Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
Speaker 1: suppose it is possible that Trump's brain has liquefied and
Speaker 1: he's canceled half his events in all his interviews, and
Speaker 1: that he is now frantically demanding somebody force Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: off the ballot and Joe Biden back onto the ballot.
Speaker 1: I suppose it is possible Trump is doing this because
Speaker 1: he's just been shown internal polling indicating he's going to
Speaker 1: win two weeks from Tuesday. But I have my doubts.
Speaker 1: It seems far likelier to me that his brain has
Speaker 1: liquefied and he's canceled half his events in all his interviews,
Speaker 1: and that he's now frantically demanding somebody I don't know who,
Speaker 1: maybe Jesus. He's frantically demanding somebody force Kamala Harris off
Speaker 1: the ballot and Joe Biden onto it because he's been
Speaker 1: shown internal pulling indicating he's going to lose two weeks
Speaker 1: from Tuesday, which means that he might avoid one of
Speaker 1: the criminal cases that would send him off to die
Speaker 1: in prison, but he ain't going to avoid both of them.
Speaker 1: And as the experts on cults and cult leaders, like
Speaker 1: Matthew Remsky wrote the other day, Trump has become one
Speaker 1: of those quote cultic leaders who exhausted ill and at
Speaker 1: the end of their cognitive rope, are reduced to a
Speaker 1: shrinking repertoire of melted talking points. Whatever way you pin
Speaker 1: these odds, Trump thinks he's winning and he's gone crazy
Speaker 1: and demanded Kamala Harris be forced off the campaign nineteen
Speaker 1: days before the election by I don't know Batman or
Speaker 1: Trump thinks he's losing and he's gone crazy and demanded
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris be forced off the campaign nineteen days before
Speaker 1: the election by I don't know grew I got a
Speaker 1: ten to one in favor of losing. Either way, we are,
Speaker 1: to paraphrase yet another movie network talking about putting a
Speaker 1: manifestly irresponsible man in the White House, and a lot
Speaker 1: of the nation is nodding along with blank approval, just
Speaker 1: like Faye Dunaway one oh seven pm yesterday, Kamala should
Speaker 1: be investigated and forced off the campaign and Joe Biden
Speaker 1: allowed to take back his rightful place. He got fourteen
Speaker 1: million primary votes, she got none. This whole sordid and
Speaker 1: fraudulent event is a threat to democracy. Now, to be fair,
Speaker 1: I edited this post out of order to read the
Speaker 1: second half first. But this is why he thinks Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris should be forced off the campaign by I don't know,
Speaker 1: by Taylor Swift. This is the first half of that post.
Speaker 1: Sixty Minutes should be immediately taken off the air election interference.
Speaker 1: CBA should lose its license. This is the biggest scandal
Speaker 1: in broadcast history. Look, it wouldn't be the biggest scandal
Speaker 1: in my broadcast history, sir, Mind you that was merely
Speaker 1: Trump's follow up. Seconds earlier, he had posted why won't
Speaker 1: sixty Minutes release the fraudulent tapes of Lion Kamala's interview
Speaker 1: with them? Could it be because Noe couldn't all right,
Speaker 1: I don't read the rest of it anyway. Could it
Speaker 1: be because it was a complete and total disaster, or
Speaker 1: that they quote created unquote many additional new answers for her,
Speaker 1: not just the one where she was so embarrassingly caught.
Speaker 1: In normal times, what happened on sixty Minutes deceptively doctoring
Speaker 1: her answers would be the end of anyone's campaign. Name
Speaker 1: it happening once Now, he couldn't Kamala is slow, incoherent,
Speaker 1: and is in no way qualified to be president of
Speaker 1: the United States. Every Republican accusation is a confession. Release
Speaker 1: the tapes for the good of America. We can do
Speaker 1: it the nice way or the hard way. Unquote, we
Speaker 1: can do it the nice way or the hard way.
Speaker 1: What is this? The Ican TEENA Turner review? You know,
Speaker 1: every now and then I think you might like to
Speaker 1: hear something from us nice and easy. But there's just
Speaker 1: one thing, you see, we never ever do nothing nice
Speaker 1: and easy. We always do it nice and rough, working
Speaker 1: for the man every night and day. So a television
Speaker 1: network news operation idiotically edits a clip, this time with
Speaker 1: a presidential candidate. So the presidential candidate has to drop out.
