Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio Funniest
Speaker 1: Dog Gone Thing Trump. Friday, Microsoft said the Iranians would
Speaker 1: try to meddle in the election. Saturday. Your campaign computers
Speaker 1: got hacked, you say, by the Iranians, you say, and
Speaker 1: you hadn't reported it to the FBI, you say, even
Speaker 1: though it's by Iran, and part of the whole campaign
Speaker 1: scam from Trump Headquarters Trump is that Iran is the
Speaker 1: root of all evil, and you didn't report it to
Speaker 1: the FBI, and you didn't provide any evidence that it
Speaker 1: actually happened. A two hundred and seventy one page Trump
Speaker 1: privileged and confidential document gets sent to The Washington Post
Speaker 1: from an AOL user named Robert. Do you call Homeland
Speaker 1: Security Trump? You do not? And then Politico says it's
Speaker 1: been getting documents, including a long vetting report on JV
Speaker 1: Vance from Robert since the twenty second of July. Called
Speaker 1: the DOJ. Then nope, you just announced it. We've been
Speaker 1: hacked by the Iranians. Iranians named Robert Monday, the FBI
Speaker 1: again anonymously, not even a spokesman's name attached to this,
Speaker 1: just like that. No, he was too hit by a
Speaker 1: bullet announcement by the FBI. The FBI gives a clear
Speaker 1: and compelling picture of the vast team that has fanned
Speaker 1: out across our country, across the Internet, across the world
Speaker 1: to track down this evil quote. We can confirm the
Speaker 1: FBI is investigating this matter, said, is anything on the
Speaker 1: back maybe on the statement. We can confirm the FBI
Speaker 1: is investigating, investigating who, investigating what, investigating whether they were
Speaker 1: really hacked, whether they were really hacked by Iranians, whether
Speaker 1: Trump just made it all up, whether the Trump campaign
Speaker 1: fell for some sort of fishing op at a porn site.
Speaker 1: Can you be a little more specific or just specific
Speaker 1: at all? No, No, all the doctors know he got
Speaker 1: shot by a bullet. Oh, none of them will be
Speaker 1: quoted on the record. And we don't have any medical
Speaker 1: records or anything from the hospital. But trust us, we've
Speaker 1: never lied. But now, of course Trump says I was
Speaker 1: hacked by Iran and the FBI says it's investigating, like
Speaker 1: I'm investigating buying Warner Bros. Discovery for one hundred dollars cash.
Speaker 1: Because Trump's campaign claims this, that means that you Washington
Speaker 1: Post and you Politico, you can't print any of it
Speaker 1: because it's all part of an internal attempt to interfere
Speaker 1: with the election by a foreign agent, and the American
Speaker 1: media can't participate in anything like that this time. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Oh bullshit, publish all of it. You have some proof Trump?
Speaker 1: I should ask the Trump campaign. Trump no longer knows
Speaker 1: where he is, let alone what's happening to his campaign?
Speaker 1: You have some proof, Trump campaign, Let's see it, anything,
Speaker 1: any proof otherwise to not publish whatever. The Trumpists are
Speaker 1: so worried about that they've made up this story about
Speaker 1: how the Iranians are better at computers than they the
Speaker 1: Trumpists are. Any decision to not publish this is campaign interference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Iranians did it, and they sent it to the
Speaker 1: Post in Politico via AOL. But American journalism, let's let
Speaker 1: Trump set the rules here without evidence, because why would
Speaker 1: people like Roger turn in the barrel? I love wiki leaks.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I've been hacked. Stone and Chris swift Boat,
Speaker 1: Junior las Sevita and Susie Wiles and Don the basket case.
Speaker 1: Trump and Stephen Chung try to manipulate the major media
Speaker 1: outlets again. Stephen Chung October seventeenth, twenty sixteen quote, must
Speaker 1: watch leaked emails from Wiki Leaks show what Hillary Clinton's
Speaker 1: staff and allies really think. And there's a link to YouTube.
Speaker 1: Washington Post, Politico America. You're getting played by the Trump
Speaker 1: campaign like Toby Ziegler's two dollars banjo again. Besides which
Speaker 1: maybe the salient hole in the logic here that any
Speaker 1: part of this Trump story is true. You're Robert from
Speaker 1: Iran and you want to hurt Trump by hacking his
Speaker 1: computers and sending all his stuff to news organizations that
Speaker 1: so clearly oppose him. So you sent it to the
Speaker 1: Washington Post and Politico. Have you read the Washington Post
Speaker 1: in Politico lately? I mean, why not just send it
Speaker 1: to the New York Times while you're at it. Dear
Speaker 1: Joe Kahan, this will really hurt Trump at Wait but
Speaker 1: why what? Because they're still mad Biden wouldn't drop out
Speaker 1: when they told him to. The lead story in politicos
Speaker 1: PM newsletter yesterday was eight gullible paragraphs about Trump returning
Speaker 1: to Twitter and doing this crap with Musk because they're
Speaker 1: not enough crazy white supremacists on Twitter x right now.
Speaker 1: The lead story in Politico's morning newsletter had been about
Speaker 1: the lack of a comprehensive Kamala Harris policy book after
Speaker 1: twenty three days of her campaign. I mean the nerve
Speaker 1: of the woman. Not Trump's insane AI charges against the
Speaker 1: vice president and the unexpected damage he did to himself
Speaker 1: with that, or why that resonated the way it did,
Speaker 1: not the fact that he was only off on his
Speaker 1: Willie Brown's story by twenty eight years, three thousand miles,
Speaker 1: two cities and seven inches in height, not that his
Speaker 1: polling is cratering. Politico's lead was Trump returning to Twitter
Speaker 1: x with tweets he clearly didn't write, Yeah, boy, I'm
Speaker 1: telling you, and that's who I'd call Politico. This is
Speaker 1: a well coordinated campaign to damage Trump. And oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, Trump's polling is cratering. The polls continue to
Speaker 1: be Kamala Palooza. The most startling of them have gotten
Speaker 1: the least attention. The New York Times buried this in
Speaker 1: one of its buried stories on the Buried Trump Buried crisis.
Speaker 1: Buried it in paragraph forty fty internal polls from Ohio.
Speaker 1: Quote for those three of you still reading down here
Speaker 1: in paragraph forty way down here. We're down here the
Speaker 1: most important part of the story. We're down here.
Speaker 2: In paragraph forty.
Speaker 1: Two, private polls conducted in Ohio recently by Republican pollsters,
Speaker 1: which mister Trump carried in twenty twenty with fifty three
Speaker 1: percent of the vote, showed him receiving less than fifty
Speaker 1: percent of the vote against Ms Harris in the state,
Speaker 1: according to a person with direct knowledge of the data.
Speaker 1: First off, that's probably Kelly an Conway. What's the difference.
Speaker 1: Note it does not say Trump is losing to Harris Hell.
Speaker 1: It is only the start of week four of her campaign,
Speaker 1: and there is a Trump honeymoon there, given that Ohioans
Speaker 1: are still rejoicing because if he wins, he would take
Speaker 1: this weirdo Senator JV. Vance off their hands. But if
Speaker 1: Trump is in trouble in Ohio, find a spot on
Speaker 1: the golf course, because his twenty twenty four campaign is
Speaker 1: already dying. And that's just the start. She is now
Speaker 1: more trusted than Trump on the economy. All the less
Speaker 1: big name poles ask questions like this, but now we're
Speaker 1: getting the marquee poles. This one about the economy is
Speaker 1: from the Financial Times. She's favored forty two to forty
Speaker 1: one in polling done by the University of Michigan School
Speaker 1: of Business, and the last time they asked anybody, Trump
Speaker 1: was favored over Biden on the economy forty one to
Speaker 1: thirty five. She made up a seven point swing on
Speaker 1: the economy in three weeks on the economy, who He's
Speaker 1: going to be on Twitter today, Let's do a story
Speaker 1: about boot where Political CNBC did a poll with a
Speaker 1: group called Generation Lab surveying only voters under the age
Speaker 1: of thirty five. They believe she is a better choice
Speaker 1: on the economy, also by a point. The kiddos also
Speaker 1: believed he is their pick for the presidency by twelve points.
