Part Two: The Ballad of Wally George

Robert is joined by Tom Reimann to discuss Wally George.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
What what Robert Evans, this has been Behind the Bastards
a podcast opened? Are we are? Is that it was
the whole episode wide. You want to try you want
to try again. We don't do second takes. The amateur

(00:23):
operation you run, you might do things like second takes
and proper introduction, but here we just go what's a
tonally and then trail off for several seconds of dead
air like the pros oh Man, that's called cinema veritate. Tom,

(00:45):
That's how that works. I know what that term meets. What?
What is? This? Is? This show? What's happening? This is
Behind the Bastards Episode two on our episode about the
men who built the right wing media land Escape and
are consequently ratcheting our world ever closer to calamity. Tom Ryan,

(01:07):
Robert is your name is of all the Rymans I know,
certainly the thomast and as the riemannist of the Toms
that I know? Um, Tom, you are co founder co
host of the game Fully Unemployed podcast network, which people
patreon you right for Collider, and you are about to
listen to a lot of really really unpleasant clips of

(01:28):
people that are just not very nice. I woke up
this morning and I was thinking, Man, I hope before
the sun sets on this day, I get to hear
a bunch of ship heads have terrible opinions. Tom, I
heard your prayers. I am here to answer them. I
texted them to you. Yeah, and it's they're They're usually

(01:53):
a lot more erotic than this, But I'll take it, Tom.
It would take years, by some kind. It's more than
a decade before Joe Pine would have a true successor.
He was so far ahead of his time that it
was not until the nineteen eighties he died in nineteen
seventy that the media landscape was truly ready for someone
to pick up the torch seems like the wrong word,

(02:16):
like the word yeah yeah. The first man to follow
in his wake was Wally George. Have you heard of
Wally George? No? And I usually I'm usually pretty up
on my wallis, so yeah, no. No, he's not of
all the Walies, but one of the most consequential of
the Wallies. So. George Walter Perch was born on December fourth,

(02:41):
nineteen thirty one, in Oakland, California. His father owned a
small shipping company. His mother, Eugenia, had been a vaudeville
performer and a child actress in Hollywood. She'd started Western's
opposite cowboy actors whose names have apparently been forgotten to
time because they were not Val Kilmer and Tombstone so
who gives a ship? Wally's and most of his childhood
and Sam Mateo. But when he was in high school

(03:03):
his parents divorced and his mother moved to Hollywood where
he finished his education. Tom who is the who is
the who was the sheriff in Deadwood? Timothy the old fan? Yeah,
Timothy Oilefant. That's the other one. That's the other cowboy,
Val Kilmer, Timothy Oilefant. That's all those are the only
Sam Elliott, Sam Elliott. Yeah, of course Sam Elliott. So, um,

(03:24):
you're talking about Sam Elliott in in the Hunt for
Red October because he's honorarily a cowboy, even though he
never got to live out his Montana dreams. Right. Yeah,
that's it. That's Sam Neil. That's Sam Neil. Esa Christ,
Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, don't do that very different extremely now.
I'll say this, I'll bet Sam Elliott appreciates ducks too.
Sam's a duck. That's his best friend. I bet Sam

(03:46):
Elliott has has loved a duck or two in his life,
cared for a duck. He looked, those eyes looked like
a duck is brought at twinkleton or twice. Yeah, Ben,
you can't smile the way Sam Elliott smiles unless you've
been friendly with the duck. There's a duck in that life.
I can tell it's a duck in that man's heart
was somewhere in there. So Wally spends most of his

(04:09):
childhood in San Mateo. But when he's in high school,
his parents divorce, and that's not common in the forties, Right,
It's got to be a great marriage for that to
be happening in the forties. Alternatively, maybe it's the two
parents who are uncommonly aware of how bad a toxic
union can be for a kid. I don't really know
what the case was. I'm going to guess it was

(04:29):
a really unpleasant situation, judging by the probably, I don't think.
I don't think no fault divorces exist yet existed yet
in California. So you had to like sue for like
a reason. Yeah, you had to fistfight a judge to
get that fight. Yeah. Um, so his mother moves to Hollywood,
where he finishes his education. He was immediately drawn to

(04:51):
the entertainment industry, obviously his family's involved in it. Um.
At age fourteen, he gets a gig working as a
DJ and an AM radio station in Glendale. Prior to this,
Wally had been a stutterer, just like Joe Pine. I
do find that interesting. Both these guys are dudes who
stutter when their kids. Um. He credits his first radio
gig with curing him. He kind of like overcomes his

