 1: leave me alone. I never felt ignored. He wrote that
Speaker 1: I made demands for a renegotiated contract and an extension.
Speaker 1: I never demanded a renegotiated contract nor an extension. When
Speaker 1: we tried to settle the breach of contract, I offered
Speaker 1: some terms under which I would stay and ask for
Speaker 1: their terms. I don't know if that was the same thing.
Speaker 1: But I never demanded a contract renegotiation. Quote. There were
Speaker 1: times when he threatened not to come to work. Not true.
Speaker 1: Not once. He wrote that there were substitute hosts on
Speaker 1: standby if I didn't show up, which happened once in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight. When the substitute host was on standby.
Speaker 1: His name was John Gibson, and he was there because
Speaker 1: I had kidney stones. Only time it happened, he didn't
Speaker 1: mention the kidney stones. He wrote that very senior people
Speaker 1: spent hours talking him. That would be me off a
Speaker 1: ledge and into the town car that would take him
Speaker 1: to the studio. Not once, not ever. Quote. When he
Speaker 1: wasn't threatening not to show up, he was threatening to quit.
Speaker 1: Never did either of those things. Carr wrote that my
Speaker 1: criticisms of Fox News, and this was the part that
Speaker 1: really did piss me off, were mere enmity. That was
Speaker 1: the word he used, because I needed an enemy on
Speaker 1: the air. It is not true. They were in there
Speaker 1: because in twenty eleven Fox News was on its way
Speaker 1: to becoming what it is now, and people like him
Speaker 1: did not believe that was going to happen, and so
Speaker 1: they just assumed I was doing it to get ratings.
Speaker 1: Now again, sometimes untrue things get into the newspapers, even
Speaker 1: into the New York Times. Even that many in one
Speaker 1: story is not enough to slam a guy nearly a
Speaker 1: decade after he died in the middle of their newsroom.
Speaker 1: Sources embellish, sources, spin, sources lie to you, and a
Speaker 1: reporter cannot always check everything for the truth or non
Speaker 1: truth behind the fact that the guy said it. But
Speaker 1: the reason I have pointed out all of these stories
Speaker 1: in detail, all these stories gotten anonymously from somebody or
Speaker 1: many somebody's at NBC, is that even though the late
Speaker 1: David Carr spent a full day with me and did
Speaker 1: a separate long interview with me on another day, and
Speaker 1: sent countless follow up emails with further questions, he never
Speaker 1: asked me about any of those stories. He never asked
Speaker 1: me about the supposed threats not to show up, the
Speaker 1: ones that didn't happen, and not the stuff about the
Speaker 1: substitute host who was on standby because you know, kidney Stones,
Speaker 1: none of it. He never asked me. New York Times
Speaker 1: reporter media reporter never asked me to confirm, contradict, deny,
Speaker 1: or no comment, never asked me. And most journalists will
Speaker 1: tell you that if you don't ask the subject of
Speaker 1: your story about a negative tale about them, or a
Speaker 1: sourced piece of information or something anonymously given to you,
Speaker 1: or some gossip, the reason you are not asking is
Speaker 1: is you don't want a good paragraph or anecdote to
Speaker 1: be destroyed by a denial or by being disproved. David
Speaker 1: Carr never asked me about any of those juicy pieces
Speaker 1: of gossip which weren't true, which he didn't check. And
Speaker 1: there's something else that seems to me that erases any
Speaker 1: reasons to hold him up as a role model for journalists.
Speaker 1: What are the classic switcherous reporters use? It was suggested
Speaker 1: to me once and I just couldn't do it, is
Speaker 1: to ask the subject of your story to do something,
Speaker 1: and then you leave out the fact that you asked.