Speaker 1: She's forty six to thirty four ahead voters under the
Speaker 1: age of thirty five. We saw Harris leapfrog Trump in
Speaker 1: the Rust Belt last week. Now we are seeing it
Speaker 1: in polling that did not close until Sunday. Bullfinch Group
Speaker 1: for a site supposedly servicing independent voters. Harris by four
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania, by five in Michigan, by nine in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: And the pollsters claim their respondents rate themselves on average
Speaker 1: independent with a marginal lean towards the right. This is
Speaker 1: after the New York Times Siena College poll that closed
Speaker 1: last Friday. Michigan Harris fifty Trump forty six, Pennsylvania Harris
Speaker 1: fifty Trump forty six, Wisconsin Harris fifty Trump forty six.
Speaker 1: I'm beginning to sense a pattern. Insider advantage. A polling
Speaker 1: group that often works for the GOPN the Trump campaign
Speaker 1: also did a Michigan poll Harris forty nine Trump forty
Speaker 1: seven as of Thursday. A Republican polster. Another republican polster,
Speaker 1: decipher AI, did its own poll. No Republican money involved
Speaker 1: in this one in Nevada, and if they try to
Speaker 1: sell it to Republicans, they're not going to get any
Speaker 1: of their money this time either. Harris forty nine point
Speaker 1: two Trump forty three point six. That's nearly six points.
Speaker 1: It is three times the lead in Nevada that was
Speaker 1: seen when she took over the nomination. You gov. North
Speaker 1: Carolina results are from polling ending Friday, Harris forty six
Speaker 1: Trump forty six, a tie in North Carolina among voters
Speaker 1: under thirty. Della Volpe Polling for Won't pack Down. It
Speaker 1: has Biden trailing Trump as of a month ago by
Speaker 1: a point. It now has Harris, beating him by nine points,
Speaker 1: and it has her approval with voters under thirty, jumping
Speaker 1: sixteen points she got the nomination. Then there's the JD
Speaker 1: Vance poll blueprint, which bills itself as a Democratic polster,
Speaker 1: but centrist polled on good old JV on July twenty
Speaker 1: first and twenty second, the two days after Trump picked
Speaker 1: the weirdo. His net favorability then was seven points underwater.
Speaker 1: But with exposure and the post convention honeymoon and Trump's
Speaker 1: seal of ungodly approval, Vance should have improved. Right. New
Speaker 1: numbers from last week, His net favorability has changed, as
Speaker 1: predicted here, from seven points underwater to eleven points underwater.
Speaker 1: They polled on specific words and terms too young, smart, businessman,
Speaker 1: sank on the rise about JV Vance, anti woman, weird,
Speaker 1: and extreme extreme about JV Vance is up by thirteen points.
Speaker 1: The lead polster, a man named Evan roth Smith said
Speaker 1: up the Vance data to semaphore news quote, everything has
Speaker 1: gone exactly as bad as Democrats had hoped and Republicans
Speaker 1: have feared. Is it loll or loll? Five point thirty
Speaker 1: eight average is now Harris forty six, Trump forty three
Speaker 1: point three, even the Real Clear Politics average of polls,
Speaker 1: which they spend an hour a day compiling and the
Speaker 1: other twenty three hours a day trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to make the ras muscin Pole seem not only
Speaker 1: legit but ten times as important as anybody else's poll.
Speaker 1: Even the Real Clear Politics poll the RCP has Harris
Speaker 1: up by half a point. But just remember the rules.
Speaker 1: The polls are rigged unless they favored Trump, just like
Speaker 1: you backed the Blue except on January sixth. And you
Speaker 1: should carry the rallies live unless they're Kamala Harris's rallies.
Speaker 1: And misspeaking is nothing to worry about unless it's by
Speaker 1: Joe Biden. And vagueness about military service should be covered
Speaker 1: endlessly unless it's Trump's draft dodging or Dvance's work in
Speaker 1: the killing fields of press release management in Iraq. And insults,
Speaker 1: especially insults about furniture, are hilarious unless they're about JV. Vance.
Speaker 1: And most important to remember, hacked emails stolen emails are
Speaker 1: sacro sanct and cannot be published under any circumstances unless
Speaker 1: they're Hillary Clinton's. Perhaps it is kind of funny what
Speaker 1: has actually tripped up Trump here The crazy post not
Speaker 1: a charge, but an absolute statement of fact in which
Speaker 1: he assumed everybody agreed with him that the images of
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris's airport crowd were ai. That really was some
Speaker 1: kind of tipping point for a lot of people who
Speaker 1: somehow or another now revealed they were holding out hope
Speaker 1: that Trump actually isn't or wasn't insane, that it was
Speaker 1: a marketing scheme or campaign strategy. People who believe that
Speaker 1: those of us who have been insisting he actually is
Speaker 1: insane were being hyperbolic for some reason. Oh, yeah, we
Speaker 1: know what you mean. You mean he's quote crazy unquote No,
Speaker 1: I mean he's crazy. Norm Eisen Trump Impeachment Council, former
Speaker 1: Obama White House ethicist in residence. I never really thought
Speaker 1: about this before. There's one thing even more scary than
Speaker 1: the idea that Donald Trump was lying about winning in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty or about today's nutty claim. It's this that
Speaker 1: he really believes it. Really. Norm never thought of that before.
Speaker 1: Trump's mental health crisis must be urgently covered by the media.
Speaker 2: Jesus H. Christ, what do you think I've been doing here?
Speaker 2: I started in twenty sixteen. I still had some dark
Speaker 2: hairs back then. Okay, all right, I'll stop whatever. Better
Speaker 2: late than ever. Welcome norm.
Speaker 1: I mean, the right wing troll ian Miles Chong said
Speaker 1: Trump's nuts about the AI thing. Tom Nichols went over
Speaker 1: the line. Here the ex congressman Joe Walsh. They now
Speaker 1: see it. I'm not alone. I'm not alone. This did
Speaker 1: not occur to them before, I guess. I mean, there
Speaker 1: aren't a lot of times in life where you have
Speaker 1: to pick the title of a book. The one I
Speaker 1: went with about Trump was Trump is effing crazy. I
Speaker 1: didn't choose that because it marketed well. It doesn't mark
Speaker 1: it well. Christ It's like the Chopper story. Sure it
Speaker 1: was Willie Brown slamming Kamala Harris on a white knuckled
Speaker 1: chopper flight with Trump and San Francisco in twenty eighteen. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: not Willie Brown. Jerry Brown. No, no, not Jerry Brown.
Speaker 1: The other politician, Nate Holden from San Francisco. No, he's
Speaker 1: from Los Angeles. And the flight wasn't in California, it
Speaker 1: was in Jersey. And no, it wasn't twenty eighteen, it
Speaker 1: was nineteen ninety. And none of them had ever heard
Speaker 1: of Kamala Harris In nineteen ninety. Oh, and Nate is
Speaker 1: like my height and Trump's height, and Willy is like
Speaker 1: five foot six inches tall. Other than that, just another
Speaker 1: gold standard take it to the bank, Trump's stable genius recollection.