(05:13):
speech impediment on the job, um, which I did with
carpal tunnel syndrome. Now. He subsequently worked at bit gigs
at other local radio stations. He held ambitions to write
for television, and in his early twenties he did write
one episode if the TV show Bonanza. Okay, alrighte, good work.
That's a real TV show. After we listen, after we

(05:35):
listen to this, after we record this, I'm gonna have
to go watch that Episode's gonna see if anything pops
out to me if there's anything problematic about Wally George's
episode of Bonanza? Is there anything problematic about an episode
of Bonanza? That's the one. It's the one Bonanza episode
that in that in the middle has a seven minute
rant about Martin Luther King Jr. So, Wally got hit

(06:00):
first radio show, the Wally George Show on Katie Y
n f M in Inglewood. I was trying to do
my radio voice for that one came across. Yeah, thank you, Tom.
I love how not imaginative any of these people are.
It's always either just the My Name Show or the
My Name Report or the my Name file. That's the

(06:21):
only thing they have. Yeah, I think there's a degree
of it that's just like, look, you're gonna move, as
we we saw with Joe Pine. It's not uncommon. It's
just been like a year or less. At most of
the places you work. You're moving around all the time.
You're trying to build brand recognition. So at least you
want people to like know your name. You know um,
And to be fair, everybody doesn't. They don't say let's
watch tonight, so the Tonight Show. They say, let's watch Carson,

(06:42):
let's watch let's watch Harrison, let's watch Leno, let's watch
Uh No, there's no one else anyone. Yeah, that's it.
It's done now. Yeah, I mean, I have no animosity
towards Stephen Colbert, but my god, late night TV is
just a horrible idea. Um, we should know that, we
should accept it. It's it's it's it needs to go.

(07:02):
Craig Ferguson needs to be allowed to take it out
behind a barn and shoot it. That that's who should
do it. Craig crying like the boy and old yellers
and loads of shotgun's shotgun and did you so? He

(07:24):
gets his first show in nineteen sixty nine, which is
the year before Joe Pine dies. Um, and yeah, he
goes through, you know, he does, like they all do.
He runs through like a series of shows on different networks.
He produces and co hosts talk radio programs one with
l A's then mayor Sam Yourty for like nearly a decade. Um,
so he's in like talk radio for a while, but
kind of a respectable turn of talk radio. Um. He

(07:46):
starts his own radio show and it does well enough
that he's able to Uh. In nineteen seventy nine, he
starts his own talk radio show again. Um, and this
one does well enough that he's able to launch his
own TV show off of it, called hot Seat, which
first airs in nineteen eighty three. And an independent radio
station in Anaheim, California. Three is a year before Rush

(08:06):
Limboss started his first political radio show UM and a
decade before the first episode of the Jerry Springer Show.
In nineteen Hot Seat with Wally George would include elements
from both of these later shows. From an article in
Timeline Quote, George had a way of rilling even the
most collected and intelligent guests. In his first year, for instance,
George invited then a c l U lawyer and later

(08:27):
journalist Jeff Cohen to talk about police brutality and surveillance
of lawful, politically motivated organizations. At first, Cohen's responses to
questions like why do you want to handcuff the police
department from catching criminals seemed prepared, choreographed, But after a
few minutes the interview intensifies. Both raised their voices, the
audience clatters and gesticulates. George interjects with an age old challenge,

(08:47):
I have nothing to hide, so what do I care
if police watch me? The audience braise with joy. But
for all his cruel, bravado and personal attacks, George consistently
stumbled when the tables were turned. His ideology was full
of contradictions. In one episode, he spits, I say, Martin
Luther King does not deserve a national holiday in his name.
There are many more Americans who deserve it a heck
of a lot more so. That's the kind of guy

(09:09):
he is. We're no longer like the genteel playing it
being polite kind of guy. Um. He's He's very much
a recognizable sort of right wing media figure. Yeah. Keeps
keeping it authentically asshole. Yeah, keeping it authentically asshole. Um.
In November of nineteen eighty three, while he earned his
first national news story when he's so irritated his guest

(09:31):
Blaze bond Pain, a pacifist in Human Rights Act rules.
That is a good name right now. The short version
of the stories that Blaze got angry and flipped Wally's desk.
He had to be escorted out by security. That sounds
like something a person named Blaze would do. It does
it does because he's a Blaze man. He's full of fire.
Sounds like an American clamator. It's gonna flip pacifically like

(09:53):
while he gets like a pacifist activist to flip his
desk on TV desk never really happened before? Is like
a huge deal, Like this is the first Horoldo getting
hit with a fucking share you know. Um God, what
a great moment that was. I found an interview with
Blaze that sheds more light on this incident and what
came after. Because this incident really like you could draw