Speaker 1: So Harris has to drop out. And of course, since
Speaker 1: Fox edited out the part where Trump talks about the
Speaker 1: enemy within during an interview with Harris, Trump also has
Speaker 1: to drop out. So two tuesdays from now, it's the
Speaker 1: presidential election Tim Walls versus JB. Vance. By the way,
Speaker 1: this just jin Harris campaign has not issued a formal
Speaker 1: complaint to the God of Television about a deceptive editing
Speaker 1: in the Brettbear interview of the Vice president because she's
Speaker 1: not nuts. It is possible somebody showed Trump the other
Speaker 1: thing that Fox made news with at six pm on
Speaker 1: Wednesday night. It's bizarre poll showing him ahead in the
Speaker 1: popular vote by two but down in the swing states
Speaker 1: by six, and thus on pace to get more votes
Speaker 1: for a change and still lose the electoral college. That
Speaker 1: kind of melts my mind. And I'm not even running
Speaker 1: for president. What's interesting is that the polling pros reacted
Speaker 1: to that poll plus two Trump nationally minus six Trump
Speaker 1: in the swings with less than spit takes or discussed.
Speaker 1: The Washington Post, Aaron Blake suggests that the electoral college
Speaker 1: bias may not have swung to what it would have
Speaker 1: to be here Harris plus eight, but that it also
Speaker 1: may no longer be anybody plus anything. Blake notes that
Speaker 1: when a Post colleague wrote his piece in early August,
Speaker 1: he noted that Trump was running just one point better
Speaker 1: in what appeared to be the tipping point state, Michigan
Speaker 1: than he was nationally, So that was a one point
Speaker 1: electoral college bias in Trump's favor, or at least at
Speaker 1: that point. The tipping point state is not set in stone.
Speaker 1: When the New York Times ran its own numbers. Last month,
Speaker 1: the pro Trump electoral college bias was just zero point
Speaker 1: seven points. Today, it looks like it might be even
Speaker 1: less of a Trump advantage, if it is one at all.
Speaker 1: It's not at all clear what the tipping point state
Speaker 1: might be, since all the swing states are so close,
Speaker 1: but right now the Washington Post polling average shows it's
Speaker 1: either Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin. Winning all three would deliver
Speaker 1: the two hundred and seventy electoral votes Harris needs, and
Speaker 1: she leads by about two points in each of them.
Speaker 1: That's virtually the same as her two point edge in
Speaker 1: national polls. So it's looking like electoral college bias could
Speaker 1: be more or less a wash quote well, not having
Speaker 1: a two or three point finger on the good old
Speaker 1: electoral college scale. That could also have freshly added to
Speaker 1: Trump's deranged syndrome, especially since Morning Consult Now reports its
Speaker 1: polling shows neither of them ahead in any of the
Speaker 1: battleground states outside the margin of error. Therefore, Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: must be forced off the campaign by Icontina Turner. It
Speaker 1: occurs to me that I have not circled back yet
Speaker 1: to the other thing. Of note I mentioned earlier, Trump
Speaker 1: keeps bailing out on things. Trump was supposed to speak
Speaker 1: at an NRA Guns Don't Kill people, People with guns
Speaker 1: kill people rally at Savannah, Georgia next Tuesday. Then evidently
Speaker 1: he canceled, claiming a scheduling conflict, and so the NRA
Speaker 1: canceled the entire show. But he's also canceled another interview
Speaker 1: technically postponed. Doesn't look like it's ever going to happen.
Speaker 1: Suddenly dropped out of a CNBC interview, as Joe Kernan's
Speaker 1: two pay revealed live on the air the other day,
Speaker 1: But now Brian Stelter says Trump was to do a
Speaker 1: separate interview next Monday with the former CNN business reporter
Speaker 1: Christine Romans for Adult NBC. This is per Brian Stelter,
Speaker 1: who wrote, I learned of another planned Trump interview that
Speaker 1: was suddenly scrapped. NBC News thought it had secured to
Speaker 1: sit down with Trump to discuss the economy and other matters.
Speaker 1: According to three sources with knowledge of the matter, the
Speaker 1: interview was expected to take place in Philadelphia on Monday,
Speaker 1: and correspondent Christine Romans was set to be the interviewer.
Speaker 1: I'm told, but then it was called off by the
Speaker 1: Trump team. The interview was quote postponed, one of the
Speaker 1: sources said, and NBC is in discussions to reschedule it. Well,
Speaker 1: take a number just TV. That's NBC canceled, CNBC canceled,
Speaker 1: sixty minutes, canceled, an town hall probably canceled, and of
Speaker 1: course the second debate against the vice president, presumably because
Speaker 1: he has to spend that time those days meeting with
Speaker 1: whoever is going to force Harris out of the campaign,
Speaker 1: and I believe that's Liam and Noel Gallagher, by thea
Speaker 1: by On top of everything suggesting something out of public
Speaker 1: sight that has gone desperately wrong inside the Trump campaign,
Speaker 1: his health or its health or both. He has also
Speaker 1: gone into reruns. Here are two reruns. Here is Trump
Speaker 1: back to the She's not allowed to be two different races,
Speaker 1: when I had convinced myself she was only one, followed
Speaker 1: by Trump with an unfortunate slip in which, days after
Speaker 1: Vance insisted the January sixth insurrectionists were knuckleheads who had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with Trump. Trump refers to those January
Speaker 1: sixth insurrectionists as.
