Speaker 1: Fl media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert here.
Speaker 1: As a lot of you probably know, about two months ago,
Speaker 1: my dad took al I spent most of a month
Speaker 1: in the hospital with him the ICU while he got sicker.
Speaker 1: He passed a couple of weeks ago, so I have
Speaker 1: lost some worktime. Needless to say, we'll be taking another
Speaker 1: break this week, and then we should be back with
Speaker 1: new episodes for the foreseeable future. I just needed another
Speaker 1: week to get back ahead, get myself going again for reruns.
Speaker 1: This week, we're running a trio of great episodes that
Speaker 1: we did a couple of years ago with Tom Ryman
Speaker 1: from Game for the Unemployed about right wing talk show
Speaker 1: guys of the past, the dudes who kind of like
Speaker 1: laid down the groundwork that made Tucker Carlson and Glenn
Speaker 1: Beck possible. So they're great episodes. Check them out. And
Speaker 1: I also wanted to plug the Portland Diaper Bank. Every
Speaker 1: year around this time we do a fundraiser for the
Speaker 1: Portland Diaper Bank. This is our fifth year in a row.
Speaker 1: Last year raised nearly thirty thousand dollars to provide diapers
Speaker 1: to low income people, and over the course of the
Speaker 1: last four years, this will be our fifth year Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards listeners have raised more than one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So if you want to help out, just google go
Speaker 1: fund me bTB fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank. That's go
Speaker 1: fund me bTB fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank. Thanks everybody.
Speaker 2: Fall Yeer I was a German name for paratrooper. I
Speaker 2: don't know why. I started the episode saying, Tom's why
Speaker 2: you did that?
Speaker 1: How are how are you doing? Do you know that
Speaker 1: the German word for paratrooper is falschwormjegger.
Speaker 2: I did not know that. Well, now you do, thank you.
Speaker 1: They had a you know, the the Nazis had an
Speaker 1: aquatic little jeep that could go on the water. They
Speaker 1: called a sh Fimenwagen. That's sweet, that's kind of funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what do we call it? That's our swimming wagon head is, yeah,
Speaker 1: gijoe vehicle. It does the women, Tom, how are you
Speaker 1: feeling two pieces of ship into this? I'm vibing on
Speaker 1: some clown shoes right now you are vibing on some
Speaker 1: clown shoes. Well, right now, Tom, this exact moment, this
Speaker 1: second in time, that we both inhabit, which may be
Speaker 1: eternal if certain philosophers are right. This very moment could
Speaker 1: go on forever, both forwards and backwards in time, could
Speaker 1: be completely encompassing, as all moments are. This moment, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about a guy you have heard of,
Speaker 1: mister Morton Downey dances all the way down just just
Speaker 1: six my ears.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, that's a name. That's a name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tom, what do you know about Morton Danny Jr.
Speaker 1: Oh Man Jay as we call him.
Speaker 3: He's like a pinky ring that fell into a puddle
Speaker 3: of toxic waste and became a man. He's he's he
Speaker 3: plays the he plays the slimy journalist that Danny Glover
Speaker 3: punches in the face and Predator two, and he.
Speaker 2: Sure is in Predator too, you god damn right, playing himself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's absolutely playing himself in Predator Too, which is incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: easily the second best Predator movie.
Speaker 3: It's it's easily the second Predator film. Yeah, yeah, definitely,
Speaker 3: you can't take that away from it. It is the
Speaker 3: second one of them, indisputably the second Predator film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, he's like a he's a he was sort.
Speaker 1: Of like the uh.
Speaker 3: The ying to Phil Dona Hughes Yang at the time,
Speaker 3: where Phil Donahue was like kind of nice and personable
Speaker 3: and Morton Downey was a real son of a bitch.
Speaker 2: When he was a real piece of shit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the fun thing about Morton Downey Junior, tom Uh
Speaker 1: is that if you start researching Morton Downey Junior, the
Speaker 1: first like Google result that tries to auto fill when
Speaker 1: you start typing his name in is is Morton Downey
Speaker 1: Junior related to Robert Downey Jr. And my answer to
Speaker 1: that is it does not appear to be. So No,
Speaker 1: just just just a fun coincidence, which is weird because
Speaker 1: he does have a famous dad, like Robert Downey Junior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but just a completely different one. I just that's that's
Speaker 1: very funny. Yeah, so let's let's let's let's talk about MDJ.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: Morton Downey Junior was born on December ninth, nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, California. His father was obviously a guy
Speaker 1: named Morton Downey. Yeah, two thirds of these guys are Californians.
Speaker 3: Well that in the thirties, I'm like, fuck, he's old,
Speaker 3: like a lot of these far's ancient, dusty, old racist mummies.
Speaker 1: That's because they were established by the time the eighties
Speaker 1: got going, and they could really start fucking some shit
Speaker 1: up for everybody.
Speaker 3: That's true. I keep thinking that the eighties was four
Speaker 3: decades ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been a long time since the eighties, thank god.
Speaker 1: So his father was obviously Morton Downey, which probably means
Speaker 1: nothing to everyone listening, but I meant an awful lot
Speaker 1: to people in the nineteen twenties and early thirties. Morton
Speaker 1: Downey's nickname was the Irish Nightingale, and he was one
Speaker 1: of the most popular singers of his day. He had
Speaker 1: Morton Downey Junior, whose first name was Sean, with his
Speaker 1: first wife, Barbara Bennett, and Barbara was famous because she
Speaker 1: was the sister of two women who were famous actresses.
Speaker 1: Morton Downey Senior would ultimately have five children, four sons
Speaker 1: and a daughter. He was not a nice man, or
Speaker 1: at least, people who knew Morton Downey Junior say he
Speaker 1: did not think well of his father. There is, in fact,
Speaker 1: significant evidence that he despised the man. He desperately wanted
Speaker 1: to succeed as a singer, and he tried repeatedly as
Speaker 1: a young man to follow in his father's footsteps. Appearing
Speaker 1: on early game shows, where his performance was reviewed positively
Speaker 1: by guys like Dean Martin. I thought he had an
Speaker 1: all right voice, but most experts agree he just didn't
Speaker 1: have what his father had. There was something lacking in
Speaker 1: his voice that like he was just never going to
Speaker 1: have the kind of career.
Speaker 2: His dad had.
Speaker 1: The Downey family were well to do. He grew up,
Speaker 1: you know, richish. They lived in I mean, if you
Speaker 1: want to know how well to do they were, they
Speaker 1: lived in Hyannasport in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and their next
Speaker 1: door neighbors were the Kennedys. Yeah, yes, it's like that's
Speaker 1: how much money they got.
Speaker 2: His kids rich Ish?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there hang in with the Kennedy's. Morton Downey
Speaker 1: Junior was good friends with Joe Kennedy. Will Or Morton
Speaker 1: Downey Senior was good friends with Joe Kennedy and as
Speaker 1: when Morton Downey Junior was a child, he would hang
Speaker 1: out regularly with the Kennedy boys, you know, like he
Speaker 1: knew Robert and JFK when they were younger. They were
Speaker 1: all buds together. I guess Downey Emmy's a bit younger.
Speaker 1: But Downey attended New York University and like the others,
Speaker 1: and like our other subjects, seems to have immediately known
Speaker 1: he wanted a career in radio. He got a job
Speaker 1: as the program director an announcer for a radio station
Speaker 1: in Hartford, Connecticut, in the early nineteen fifties. Over the
Speaker 1: next decade and change, he was hired primarily as a DJ,
Speaker 1: although he also sang for several pop and country records
Speaker 1: and wrote a handful of songs that saw modest success.
Speaker 1: Like Wally, George Morton, Downey Junior bounced around various markets Phoenix, Miami,
Speaker 1: Kansas City, San Diego, and Seattle. Also like Wally, he
Speaker 1: was a huge asshole and had trouble working with people.
Speaker 1: He was forced to resign from a Miami network when
Speaker 1: he gave the home phone number for a competing DJ
Speaker 1: out on the air and insulted the man's wife.
Speaker 2: Oh like Docks, the guy on on the air.
Speaker 3: I want to I want to hear I hear him croon.
Speaker 3: I had no idea that was his background. Oh, I
Speaker 3: mean we can't he cut an album?
Speaker 2: Tom? Oh boy, you know what, Tom, We'll play this
Speaker 2: right now. Sweet. Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Let's let's do this now. I need you to
Speaker 1: hear his song about the war on drugs.
Speaker 2: What's it called? Hey there, mister dealer, Oh.