Speaker 1: I mean, do these things have any thing in common?
Speaker 1: Probably not, except if there is the proverbial run on
Speaker 1: the honesty bank where suddenly everything Trump does flying in
Speaker 1: Epstein's plane over the weekend. Oh wait, Epstein's been dead
Speaker 1: five years, five years last week. Epstein probably has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with that plane. Now, I'm just saying, but
Speaker 1: there's that story. There's the Kamala harris Ai story, the
Speaker 1: Nate Holden nineteen ninety story that became Willie Brown twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: There becomes a moment where everything he does that nobody
Speaker 1: thought to make a big deal of that, Nobody actually thought,
Speaker 1: maybe this guy's just crazy. They're now all looking for
Speaker 1: things to make a big deal about, in which case, oops,
Speaker 1: just say oops and get out. Let me quote Burt
Speaker 1: Lancaster as JJ Hunsecker in the Dark classic the Sweet
Speaker 1: Smell of success, Your dead son, get yourself buried. But
Speaker 1: not to worry. Trump hasn't crashed and burned. He's not
Speaker 1: out of control. He's not crashing in the polls. He's
Speaker 1: not responding to the disastrous consequences of his obsession with
Speaker 1: revenge by stepping on the pedal and being even more
Speaker 1: obsessed with revenge. He's not dead and get yourself buried.
Speaker 1: And the media isn't suddenly looking for things to make
Speaker 1: big deals of. Oh no, he's winning. Don't you see that?
Speaker 1: Look at all those pole that said the Rasmus and Pole.
Speaker 1: Those are they? They made ESPN and then sold it
Speaker 1: for three dollars. They're the geniuses. Everybody else is wrong.
Speaker 1: You'll see it be like nineteen forty eight with Harry True.
Speaker 1: Oh he was a Democrat. Don't use nineteen forty eight. No, No,
Speaker 1: we're winning. Don't you see that? We're winning like the Nazis.
Speaker 1: We're winning in nineteen forty five. At this point, Eric
Speaker 1: Erickson grew up so poor we could only afford the
Speaker 1: one name. The GOP has so devastated. Tim Walls. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised to see Josh Shapiro show up at
Speaker 1: the DNC as their vice presidential pick unquote, which is
Speaker 1: such a wildly inaccurate and desperate thing to write. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised to see somebody else One of those
Speaker 1: patented QAnon body doubles show up at the DNC, claiming
Speaker 1: to be the actual Eric Erickson, as if anybody knows
Speaker 1: who the f Eric Erickson is or you know what
Speaker 1: the f he looks like? Oh he's winning. No, absolutely don't, don't.
Speaker 1: Don't listen to the polls. They're all, they're all, they're all.
Speaker 1: They're all rigged. They're all rigged. Also of interest here
Speaker 1: with the Olympics, over what percentage of the public now
Speaker 1: thinks that if it started right now it could make
Speaker 1: the Olympic team? Would you believe The correct answer is
Speaker 1: about twenty five percent people think they could make the
Speaker 1: Olympic team. And the death of news is usually slow
Speaker 1: and incremental, and don't you know what you got till
Speaker 1: it's gone, except when it is sudden and traumatizing. The
Speaker 1: best all news radio station in history is dead. That's next.
Speaker 1: This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman. Postscripts
Speaker 1: to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions,
Speaker 1: and today the words postscripts and news are actually in
Speaker 1: linked and never more appropriately so, and never more sadly so,
Speaker 1: Dateline New York WCBS News Radio eight eighty formerly WCBS
Speaker 1: News Radio eighty eight, two week shy of its fifty
Speaker 1: seventh anniversary as the lynchpin in the CBS News brand,
Speaker 1: the nerve center of its operation, WCBS News Radio is
Speaker 1: going off the air two weeks from yesterday, the home
Speaker 1: of Charles Osgood and Lou Adler and Jim Donnelly and
Speaker 1: Rita Sands and Ed Ingles and Rich Lamb and Arth
Speaker 1: Athens and Irene Cornell and more recently Wayne Cabot and
Speaker 1: Paul Murnaine and Tom Kaminski and thousands of others of
Speaker 1: the best radio news broadcasters at the best radio news
Speaker 1: operation in history. They are all going off the air.
Speaker 1: The other allnews radio station in New York WIS WINS
Speaker 1: We'll stay on the air. The two started to share
Speaker 1: reporters and some anchors two years ago, which was the
Speaker 1: first sign of the apocalypse. There are many people who
Speaker 1: prefer the WINS style, which dates back to their days
Speaker 1: as bloodthirsty rivals Wions, using the Westinghouse bulletin style. WCBS
Speaker 1: the more thorough style. I have been listening to them
Speaker 1: both since about nineteen seventy and I have met in
Speaker 1: that time many of those people who have preferred wions.
Speaker 1: And when I say many, I mean I have met
Speaker 1: two of them. This is what it's sounden like when
Speaker 1: WCBS signed on on August twenty eighth, nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: From the beginning, the news happened there. Literally that morning,
Speaker 1: August twenty eighth, nineteen sixty seven, the morning of the
Speaker 1: launch of all News CBS Radio, a plane hit their tower.
Speaker 1: I swear.
Speaker 3: This is News Radio eighty eight WCBS FM, New York,
Speaker 3: para shooting disaster on Lake Erie, as many as five
Speaker 3: feared killed as a light plane hits the WCBS radio tower,
Speaker 3: and a wave of terrorism in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: Good morning, this is Charles Osgood, News Radio eighty eight,
Speaker 1: Boats and Plane. That newscast anchored that morning by Charles
Speaker 1: Osgood continues at this hour, and it will continue until
Speaker 1: two weeks from yesterday. It has been occasionally interrupted by
Speaker 1: sporting events and some paid for broadcasts on Sunday mornings.
Speaker 1: Other than that, they have been on the air since
Speaker 1: August twenty eighth, nineteen sixty seven. WCBS was on the
Speaker 1: air for forty four years before it went all news
Speaker 1: will be replaced at eight eighty on the AM dial
Speaker 1: by ESPN Radio in New York. And I say this
Speaker 1: in the following context. When the news director at WCBS
Speaker 1: told me when I was twenty years old that I
Speaker 1: would make it in broadcasting, I began to believe that
Speaker 1: I would make it in broadcasting. I want to tell
Speaker 1: that story in full in a moment when I heard
Speaker 1: my own work on WCBS later the same year. I
Speaker 1: confirmed my own existence when they had an opening for
Speaker 1: a sportscaster the next year at WCBS, and they hired
Speaker 1: somebody else instead. Although I was the runner up, I
Speaker 1: could barely get out of bed for the next week.