Speaker 2: We they have a woman who is black, Leah would
Speaker 2: say she's Indian, but she is black, but she really
Speaker 2: a lot of people didn't know which is true.
Speaker 3: But I learned about it just a couple of months ago.
Speaker 3: You know the fact that she's black, or that she's Indian,
Speaker 3: the fact that she's black. I thought she was Indian
Speaker 3: until a couple of months. The thing's changed. I mean
Speaker 3: a lot of people because if you follow baseball, Sammy
Speaker 3: Sosa kind of you know, you sometimes have to respect
Speaker 3: people they Samish, right, So I thought maybe she was
Speaker 3: doing a Sammy Sosa the other way, Sammy Chase right.
Speaker 2: There were no guns down there. We didn't have guns.
Speaker 2: The others had guns, but we didn't have guns. And
Speaker 2: would I say, we these are people that walk down
Speaker 2: This was a tiny percentage of the overall which nobody
Speaker 2: sees and nobody nobody shows.
Speaker 1: But that was a day of love. We us them
Speaker 1: what ebbs the third rerun that we can do it
Speaker 1: the nice way or the hard way? Threat, that's that's
Speaker 1: a rerun. And I would be more alarmed about that,
Speaker 1: except he just referred to the January sixth ers as US,
Speaker 1: And all I know is that the last time he
Speaker 1: and they the US, to which he refers tried the
Speaker 1: hard way. They all lost anyway. And by the way,
Speaker 1: this time Joe Biden will have the tanks and the aircraft.
Speaker 1: But you have a nice day out there, Donnie Dorko.
Speaker 1: By the way, Judge Tanya Chudkin told Trump, we're doing
Speaker 1: it the hard way. She was to release the Jack
Speaker 1: Smith footnotes yesterday, and his mouthpieces put in a last
Speaker 1: minute appeal asking for it to be delayed, just to
Speaker 1: pick a random date Thursday, November after the election. He
Speaker 1: wanted more discovery. She gave him a fifty page rulely
Speaker 1: basically reading f you discover this, but giving him a
Speaker 1: little bit more information on Mike Pence's handling of classified info.
Speaker 1: When it comes out, we'll see, let's see what else.
Speaker 1: Jim Mattis, Trump's first secretary of Defense, told Bob Woodward
Speaker 1: that Mark Milly was right when Milly said Trump was
Speaker 1: the most dangerous man ever, and that Milly was right
Speaker 1: to call Trump a fascist. And there is a new
Speaker 1: book about Mitch McConnell coming out in a week before
Speaker 1: the election, in which McConnell is quoted after the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty election, but before January sixth as calling Trump stupid,
Speaker 1: as well as being ill tempered, a despicable human being,
Speaker 1: and a narcissist. Yeah. Thanks, boys, If you had said
Speaker 1: any of that while he was still in office, they
Speaker 1: would be building statues of you right now. And then
Speaker 1: the fun of the day there was the burn of
Speaker 1: the campaign Lacrosse, Wisconsin. If Kamala Harris wins, it will
Speaker 1: be because of the events of a twenty four hour
Speaker 1: span in which she went on Fox News and kicked
Speaker 1: Brettbear's ass and kicked Fox's ass and called them out
Speaker 1: and came right up to the line of looking angry
Speaker 1: without actually getting there, and then said this. In Lacrosse, Wisconsin, yesterday,
Speaker 1: Harris's rally was crashed by pro Trump supporters. There were
Speaker 1: no survivors. Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally. No,
Speaker 1: I think you meant to go to the smaller one
Speaker 1: down the street out. Also of interest, here, a Trump
Speaker 1: attorney and spokesmodel insists there's about to be a flood
Speaker 1: of celebrity endorsements of Trump. Because it wasn't really clear
Speaker 1: what she was saying, She's kind of stupid, something about
Speaker 1: democrats are all pedophiles, or celebrities are all pedophiles or
Speaker 1: all Democrats are celebrities. I don't know. Jesus has something
Speaker 1: to do with it again, even though, of course it
Speaker 1: was the Republicans who put the big picture windows between
Speaker 1: the bathrooms and the hallways in the middle school in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Oberman.
Speaker 1: Oberman a little Yankee Stadium tribute to Larry David. Between
Speaker 1: his introduction and the voice of the Great Yankee p
Speaker 1: I announce a Bob Shepherd and the music he heard there,
Speaker 1: the bach Takata and Fugue State still ahead on this
Speaker 1: initiative countdown. Third Bird time. He never did write a novel.