Speaker 1: You make it look like the subject of the story
Speaker 1: just did it. There are three references at least in
Speaker 1: this story to the media blitz that I was doing
Speaker 1: and my flogging my new show. There is not one
Speaker 1: reference to the fact that David Carr asked to interview me,
Speaker 1: not the other way around. To read the piece, you
Speaker 1: would think. He did not ask me endless follow up
Speaker 1: question by email, and the story that became many late
Speaker 1: night email conversations that were part of a blitz of
Speaker 1: press to advance my career. Over dinner at a game
Speaker 1: at Yankee Stadium, I paid for his ticket. He and
Speaker 1: The Times never reimbursed me. By the way, He asked
Speaker 1: me to explain in as much detail as possible the
Speaker 1: technical process of reading the teleprompter on TV. So I
Speaker 1: did in intricate detail. Mostly I quoted Tom Snyder's intricate
Speaker 1: technical explanation of the teleprompter. He closed the piece with
Speaker 1: three plus paragraphs about that that are designed to make
Speaker 1: it look like I just launched into it, never says
Speaker 1: he asked. It begins with he knows exactly what to
Speaker 1: do when the red light on the camera beckons him
Speaker 1: to begin talking, and the piece ends with he looked
Speaker 1: like that guy on television, the one who likes the camera. Yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: I was just answering his question. I hadn't thought of
Speaker 1: David Carr or the story or this little journal ethics
Speaker 1: limbo dance that he did. Hadn't thought of him or
Speaker 1: it for years. I certainly hadn't spent all the time
Speaker 1: since twenty fifteen thinking when's the right time to trash
Speaker 1: a dead guy from the Times who broke all their
Speaker 1: journalistic rules at my expense and considering that ticket literally
Speaker 1: at my expense. But a couple of months ago, one
Speaker 1: of my friends who Carr interviewed for the piece, brought
Speaker 1: up the interview. Something had reminded her about it, and
Speaker 1: she wanted to tell me. She was still furious at
Speaker 1: the questions he asked her the moment I left the room,
Speaker 1: tell me the worst thing you can about him. It
Speaker 1: was thirteen years ago. She's madder now than I was then.
Speaker 1: And then came the social media stuff from the thing
Speaker 1: at Georgetown remembering his work. So again, the people who
Speaker 1: were there, Jake Tapper, Amanda Ripley, Eric Wemple, Brian Stelter, others,
Speaker 1: they get together to honor a departed friend, to honor
Speaker 1: a mentor, to salute the memory of a courageous inspiration.
Speaker 1: I honor them for doing that, but let's not pave
Speaker 1: over reality here. Nobody he wrote about said anything about
Speaker 1: him when he died, Not anything nice, just not anything.
Speaker 1: As a journalist, the late David Carr was a corner cutter.
Speaker 1: You may want to be the David Carr kind of colleague,
Speaker 1: you do not want to be the David Carr kind
Speaker 1: of journalist. Okay, back to this decade and the living
Speaker 1: sort of the runner up worser, Trump again ettd. Every
Speaker 1: team Trump touches dies this. He wrote on Saturday night.
Speaker 1: Wow co. The Florida Panthers are a fantastic ice hockey team.
Speaker 1: They're three and zero against the very good Edmonton Oilers
Speaker 1: from Canada. They're down one to nothing tonight, but it's
Speaker 1: still early. Hopefully they will put them away. Very impressive
Speaker 1: in sports. We call this bandwagoning and ETTD or ETTTD.
Speaker 1: The Florida Panthers were leading the Stanley Cup Finals in
Speaker 1: ice hockey. Who the hell calls it ice hockey? For
Speaker 1: those of you who've just arrived on Earth, it's ice hockey.
Speaker 1: They were leading three games to none, and they were
Speaker 1: only trailing the Edmonton Oilers in Game four one to nothing,
Speaker 1: two goals, and they win the Stanley Cup. When Trump
Speaker 1: wrote and posted what I just read you, and then
Speaker 1: they went to hell on a Trump basket. Florida lost
Speaker 1: that fourth game Saturday night, not one to nothing, but
Speaker 1: a little bit worse than that. They gave up eight goals.
Speaker 1: They lost eight to one. Then Tuesday night they lost
Speaker 1: again again, missing the chance to clinch the Stanley Cup
Speaker 1: five to three. They now lead Edmonton three games to two,
Speaker 1: and Edmonton's chance to tie the series up and set
Speaker 1: up Florida for the worst choke in hockey history is
Speaker 1: Friday Night. Because ettd every team Trump Tart touches dies,
Speaker 1: but our winner the worst. Greg Guttfeld of Fox Fox
Speaker 1: has been actively altering and editing video of the President
Speaker 1: to make him seem feeble or lost, when of course
Speaker 1: it is the boy they pimped for Trump, who called
Speaker 1: the president Joe Bride, who called his own doctor Ronnie
Speaker 1: Jackson Ronnie Johnson. And that's just since Sunday, stay tuned,
Speaker 1: there'll be more. But that's what they do Fox News.
Speaker 1: They're whores. That's what I tried to tell David Carr
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, and he wrote it up like it
Speaker 1: was just a marketing scheme for MSNBC or Current TV.
Speaker 1: Gutfeld wins this award today because he went a little
Speaker 1: further than just being a whore. He insisted on air
Speaker 1: that it's everybody else who's lying. It's not Fox quote.
Speaker 1: When we see something we've edit the media is not
Speaker 1: because they're the engine behind their hoaxes. The Dems in
Speaker 1: the media are lucky we don't match their dishonesty. By
Speaker 1: the way, Fox News top rated cable TV network or
Speaker 1: cable news network always often the top rated cable TV network.