Speaker 1: When I began to work on the sister station of WCBS,
Speaker 1: the one in Los Angeles KNX News Radio, at age
Speaker 1: twenty six, I grew about an inch taller. I sometimes
Speaker 1: would mention KNX before I mentioned the TV station of
Speaker 1: which I happened to be sports director and paid half
Speaker 1: a million dollars. And when ESPN bought a station in
Speaker 1: New York in two thousand and one, the first person
Speaker 1: they approached to be the primary host for that station
Speaker 1: was me. I had to sign a non disclosure agreement
Speaker 1: just to talk about it with them. So I've had
Speaker 1: a lot invested over the years in WCBS and WIS
Speaker 1: and ESPN Radio, and WIS outliving WCBS and WCBS to
Speaker 1: be replaced by ESPN Radio. It's like the war of
Speaker 1: Coke versus Pepsi finally ending and the winner turning out
Speaker 1: to be RC Cola diet r c Cola. They're all
Speaker 1: gone now, or they will be WNW, the unstoppable owner
Speaker 1: of the big band market. Here WABC, the Beatles station WOOR,
Speaker 1: which ran live daily shows by Bob Elliott and Ray
Speaker 1: Goulding and then one at night from Gene Shephard. They
Speaker 1: might as well have had Thurber working there and now WCBS. No,
Speaker 1: you don't need to all news radio stations in New
Speaker 1: York City. It didn't need them in La. I worked
Speaker 1: for both of them in KFU. B doesn't exist anymore either.
Speaker 1: You don't need them both, just like you don't need
Speaker 1: coke and pepsi, or you don't need AM and FM
Speaker 1: or rock and roll. Yeah, that was the WCBS sounder
Speaker 1: twice an hour, three times an hour. Those notes mean
Speaker 1: news still ahead of us. On this edition of countdown
Speaker 1: as I just referenced a letter from the news director
Speaker 1: at WCBS. The late Lou Adler, sits framed on my wall,
Speaker 1: memorized the way my dad used to keep his first
Speaker 1: architectural license above his drafting table. The letter and the
Speaker 1: future it promised was one thing that I nearly got
Speaker 1: killed on the drive to Ithaca, New York to read
Speaker 1: that letter after my friend's father had taken the snow
Speaker 1: tires off his son's car because it was April, and
Speaker 1: since when did it snow in April? That story is
Speaker 1: nearly as good. It's next in things I promised not
Speaker 1: to tell, along with the Lou Adler letter. First, there
Speaker 1: are still more new idiots to talk about. The daily
Speaker 1: roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects
Speaker 1: specimens who constitute two days worse persons in the world,
Speaker 1: Lebrons worse. Usef Dikeatz, the Turkish Olympic air pistol Olympic medalist.
Speaker 1: You've seen him everybody else wearing these extraordinary form fitting
Speaker 1: outfits to shoot their little guns at the Olympics, some
Speaker 1: wearing sights on their fingers and having one eye forcibly closed.
Speaker 1: And this guy Yusef Dickhetz just sort of stood there
Speaker 1: and went keep the target still boom and want to metal. Well,
Speaker 1: it's all his fault. YouGov did a survey and it
Speaker 1: reports that twenty seven percent of British people now think
Speaker 1: that if they started to train today, they could make
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty eight British Olympic team. Isn't that special?
Speaker 1: Twenty seven percent of everybody in the United Kingdom, including
Speaker 1: everybody who really can't get up to change channels to
Speaker 1: stop watching the Olympics now, they think they could make
Speaker 1: the team if they started doing it now. This is
Speaker 1: the fundamental problem with and the reason for the continuation
Speaker 1: of humanity. No, you're wrong. None of you have a
Speaker 1: chance of making the team. And you're gonna try anyway,
Speaker 1: and one person will and that will be enough for
Speaker 1: another one hundred years of humanity. But listen to this.
Speaker 1: The ten meter air rifle, the shooting competition, fifteen percent
Speaker 1: of Britain's think they can make that team. Thirteen percent
Speaker 1: think they could make the archery team, ten percent believe
Speaker 1: they could make Olympic badminton, nine percent believe they could
Speaker 1: play Olympic table tennis, seven percent believe they could row
Speaker 1: on the Olympic rowing team. Have you ever tried rowing?
Speaker 1: I mean competitive rowing? Have you ever tried to be
Speaker 1: a member of a crew, just to say the collegiate level.
Speaker 1: I went to one practice one day and went five
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning. Are you out of your minds?
Speaker 1: Six percent believe they can make the one hundred meters
Speaker 1: sprint team. Yeah, what's your name? Usain Bolt McGillicuddy cycling.
Speaker 1: Six percent believe they could make a cycling road race
Speaker 1: Olympic team one hundred stoke. Six percent believe they could
Speaker 1: make the Olympic swimming team. Six percent believe they could
Speaker 1: make the Olympic British trampoline team. Five percent believe they
Speaker 1: could make the shot put. Five percent believe they could
Speaker 1: win a spot on the British cycling team. In track
Speaker 1: cycling the sprints, they could go faster than everybody else.
Speaker 1: Five percent believe they could make the equestrian team. Five
Speaker 1: percent fencing five percent Olympic golf, Well, this is universal.
Speaker 1: All golfers think they could make the Olympic team. Five
Speaker 1: percent believe they could make Olympic volleyball. Four percent believe
Speaker 1: they could make the British Olympic basketball team. Four percent
Speaker 1: believe they could make the British Olympic soccer team, which
Speaker 1: is far crazier than the ones who think they could
Speaker 1: make the basketball team. Four percent believe they could make
Speaker 1: the sailing team, the triathlon team, four percent believe they
Speaker 1: could make water polo, three percent believe they could make
Speaker 1: rhythmic gymnastics or artistic gymnastics. Three percent believe they could
Speaker 1: make the diving team. So let's everybody go and stand
Speaker 1: by the pool. To fish these people out of the water,
Speaker 1: you have to be able to swim. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Three percent believe they could make the British Olympic rugby team,
Speaker 1: and three percent believe they could make the Olympic skateboarding team.
Speaker 1: I am flashed back to a day in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: four when I was at Channel five in LA and
Speaker 1: we were carrying the Olympics, and we got the spillover
Speaker 1: phone calls from viewers who didn't know what the hell
Speaker 1: they were watching because it was a Wednesday afternoon and
Speaker 1: the soap operas weren't on, and they wanted to know
Speaker 1: what they were seeing. And one guy called in and said,
Speaker 1: what is this sport you have on? And I looked
Speaker 1: up at the monitor and it was a soccer game.
Speaker 1: The guy had never seen soccer before. This is very interesting.
Speaker 1: How do you try out for this team? Well you don't.
Speaker 1: Those are basically professionals. Oh no, I could do that.
Speaker 1: I can run up and down a field like that
Speaker 1: for sixty minutes. Sure, I could do it all day.
Speaker 1: Where are they playing this match? And I said, it's
Speaker 1: at the Rose Bowl and pass Adena, California. And the
Speaker 1: guy said, what part of Boston is that? Is it
Speaker 1: on the tee? He was not making this up. But
Speaker 1: the one I don't understand is I understand that the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom has not had a lot of success in
Speaker 1: international football recently, but four percent of people in Great
Speaker 1: Britain believe they could make the soccer team that would
Speaker 1: represent the UK in the twenty twenty Olympics if they
Speaker 1: started trying. Now. The key thing in all this is
Speaker 1: this includes all the people who will turn forty nine
Speaker 1: four years from now or thirty nine four years from now,
Speaker 1: and now fifteen percent because of this, one guy from
Speaker 1: Turkey think they can make the air rifle competition. Ald Stell,
Speaker 1: Ald Stell, you ever used a gun before. No, you're
Speaker 1: supposed to point the hole out towards the target. No kidden,
Speaker 1: no Kiddenovna. The runner up, the worser Chris las Savita
Speaker 1: Trump simp. You will recall he was behind the swift
Speaker 1: boating of John Kerry during the two thousand and four campaign.