Speaker 1: He did write a history of the New Yorker magazine.
Speaker 1: He did write epic short stories like The Greatest Man
Speaker 1: in the World, and at least three short stories that
Speaker 1: became movies. But then there are his miniatures, his polished gems,
Speaker 1: his ships built inside wine bottles, his fables. There is
Speaker 1: more cynicism, more criticism, more liberalism per square inch in
Speaker 1: these fables than in any other examples of his great writing.
Speaker 1: The Fables of James Thurber next on Fridays with Herber first,
Speaker 1: there are still more new idiots to talk about the
Speaker 1: daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger
Speaker 1: effects specimens who constitute today's day worst worst persons, Persons
Speaker 1: in the world b the Bronze Worse BBC News. It
Speaker 1: has canceled after three decades. A news show with the
Speaker 1: improbable name of Hard Talk, which it ran on the
Speaker 1: BBC UK News Channel and globally on BBC World News.
Speaker 1: Not my favorite show because it often fell into confrontation
Speaker 1: and every once in a while the kind of automatic
Speaker 1: contradiction heard in the fabulous Monty Python sketch. I'd like
Speaker 1: to have an argument, please, you know, good morning? What's
Speaker 1: good about it? That kind of stuff. They also ran
Speaker 1: the same episode like like six times a day any who.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, the number of times I found
Speaker 1: myself watching it anyway once a day because the topics
Speaker 1: could range from the latest from the Middle East with
Speaker 1: the president of prime minister, former military chief or an
Speaker 1: artist or writer explaining defending, chronicling their own work, or
Speaker 1: the topic whether or not the Prime Minister of Finland
Speaker 1: was gonna have to resign because there was video of
Speaker 1: her at a disco drinking and the interviewee for half
Speaker 1: an hour was the Prime Minister of Finland talking about
Speaker 1: her own evening at the disco. Panic at the disco,
Speaker 1: they got great guests, and you'd rather have a great
Speaker 1: guest challenged by an interviewer, usually Steven Sacker, than just
Speaker 1: nodded at, Oh, tell me more about how wonderful you
Speaker 1: are again. Sometimes it just fell into gainsaying for the
Speaker 1: hell of it. I'm not sure it ever once got
Speaker 1: American politics right. But now the BBC has canceled this,
Speaker 1: this little window into the world what's actually happening behind
Speaker 1: the scene in Uzbekistan. They've canceled it, I assume so
Speaker 1: so the BBC News channels can add a one hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy third different business update to its daily schedule,
Speaker 1: because the BBC News channels are quickly morphing into the
Speaker 1: BBC Business News Channels, as all news channels around the
Speaker 1: world have been doing for years. And that's exactly what
Speaker 1: news and the world needs. More glorification of money. Good evening.
Speaker 1: How much money do you have? Our next guest has
Speaker 1: more money than you do. We'll ask him how he
Speaker 1: got more money. You can sit there and see quietly
Speaker 1: as he explains. The runner up speaking of which worser.
Speaker 1: Christina Bob, the Ilse, the she Wolf of the ss
Speaker 1: of the Trump campaign, you know her. She was the
Speaker 1: Trump attorney so stupid that the other Trump attorneys got
Speaker 1: her to sign the document vowing for the completeness of
Speaker 1: the search of the classified materials Trump stole and stan
Speaker 1: marri A Lago. She signed it, not the other ones.
Speaker 1: This was while she was also on the air on
Speaker 1: one of the fascist feeds Flomax Channel or news Aryan
Speaker 1: Nation or One America, one Reich or whatever one it
Speaker 1: was she was on. She's the one with the extremely
Speaker 1: narrow head, and this paranoid, delusional, light bulb head shaped
Speaker 1: person has announced that she expects a rash of celebrities
Speaker 1: to now endorse Trump, especially after the election, because while
Speaker 1: because it turns out, Christina Bob is on top of
Speaker 1: everything else a QAnon slanderer. Let me quote her from
Speaker 1: the podcast Steak for Breakfast, hosted by I don't know,
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk Hannibal Lecter. I don't know. I think there's
Speaker 1: one Trump Nazi who does all these podcasts, and they
Speaker 1: just change his name from show to sho to make
Speaker 1: it sound like there's three hundred and seventeen different ones
Speaker 1: quoting Bobby Christina or whatever her name is on celebrities.