Speaker 1: They're the media. They're in fact the establishment media. Anyway,
Speaker 1: to resume Gutfeld's quote, when we see something, we've had
Speaker 1: it the media is not because they're the engine behind
Speaker 1: their hoaxes. The Dems in the media are lucky we
Speaker 1: don't match their dishonesty. We could, we don't. We don't
Speaker 1: have to because basically we don't have to make up crap. Well,
Speaker 1: of course you don't have to make up crap, Gutfeld,
Speaker 1: it's provided to you by Rupert Murdoch. Greg, you don't
Speaker 1: make up crap. You just paid Dominion seven hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty seven million, five hundred thousand dollars to settle their
Speaker 1: suit against you for making up crap because Rupert Murdoch
Speaker 1: had too much money. Gutfeld two days, worst person in
Speaker 1: the world. It's not a marketing point to the number
Speaker 1: one story on the countdown and my favorite topic me
Speaker 1: and how I learned not to drink. Anybody over the
Speaker 1: age of twenty seven and the number may actually be
Speaker 1: way lower than that can look back in genuine horror
Speaker 1: at a day on which they did something alarming or
Speaker 1: potentially physically injurious or fatal at a much younger age.
Speaker 1: For me, since the day I turned twenty three and
Speaker 1: a half on July twenty seventh, nineteen eighty two. That
Speaker 1: day was July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty two, and I
Speaker 1: remember on my twenty third and half birthday being kind
Speaker 1: of surprised that I had made it through the previous
Speaker 1: three days. July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty two is one
Speaker 1: of those timeless, airless, stultifying summer sundays in New York
Speaker 1: that can arrive and sit on your head and do
Speaker 1: its best to smother you. It can get there anytime
Speaker 1: from the end of May until the middle of September.
Speaker 1: I was invited to a party on Long Island, Scias
Speaker 1: it Maybe, where nine college friends were already having a
Speaker 1: great time drinking. My friend Peter rented a duplex there
Speaker 1: and shared it with some radio colleagues of his, including
Speaker 1: impossibly the former New York Rangers hockey player Pete Stemkowski.
Speaker 1: My friend Glenn Cornelius, who we would lose when he
Speaker 1: turned thirty nine and whose name is on the studios
Speaker 1: of our Cornell radio station's new facility along with my
Speaker 1: dad's was there. He was in charge of grilling the burgers,
Speaker 1: and his wife was there. Then my friend Peter's parents,
Speaker 1: and a pal who used to be Pat Lions and
Speaker 1: a T shirt but is now Patrick J. Lyons of
Speaker 1: the Foreign desk of the New York Times thank you
Speaker 1: in a beard and a three piece suit that makes
Speaker 1: them look like Britain's ambassador to this country. In eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven, I mention all this because it is in
Speaker 1: my diary for the next day. I don't actually remember it,
Speaker 1: and I don't actually remember it because it was so
Speaker 1: damn hot that I would not leave Peter's well air
Speaker 1: conditioned living room even to go grab a burger that
Speaker 1: Glenn Cornelius was fixing with expert precision. I just sat there.
Speaker 1: I just sat there and drank beer. Mind you, I
Speaker 1: didn't drink a lot in college or thereafter. I was
Speaker 1: never once carted in my life. I think I got
Speaker 1: my first bar beer at the age of thirteen, But
Speaker 1: as of that day in nineteen eighty two, I don't
Speaker 1: believe I had ever had something to drink on three
Speaker 1: consecutive days, and I probably hadn't had anything to drink
Speaker 1: on two consecutive days more than four or five times
Speaker 1: in my life. But that day was so oppressive, so unpleasant,
Speaker 1: that I just kept drinking beer, and I did not stop.
Speaker 1: From my arrival at two or three PM until my
Speaker 1: departure just before ten, I had a beer in my
Speaker 1: hand for seven eight hours without interruption. In those days,
Speaker 1: if I stuck to one kind of beverage, I would
Speaker 1: neither stay obviously drunk, nor would I get a hangover.
Speaker 1: I do not know how many beers I had that
Speaker 1: stultifying afternoon and evening. If I only got a new
Speaker 1: beer every fifteen minutes, that would still be twenty eight
Speaker 1: or thirty beers. Might have been less, might have been more.