Speaker 4: Many name, mister taler.
Speaker 2: Push son of the minds are the kids of America?
Speaker 2: Just don't make your back.
Speaker 5: You all the sleeves, bag on the country, garbage of all.
Speaker 3: He's like attacking the microphone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so welcome to his eternal mob.
Speaker 3: He looks like a skeleton at a costume contest dressed.
Speaker 2: As Dan Martin.
Speaker 1: All right, that's probably enough of Hey there, mister dealer.
Speaker 2: God it is so this will mean more.
Speaker 3: When you've had Dean Martin was too kind to him.
Speaker 3: He was better when he was younger too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, his earlier, his earlier shit is I think because
Speaker 1: he's he's what, he was famous when he recorded.
Speaker 3: He's so he was like doing a thing. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: he's still like yeah, it's yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think he had a bad voice and
Speaker 1: the stuff you can hear from younger. There's a good
Speaker 1: documentary about his tours.
Speaker 2: But yeah, he is.
Speaker 1: He is going real agro there, and it's because you know,
Speaker 1: he was already a name at that point. He was
Speaker 1: he was doing a bit or maybe he just like
Speaker 1: was out of his mind because that's what being famous
Speaker 1: does to you.
Speaker 2: After a while, I.
Speaker 1: Don't know, you can see the cocaine, just like in
Speaker 1: an aura. Yeah, yeah, it followed him around. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight, Morton took a break from his work, his career,
Speaker 1: which was again he was kind of a mix of
Speaker 1: a DJ and a kind of a pinch hitter in
Speaker 1: the music industry, coming into do background vocals and stuff
Speaker 1: to work on that campaign for his good childhood friend
Speaker 1: Bobby Kennedy. When Kennedy was assassinated, Morton wrote a book
Speaker 1: of poetry with the title Quiet Thoughts Make the Loudest Noise.
Speaker 1: The book was a way of processing grief, and you
Speaker 1: can still find a handful of hardcover copies on Amazon
Speaker 1: for like one hundred and forty eight dollars. Yes, I
Speaker 1: am not buying one of them, but I did transcribe
Speaker 1: one of the poems he wrote specifically about Robert Kennedy's death,
Speaker 1: from the documentary Avocatur And I'm going to read that
Speaker 1: to you now. Row upon row of grief racked followers,
Speaker 1: sunken cheeks replacing their years ago happy faces, saying proudly
Speaker 1: for their departed friend, their final hope and wondered why
Speaker 1: a man must die to be a hero, and whether
Speaker 1: we honor only those our own selfish hearts destroy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think sunk in cheeks is what he
Speaker 3: meant to say, But but yeah, it's kind of you know,
Speaker 3: it's kind of profound, that's right.
Speaker 1: He's certainly like a man who's thinking about like the
Speaker 1: nature of Yeah, yeah, that it was thoughtful. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: call him a shallow man based on that. He's a
Speaker 1: man who's trying to process complicated and sorrowful emotions in
Speaker 1: an artistic way. Clearly a person capable of not just
Speaker 1: feeling grief, but of expressing it artistically. He continued to
Speaker 1: sing occasionally, and he made his living as yet another
Speaker 1: disc jockey until in nineteen eighty three, the same year
Speaker 1: that the Wally George TV Show starts. A year before
Speaker 1: Rush Limbaugh gots on talk radio, he gets a job
Speaker 1: as a talk radio host on WDBO in Orlando, Florida.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and again they're both kind of writing this
Speaker 1: wave of right wing populism in the rise of the
Speaker 1: religious right and Ronald Reagan like they're part of a thing.
Speaker 1: They're not starting it, but they are also influencing the
Speaker 1: way this thing grows. So Wally George and Morton Danny
Speaker 1: Junior both rode that right wing wave and helped to
Speaker 1: shape it. Morton Danny Junior was even more incendiary and
Speaker 1: control uncontrolled than Wally. He lost his first talk show
Speaker 1: gig after he punched a guest, an abortion rights activist
Speaker 1: named Bill Baird, who he then called a son of
Speaker 1: a bitch.
Speaker 2: So how many episodes in that?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Wally George screams at people and stuff, and I
Speaker 1: think shoved some folks a few times. Or Nanny Junior
Speaker 1: just cold cock some motherfucker Like months into his first
Speaker 1: talk show and again a radio talk show.
Speaker 3: I wonder if you can hear like the meat sound
Speaker 3: on the microphone.
Speaker 1: I haven't found this audio, but I bet it's great.
Speaker 2: Next.
Speaker 1: According to the New York Times quote, mister Downey was
Speaker 1: soon hired by KFBKAM Radio, a news talk station in Sacramento, California. There,
Speaker 1: he told a joke in which he used the word
Speaker 1: chinaman several times, angering Tom. Yeah, not that surprising, is it, Tom?
Speaker 1: So Yeah, he tells a joke in which he uses
Speaker 1: the word chinaman several times, which pisses off Tom Chin,
Speaker 1: a Chinese American member of Sacramento City Council who was
Speaker 1: listening in his car.
Speaker 2: Why. I wonder why that bothered him.
Speaker 1: I wonder why he got angry at that. Mister Chin
Speaker 1: called the station. According to the councilman and to Paul R.
Speaker 1: Errand then the station's program director, mister Chin was put
Speaker 1: through to mister Downey, who let loose a verbal tirade
Speaker 1: against him. Mister Downey was discharged the next day. So
Speaker 1: he tells a racist joke on air. It offends a
Speaker 1: member of the city council who calls, and then he
Speaker 1: proceeds to be racist to that guy, lafe on.
Speaker 2: The air and loses his job. Yeah, yeah, that's usually
Speaker 2: probably should be what happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Now the station had to obviously had to
Speaker 1: shit can Morton Downy.
Speaker 2: June I liked that.
Speaker 3: He was like, Oh, I'm sorry, I'll just be racist
Speaker 3: to you directly. Then, Yeah, do you do what would
Speaker 3: you like me to just be a piece of shit
Speaker 3: to your face? I did not mean to do it
Speaker 3: to your back on the air. Absolutely not. Oh forgive me,
Speaker 3: let me be an asshole directly.
Speaker 1: To let me be an asshole directly to you, I
Speaker 1: don't mean to be rude. So they had to fire him.
Speaker 1: But he was also and you'll you'll hear different things
Speaker 1: about how popular he was. By some accounts he was
Speaker 1: he was very successful. By some accounts just modestly successful.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you which. But he did well enough
Speaker 1: that the station was like, well, this guy's built an audience.
Speaker 1: They're very dedicated, and so when he leaves, they decide
Speaker 1: they need to replace him with another right wing firebrand,
Speaker 1: someone who can stir up the same kind of populist
Speaker 1: rage but also isn't quite as racist. You know, they
Speaker 1: picked Tom I don't know who followed him into the job.
Speaker 1: You might have heard of this guy, little fella. He
Speaker 1: might know his name, Rush Limbaugh. Oh that's how Rush
Speaker 1: gets His first big political gig.
Speaker 2: Was Morton Downey being too racist on the issue.
Speaker 1: It was too racist, and so Rush Limbaugh came in
Speaker 1: and said, I can be slightly less racist than that
Speaker 1: for a while, for a little while. Eventually I'll be
Speaker 1: much more racist than that. I could be slightly less
Speaker 1: racist to people's faces. Yeah again, for a while, for
Speaker 1: a while.
Speaker 2: I love like, man, that was too racist. Let's get
Speaker 2: Russian here, let's get you get that Rush Limbaugh hit
Speaker 2: in air. Yeah, we would tone things down somewhat.
Speaker 1: Tom, Where do you go when you've just gotten fired
Speaker 1: from your right wing radio job for being too much
Speaker 1: of a racist?
Speaker 2: Uh? Television?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 7: I mean?
Speaker 2: But what city do you go to?
Speaker 4: Mmm?
Speaker 2: Portland? I don't know. No, Cleveland, Cleveland? Oh yeah sure, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah you get yeah, you get your ass on down
Speaker 1: to Cleveland. Hey, our rivers are very rarely on fire,
Speaker 1: unlike Cleveland. So he gets hired by w E. R.
Speaker 1: E a M. To improve the poor ratings of its
Speaker 1: talk show department. He was forced out there when he
Speaker 1: again hurled racial slurs at an elected leader. This one
Speaker 1: of your municipal court seeing this coming, who could have guessed?
Speaker 1: Wally George, the man who punched an abortion rights activist
Speaker 1: and lost his first radio show, lost a second for
Speaker 1: screaming racial slurs at a city councilor would lose his
Speaker 1: third show for screaming racials? Is it a municipal court judge?