Speaker 1: He tweeted or somebody else tweeted a criticism of the
Speaker 1: lies of the two thousand and four swift boat campaign,
Speaker 1: which was designed to prove that John Kerry, during his
Speaker 1: service in Vietnam, when he won his medals during everybody
Speaker 1: getting around him, around him getting killed, didn't deserve any
Speaker 1: of those medals, and therefore should be defeated for the
Speaker 1: presidency by George W. Stay at home, fly a plane
Speaker 1: in Texas Bush. Yes, Chris Losovita was the guy in
Speaker 1: charge of that. Rick Losovita was a CBS sports producer,
Speaker 1: almost as big a jackass, but not quite. Chris Losovita
Speaker 1: is now on the course the Trump campaign, basically the
Speaker 1: co manager. He responded to this criticism by tweeting, swift
Speaker 1: boat veterans for truth were never disproven. Reply to that, yes,
Speaker 1: it was disproven. I was chief strategist for Bush Cheney
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, and this, the swift boat attack
Speaker 1: was nearly all lies. That's from Matt Dowd. I believe
Speaker 1: Chris Losovita was hoisted or hoist on his own petard.
Speaker 1: Of course los Aveta was hoist on his own petard
Speaker 1: into his own hell. The trump Ists have already landed
Speaker 1: on him and Pat Semral's daughter Susie Susie Wiles as
Speaker 1: the reason Trump has already lost the election, even though
Speaker 1: it's November and we're just in August. Now he's been attacked,
Speaker 1: this Lasavita has by everybody from James Carville to Nick Fuentes.
Speaker 1: You have to feel sorry for krit now you don't fham.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, the winner a woman named Michelle Morrow.
Speaker 1: Why do we have to play this election like it
Speaker 1: will be decided by one point each in fifty different
Speaker 1: states because of the Michelle Morrows of this world. It's
Speaker 1: not just that Trump has to be beaten. His gang
Speaker 1: has to be metaphorically chased down like they were the Clantons.
Speaker 1: And this is Wyatt earp Day. Who is Michelle Morrow.
Speaker 1: She is the Republican candidate to run the public schools
Speaker 1: in North Carolina, and she is one hundred percent fascist,
Speaker 1: kill everybody else nuts you think they're eight hundred pound
Speaker 1: candidate for governor who thinks his opponent needs killing is
Speaker 1: a bad guy. This is Michelle Morrow, as CNN found
Speaker 1: on Facebook, and she recorded this on the night of
Speaker 1: January sixth, twenty twenty one. Oh, Michelle, it's your turn
Speaker 1: to be crazy.
Speaker 4: President Trump is still president until the twentieth so he
Speaker 4: can still invoke the Executive Order against voter fraud. And
Speaker 4: now he has every player that participated in his sights
Speaker 4: and they can all be arrested for treason. And if
Speaker 4: the police won't do it, and the Department of Justice
Speaker 4: won't do it, then he will have to enact the
Speaker 4: Insurrection Act, in which case the Insurrection Act completely puts
Speaker 4: the Constitution to the side and says now the military rules.
Speaker 4: All okay, And let me tell you President Trump. President
Speaker 4: Trump has the military on his side because the military
Speaker 4: and many leaders in the military who love this nation
Speaker 4: and who love our constitution, and who have put their
Speaker 4: life on the line to protect the freedoms of people
Speaker 4: in the United States that they will never meet, they
Speaker 4: chose President Trump to be their candidate. So as long
Speaker 4: as he invokes the Insurrection Act, before the inauguration. Then
Speaker 4: he's going to be reinaugurated. He's going to be put.
Speaker 1: Back in as our grandfather is and great grandfather said
Speaker 1: during World War Two? Why we fight Michelle Morrow, who
Speaker 1: thinks that the military should take over the government to
Speaker 1: make sure Trump becomes president again. And guess what I'm thinking.
Speaker 1: She hasn't repudiated that point of view. Maybe we could
Speaker 1: have just a little bit of an insurrection Act by
Speaker 1: President Biden just directed at her. We're going to invoke
Speaker 1: the Insurrection Act for the next thirty five seconds while
Speaker 1: we lock her up and she dies in prison. Two. Michelle,
Speaker 1: we lost that January sixth, but we're going to win
Speaker 1: the next one, in which the victims are your children. Morrow,
Speaker 1: Republican candidate to run public schools in North Carolina and
Speaker 1: today's worst person in the world. This is the story,
Speaker 1: and it is a long one of the Adler Letter
Speaker 1: and the hell through which I had to go just
Speaker 1: to read it. The Adler Letter falling into my hands
Speaker 1: on the night of Sunday, April eight, nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: was like the PostScript to a breathless, five hundred page
Speaker 1: novel that turns out to be a million times, more exciting,
Speaker 1: more interesting, and more important than any of those five
Speaker 1: hundred pages or the five hundred pages combined. We had
Speaker 1: driven by that point around nine or ten hours. I
Speaker 1: do not believe I ever actually expected to die on
Speaker 1: the trip, but I was at least a dozen times
Speaker 1: absolutely convinced that George and I would wind up in
Speaker 1: the hospital. He and I were college seniors, gone home
Speaker 1: to see the defending two time world champion New York
Speaker 1: Yankees opened the nineteen seventy nine baseball season, and then
Speaker 1: back on the road for the four and a half
Speaker 1: hour trip from the parking garage at Yankee Stadium to
Speaker 1: the rural wilds of Ithaca, New York. We had done
Speaker 1: this countless times, but I did not know, as I
Speaker 1: got out of my dad's car and later on into
Speaker 1: George's that this trip had two previously unimaginable components. First,
Speaker 1: at that hour, the Adler letter had already been sitting
Speaker 1: in my mailbox at my apartment at two hundred and
Speaker 1: seven Delaware Avenue at the New York for at least
Speaker 1: one day, maybe two, and I did not know the
Speaker 1: other thing, and only found it out as George told
Speaker 1: me about it at the ball game. His father had
Speaker 1: yelled towards him as George backed out of the driveway
Speaker 1: that morning, George, there's rain in the forecast. Drive carefully,
Speaker 1: remember I took off your snow tires because it's spring now.
Speaker 1: The midpoint of the trip to my school, Cornell and
Speaker 1: his Ethaca College, more or less, was a McDonald's restaurant
Speaker 1: in Liberty, New York. And we stopped there and got
Speaker 1: a late lunch or an early dinner. And I was
Speaker 1: sitting facing the window and George was sitting facing the
Speaker 1: ca outer And as we ate and mumbled, I said, George,
Speaker 1: you have a really bad case of dan drift or
Speaker 1: did it just start really snowing? George wheeled around to
Speaker 1: look out the window. Uh oh. We wrapped up our
Speaker 1: burgers and took them with us and literally ran to
Speaker 1: the car my father and his goddamn snow tire obsession.
Speaker 1: George shouted. Within an hour on the outskirts of Binghamton,
Speaker 1: New York, three or four inches of snow had reduced
Speaker 1: speed to just above single digits and visibility to next
Speaker 1: to nothing. George was a meticulously good driver, didn't matter.
Speaker 1: We spun out a full three sixty loop the loop.
Speaker 1: We're going north. Oops, we're going west and oncoming traffic. Oops,
Speaker 1: we're going south into the cars behind us. Oops, we're
Speaker 1: going east into the ditch next to the highway. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: we're going north again. I think we spun out six
Speaker 1: or seven times on the highway alone before we got
Speaker 1: to Binghamton. There was some sola scenes seeing other cars
Speaker 1: in both directions doing exactly the same thing, and concluding
Speaker 1: that George's father could not have had the time to
Speaker 1: remove all their snow tires too. We were not far
Speaker 1: north of Binghamton, still skidding, still spinning, George swearing NonStop.