Speaker 1: My guess is it was more closer to forty. I
Speaker 1: recall having the presence of mind to ask my friends Peter,
Speaker 1: pat and Glenn not merely to take me to the
Speaker 1: train station so I could get back to my apartment
Speaker 1: in the city, but to stay with me on the
Speaker 1: platform to make sure I got on the train rather
Speaker 1: than falling in front of it. I also remember them
Speaker 1: going so far as to make sure not just that
Speaker 1: I got on, but that I sat down, And I
Speaker 1: recall being overjoyed at the train's air conditioning, considering that
Speaker 1: at ten PM that night at the train station it
Speaker 1: was still ninety degrees out. I'm pretty sure I splurged,
Speaker 1: and it was a splurge in those days for a
Speaker 1: cab back from Penn Station to my home on the
Speaker 1: other side of town, even though my salary is the
Speaker 1: national sports correspondent for CNN, was twenty six thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a year. And never once in all of this boozy
Speaker 1: time did I forget that not only was I do
Speaker 1: in at CNN at nine thirty the following morning, but
Speaker 1: that I was also due in at my part time
Speaker 1: job as the backup sportscaster on a New York radio
Speaker 1: station WNAW at four the next morning. It was past
Speaker 1: eleven PM when I got into my apartment, whose air
Speaker 1: conditioner was poorly designed for the purpose and did little
Speaker 1: bit blow air around. Though still wobbly from drink twenty
Speaker 1: eight beers thirty forty. I immediately set two alarms for
Speaker 1: three am, four hours. Hence, I got a huge block
Speaker 1: of ice out of my freezer. I put it in
Speaker 1: the tub in front of my giant room fan. I
Speaker 1: took a delightful shower. I did not dry off. I
Speaker 1: simply wrapped myself in my bed sheep, and I fell asleep.
Speaker 1: I woke up to the alarms three and a half
Speaker 1: hours later, slightly less drunk, but not much less drunk.
Speaker 1: I showered again, shaved and still drunk, put on a suit,
Speaker 1: shirt and tie, checked the temperature, which had cooled all
Speaker 1: the weight down to a balmy eighty eight, and still drunk.
Speaker 1: I walked in the middle of the night through the
Speaker 1: risky New York of nineteen eighty two to the radio
Speaker 1: station fourteen blocks downtown. But of course it was morning,
Speaker 1: and morning, whether you are drunk or not, still drunk
Speaker 1: means breakfast. So I stopped at the best all night
Speaker 1: diner among several that were open along the route, and
Speaker 1: I got something to go, eggs, bacon and sausage, a
Speaker 1: little French toast, orange juice, coffee, and of course two
Speaker 1: pieces of pastry. And I carried it and I was
Speaker 1: still drunk into WAW Radio Metro Media Radio in New York.
Speaker 1: I greeted, still drunk, the newscasters and producers. I grabbed
Speaker 1: the role of sports wire copies still drunk that had
Speaker 1: been churning out since about six pm the night before,
Speaker 1: and still drunk, found the stories I needed, and still
Speaker 1: drunk while I ate my breakfast that with today sustained
Speaker 1: me for three and a half weeks. I wrote my
Speaker 1: first sports cast to air at five thirty AM. I
Speaker 1: finished it. I looked at the clock. It was four
Speaker 1: to thirty AM. So since the sports stories rarely changed
Speaker 1: on the morning shift, I still drunk wrote the six
Speaker 1: thirty sports cast as well, and then the seven to thirty,
Speaker 1: and still drunk, and it's still being only five ten am.
Speaker 1: I wrote the last of the sports cast, the eight
Speaker 1: to thirty. In point of fact, drunk, I was working
Speaker 1: faster than I normally did. A perusal of world history
Speaker 1: suggests that the stories of the morning included the Yankees
Speaker 1: losing six to four of the Angels, with ex Yankee
Speaker 1: Reggie Jackson going one for three in front of fifty
Speaker 1: one thousand, five hundred and sixty one sweating fans at
Speaker 1: Yankee Stadium, that Dave Kingman made two unassisted double plays
Speaker 1: at first base for the Mets as they lost three
Speaker 1: to two, with the victorious Padres, placing the tragic second
Speaker 1: basement Alan Wiggins on the disabled list because he had
Speaker 1: been arrested for cocaine possession, and that goalie Hubert Berkenheimer
Speaker 1: starred as the New York Cosmos won their fifth straight
Speaker 1: game eleven straight at home over the San Diego Soccers.
Speaker 1: An ill fated Olympic sort of thing called the National
Speaker 1: Sports Festival was well underway in Indianapolis. It was as
Speaker 1: boring then as it sounds now, no matter how drunk
Speaker 1: your sportscasterre happened to be. At five point thirty am,
Speaker 1: I went on the air, still drunk and read my
Speaker 1: script flawlessly. By six point thirty I was beginning to
Speaker 1: sober up. At seven, I was a little headachey. At
Speaker 1: eight thirty, I was now one hundred percent not drunk.