Speaker 1: Oos among us.
Speaker 3: Has not on a bad day a hurled racist slurs
Speaker 3: at a circuit court judge?
Speaker 1: Or or yeah, those of us who have not gone
Speaker 1: to jail have done that. So while his former employer
Speaker 1: wrestled with a lawsuit. As a result of this, Morton
Speaker 1: Downey Junior moved to Chicago to do it all over again.
Speaker 1: So during both of these strategy yeah the OK strategy Chicago, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Chicago forgives all sense. During his first two dalliances with
Speaker 1: talk radio, Morton Downey Junior had a regular segment on
Speaker 1: his shows called the Executive Intelligence Report, which is him
Speaker 1: reading from a magazine published by Lyndon LaRouche.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have to do a whole.
Speaker 1: Episode on Lyndon LaRouche at some point, but for now
Speaker 1: you'll have to be satisfied with this quick description of
Speaker 1: Lindon courtesy of a New York Times obituary. And again,
Speaker 1: this is the source of Morton Downey Junior's execus Kative
Speaker 1: Intelligence Report quote. Lyndon LaRouche, the quixotic, apocalyptic leader of
Speaker 1: a cult like political organization who ran for president eight
Speaker 1: times once more. Prison cell died on Tuesday. He was
Speaker 1: ninety six. Defining what mister LaRue is yeah right, that's
Speaker 1: a motherfucking sentence, is an entire sentence. Defining what mister
Speaker 1: Larouge stood for was no easy task. He began his
Speaker 1: political career on the far left and ended it on
Speaker 1: the far right. He said he admired Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton,
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln, and Ronald Reagan and loathed Hitler the composure
Speaker 1: Richard Wagner and other anti Semites, though he himself made
Speaker 1: anti Semitic statements and boy Diddy a lot of them.
Speaker 1: He was a fascist tom He was a fascist political
Speaker 1: cult leader.
Speaker 3: I liked the obituary was like, we don't know what
Speaker 3: the fuck he believed.
Speaker 1: He believed in Lyndon Larouge having a bunch of like
Speaker 1: he had a bunch of followers who basically it was
Speaker 1: a cult, like they lived for this man, and they
Speaker 1: would go out and proselytize on the street. They would
Speaker 1: hand out papers at call campuses. LaRouche argued that environmentalists
Speaker 1: were trying to wipe out the human race, which is
Speaker 1: a claim that Alex Jones now parrots. He believed Queen
Speaker 1: Elizabeth was trying to murder him personally. He argued that
Speaker 1: Jews had founded the KKK, and he described Indigenous Americans
Speaker 1: as lower beasts. So this is the source of Morton
Speaker 1: Downey Junior's intel I'm finding a couple of consistent threads
Speaker 1: in his belief structure that perhaps his obituary could have
Speaker 1: latched onto it. May I think they may have gotten
Speaker 1: into that later. That was like the first two paragraphs.
Speaker 1: I just I read that obituorian was like, my god,
Speaker 1: that is a sentence.
Speaker 3: Yeahah, that first sentence almost knocked me out of my chair. Yeah,
Speaker 3: what a fucking life the president eight times once from prison?
Speaker 2: But what it was a tax thing? I think.
Speaker 1: Again, we'll do I'll have to read into him and
Speaker 1: we'll do a whole episode on Lyndon Larouge. He's quite
Speaker 1: a character. Yeah, yeah, the head of Morton Downey Junior's
Speaker 1: Intel program. Now, the fact that Morton Downey Junior platform
Speaker 1: this guy is very and it's arguably more fucked up
Speaker 1: because Morton Downey Junior did not really like him. As
Speaker 1: he told The New York Times, I decided I was
Speaker 1: going to be as friendly towards these people and get
Speaker 1: as much information out of them as I could, because
Speaker 1: someday I would expose them. Now that's bullshit. It's true
Speaker 1: that he did eventually get Lyndon Larushe on his TV show,
Speaker 1: and he tore him apart like it was a very
Speaker 1: aggressive interview with Lyndon, but he also continued to spread
Speaker 1: Laruche's newsletter and other publications after that point, calling the
Speaker 1: fascist cult leader's intelligence information quote the second or third
Speaker 1: best in the world.
Speaker 3: Based on what Morton Downey Junior he Morton Downey Junior
Speaker 3: doesn't know nice build cast member of Predator two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, mother, I mean he did make the top ten
Speaker 1: look look in fairness, that's more than either of us
Speaker 1: have ever done in terms of predators.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 3: But I'm not out here saying this is the second
Speaker 3: or third most reputable intelligence support in the world.
Speaker 2: No, you're not.
Speaker 1: No, based on your experience, which is you and I
Speaker 1: both did get to look at the Predator costume.
Speaker 3: Yes, oh wait, no, this was it. I didn't well,
Speaker 3: oh you weren't there that it wasn't, But I saw
Speaker 3: the video.
Speaker 2: It was rad It seems like a.
Speaker 1: Just knowing that I was that close to something that
Speaker 1: had touched Morton Downey Junior was was just powerful. Tom
Speaker 1: was really powerful. You know what else has touched Morton
Speaker 1: Downey Junior in a sexual man?
Speaker 2: He's products and services. Probably they fucked him. They fucked him.
Speaker 3: Products and services have been inserted into Morton Downey Junior.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, that is again the only promise we make about
Speaker 1: our sponsors. So if he seems fine with us, so
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna continue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's an AD that's an AD throw, that's an
Speaker 3: AD throw baby.
Speaker 2: Oh we're back.
Speaker 1: So by nineteen eighty seven, Rush Limbaugh's show had exploded
Speaker 1: in popularity. Wally George was the talk of Orange County.
Speaker 1: This is kind of the height of the Wally George
Speaker 1: Show too. And despite Morton's mixed success on radio, a
Speaker 1: station in New York slash New Jersey, I guess it
Speaker 1: covered both decided let's give this guy a TV show.
Speaker 1: And I think they're looking at Wally George over in
Speaker 1: OC They're seeing Rush Limbubloup in the radio and they're like,
Speaker 1: this guy could be a could be a hit on TV.
Speaker 1: And in fairness, they're not wrong.
Speaker 5: He was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was filmed in Secaucus. The Morton Downey Junior
Speaker 1: Show was cut very much in the shape of Wally
Speaker 1: George's hot seat. In fact, Wally even had Morton on
Speaker 1: his show in the late nineteen eighties and it was
Speaker 1: immediately hostile. And I'm first going to play this clip
Speaker 1: Morton Donny Junior on the Wally George, Oh boy.
Speaker 3: It's really a Freddy versus Jason moment. Just say two
Speaker 3: rats fighting over a dead cat.
Speaker 2: Oh boy.
Speaker 1: And I have to say before if you're wondering what
Speaker 1: Morton Downey Junior looks like, well so if he gets
Speaker 1: this clip together, remember Iron Giant, Remember the bad guy
Speaker 1: from Iron Giant. He looks like Christopher Sleazy Fed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he looks like he looks like Shooter mcgavett. It looks
Speaker 1: like yeah he does. Who is the same I was
Speaker 1: blew me away to learn that Shooter mcgafvin and the
Speaker 1: Fed from uh uh uh the Iron Giant are the
Speaker 1: same guy.
Speaker 3: Incredible thing. He looks like he looks like Shooter McGavin
Speaker 3: with novelty teeth. Yeah, he looks like Shooter McGavin if
Speaker 3: Shooter McGavin did like birthday parties for children.
Speaker 2: Oh, here it is.
Speaker 4: You.
Speaker 5: You're coming up with the usual simplistic answers. Wally that
Speaker 5: conservatives who don't know what the hell they're talking about.
Speaker 6: Stop.
Speaker 4: I've got an audience out here.
Speaker 5: You've got an audience of monkeys.
Speaker 2: Out here will do everything that you tell him to do.
Speaker 2: He's not wrong.
Speaker 5: I'm warning you the next time you don't warn me,
Speaker 5: Punk God.
Speaker 4: Lolly.
Speaker 2: George looks incredible, man.
Speaker 3: He looks like the entertainment direct that a cruise ship,
Speaker 3: but like a bad cruise ship.
Speaker 1: The cops have come on now, and they're pulling Morton
Speaker 1: Downey Junior off the show and tackling.
Speaker 2: He gets tackled by jor total Roger Stone vibes from
Speaker 2: that guy with.
Speaker 4: Like a.
Speaker 1: And obviously all of that was set up ahead of time.