Speaker 1: When he interrupted himself long enough to ask me what
Speaker 1: time it was, I had to hold my watch up
Speaker 1: to the car window to get brief flashes of illumination
Speaker 1: from the highway lights. A little after seven, we skid
Speaker 1: it again. George swore loudly put the Ranger game on.
Speaker 1: I'd do it myself, but we skid it again. By now,
Speaker 1: I was getting kind of used to it. I turned
Speaker 1: the radio literally before George regained control of the steering.
Speaker 1: I found the Rangers station, the one in New York. Wnaw.
Speaker 1: If you had told me that night that a little
Speaker 1: over a year later, I would be broadcasting on WNW.
Speaker 1: My first thought would have been, so we don't get
Speaker 1: killed tonight because George's father took off the snow tires.
Speaker 1: That's nice. Oh and I work there and I'm not
Speaker 1: a ghost. If you told me that night that the
Speaker 1: aper letter was waiting for me back in my snow
Speaker 1: covered mailbox in Ithaca, I might have pressed George to
Speaker 1: go faster, and they might never have even found our bodies.
Speaker 1: The storm, as storms often did in those long gone days,
Speaker 1: somehow boosted the AM radio signal from New York, and
Speaker 1: though we were two hundred miles away from the transmitter,
Speaker 1: Marv Albert and the WAW Rangers broadcast was clear as
Speaker 1: a bell. The traction even seemed to get a little better,
Speaker 1: But we both knew the ordeal that lay ahead. The
Speaker 1: exit from the highway at Whitney Point. It amazed us,
Speaker 1: as it amazes the students there now, as it must
Speaker 1: have amazed the students who went there a century ago.
Speaker 1: A century and a half ago. That Cornell University, which
Speaker 1: I attended at Ithaca College, which George attended, were both
Speaker 1: an hour's drive away from the nearest highway There was
Speaker 1: in fact, no access to at the New York by
Speaker 1: anything more than a two lane road. It was legendary
Speaker 1: on the Cornell campus that old Ezra Cornell, the barely
Speaker 1: literate railroad tie preservative tycoon of the nineteenth century, decided
Speaker 1: to give away nearly all of his fortune, which today
Speaker 1: would have been at least a billion dollars. And he
Speaker 1: told a friend he was going to open a university
Speaker 1: where anyone can study anything. His friend reacted in horror,
Speaker 1: They will stampede the place. Ezra Cornell laughed, Wait, you
Speaker 1: see where I put it. Ezra Cornell's little geographical joke
Speaker 1: was still vividly alive one hundred and ten odd years later.
Speaker 1: The easiest of the roots to his university was the
Speaker 1: one that took you from Ithaca to Whitney Point. Whitney
Speaker 1: Point the capital of the metroplex there Whitney Point, Lyle
Speaker 1: and Center Lyle, also known as the Calcutta of Broome County,
Speaker 1: where nearly three thousand people live atop each other in
Speaker 1: conditions so crowded that every person barely has his own
Speaker 1: square mile. Once you got off at Whitney Point, you
Speaker 1: were at the mercies of route seventy nine, where if
Speaker 1: traffic were light or the driver's adroit you might make
Speaker 1: it back to it again in thirty minutes, but if
Speaker 1: you got stuck behind somebody, it could be an hour
Speaker 1: or two. Or if there was an April blizzard and
Speaker 1: George's father had taken off your snow tires, it could
Speaker 1: take you longer than it took Antarctic explorers to reach
Speaker 1: the South Pole, and you'd see more snow and ice
Speaker 1: than they did. I believe George and I skidded making
Speaker 1: the left turn off the highway, but he managed to
Speaker 1: stay on the road. The radio signal was not quite
Speaker 1: as fortunate. Within minutes of leaving the highway, WNEW began
Speaker 1: to compete for space on George's car radio, with some
Speaker 1: audible noise that the radio could suddenly pick up from
Speaker 1: his turn signals, Make a right, and Marv Albert was
Speaker 1: being drowned out by allowed Ejan Vickers crossed click pop
Speaker 1: plan and slashes click click click. Within minutes after the
Speaker 1: first spin out on Route seventy nine, mercifully with literally
Speaker 1: no other cars on the road, the woo woos arrived.
Speaker 1: We never figured out what they were, but they waxed
Speaker 1: and waned so slowly that at first I asked George
Speaker 1: why Ranger fans at Madison Square Garden were chanting woo
Speaker 1: woo during the game. George was too busy swearing to answer.
Speaker 1: The snow was now horizontal, and as it danced towards
Speaker 1: us in George's headlights, it was hypnotic, and the Ranger
Speaker 1: broadcast now sounded like this vickers crossly woo woo, woooo
Speaker 1: pok plan slashes click click, click, click, click, damn it
Speaker 1: all to hell, wooooo, tigrandson holds in the same woo woo,
Speaker 1: son of a bench. The trip from Whitney Point had
Speaker 1: taken well over an hour, and we were not halfway
Speaker 1: there yet when the inevitable happened. George kept a stay
Speaker 1: at he slow paced ten or fifteen miles an hour tops.
Speaker 1: He really was a great driver. He did not accelerate,
Speaker 1: he did not turn, yet all of a moment, his
Speaker 1: green nineteen seventy Dodge Dark decided to make an abrupt
Speaker 1: left at about a forty five degree angle. We were
Speaker 1: off the road in seconds and headed for an unscheduled
Speaker 1: visit to the front porch of a farmer's house that
Speaker 1: had to have been sent back at least two hundred
Speaker 1: feet from the road here. Finally, the heavy snow worked
Speaker 1: to our advantage. It slowed us, then it stopped us
Speaker 1: just two or three feet before we would have plowed
Speaker 1: into this guy's house. However, since we were in Richford,
Speaker 1: New York, birthplace of John Rockefeller, by the way, or
Speaker 1: we were in Caroline or Caroline Center or Slaterville Springs,
Speaker 1: or wherever the hell we were, the homeowner emerged bearing
Speaker 1: not a gun nor an attitude, but genuine concern. In fact,
Speaker 1: he heard the Ranger game on the radio and asked
Speaker 1: me the score, which is when I noticed, at the
Speaker 1: moment we had left the road, the woo woos had
Speaker 1: stopped and the waw signal was as good as it
Speaker 1: must have been in Madison Square Garden in New York.
Speaker 1: The farmer helped us push the car back onto Route
Speaker 1: seventy nine, and as we got in he went and said, uh,
Speaker 1: wear are you snow tires? George started to swear again.
Speaker 1: I took over and explained about George's father, never been
Speaker 1: up here has he? George started the car back up
Speaker 1: and now drove even slower. Within a minute, the woo
Speaker 1: woos were back marv Alvert Imsel Messina. Woo Woo woo
Speaker 1: where the Rangers lead.
Speaker 2: Woo woo woo.
Speaker 1: We got there finally. George was actually going to try
Speaker 1: to drive up the hill that led to the other
Speaker 1: hill that led to the Delaware Avenue hill where my
Speaker 1: apartment was. Calculating that I had pressed my luck sufficiently,
Speaker 1: I told him just let me out at East State
Speaker 1: and Mitchell and I'd make it from there on foot. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: George's father had not removed the sure grip souls from
Speaker 1: my winter boots. I actually went to my radio station first.