Speaker 1: I also think there might be a little bit of
Speaker 1: the Diddy effect where they want to be like, I'm
Speaker 1: not a pedophile, you know, like I'm not part of
Speaker 1: that camp. So it's a little bit more socially acceptable,
Speaker 1: that is, to endorse Trump because the Left is so
Speaker 1: evil and I don't know what other word to use
Speaker 1: other than flat out demonic at this point, with the
Speaker 1: fact that they want to normalize pedophilia, madam f you,
Speaker 1: nobody wants to do that. They want to make pedophiles
Speaker 1: basically a type of protected class. Like I said, the
Speaker 1: woman is out of her mind. I don't mean that
Speaker 1: in the legal sense of the world word. I just mean,
Speaker 1: you know, protecting pedophile rights or whatever the heck they're
Speaker 1: going after all of the weird transgender stuff they're doing.
Speaker 1: And then you have these the Ditty Case, the Epstein List,
Speaker 1: Who the hell is on the Epstein List? Dramatic pause,
Speaker 1: and the music. Everybody knows. Everybody knows that it's the
Speaker 1: Democrats supporters that are protecting that Epstein List and are
Speaker 1: quite honestly protecting the ditty list. Because it's in the
Speaker 1: Biden Department of Justice that has that evidence right now.
Speaker 1: They're the ones that rated that place, so everybody knows
Speaker 1: they're a bunch of Democrats. This is a lawyer talking.
Speaker 1: I'd like to see your diploma, please, diploma from the
Speaker 1: crackerjack Box School of Law. I didn't know there was
Speaker 1: such a place. Just a reminder that when Trump or
Speaker 1: the sycophantic lizard people around him are really lying, the
Speaker 1: tell is that phrase everybody knows it means they just
Speaker 1: made something up. Everybody knows Christina Bob is actually eighty
Speaker 1: three years old. Stuff like that. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: to go on that long about this and you begin
Speaker 1: to think, once again, why is this woman? Why are
Speaker 1: they all in the Trump camp so obsessed with kids
Speaker 1: and sex? They spend half of their time talking about it,
Speaker 1: passing laws about it. What kids' bathrooms like are in schools,
Speaker 1: what kids can go into, which bathrooms. They put viewing
Speaker 1: windows in the bathrooms in a middle school in Hanover, PA,
Speaker 1: supposedly to make sure they could tell if any of
Speaker 1: the kids were vaping in there or being truants. Did
Speaker 1: you go to school today, honey, yes, what you do?
Speaker 1: I went to the bathroom for eight hours. If that
Speaker 1: was a suggestion from the Department of Education a window
Speaker 1: in a middle school kid's bathroom, Jamie Comer would be
Speaker 1: conducting a hearing on it, and this idiot Christina Bob
Speaker 1: would be the first witness. I don't know where the
Speaker 1: far rights obsession with the sex and and gender preferences
Speaker 1: of miners came up, but I look at Christina Bob
Speaker 1: and that herman munster head of hers and I think,
Speaker 1: doctor during the delivery, did you have too tight a
Speaker 1: grip on the foresips or something? But the winner the
Speaker 1: worst Chris slecked. Oh he's back, the man who ran
Speaker 1: CNN into the ground. That spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: here quoting Oliver Darcy's media newsletter status because it really
Speaker 1: is the best of a bunch, and Brian Stelter's new
Speaker 1: return to CNN newsletter, which I think he is named Management.
Speaker 1: Isn't it wonderful? It's just so kiss ass. Mister Darcy
Speaker 1: had a big scoop this week. Let me quote some
Speaker 1: of it and I'll annotate it as I go. Chris Lickt,
Speaker 1: he writes, is ready to step back into the public spotlight.
Speaker 1: I'm ready to step back into being twenty eight years
Speaker 1: old again. Nobody asked me to, and nobody's gonna let me.
Speaker 1: But I'm ready to step back into being twenty eight
Speaker 1: years old again. And Chris lick is ready to step
Speaker 1: back into the public spotlight. The x CNN chief, who
Speaker 1: was dismissed last year after a tumultuous run atop the
Speaker 1: news network, is scheduled to deliver remarks at two industry
Speaker 1: conferences following the November election. After spending more than a
Speaker 1: year exiled in the wilderness, the former CNN boss is
Speaker 1: cautiously re emerging with the aim of a playing a
Speaker 1: to be determined role restoring trust in media institutions amid
Speaker 1: the current polarized environment. Quote. I made a conscious decision
Speaker 1: not to be seen for a while and not be
Speaker 1: heard from unquote. Got to say that was a good
Speaker 1: idea by Chris Lickt, his first But given everything that
Speaker 1: is happening, both of these conferences are after the election,
Speaker 1: there's going to be a huge discussion over how things
Speaker 1: go forward, depending on who wins. During our phone conversation,
Speaker 1: Lickt appeared to be in high spirits. Okay, Olivery Darcy,
Speaker 1: I think you're close there. In that last description, what
Speaker 1: licked is saying here is if Trump wins and the
Speaker 1: news outlets that have not filated him yet, like Licht's
Speaker 1: CNN filated him every day, if they erupt in fight
Speaker 1: or flight fear, because Trump would have won, Chris Lickt
Speaker 1: is ready to lead them all in flight right away,
Speaker 1: right away. Lickt wanted to use our time to relay
Speaker 1: that he is genuinely unnerved and worried about the corrosive
Speaker 1: effects that the broken information environment is having on the country.