Speaker 1: I said goodbye to all of my radio colleagues. I
Speaker 1: checked the temperature, now back up to ninety three degrees,
Speaker 1: and I went out and walked one block to the
Speaker 1: downtown subway train that would take me to the World
Speaker 1: Trade Center. And the eight hour day that awaited me
Speaker 1: as a reporter out in the field with a camera crew.
Speaker 1: And oh, by the way, in nineteen eighty two, that
Speaker 1: particular subway line did not have air conditioning. My diary
Speaker 1: entry leaves out the story that I covered that day
Speaker 1: for CNN, but it does note that I made a
Speaker 1: tape of the drunken radio sports casts and listened that
Speaker 1: evening and enjoined them immensely because I had no memory
Speaker 1: of researching, composing, writing, or reading them whatsoever. My diary
Speaker 1: also says I made dinner plans with a girl at
Speaker 1: WNW who I was dating, and I flirted with another
Speaker 1: woman at CNN who said that my new publicity photos
Speaker 1: had made me look like a puppy dog. She and
Speaker 1: I also made dinner plans. This is like a month
Speaker 1: and a half of life for me today, or even
Speaker 1: at the age of thirty three, let alone twenty three.
Speaker 1: I remember, either that day or the next, possibly as
Speaker 1: I listened to the sportscasts I had done while on
Speaker 1: still drunken autopilot, that it was very impressive to me
Speaker 1: that I had managed to do all this without swearing
Speaker 1: on radio or fainting while standing up and holding a
Speaker 1: CNN microphone out into the ninety three degree heat, or
Speaker 1: getting unwell in front of either of those girls, that
Speaker 1: I could, in the parlance of those just post madmen years,
Speaker 1: hold my alcohol. And then I also remember that, just
Speaker 1: as quickly I remembered in nineteen eighty two the names
Speaker 1: of some of my father's uncles and some of my
Speaker 1: mother's cousins who they had told me had all died
Speaker 1: around the age of forty forty five because bluntly they
Speaker 1: could also hold their alcohol. Where I got the phrase
Speaker 1: I did, I don't know, but I did think of
Speaker 1: it that night. It's not you are holding your alcohol.
Speaker 1: It's called functional alcoholism. And functional alcoholism will allow you
Speaker 1: to drink forty beers one night and then work from
Speaker 1: four am to six pm the next. Then later it'll
Speaker 1: come back and you know, kill you. Since that episode
Speaker 1: in July nineteen eighty two, the number of times I
Speaker 1: have had double digit drinks on one day is one.
Speaker 1: I was thirty seven. I was going to a party
Speaker 1: celebrating what everybody else was believing was me joining their
Speaker 1: Chicago radio station, but which I alone knew management had
Speaker 1: instead decided to close that radio station and fire all
Speaker 1: of them, and before I left my hotel, I took
Speaker 1: a bunch of the hotel business cards with me because
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure I'd still be able to speak later
Speaker 1: that night. I wanted a card so I could just
Speaker 1: head it to the cab driver. And that is exactly
Speaker 1: what happened, and legitimately, I do not believe that in
Speaker 1: all the years since then, and that's nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: I have ever had anything to drink two days in
Speaker 1: a row, and that street probably goes back to nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two as well, never have anything to drink two
Speaker 1: days in a row. And not to preach, but may
Speaker 1: I suggest that you shouldn't either. I've done all the
Speaker 1: damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown
Speaker 1: Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel arranged, produced,
Speaker 1: and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on
Speaker 1: the guitars, bass and drums, and mister Shanelle handled orchestration
Speaker 1: and keyboards. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music,
Speaker 1: including some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged and performed
Speaker 1: by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is
Speaker 1: the Olderman theme from ESPN two written by Mitch Warren
Speaker 1: Davis courtesy of ESPN. In our satirical and fifthy musical
Speaker 1: comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever.
Speaker 1: Our announcer was my friend Kenny Maine, and everything else
Speaker 1: was as usual, pretty much my fault. So that's countdown
Speaker 1: for this the one hundred and fortieth day until the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty fourth presidential election and the two hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty first day since convicted felon 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. A reminder we
Speaker 1: will be live again on YouTube after the debate a
Speaker 1: week from tonight if Trump shows up. And also please
Speaker 1: send your link to this podcast to somebody who does
Speaker 1: not already listen. It is free after all. The next
Speaker 1: scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins is the new warrants till then.
Speaker 1: I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
Speaker 1: good luck. Countdown with Keith Olberman 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.