Speaker 1: The plan was always I suspect for Morton Downey Junior
Speaker 1: to get tackled by sheriff's deputies on the seat of
Speaker 1: Wally Joege's on seat.
Speaker 3: It seems so extreme, and he's already so famous at
Speaker 3: that point that they wouldn't Yeah, they would not dare
Speaker 3: do that to him and listen to staged.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean while yeah, yeah, it's it's very funny
Speaker 1: and and honestly, I can't tell you it may not
Speaker 1: have been pre planned as much as both men just
Speaker 1: naturally knew going in. This is how this is going
Speaker 1: to end. Like I'm I'm Morton Danny Junior and the
Speaker 1: Wally george Show. Of course, I'm going to get tackled
Speaker 1: off stage during like a nearly physical fight between the
Speaker 1: two of us. This is just how this has to happen.
Speaker 1: I am naturally enough of a right wing shithead firebrand
Speaker 1: that jet that's just in my blood. Well, the thing
Speaker 1: that at the moment we were on a ca Amra together,
Speaker 1: this was what had to happen, right.
Speaker 3: Whoever wins, we lose. Yeah, the real fredge Jason situation.
Speaker 3: The thing that stuck out to me was when there's
Speaker 3: a scene, well not a scene. I'm fucking talking about
Speaker 3: this like it's a movie because it's so stage.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: There's a part in the clip where Wally George stands
Speaker 3: up after uh uh morton down. He says, don't don't
Speaker 3: warn me. He stands up like he's gonna fight, but
Speaker 3: he buttons his He buttons his coat. He buttons his
Speaker 3: fucking coat. That's a thing you do when you know
Speaker 3: you're gonna be on camera. You do the opposite when
Speaker 3: you know you're about to start throwing hands, is you
Speaker 3: want to unbutton that coat.
Speaker 1: So it's like, yeah, you want to un button You
Speaker 1: might even want to take that. If you're really gonna
Speaker 1: throw hands, you take that shirt off and you fold
Speaker 1: it on the table where you say, all right, here's
Speaker 1: how things are gonna go, you know.
Speaker 3: So the fact that he's stoo up and buttoned his jacket,
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, yeah, you know you're not going to
Speaker 3: course of course, yeah that it would have been very fun.
Speaker 1: But I don't think either of well, actually, no, Morton
Speaker 1: Danny Junior definitely threw a punch. He punched that guy
Speaker 1: who came on his radio shift to.
Speaker 3: Every you know, all the all the what a terrible
Speaker 3: piece of shitty is and all the funny things we're
Speaker 3: going to do to make fun of him on this episode,
Speaker 3: Morton Downy doesn't look like.
Speaker 2: He hasn't been in a fight.
Speaker 1: No, No, Morton Downey Junior wouldn't have survived to this
Speaker 1: age if he hadn't learned a couple of things about fighting,
Speaker 1: because that's a man who pisses people off. Yeah, Wally
Speaker 1: George is a man who was very careful to never
Speaker 1: piss anyone off until he felt like he wouldn't get
Speaker 1: the shit beaten out of him, like he was an
Speaker 1: adult and polite society.
Speaker 2: That was a kid who hid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he can bully into giving you an extra ride
Speaker 3: on the Teacups at the Curb.
Speaker 1: Now Morton Danny Junior was different from Wally George and
Speaker 1: in fact, well he started off as way more out
Speaker 1: of control. Again, he got fired from his first job
Speaker 1: for assaulting a guest. He toned it down for his
Speaker 1: actual TV show, not much, but in an intelligent way.
Speaker 1: He was actually in a lot of ways, he was
Speaker 1: kind of a mix between Wally George and Joe Pine
Speaker 1: because like Wally George he would be like a lunatic
Speaker 1: a bunch of the time and like very loud, get
Speaker 1: into fights on stage and whatnot a showman. But Joe
Speaker 1: Pine he could actually sit down and have conversations with people,
Speaker 1: even once he disagreed with without just screaming at them,
Speaker 1: And there were actual debates on his show. So he
Speaker 1: was not the same as Wally and I think that's
Speaker 1: why he was. He made more of an impact because
Speaker 1: Wally George was never anything but just like pure id
Speaker 1: and there was a little bit of thinking on the
Speaker 1: Morton Downey Junior show. I'm not saying that to praise it,
Speaker 1: just to like characterize what he was doing. It was
Speaker 1: a bit different than Wally George. He opened his first
Speaker 1: episode with the words certain things really burn my buns,
Speaker 1: and that more or less summed up the focus. Morton
Speaker 1: was irritated by a lot of things feminism, environmentalism, social justice,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to make his audience angry too. Like Wally,
Speaker 1: he was happy to platform people with differing beliefs so
Speaker 1: long as they would get into arguments with him. That
Speaker 1: made good television. His show was an immediate success, and
Speaker 1: its wide audience meant that some of his guests became
Speaker 1: stars in their own right. One of his early interviews
Speaker 1: was a little known congressman you might have heard of
Speaker 1: tom named Ron Paul. Now Morton Downey Junior. What a
Speaker 1: friendly introduction of Ron Paul. Here he brings the congressman
Speaker 1: up on stage by saying, we're going to talk to
Speaker 1: a man who could be snorting cocaine in the Oval office.
Speaker 1: Because again, Ron Paul, the thing that like, one of
Speaker 1: the things that made him prominent early on is he's
Speaker 1: for the decriminalization or legalization of all drugs. And Morton
Speaker 1: Downey Junior is, as a Republican in this period of time,
Speaker 1: an art drug warrior. So here's here's Ron Paul on
Speaker 1: the Morton Downey Junior show.
Speaker 5: Now, would you believe that the government should stay out
Speaker 5: of our personal business all together?
Speaker 6: Ye?
Speaker 2: Matter of fact?
Speaker 5: Is all right, that's good guys, but also happens to
Speaker 5: be my personal business if I want to kill my
Speaker 5: four year old kid. Right, No, no, no, no, wait
Speaker 5: a minute, wait, you're giving you're giving libertarian a distorted explanation.
Speaker 5: Oh sir, your people gave it to yourselves and your platform.
Speaker 2: No, let me explain that.
Speaker 5: The answer is that we allowed to do what we want.
Speaker 2: We even permit people smoke. Serious happened.
Speaker 5: That happens to be the most deadly drug in the
Speaker 5: United States.
Speaker 8: You know, three.
Speaker 2: Appreciated.
Speaker 5: Maybe we ought to make it will need a banded.
Speaker 2: I wish you'd bean it.
Speaker 4: Right now.
Speaker 8: You can buy it out on the street and pay
Speaker 8: five out.
Speaker 2: So you see what a number one?
Speaker 1: Ron Paul really comes across as a reasonable man in
Speaker 1: that interview. Yeah, yeah, but you see, you see what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. He's kind of a mix of Wally
Speaker 1: George and Joe Pine because he's way more aggressive and
Speaker 1: rude than Joe Pine. But he's also he's not just
Speaker 1: shouting over him. Ron Paul gets and he'll he'll he'll
Speaker 1: quiet his audience.
Speaker 2: Down and whatnot.
Speaker 1: Like he's he's he's he's found this middle level between
Speaker 1: the two men that's certainly not like, I mean, he's
Speaker 1: a bully, he's a dick, but he's not what Wally
Speaker 1: George was. It's not quite that same level of like
Speaker 1: it's not as much of a lynch mob the audience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, still a lot.
Speaker 1: Of audience participation, but yeah, less violently fascist, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: still the bad faith arguments still, of course, in the
Speaker 1: same way that Joe Pine was bad faith that exactly.
Speaker 2: You know, they all have this in common. Yea, they
Speaker 2: all have this in common.
Speaker 1: And I just think it's interesting how Morton, I think,
Speaker 1: is very consciously mixing Joe Pine with Wally George in
Speaker 1: order to kind of like Wally went way too far.
Speaker 1: Joe Pine is not far enough for today's TV. Nobody
Speaker 1: would listen to Joe Pine today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's too.
Speaker 3: Calm, you know, He's like, he wants to maintain he
Speaker 3: wants the same kind of controversy and intense emotions of
Speaker 3: Wally George, but he wants to maintain firm control of
Speaker 3: the show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly that's exactly it, and
Speaker 1: this is probably why his show. And also you know
Speaker 1: the fact that when he has people on emibly disagrees with,
Speaker 1: he does allow them more of a chance to make
Speaker 1: their point. Ron Paul gets to say a lot in
Speaker 1: this interview, and this is I don't want to say
Speaker 1: this is like the reason he became prominent, but this
Speaker 1: is a decent part of it. This is a significant
Speaker 1: reason for his like why he started to become well known,
Speaker 1: and it's in part because he does get he looks
Speaker 1: good up there.