Speaker 1: He underscored that without a functioning media, the fabric that
Speaker 1: makes up civilization erodes, imperiling us all, and he repeatedly
Speaker 1: said he wanted to be part of the solution, whatever
Speaker 1: that may be. Quote. Everyone is still struggling to find
Speaker 1: the right answer to engage with the public in a
Speaker 1: way that can reverse the trend of people losing trust
Speaker 1: in institutions. Lickt said, I think it's an existential crisis
Speaker 1: for society, and that is not specific to any news organization.
Speaker 1: It is just mass media in general, and it's a
Speaker 1: problem that the country has to solve. It is an
Speaker 1: absolute threat to society. Mister Darcy adroitly and politely notes
Speaker 1: that Chris lick was quote no bystander to the problem
Speaker 1: he describes that is a threat to society, corrosion. That's
Speaker 1: a nice euphemism. Chris Lickt is battery acid. If he
Speaker 1: believed in a moment in journalism, he'd never would have
Speaker 1: associated himself with that manipulator Joe Scarborough, or that opportunist
Speaker 1: Stephen Colbert, or especially the clown college owning CNN, for
Speaker 1: whom the word news is just a brand name. To
Speaker 1: be fair, Oliver Darcy went after him. Lickt lived up
Speaker 1: to his reputation we're down to it. Quote. When I
Speaker 1: asked Lickt how a year later he'd used his time
Speaker 1: at CNN, or whether he had any regrets, he declined
Speaker 1: to answer. I'm not going there, Licht replied. Anybody who
Speaker 1: knows Chris Lickt knows he's going there. Licht said he
Speaker 1: has changed his news consumption habits in taking information quote
Speaker 1: much more like a normal civilian. When pressed as to
Speaker 1: what exactly that means, Licht said he definitely watches much
Speaker 1: less cable news and tries to sample a lot of
Speaker 1: different types of information from a lot of different sources.
Speaker 1: More importantly, Lick said he has spent his time out
Speaker 1: of the public eye trying to learn from an array
Speaker 1: of people he has met over scores of meals, coffees,
Speaker 1: and drinks. In fact, Lick told me he's held hundreds
Speaker 1: of meetings talking to people outside my bubble, outside my
Speaker 1: comfort zone. Okay, so not just personal trainers this time, coffees, meals, drinks,
Speaker 1: hundreds of meetings talking to people he doesn't know. Oh,
Speaker 1: I get it now, Chris Lick is now panhandling. As
Speaker 1: the British say, he's living rough quote. I am working
Speaker 1: on some interesting things, he said, nothing that I'm ready
Speaker 1: to talk about. But there's a lot of exciting things
Speaker 1: happening in this space, as you know. And so I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to figure out where i can be helpful, Chris,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to figure out where I can be helpful.
Speaker 1: Where you ask, May I suggest Venezuela licked two days
Speaker 1: worst person Ben Now to the number one story in
Speaker 1: the countdown. And since it's the weekend, it's Fridays with Thurber.
Speaker 1: You don't see a lot of new fables anymore. These days.
Speaker 1: People aren't writing as many fables as they used to.
Speaker 1: There was ASoP around five to eighty BC, and then
Speaker 1: James Thrber around nineteen thirty nine, and that's pretty much it.
Speaker 1: Fables require animals to stand in for people. They need
Speaker 1: to be short, they need to be precise, They need
Speaker 1: to end with a moral. They should be, if not
Speaker 1: laugh out loud, funny, at least cry and thought provoking.
Speaker 1: Three years ago, it was my privilege to write the
Speaker 1: foreword to Michael J. Rosen's new volume James Thurber Collected Fables,
Speaker 1: which includes many of the fables that had not previously
Speaker 1: been published in a book. Despite my forward, I suspect
Speaker 1: you will enjoy that book anyway. Thurber published most of
Speaker 1: his fables and most of everything else in the New
Speaker 1: Yorker magazine. He collected twenty eight of them in his
Speaker 1: nineteen forty volume, Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated.
Speaker 1: His further Fables for Our Time, came out in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six and is heavily influenced by the era of McCarthyism.