Speaker 1: It was literally a two minute walk from there to
Speaker 1: my apartment. I lingered at WVBR for fifteen or twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: and then hiked back. The Rangers had won their game
Speaker 1: from the station I had called George's apartment and he
Speaker 1: had made it back there, and I took my first
Speaker 1: deep breath since the McDonald's in Liberty. Then I reflected
Speaker 1: that it was only six hours until my next class,
Speaker 1: and guess what I was going to cut. I stopped
Speaker 1: off the snow on my porch at two hundred and
Speaker 1: seven Delaware Avenue and I opened the door and I
Speaker 1: dumped my bag inside, and then I reached into the
Speaker 1: mailbox and I saw it immediately the return address Adler WCBS,
Speaker 1: CBS Radio, the Division of CBS, Inc. Fifty one West
Speaker 1: fifty two Street, New York, New York, one zero zero
Speaker 1: one to nine two nine seven five four three two one.
Speaker 1: Lou Adler was radio news in New York City in
Speaker 1: April nineteen seventy nine. And this was April nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: I could barely breathe the Adler letter. What was in
Speaker 1: the Adler letter? Which explains why five decades later, I
Speaker 1: know it by heart and can tell you exactly where
Speaker 1: it is at the moment. That's next. This is Countdown,
Speaker 1: resuming the number one story on the Countdown and the
Speaker 1: several lifetimes contained. On Sunday, April eighth, nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: I survived nine or ten eight hundred hour drive in
Speaker 1: a blizzard, right after my friend's dad had helpfully removed
Speaker 1: the snow tires from my friend's car. I had lived
Speaker 1: to resume my desperate bid to graduate college in two
Speaker 1: months and get a job somewhere in radio in three months,
Speaker 1: and against all odds, amid all the snow and mess.
Speaker 1: There was a letter waiting for me at my apartment
Speaker 1: in silent snow inundated Ithaca, New York, A letter from
Speaker 1: Lou Adler, the news director of the leading all news
Speaker 1: station in the United States of America. Lou Adler had
Speaker 1: begun on WCBS the year I was born. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, the station went all news, and it immediately
Speaker 1: became the best all news station in the country. Lou
Speaker 1: Adler co anchored the mornings, and eight years earlier he
Speaker 1: had become the station's news director. He was the best.
Speaker 1: His co anchor, Jim Donnelly, was the best. His sportscaster
Speaker 1: at Engles was the best. His reporters were the best.
Speaker 1: His weatherman was the best. His traffic guys were the best.
Speaker 1: His jingles were the best. I listened daily in high school,
Speaker 1: and when I was home from college, I did not
Speaker 1: take literal notes on, only mental ones. My college graduation,
Speaker 1: if I made it, was seven weeks away. I had
Speaker 1: never worked on television in any form, but I had
Speaker 1: been on radio two or three thousand times by then,
Speaker 1: and I thought I was pretty good at it. In
Speaker 1: the preceding months, I had flooded every radio station in
Speaker 1: every major market in the Northeast. With a demo tape
Speaker 1: and a resume, I figured I might as well start
Speaker 1: in my home of New York and not eliminate a
Speaker 1: potential job, no matter how long a long shot it
Speaker 1: might have been. If I wasn't good enough to work there,
Speaker 1: I concluded I should let the people who ran New
Speaker 1: York's radio stations decide that, since that's what they were
Speaker 1: paid to do. To this point, they had decided that
Speaker 1: by not responding. I got a few nibbles from some
Speaker 1: of the smaller stations, but as April eighth turned to
Speaker 1: April ninth, I had no job prospects. Other friends were
Speaker 1: getting offers in Waterbury, Connecticut, and Laconia, New Hampshire, thought
Speaker 1: of which and nothing against either of those cities filled
Speaker 1: me with terror. And now, after this ordeal by snow
Speaker 1: and without snow tires, after the wnw wooo's and Georgia's
Speaker 1: father's near fatal decision to remove those winter tires, here
Speaker 1: in my hand was a letter from the man who was,
Speaker 1: to my mind, the best radio newscaster I had ever heard.
Speaker 1: Obviously it would be a rejection, but even in that moment,
Speaker 1: even at my age twenty years two months and change.
Speaker 1: I was awe struck not only that Lou Adler had replied,
Speaker 1: but that he alone, of all I had written to,
Speaker 1: he had been the one who replied. I believe I
Speaker 1: did not remove my parka before opening the envelope. I
Speaker 1: did put on one lamp in my apartment, and I
Speaker 1: read WCBS. CBS Radio, a division of CBS Inc. Fifty
Speaker 1: one West fifty two Street, New York, New York, one
Speaker 1: zero zero one nine two one two nine seventy five
Speaker 1: four three two one April third, nineteen seventy nine, mister
Speaker 1: Keith Olderman, two hundred seven Delaware Avenue, Etica, New York,
Speaker 1: one four eight five. Oh, dear mister Olderman. This will
Speaker 1: reply to your letter of March twenty seventh, with which
Speaker 1: you included a tape of your sports work on WVBRFM.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's hard to know what a man can do
Speaker 1: by listening to a brief tape. I stopped wait a man,
Speaker 1: which oh me, I'm just a kid. Sometimes it's hard
Speaker 1: to know what a man can do by listening to
Speaker 1: a brief tape. But I must tell you I was
Speaker 1: excited by what I heard of yours. I think you
Speaker 1: have exceptional talent and poise considering your age and experience.
Speaker 1: You read well, and you write well, and you know
Speaker 1: how to use tape. If the short tape is truly
Speaker 1: representative of what you can do, and if your knowledge
Speaker 1: of sports is broad, and if you can perform under
Speaker 1: pressure well, then I feel you have an excellent future
Speaker 1: in this industry. By this point, my heart was beating
Speaker 1: so furiously I could hear it. I was this close
Speaker 1: to hearing it make the woo woo sound. I think
Speaker 1: it might be a good idea for us to meet.
Speaker 1: Let me know when you can make it to New York.
Speaker 1: I have nothing here for you, and I know of
Speaker 1: nothing solid. But if I feel as strongly about your
Speaker 1: potential after we meet as I do now, a meeting
Speaker 1: certainly could do you no harm. Sincerely, Lewis c Adler,
Speaker 1: Director News, Operations and Programs LCA slash Peepe George, I
Speaker 1: screamed into the phone. Can we drive back to the
Speaker 1: city right now? He swore. I read George the letter.
Speaker 1: He paused, No, we shouldn't go tonight. You're not going
Speaker 1: to see him tomorrow. Wait till you get your appointment.
Speaker 1: But Jesus. This is like the manager of the Yankees
Speaker 1: asking you to stop by the stadium and bring your
Speaker 1: glove and bat, just in case I think I got
Speaker 1: to sleep at sunrise. I had read the Adler letter
Speaker 1: twenty or thirty times, and not until the fifteenth or
Speaker 1: so did I stop expecting it to have turned back
Speaker 1: into some courteous form letter rejection. Badly xeroxyton slightly offsetter.
Speaker 1: Slowly it dawned on me that my own assessment of
Speaker 1: my radio skills were not predicated on ego or even
Speaker 1: the context of what else I could hear in Ithaca,
Speaker 1: which was then the three hundred and fifty first largest
Speaker 1: radio market in the country. Good but still three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty first. I cannot now describe the sense of validation,
Speaker 1: except to say that I have seriously considered not taking
Speaker 1: Lou Adler up on his offer to meet him at
Speaker 1: CBS World Headquarters, black Rock itself, where Bill Paley would
Speaker 1: be working upstairs, because short of offering me a job,
Speaker 1: there really was no chance mister Adler could do or
Speaker 1: say anything more that could make me feel better or
Speaker 1: more confident that my dream of becoming a sportscaster would
Speaker 1: not lead me to starvation or to Laconia, New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: In fact, in person, Lou Adler found more things to say.