Speaker 2: He makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people, like listening to
Speaker 1: Ron Paul on the Morton Downey Junior Show, would be like, well,
Speaker 1: this is actually a reasonable man, especially considering the kind
Speaker 1: of like angry young men who would watch the Morton
Speaker 1: Downey Junior Show.
Speaker 2: I'm sure a lot of them got into Ron Paul watching.
Speaker 1: This in a way that like with Wally George, that
Speaker 1: I'm sure never happened because he never let people say
Speaker 1: that much. And yeah, I mean it's hard to watch
Speaker 1: the Ron Paul interview and dislike the man where Joe
Speaker 1: Pine was always chivalrous to his female guests, though even
Speaker 1: though he disagreed with Morten felt no need to hold
Speaker 1: his punches. At one point he had on a vegan,
Speaker 1: which is again that was like the first thing we
Speaker 1: saw Joe Pine doing is like talking to a vegan
Speaker 1: so he can make fun of him, which is a big,
Speaker 1: a long reoccurring thing in like right wing politics. And yeah,
Speaker 1: she made the point, this vegan that Morton's talking to
Speaker 1: you made the point that vegan diets were healthier, to
Speaker 1: which Wally responded, I eat raw hamburger, I eat raw fish.
Speaker 1: I smoke four packs of cigarettes a day. I have
Speaker 1: about four drinks a day. I'm fifty five years old,
Speaker 1: and I look as good as you do, which is
Speaker 1: gonna be funny later, although you do have to be
Speaker 1: fair like he looks a lot younger than Joe Pine does.
Speaker 3: When Joe Pine was like forty, Joe Pine looked like
Speaker 3: a pyramid, like a pyramid made man.
Speaker 1: He says he's smoking four packs of cigarettes a day.
Speaker 1: Joe Pine is smoking for backs of cigarettes an hour,
Speaker 1: like he sees he's on his commute.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one of his most popular sparring partners was feminist
Speaker 1: lawyer Gloria Allred, who again gained a lot of her
Speaker 1: popularity because of the Morton Downey Junior Show. This is
Speaker 1: a big vector for a lot of people who are
Speaker 1: who are still prominent today. Again not the only reason,
Speaker 1: but like, this is a big show, this is a
Speaker 1: significant cultural moment, and she has a big role in it.
Speaker 1: She's a regular guest, and she and Downey would like
Speaker 1: spar a lot constantly. You might have expected her to
Speaker 1: hate him, like, given her politics and his politics. They
Speaker 1: certainly fought like Heena is on the air, but as
Speaker 1: the documentary of Vakatur makes clear, the two got along.
Speaker 1: This was a game and they were both happy to
Speaker 1: play it in order to make themselves famous. And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have Sophie play this clip. This is from the
Speaker 1: documentary of Vakatur, which I really do recommend.
Speaker 5: Anyone who had breasts was a feminist.
Speaker 4: There are almost no feminists who have ever burned a bra,
Speaker 4: So let me get that straights.
Speaker 5: No feminist who ever had anything that they needed to
Speaker 5: wear a bra.
Speaker 4: For Between us, there was a certain amount of sexual tension,
Speaker 4: likewise on your jockstrap.
Speaker 5: But in any case, how does she know she has
Speaker 5: a tape measure on her tongue?
Speaker 1: Like Jesus, I know, right, that's just gross all around.
Speaker 2: Do you feel like I need a shower?
Speaker 1: But also you see the difference again when Wally George
Speaker 1: never had any like it wasn't yelling at people he
Speaker 1: was like friendly with, Like clearly he wanted that with
Speaker 1: some of them, Like he was willing to like talk
Speaker 1: with Blaze and be like, hey, we could have a
Speaker 1: good thing going. He was able to find people who
Speaker 1: were media trained, who were talented in their own right,
Speaker 1: who could go on and have show arguments with him
Speaker 1: to keep the crowd braying. But there was nothing he didn't.
Speaker 1: He didn't again, he didn't believe in shit. But while
Speaker 1: Wally George like couldn't. I guess I don't think Wally
Speaker 1: when Morton Jenny Junr was willing to do, was someone
Speaker 1: get in hits on him verbally, like he wanted that
Speaker 1: kind of sparring, you know, because that's good TV. I
Speaker 1: think Wally George was just too brittle a man to
Speaker 1: accept that. Yeah, yeah, Morton I think never would have
Speaker 1: taken anything really personally because he's a showman and he
Speaker 1: gets that like, well, I'm having Gloria on, Like neither
Speaker 1: of us believe in anything. We just are using this
Speaker 1: as a vehicle for our own personal fame. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we can say, like, have whatever fights we.
Speaker 2: Want to have.
Speaker 1: And yeah, they would have made a good couple because
Speaker 1: they're both the same person more or less.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: Eight months into its run, the Morton Downey Junior Show
Speaker 1: was a wildfire hit. The New York Times sent in
Speaker 1: a reporter to watch the show as it was taped,
Speaker 1: and his recollection does a good job of setting up
Speaker 1: the mood. Quote Sean Morton Downey Junior, Sean to his friends,
Speaker 1: mort mort to the adoring t shirted fans crowding the
Speaker 1: New Jersey Television studio audience, smoked and paste and spewed venom.
Speaker 1: You're not licking the butts of the boots of the
Speaker 1: bureaucracy that doesn't give a damn about the American people,
Speaker 1: he commanded. Bureaucratic bitch, he shouted. As the congregation and
Speaker 1: as unruly as any splatter film crowd at the nearby
Speaker 1: Low's Metal Plaza eight jumped up and loudly voiced its approval. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the it's it's combative. But as you saw from
Speaker 1: that glare already quote, don't cheer it like somebody getting
Speaker 1: in a hit. On Morton too. It's not the same
Speaker 1: like we're getting closer to Springer here. We're getting closer
Speaker 1: to Springer here. That's right, that's more about the spectacle.
Speaker 1: They just want to see him, They just want to
Speaker 1: see shit fly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Mort was separated from later imitators, people like Jerry Springer,
Speaker 1: and from people like Wally.
Speaker 2: George, who was a little.
Speaker 1: Earlier by his willingness to physically confront his guests. He
Speaker 1: came very close to getting into fights on several occasions.
Speaker 1: And his studio, Yeah, his studio was the first in
Speaker 1: television to put the audience through a metal detector.
Speaker 2: Oh man.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure there was a mix of that's practical
Speaker 1: because he has somebody might get fucking stabbed, but also
Speaker 1: that's like, that's another thing we can rag about. It's like,
Speaker 1: this is TV is so hot, we gotta have a
Speaker 1: metal detector for the audience.
Speaker 3: The audience, that's how in Yeah, this show is Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a gimmick.
Speaker 1: As with Wally George, his live audience particularly skewed towards
Speaker 1: young and disaffected men, a lot of the same kind
Speaker 1: of guys who would have been in the alt right
Speaker 1: and would have been like edgy Kids Online Today. The
Speaker 1: documentary of Acatur includes interviews with some of these audience members,
Speaker 1: including Joshua Rothman, who is now a history professor who
Speaker 1: was part of Wally's regular audience when he was like
Speaker 1: fucking like, it looks like he's like sixteen in this.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he was a little older. But here's here's
Speaker 1: Joshua explaining the appeal of showing up to a taping
Speaker 1: of More Show.
Speaker 2: If you guys and that other grem went over there,
Speaker 2: like japads, this is him as a kid, I shove
Speaker 2: it wor up all right.
Speaker 7: Just was also sort of perfect for seventeen year olds
Speaker 7: because it had no nuance at all.
Speaker 2: Everything was black or white, and seventeen year olds.
Speaker 7: Card everything is either totally one thing or totally the other.
Speaker 2: There is no middle. We are amer Car, We're number one.
Speaker 2: You know what I think. I think Donald Trump should
Speaker 2: take his game and just go to hell. Yeah that's
Speaker 2: all that's all you got, man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looked like he was gonna say something colorful
Speaker 3: for sixteen year old you know, So that that says
Speaker 3: a lot of it right there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, both like we didn't have YouTube if you're a
Speaker 1: kid and you want to, like you feel like you
Speaker 1: have something to say, you could get on TV. As
Speaker 1: long as you're willing to like shout something stupid. Morton
Speaker 1: Downey Junior will put your ass on television.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as long as you to get possibly beaten up
Speaker 3: by him on the air.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's can I know, I get I get it,
Speaker 2: I get it. It's yeah. He's given them not only.