Speaker 1: Many of the fables are classics, some are sleepers, all
Speaker 1: are great. Let me give you three of them to
Speaker 1: carry you through the weekend, Starting with maybe maybe the best,
Speaker 1: little misogynistic, but damned fun and certainly the best of
Speaker 1: them in terms of being known to the public. The
Speaker 1: Unicorn in the guard by James Thurber. Once upon a
Speaker 1: sunny morning, a man who sat in a breakfast nook
Speaker 1: looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white
Speaker 1: unicorn with a golden horn, quietly cropping the roses in
Speaker 1: the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where
Speaker 1: his wife was still asleep, and woke her. There's a
Speaker 1: unicorn in the garden, he said, eating roses. She opened
Speaker 1: one unfriendly eye and looked at him. The unicorn is
Speaker 1: a mythical beast, she said, and turned her back on him.
Speaker 1: The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden.
Speaker 1: The unicorn was still there. He was now browsing among
Speaker 1: the tulips. Here, unicorn, said the man, and he pulled
Speaker 1: up a lily and gave it to him. The unicorn
Speaker 1: ate it gravely with a high heart. Because there was
Speaker 1: a unicorn in his garden. The man went upstairs and
Speaker 1: roused his wife again. The unicorn, he said, ay to lily.
Speaker 1: His wife sat up in bed and looked at him coldly.
Speaker 1: You are a booby, she said, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: have you put in the booby hatch. The man, who
Speaker 1: had never liked the words booby and booby hatch, and
Speaker 1: who liked them even less on a shining morning, when
Speaker 1: there was a unicorn in the garden, thought for a moment,
Speaker 1: we'll see about that, he said. He walked over to
Speaker 1: the door. He has a golden horn in the middle
Speaker 1: of his forehead, he told her. Then he went back
Speaker 1: to the garden to watch the unicorn, but the unicorn
Speaker 1: had gone away. The man sat down among the roses
Speaker 1: and went to sleep. As soon as the husband had
Speaker 1: gone out of the house, the wife got up and
Speaker 1: dressed as fast as she could. She was very excited,
Speaker 1: and there was a gloat in her eye. She telephoned
Speaker 1: the police, and she telephoned a psychiatrists. She told them
Speaker 1: to hurry to her house and bring a straight jacket.
Speaker 1: When the police and the psychiatrist arrived, they sat down
Speaker 1: in chairs and looked at her with great interest. My husband,
Speaker 1: she said, saw unicorn this morning. The police looked at
Speaker 1: the psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist looked at the police. He
Speaker 1: told me it ate a lelly, she said. The psychiatrist
Speaker 1: looked at the police, and the police looked at the psychiatrist.
Speaker 1: He told me it had a golden horn in the
Speaker 1: middle of its forehead. She said, had a solemn signal
Speaker 1: from the psychiatrist. The police leaped from their chairs and
Speaker 1: seized the wife. They had a hard time subduing her,
Speaker 1: for she put up a terrific struggle, but they finally
Speaker 1: subdued her just as they got her into the straight jacket.
Speaker 1: The husband came back into the house. Did you tell
Speaker 1: your wife you saw unicorn, asked the police. Of course not,
Speaker 1: said the husband. The unicorn is a mythical beast. That's
Speaker 1: all I wanted to know, said the psychiatrist. Make her away.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, so h what. Your wife is as crazy
Speaker 1: as a jaybud. So they took her away, cursing and screaming,
Speaker 1: and shut her up in an institution. The husband lived
Speaker 1: happily ever after. Moral don't count your boobies until they
Speaker 1: are hatched. The Unicorn in the Garden by James Thurber
Speaker 1: I promised three. Here's the second one. It's a little
Speaker 1: less joyful and silly. The rabbits who caused all the
Speaker 1: trouble by James thurber within the memory of the youngest child.
Speaker 1: There was a family of rabbits who lived near pack
Speaker 1: of wolves. The wolves announced that they did not like
Speaker 1: the way the rabbits were living. The wolves were crazy
Speaker 1: about the way they themselves were living because it was
Speaker 1: the only way to live. One night, several wolves were
Speaker 1: killed in an earthquake, and this was blamed on the rabbits,
Speaker 1: for it is well known that rabbits pound on the
Speaker 1: ground with their hind legs and cause earthquakes. On another night,
Speaker 1: one of the wolves was killed by a bolt of lightning,
Speaker 1: and this was also blamed on the rabbits, for it
Speaker 1: is well known that lettuce eaters cause lightning. The wolves
Speaker 1: threatened to civilize the rabbits if they didn't behave, and
Speaker 1: the rabbits decided to run away to a desert island,
Speaker 1: but the other animals who lived at a great distance
Speaker 1: shamed them, saying, you must stay where you are and
Speaker 1: be brave. This is no world for escapists. If the
Speaker 1: wolves attack you, we will come to your aid in
Speaker 1: all probability. So the rabbits continued to live near the wolves,
Speaker 1: and one day there was a terrible flood which dround
Speaker 1: a great many wolves. This was blamed on the rabbits,
Speaker 1: for it is well known that carrot nibblers with long
Speaker 1: ears caused floods. The wolves descended upon the rabbits for
Speaker 1: their own good and in prison them in a dark
Speaker 1: cave for their own protection. When nothing was heard about
Speaker 1: the rabbits for some weeks, the other animals demanded to
Speaker 1: know what had happened to them. The wolves replied that
Speaker 1: the rabbits had been eaten, and since they had been eaten,
Speaker 1: the affair was a purely internal matter. But the other
Speaker 1: animals warned that they might possibly unite against the wolves
Speaker 1: unless some reason was given for the destruction of the rabbits.