Speaker 1: If I had an opening for a sportscaster right now,
Speaker 1: I would seriously consider you for it. I would hesitate
Speaker 1: because of your age and your lack of practical experience,
Speaker 1: and then I'd probably do it anyway. He was as
Speaker 1: warm and supportive and informal as his letter had been,
Speaker 1: structured and serious and tempered. Let me take you on
Speaker 1: a tour. We saw the live studios, the production studios,
Speaker 1: the writer's area. I wasn't just speechless again, I was breathless.
Speaker 1: And you should probably recognize this man by voice, if
Speaker 1: not by sight. Keith Olderman. Meet our sports director. Ed Engles, ed,
Speaker 1: this is Keith. This is the fellow with the tape.
Speaker 1: Ed Engles took a moment that his eyes widened. Hi,
Speaker 1: what a tape, Jesus, Lou, don't tell me you've hired him?
Speaker 1: Did you fire me? I must, ad meant. I thought
Speaker 1: for a second it might have happened. I did not
Speaker 1: shrink entirely from that fantasy. Lou Adler laughed, No, Eddie.
Speaker 1: Then he paused, it was irresistible, not yet we went
Speaker 1: back to Lou Adweer's office. Have you got any job prospects?
Speaker 1: I explained that a month earlier, thanks to a chain
Speaker 1: of recommendations that stretched from my internship at Channel five
Speaker 1: Television the year before through a young ABC sports executive
Speaker 1: named Bob Eiger. I think it was to a friend
Speaker 1: of a friend of a friend of a friend. I
Speaker 1: had met everybody at the radio network of United Press International,
Speaker 1: and I was supposed to go back and see them
Speaker 1: about working their freelance as summer vacation relief for the
Speaker 1: year ahead in sports and in news. Oh, that would
Speaker 1: be ideal for you, Lou Adwer said. It's a tough
Speaker 1: place to work. They don't pay well at UPI, but
Speaker 1: it's here in the city, and every other radio station
Speaker 1: in this country will hear you on the feed. That's
Speaker 1: where we hired ed from ed Ingles. So if we
Speaker 1: have an opening, he smiled broadly, can poach you and
Speaker 1: get you here in less than two weeks? Can I?
Speaker 1: Mister Adler then suggested that CBS station in Atlanta would
Speaker 1: be needing a sportscaster in a few months. I'll stay
Speaker 1: on top of that. They already have a copy of
Speaker 1: your tape. I hope you don't mind. I made several
Speaker 1: copies of your tape. If UPI does not work out,
Speaker 1: I am confident you will be offered a job in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and maybe quite a few other jobs. I hope I've
Speaker 1: been of some help. Stay in touch. It's one of
Speaker 1: the privileges of this job to be able to help.
Speaker 1: But frankly, you're not going to need that much help.
Speaker 1: I may have taken the train back to my folks house,
Speaker 1: or I may have just walked the twenty miles or floated.
Speaker 1: The UPI job worked out full time. Two months later,
Speaker 1: at the first game I covered for money, I walked
Speaker 1: into the press box at Shay Stadium and there was
Speaker 1: ed ingles. Thank god you went to UPI. The way
Speaker 1: Adler went on about you, I seriously wondered if he
Speaker 1: was planning to bring you in and kick me out.
Speaker 1: The Atlanta offer Lou Adler arranged came I turned it down.
Speaker 1: About a year later, I got a call from Adler's
Speaker 1: assistant saying they were going to need a new afternoon
Speaker 1: sportscaster at WCBS and would I send a new tape.
Speaker 1: But by that fall, when the job opened, Lou Adler
Speaker 1: was leaving WCBS to become news director and vice president
Speaker 1: of another New York radio station, wor his successor would
Speaker 1: choose somebody else for the job. Just as I heard
Speaker 1: from the people who ran the radio network that the
Speaker 1: WR folks had started the year before, it was not
Speaker 1: coincidental Lou Adler had sent these people starting this new
Speaker 1: network my tape there is inevitably from the distant future
Speaker 1: a punchline. In two thousand and six or two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, when Countdown had become the highest rated cable
Speaker 1: news program that wasn't on Fox, an email appeared in
Speaker 1: my inbox. I could not believe the name of the sender,
Speaker 1: Lou Adler. He began just as formally as he had
Speaker 1: had in nineteen seventy nine. He actually felt it was
Speaker 1: necessary to remind me about his letter. He said he
Speaker 1: watched every night, and when he found other viewers of
Speaker 1: the program, he told them the story. Proudly, he said.
Speaker 1: He asked if I remembered. I wrote back, immediately, remembered remembered.
Speaker 1: I told him I still had his letter, and I
Speaker 1: still had the sense of confidence it had given me
Speaker 1: that it was central to my decision to more or
Speaker 1: less give up my sports career at the age of
Speaker 1: thirty eight and try news. And I told him the
Speaker 1: whole driving back to Ithaca and the snow tire story,
Speaker 1: just for fun. Lou wrote back again within minutes. He
Speaker 1: had just retired after running the mass communications program at
Speaker 1: Quinnipiac College, and he said he had had a strong
Speaker 1: sense of his career having been the proverbial punch into
Speaker 1: a pail of water. Now it was my turn to
Speaker 1: reassure him that the people like me who he had
Speaker 1: supported and taught and broadcast to had long since begun
Speaker 1: to support and teach the next generation, and that generation
Speaker 1: was already supporting the one after that. And there would
Speaker 1: be people in this business beginning their careers after both
Speaker 1: of us were dead who would owe a debt of gratitude,
Speaker 1: whether or not they knew it to Lou Adler, as
Speaker 1: I always will. Lou Adler died five years ago at
Speaker 1: the age of eighty eight. There are letters and photos
Speaker 1: in the hallway that leads in from the front door
Speaker 1: of my home. They are from Barack Obama, Bill Clinton,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, and Lou Adler, and now WCBS
Speaker 1: will be off the air in thirteen days, might as
Speaker 1: well shut off CBS News. Well, from my point of view,
Speaker 1: this does seventy five percent of that. Anyway, I've done
Speaker 1: all the damage I can do here, not as much
Speaker 1: as Odissy has. Thank you for listening. Please share this
Speaker 1: pod with somebody who doesn't listen. Maybe we can pick
Speaker 1: up all the CBS listeners. We're up to a total
Speaker 1: audience of a million of a week. Let's go. Brian
Speaker 1: Ray and John Phillip Shaneil the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced,
Speaker 1: and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handling orchestration
Speaker 1: and keyboards, Mister Ray on guitars, bass and drums, and
Speaker 1: it was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and fifty
Speaker 1: musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Speaker 1: Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Alderman theme from
Speaker 1: ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Speaker 1: Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
Speaker 1: My announcer today was speaking of music, my friend Stevie
Speaker 1: van zandt everything else was pretty much my fault, although
Speaker 1: I tend on occasions like this to blame it all
Speaker 1: on lou That's countdown for this the eighty fifth day
Speaker 1: until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the one three
Speaker 1: hundred and fourteenth day since convicted felon dementia j Trump's
Speaker 1: first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
Speaker 1: United States. Use the September eighteenth sentencing hearing. Use the
Speaker 1: mental health system. You've got it. President Biden used presidential
Speaker 1: immunity to stop him from doing it again while we
Speaker 1: still can. And anti Semitic, anti immigration MAGA Republicans, please
Speaker 1: stop shooting at Trump. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Bulletins as the news requires until the next one. I'm
Speaker 1: Keith Oldruman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.