Speaker 3: In uh, he's.
Speaker 2: Given them an outlet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it seems like they, like we were talking
Speaker 3: about with the crowd of Wally's show, it's it's more
Speaker 3: that it's it's not necessarily the political views. It's there
Speaker 3: latching onto this sort of maximum anger anything goes kind
Speaker 3: of environment.
Speaker 1: It's this space where they can let out, like every
Speaker 1: seventeen year old is angry as shit about a bunch
Speaker 1: of different things. And you could get on Morton Downey
Speaker 1: Junior's show and you could either express real anger with
Speaker 1: something or what's probably more common, you could express the
Speaker 1: anger inside you and just throw it at anything, like
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. He just wants you to be loud
Speaker 1: and yelling and he'll be happy with you. And there's
Speaker 1: no you can be edgy if you want to just
Speaker 1: say something fucked up on TV. He can, He'll let
Speaker 1: you do that. It's like shit posting too, like all
Speaker 1: of this like four chance stuff. You can see those impulses.
Speaker 1: He's giving people an outlet for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And they show the clip from their homemade video
Speaker 3: that they that they made, like a sketch that they did,
Speaker 3: these kids who yeah, pretending to be Morton Downey Junior.
Speaker 3: So it's clear that it's it's his like bombastic, this
Speaker 3: character that he is that they're latching onto less than
Speaker 3: his views. It's more just the way he speaks and
Speaker 3: the way he behaves and the way he's sort of
Speaker 3: you know, it's like when people would chant, when people
Speaker 3: would chant Jerry Jerry, Yeah exactly, people would get into fights.
Speaker 3: It's nothing to do with Springer himself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's it's nothing to do these kids don't
Speaker 1: care about I'm sure didn't. I mean, I'm sure at
Speaker 1: the time they agreed with whatever political shit he was saying,
Speaker 1: but they didn't think about policy. Were fucking seventeen year
Speaker 1: olds like they were just they identified with the way
Speaker 1: that he expressed emotion and the way that he let
Speaker 1: them do it.
Speaker 3: And as they identified with an angry white man of
Speaker 3: being an angry white man on television and being colorful
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Morton absolutely played the role of a religious extremist. Again,
Speaker 1: I don't think he believed in anything, certainly not God,
Speaker 1: but he knew that fights over religion could make good television.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to play an excerpt here from an
Speaker 1: episode titled God Versus Atheism. And we don't think that
Speaker 1: shows us if they forced to pray when they don't
Speaker 1: want to.
Speaker 2: Any child is free to pray at any time that
Speaker 2: he wants.
Speaker 1: In the public schools today, we.
Speaker 5: Say we're going to give you a minute to pray
Speaker 5: anytime you want.
Speaker 2: No, they the government doesn't tell children when.
Speaker 3: To pray, what to pray, how to pray, or even.
Speaker 2: If they doesn't.
Speaker 4: Reths like you and Madam y'all had I made sure
Speaker 4: we can't even say in the Pledge of Allegiance the
Speaker 4: word God anymore in a public school because of you, guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the same shit you see nowadays. It's a stupid,
Speaker 2: useless argument we're still making.
Speaker 1: Yep, Yeah, exactly. Later on in that same interview, Downy
Speaker 1: tells his atheist guest, this is a nation of freedom,
Speaker 1: are you a religion, then you have no fucking freedom,
Speaker 1: just like like.
Speaker 2: Nine year old arguments.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, I don't even know what the fuck
Speaker 1: that's supposed to be.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: While the Morton Dannie Junior Show had lots of yelling
Speaker 1: and fighting, some of its most sinister impacts came from
Speaker 1: the segments that were calm, thoughtful debates. In my research,
Speaker 1: I came across a roundtable discussion from nineteen eighty eight
Speaker 1: about black crime featuring Reverend Al Sharpton. Who's another person
Speaker 1: who really the Morton Downey Junior Show massively increased his platform,
Speaker 1: his profile, Like he owes a lot of his fame
Speaker 1: to the Morton Downey Junior Show. It made him, It
Speaker 1: helped make him into like a regular fixture on TV.
Speaker 1: While the authority or while the audience does hoot and
Speaker 1: holler some the discussion is very simple and it's kind
Speaker 1: of chilling because one of Morton's guests here goes on
Speaker 1: an extended tirade about black on white crime statistics, which
Speaker 1: is like a major argument point for fucking neo Nazis today.
Speaker 1: So here that is, in.
Speaker 7: The United States, nineteen eighty six, more murders were committed
Speaker 7: by blacks twelve percent of the population than we're committed
Speaker 7: by whites eighty five percent of the population. These are
Speaker 7: the numbers right here, right out of the Justice Department figures,
Speaker 7: and you can check them later if anyone has any
Speaker 7: doubts on that. When you check the murder figures in
Speaker 7: interracial crime, now interracial means that you have a perpetrator
Speaker 7: of one race and of another race. When you check
Speaker 7: those figures, yeah, you find and I'll just get to
Speaker 7: the conclusion of it. You find that a black in
Speaker 7: nineteen eighty four, a black crack Jesus was over fifteen
Speaker 7: times more likely the murder of white than the white
Speaker 7: was the murderer.
Speaker 2: Wright.
Speaker 1: That's enough of this. So obviously this guy statistics are
Speaker 1: very flawed. And one of Morton's other guests, doctor Gloria Toot,
Speaker 1: does point this out pretty much immediately, and we're going
Speaker 1: to play that clip now too. Here's her like slapping
Speaker 1: back on this.
Speaker 6: Number One, your credit is erroneous. Crime is being reduced
Speaker 6: in America, not simply by black but by Americans in general.
Speaker 6: We have mest crime in nineteen eighty seven than we
Speaker 6: had ten years ago. Number Two, with the Justice Department
Speaker 6: and state and local government officials and crime have admitted
Speaker 6: that the reporting statistics are an era as it relates
Speaker 6: to the crime reported by minorities and crimes reported about
Speaker 6: white Number three also has now been acknowledged by those
Speaker 6: officials that in many instances, the white criminal is not
Speaker 6: is up convicted or even arrested, whereas your minority is.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 6: I could go on and on and on, but the
Speaker 6: fact toy is gaining. I'm just not accurate, and we.
Speaker 2: Do ourselves at disservice and we.
Speaker 6: Don't look at what the problem is.
Speaker 1: So obviously that's a more productive debate than was ever
Speaker 1: had on the Wally George Show. It seems more like
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff you might have heard on Joe Pine.
Speaker 1: And in fairness, he is bringing on people to contradict
Speaker 1: and argue with this guy talking about black on white crime.
Speaker 1: So you could call this, on one level, a more
Speaker 1: responsible and productive debate than a lot of what you
Speaker 1: see on right wing TV today. But I can't help
Speaker 1: but see in this echoes of the kind of fascist
Speaker 1: platforming that would become much more common in later years
Speaker 1: without the measured pushback that Morton's show at least gave
Speaker 1: it the specter of black on white crime and high
Speaker 1: crime rates among black people are two of the most
Speaker 1: virulent and productive talking points of the fascist right. I
Speaker 1: could go on a rant about Dylan Roof here, who
Speaker 1: he claims inspired to go on his massacre by reading
Speaker 1: about black on white crime, but this discussion has very
Speaker 1: deep roots. And I'm kind of torn between seeing Morton
Speaker 1: here as someone who handed it better than some people
Speaker 1: in the right, because he did have two very well
Speaker 1: prepared black guests to counter this line of argument, or
Speaker 1: whether I'm just more unsettled by the fact that he
Speaker 1: put this fucking argument on television at all. Like, I
Speaker 1: don't know kind of where to land on that, but
Speaker 1: it leaves me feeling unsettled.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I don't trust anything that any of these people do.
Speaker 3: So it's he just did it for Rady. He knew
Speaker 3: this was a hot button issue for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, And he had a full panel so that
Speaker 3: he could maximize the outrage and the controversy and just
Speaker 3: you know, you don't get one person on there to
Speaker 3: talk about their views because that's not going to start
Speaker 3: a fight. You have to get somebody else on there
Speaker 3: to contradict what they're saying or counter what they're saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's I think what's going on here. But
Speaker 1: you know who won't platform people spreading Nazi talking points
Speaker 1: about race related crimes, Tom.
Speaker 3: Hopefully the fine people bringing us these products and services.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they absolutely do not, unless it's in which case.