Speaker 1: So the wolves gave them one. They were trying to escape,
Speaker 1: said the wolves. And as you know, this is no
Speaker 1: world for escapists. Moral run, don't walk to the nearest
Speaker 1: desert island. The rabbits who caused all the trouble by
Speaker 1: James Thurber and one last one. And I have mentioned
Speaker 1: this before in other settings, but I'll mention it again.
Speaker 1: I have a tattoo that pertains to this particular one,
Speaker 1: and I have an ex girlfriend running around who has
Speaker 1: the moral to this one on her shoulders. I wonder how.
Speaker 1: She ever, explained that The Moth and the Star by
Speaker 1: James Thurber, a young and impressionable moth once set his
Speaker 1: heart on a certain star. He told his mother about this,
Speaker 1: and she counseled him to set his heart on a
Speaker 1: bridge lamp instead. Stars aren't the thing to hang around,
Speaker 1: she said, lamp saying the thing to hang around. You
Speaker 1: get somewhere that way, said the moth's father. You don't
Speaker 1: get anywhere chasing stars. But the moth would not heed
Speaker 1: the words of either parent. Every evening, at dusk, when
Speaker 1: the star came out, he would start flying toward it,
Speaker 1: and every morning at dawn he would crawl back home,
Speaker 1: worn out with his vain endeavor. One day, his father
Speaker 1: said to him, you haven't burned a wing in months, boy,
Speaker 1: and it looks to me as if you're never going to.
Speaker 1: All your brothers have been badly burned flying around street lamps,
Speaker 1: and all your sisters have been terribly singed flying around
Speaker 1: house lamps. Come on, now, get out of here and
Speaker 1: get yourself scorched. Big stropping muth like you without a
Speaker 1: muck on him. The moth left his father's house, but
Speaker 1: he would not fly around street lamps, and he would
Speaker 1: not fly around house lamps. He went right on trying
Speaker 1: to reach the star, which was four and one third
Speaker 1: light years or twenty five trillion miles away. The moth
Speaker 1: thought it was just caught in the top of the
Speaker 1: branches of an elm over there. He never did reach
Speaker 1: the star, but he went right on trying night after night.
Speaker 1: When he was a very very old moth, he began
Speaker 1: to think that he really had reached the star, and
Speaker 1: he went around saying so. This gave him a deep
Speaker 1: and lasting pleasure, and he lived to a great old age.
Speaker 1: His parents, and his brothers and his sisters had all
Speaker 1: been burned to death when they were quite young. Tomorrow,
Speaker 1: who flies afar from the sphere of our sorrow is
Speaker 1: here today and here tomorrow. The Moth and the Star
Speaker 1: by James Thurber. I've done all the damage I can
Speaker 1: do here. Thank you for listening. But now back to
Speaker 1: five episodes a week, posting nightly just after midnight Eastern.
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Speaker 1: but they need to listen. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle,
Speaker 1: the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most
Speaker 1: of our music. Mister Shanelle handled the orchestration, the keyboards.
Speaker 1: Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass and the drums.
Speaker 1: It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy
Speaker 1: musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Speaker 1: Nancy Faust. The sports theme is the Olderman theme from
Speaker 1: ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy
Speaker 1: of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the
Speaker 1: group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my friend
Speaker 1: Larry David performing as Bob Sheffield. Everything else is pretty
Speaker 1: much my fault. Let's countdown for today, two weeks and
Speaker 1: four days until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the
Speaker 1: one three and eighty second day since convicted felon dissociative
Speaker 1: fugue Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
Speaker 1: government of the United States, use the election, use the
Speaker 1: mental health system, use presidential immunity to keep him from
Speaker 1: doing it again, while always I'll have a chance. The
Speaker 1: next schedule Countdown is Monday. Bulletin says the news requires
Speaker 1: until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
Speaker 1: and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
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