Speaker 2: Wo boy, here's ads. All right, we're back. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: So Reverend Al Sharpton was another media figure who got
Speaker 1: a massive early boost to his career thanks to the
Speaker 1: Morton Downey Junior Show. Maybe not early, but he got
Speaker 1: this really increased a lot of his visibility. He and
Speaker 1: Morton were regular sparring partners, and they also were clearly friends.
Speaker 1: Al made for great television. At one point, he called
Speaker 1: another guest a punk F word in a moment of rage.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was Al's friendship with Morton Downy Junior
Speaker 1: that would prove to be the downfall of the Morton
Speaker 1: Downey Junior Show. From the Chicago Tribune quote, it all
Speaker 1: came to a head when the show began focusing on
Speaker 1: the case of Tijuana Brawley, a fifteen year old African
Speaker 1: American girl who claimed to have been raped by six
Speaker 1: white men, including a police officer and had KKK another
Speaker 1: vile words scrawled on her body. Show after show was
Speaker 1: devoted to this case, many featuring the Brawley advisor and
Speaker 1: then relatively unknown Al Sharpton. Downy beat that story to death,
Speaker 1: and his ratings began to plummet, especially after Brawley's accusations
Speaker 1: were deemed false by a grand jury. So it does
Speaker 1: seem to be a case where Brawley was lying. I
Speaker 1: think it's because she'd like stayed out late and like
Speaker 1: had to come up with an excuse and it just
Speaker 1: was like a kid doing a dumb thing, and then
Speaker 1: it blew up and became national news. It's a very
Speaker 1: sad story. I think she's still like, for the rest
Speaker 1: of her life will owe money to one of the
Speaker 1: people she accused.
Speaker 2: Who suit her.
Speaker 1: It's like pretty fucked uptail and Morton Danny Junior jumped
Speaker 1: on it and took it as a crusade, not because
Speaker 1: he cared about this woman and thought that it was true,
Speaker 1: but because you know, it was TV and he's Morton
Speaker 1: Danny Junior.
Speaker 3: Shit and issue of the day. It's a Zac sat
Speaker 3: mentality behind the debate. We just listened to yep, yep,
Speaker 3: exactly now. The Tawana Brawley case led to one of
Speaker 3: the most infamous moments of nineteen eighties television, when Mort
Speaker 3: had Al Sharpton on with a black, white right wing
Speaker 3: activist named Roy. The stated goal of the episode was
Speaker 3: to determine who was the leader of Black America. Both
Speaker 3: in it.
Speaker 1: It's so boy, Tom, it's a little more complex than
Speaker 1: is it Sharp Dinner?
Speaker 2: Ennis?
Speaker 1: But that's kind of like the inference that, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: both Innis and Sharpton receive a chorus of booze when
Speaker 1: they're introduced, because that's the kind of show this is.
Speaker 2: Oh boy.
Speaker 1: Mort starts the interview by bringing up comments Sharpton made
Speaker 1: criticizing Ennis. Sharpton goes on a rant, calling Ennis a sellout,
Speaker 1: and then this happens, and it's in us speaking at
Speaker 1: the start of this, Oh ahead.
Speaker 8: I'm one of the few, none bigger than black leaders.
Speaker 2: Run.
Speaker 8: I will say, let me stay now, let's deal with
Speaker 8: the facts. Let's go to a record tonight. We want
Speaker 8: to deal with the records and the facts. Please do
Speaker 8: it on this program, your program.
Speaker 2: You heard me.
Speaker 8: You have me on tape defending this man. Recently, even
Speaker 8: after the Shenanigans with him and the others a lot
Speaker 8: of crap.
Speaker 2: You'll have time, brother ship. Yeah, he was pushed out sharp.
Speaker 1: He just he just shoved his s down onto the
Speaker 1: stage and a bunch of dudes rush up to start
Speaker 1: shoving ship balls.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He pushed him right off the stage. He pushed him
Speaker 1: right off the damn stage. Yeah, ship, Yeah, And it
Speaker 1: went fucking viral. This moment was huge. Every TV show,
Speaker 1: like every news show had the clips of this fucking weeks,
Speaker 1: like in a way that like no genocide today goes
Speaker 1: as viral is this clip of Al Sharpton getting shoved
Speaker 1: off a stage went which is not a great didn't
Speaker 1: because I know, gret, I bet I know, yeah, because yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I bet you Yeah, I bet we all to.
Speaker 2: It's Yeah.
Speaker 1: After the Tawana Brawley case fell apart, nothing could abate
Speaker 1: the downward slide of Morton's ratings. The next year, in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, he made a desperate stab at regaining
Speaker 1: his relevance. He filed a police report claiming three skinheads
Speaker 1: had jumped him, beaten him up, and drawn a swastika
Speaker 1: on his forehead and an airplane bat in an airport bathroom.
Speaker 1: The police almost immediately came forward and said that the
Speaker 1: facts of the case as he had reported it to them,
Speaker 1: or is he reported it to the media, did not
Speaker 1: align with like what he had said. Basically, he said,
Speaker 1: like he's fucking lying. We have no evidence that any
Speaker 1: of this is true. We can't substantiate any of his claims.
Speaker 1: And it came out later one of his friends hastified,
Speaker 1: like he faked it. He like drew a swastika, Like
Speaker 1: the photos that he gave the cops are different from
Speaker 1: like the photos that he put up on TV of
Speaker 1: like the swastika on his forehead, Like he just like
Speaker 1: faked getting jumped by skinheads to try to drum up
Speaker 1: like a media controversy. He's just a desperate scumbought bag.
Speaker 1: He made several comeback scumbought.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Android created only to be a scumbag.
Speaker 1: Just a shit droid full of just spew and poop.
Speaker 1: So he made a few and comeback attempts, and he
Speaker 1: tried to make a living doing talk radio, and he
Speaker 1: maintained actually a surprisingly robust career in movies you've already mentioned.
Speaker 1: He's Knife Bills and Predator too. He was in Revenge
Speaker 1: of the Nerds three Sure, which is really quite a film.
Speaker 1: He was in The Silencer. He was in Tails of
Speaker 1: the Crypt to name but a few episodes, although Wally
Speaker 1: George really should have been the one Entails from.
Speaker 2: The Grip honestly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety six he was diagnosed with lung cancer,
Speaker 1: which was embarrassing. Yeah, how dare you really? We have
Speaker 1: we have to thank comrade cigarettes for getting two thirds
Speaker 1: of these guys out of the planet critical support to
Speaker 1: chain smoking. This was embarrassing. To live by the sword, Robert,
Speaker 1: you die by the sword. And he had he made
Speaker 1: a big deal about being a smoker on the year,
Speaker 1: kind of like the way kind of Bill Hicks did.
Speaker 1: If you listen to some of like those routines.
Speaker 2: He would talk on a cigarette and like every clip
Speaker 2: we've yes, yeah, and he would talk about like these
Speaker 2: aren't bad for me. I look better than you.
Speaker 1: You know we read that clip a little bit earlier,
Speaker 1: were you?
Speaker 3: And he does fore it back? Does motherfucker looks? Yeah,
Speaker 3: he doesn't look good. He does look good. He's all teeth. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he had, he had. He had made so much hay
Speaker 3: out of like being a smoker. He had autographed cigarette
Speaker 3: seed promised never to quit, but then he gets lung cancer,
Speaker 3: and so he immediately becomes an anti smoking activist, begging
Speaker 3: people to stop. He told one interviewer, I used a
Speaker 3: cigarette as a combat weapon, and I never gave much
Speaker 3: thought to the chance that the cigarette would most likely
Speaker 3: kill me. Just very funny, mmmm or yeah. Morton died
Speaker 3: in two thousand and one, but his influence lives on.
Speaker 3: When his show was canceled in nineteen eighty nine, a
Speaker 3: TV reviewer with the Chicago Tribune wrote that the cancelation
Speaker 3: quote removes from our lives one of the most abrasive
Speaker 3: people ever to appear on television. But do not think
Speaker 3: that this represents a move towards a calmer climb. Downy
Speaker 3: wetted people's appetites for confrontational TV. There will be someone
Speaker 3: to take his place. That's a that's.
Speaker 2: Pressure be a few someones. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In an opinion column for CNN, Michael Smerconish makes this
Speaker 1: point quote. When Fox News launched in nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: it adopted the talk radio playbook, and NBC briefly gained
Speaker 1: viewers by giving Keith Olberman a Downey like platform for
Speaker 1: his diatribes against President George W.
Speaker 2: Bush.
Speaker 1: The model for each was a toned down version of
Speaker 1: that which Downey had established. Entertainment masked a news constant conflict,
Speaker 1: good guys versus bad guys and preordained outcomes. But Downey's
Speaker 1: influence extended beyond media outlets and should be appreciated as
Speaker 1: more than just another contributing factor to the decline of
Speaker 1: America's cultural health. The media paradigm he fathered has taken
Speaker 1: a toll on the way in which we are governed.
Speaker 1: There has been a noticeable uptick in incivility and polarization
Speaker 1: among our leaders in the exact same period in which
Speaker 1: the media has moved to the extremes, in part because
Speaker 1: of the power that Downey's successors exert over primary voters now.
Speaker 1: In this columns Murconish cites Brian Rosenwald, a fellow at
Speaker 1: the University of Pennsylvania who did his doctoral dissertation on
Speaker 1: talk radio. Rosenwald writes Downey's heirs have fostered polarization through
Speaker 1: their influence in primary elections. Republican members of Congress must
Speaker 1: fear infuriating talk radio and cable news hosts because media
Speaker 1: personalities can use their platforms to offset several major advantages,
Speaker 1: including significantly greater fundraising and name recognition, held by incumbents
Speaker 1: in primary elections. Hosts demand purity from elected officials, label
Speaker 1: compromises treason, and glorify Congress's rhetorical bomb throwers such as
Speaker 1: Senator Ted Gruz. Yeah, it's pretty pretty good. There's some
Speaker 1: quotes in this that are talking about like polarization in
Speaker 1: Washington that notes that like as late as the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the typical member of one party voted with his colleagues
Speaker 1: his party members just over sixty percent of the time,
Speaker 1: and that those numbers have raised every decade. In twenty ten,
Speaker 1: Democrats voted together ninety one percent of the time, Republicans
Speaker 1: eighty nine percent of the time. Unfortunately, those able to
Speaker 1: reverse those trends have ceded the debate to the loudest voices.
Speaker 1: A Gallup survey released in January have found that more
Speaker 1: Republicans regard themselves as independent forty three as more Americans
Speaker 1: regard themselves as independent forty three than Democrat thirty or
Speaker 1: Republican twenty six percent. But any ground gained by the
Speaker 1: non partisan ranks continues to be offset by higher political
Speaker 1: interest resting at the political extremes. It's all about passion.
Speaker 1: As documented by Pew Research Center this past spring, liberals
Speaker 1: and conservatives exceed moderates and independence in their levels of
Speaker 1: political interest, which translates into voter participation. So it's got
Speaker 1: Most people have been turned off by this hyper partisanization,
Speaker 1: but those who stay in the game just get angrier
Speaker 1: and angrier at each other, and it just makes for
Speaker 1: an angrier country and more. And Danny Junior was certainly
Speaker 1: the most successful person on TV doing it before our
Speaker 1: modern media era because Molly George was kind of a
Speaker 1: marginal figure. He was influential in OC and influential to
Speaker 1: other media figures, but more than Danny Junior had a
Speaker 1: national show right like he was everywhere.
Speaker 3: I knew who he was, and I was a little kid.
Speaker 3: I didn't even really know why I knew who he was.
Speaker 1: People knew Morton Downey Junior. He was kind of this
Speaker 1: perfect synthesis, and that's what it took to really get
Speaker 1: like this kind of specific kind of right wing media
Speaker 1: off the ground was a synthesis of Joe Pine and
Speaker 1: Wally George. Morton Downey Jr. Was the first guy to
Speaker 1: do that and you know. He eventually he flew too
Speaker 1: close to the sun and drew a swastika on his
Speaker 1: own forehead. But you know, like the Tale of air
Speaker 1: just this in the Tale of Itchlor it did happen
Speaker 1: in an airport.
Speaker 2: Tom, that's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh, what a dope, What a dope.
Speaker 2: Yeah, three people I didn't I don't like very much. Well,
Speaker 2: if it's any consolation, they're all super dead.
Speaker 1: They are very dead, two thirds of them because they
Speaker 1: smoked too much.
Speaker 3: A man, But it's a it's a good thing they
Speaker 3: didn't do like irreparable damage to the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thankfully we're sailing right along.
Speaker 3: That's a good, good thing. Like the beginning, Like the
Speaker 3: seeds they planted haven't grown at a terrifying fucking forests
Speaker 3: of races.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, that never happened. Speaking of which, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna open my news app for the first time since
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one. See what's been happening. Oh, dear Tom,
Speaker 1: I have some bad news about the Twin Towers. You
Speaker 1: may want to sit down for this one. Damn it
Speaker 1: did they smoke too many cigarettes.
Speaker 2: Too in a way?
Speaker 1: Tom in away, Oh Tom, that brings us to the
Speaker 1: end of our long journey.
Speaker 2: Oh thanks, thanks, thanks.
Speaker 3: For sitting through this with me and a lot of clicks.
Speaker 3: I now I have a fuller picture of Moreton Downy
Speaker 3: Junior in my mind.
Speaker 1: Glad that was for It's the only goal I've ever
Speaker 1: had for this show, which is why this is our
Speaker 1: final episode. All Right, Tom, what do you gotta I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm just just exhausted sad.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, I'm just sad. Now, I'm exhausted sad. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna get it. I'm gonna get a flaxen Wally George Wig.
Speaker 1: I am gonna get a wall George Wig. I need
Speaker 1: to I need to do something to recharge after this.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll watch Hot Rot again or.
Speaker 2: Uh watch Predator.
Speaker 1: To watch Predator too, You're right with Gary Busey, Thank god.
Speaker 1: By the way, Lover punches Morton Downy right in the face.
Speaker 1: The best thing about Gary Busey's role in that is
Speaker 1: that Wally George could absolutely have played Gary Busey's character
Speaker 1: in that movie.
Speaker 2: He's playingly George.
Speaker 1: In that movie, and fucking Morton Downey Junior is in
Speaker 1: it too.
Speaker 2: My god, what a film.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get this Predator because he's on a mirror.
Speaker 1: I kind of want to rewatch Revenge of the Nerds
Speaker 1: three and see what the fuck Morton Danny Junior.
Speaker 2: Was doing and that shit. I wouldn't, yeh, I didn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't really enjoy watching it the first time. At
Speaker 2: least Predator too has.
Speaker 1: I think they were on the beach if I'm remembering right,
Speaker 1: it was on it was in like the Bahamas or something.
Speaker 3: I think it's Nerds and Nerds in Paradise, that's right.
Speaker 3: I think that's one of the seals. At least Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: Revenge of the Nerds whole movie is a bastard. It's
Speaker 2: the Morton Downey of a film series. You can do it.
Speaker 2: You could do an episode on just the Revenge of
Speaker 2: the Nerds Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: All right, well you gotta plug anything, tom Oh sure.
Speaker 3: I have a podcast network Gameplean Employed, and I do
Speaker 3: with my partner, my podcasting partner David Bell, also from Cracked.
Speaker 3: He is from from Cracked. Yeah, we all used to
Speaker 3: work there, we did, Tom. You can check it out
Speaker 3: a Gamelean not game flannplay dot patreon dot com, slash
Speaker 3: Gamepley Unemployed, where you can check out our Patreon. We
Speaker 3: got all kinds of cool stuff on there, like exclusive
Speaker 3: podcasts and other things that we do with our patrons.
Speaker 3: It's it's a lot of funny.
Speaker 2: You check it out.
Speaker 3: I also do Right Again Collider and I write for
Speaker 3: some more news with your friends Cody and Katie Robert.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean friends, enemies, yeah, frenemies, eternal eternal opponents,
Speaker 1: And also write for one hot talk at all kinds
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 2: You can find me. Just google me. I'm out Google
Speaker 2: tom Ryman. Find him at his home, you.
Speaker 1: Know, please do Yeah, no, docks me on attack him
Speaker 1: in an airport bathroom and draw swastika on his forehead
Speaker 1: to improve his career for unclear reason, I really do
Speaker 1: wonder what was the what was the game plan there, Morton?
Speaker 2: How is this going to help? He was gonna he
Speaker 2: was gonna make that in like three months of show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hunting down the Nazis who beat him up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he had a whole plan. He had a whole pitch.
Speaker 2: Deck Man.
Speaker 1: God, I wish we'd all just agreed to, like, see
Speaker 1: what he was going to do first before I do what.
Speaker 2: I kind of see where he's going with us. Behind
Speaker 2: the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For
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Speaker 2: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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