(10:13):
a direct line from this to Jerry Springer. I'm sorry,
what year was this again? This is er starts, um,
and this is really like this, this, this chunk I'm
gonna read is interesting because it gives you. It gives
you a sense of the way in which Wally is
helping to give birth to not just the cultural space
that guys like Jerry Springer occupied, but like what reality
TV becomes. Um, So this is him. This is Blaze

(10:36):
talking about what happened after he flips that desk and
gets escorted off by security. Quote. He called me this
had to be nineteen eighty three and asked if I
could come on his program. It was right during Reagan's
Warren Grenada. In a phone conversation, he seemed just delightful.
I was in the background listening to his interviews just
before me, a Mexican American attorney, and Wally was just
insulting him with racial slurs and so on, and I
was quite irritated just hearing him operate. When it was

(10:57):
my turn, I went to the interview and he had
a large group of young people in the audience, and
just as he was getting started, I torn towards the
audience and I said, I hope you won't go and
die as the enemy in a place like Grenado where
you're not wanted. He got a little upset when I
made that comment. He came over and assaulted me and
battered me. He attacked me from behind. It was a
little difficult for a long standing boxer to not respond,
but I thought that would be a terrible thing to do.

(11:18):
So I looked at his desk and I saw there
was no one near it and no one that would
be harmed. So I just flipped the desk over and
walked out. I came home and I told my wife
and children how surprised I was, and within moments we
saw it on ABC, CBS, NBC. It was all over
the country. I think that particular episode had has been
played a thousand times across the country. I still see it.
It's amazing how it made an impact on TV. There

(11:39):
was no staging. However, after the security men ushered me
to my car, I went home and the following morning,
Wally called me and said, Blaze, we have a terrific
thing going here. We can do this all over the country.
I said, Wally, you're a charlatan and there will be
no further interviews, thank you. Wally doesn't believe in shit.
Wal Wally is just like, yeah, I'll bring this. I like,

(12:00):
I want him to throw ship. I want to like,
this is great TV. So that's more of the thing
that I was talking about last episode, where it's like,
is he genuinely getting pulled in this direction or is
he getting pulled in this direction because like this is
make this makes good TV? And Yeah, that's like the
guiding light of a lot of these chuds is that
they don't actually believe in a lot of things. If anything,
I just believe in whatever gets them the money, gets

(12:21):
in the attention. I think Joe Pine might have believed
in things. He certainly fought for something at one point. Um.
I Wally clearly doesn't like he's just happy to like yeah, um,
like the next day, like it was a pro wrestling match,
Yeah exactly, Like, yeah, we can do this, all of it,
and you can tear the country. So what the funk
are you talking about? Joe Pine is like not a

(12:42):
good person, not a nice person, pretty racist and bigot,
and I'm sure in a lot of ways, although I
doubt excessively for his time UM, which is not saying
anything good about him. It's talking about like the white
dudes in the nineteen sixties and his generation. We're pretty
fucking racist. But I don't think I wouldn't qualify him
as a bastard based on like the things he intentionally did.

(13:03):
Once we're at Wally George, We're we're in like the
like full bastard territory, like sweat, because Joe Paine is
a guy who's like willing to do things and like
drudge up, judge up controversy, but also can listen to
people and like has something he believes in UM and
is trying to get across with Wally George. It is
pure I'm into this right wing ship just for because

(13:24):
it's what it gets the rage views, it gets people angry,
gets people riled up. I don't care who I have
on I want folks to fight. I just want to
like tickle people's amygdala and make them angry. You know,
does he start selling brain pills forever? No? No, he's
not not to mine. O. Well, I don't know. Maybe
I I can't comprehensively say he never sold brain pills. Um,
I I cannot make that claim to a point of certainty.

(13:46):
Tom excited that that, like Alex Jones and like a
lot of the folks who came after, Wally George built
an audience that was cult like in its devotion. By
nineteen eighty four, an audience of mostly college age men
were waiting up to six months for their chance to
sit in his eight person studio audience. People would like
sign up for this ship way ahead of time. They'd

(14:08):
shout who and wear shirts with American flags on them,
roaring until he forced them to stop. Where Joe Pine
could be mocking and even cruel, as long as he
maintained an air of genteel politeness, Wally George was free
to scream, shout, and even strike people. He told one
interviewer in nineteen eighty four. They say that I'm a lunatic,
that I'm a maniac. But why do you have to

(14:28):
smile at your guests and be nice and let them
say what they want to say. In this, Wally completed
the transition from Joe Pine, a right wing firebrand whose
work was still firmly rooted in the outward civility of
the nineteen fifties, to modern right wing media. Wally would
not sit and listen to, for example, a trans woman
explaining her life. He had no interest in letting guests
say their peace. The central conceit of his show was

(14:50):
that left leaning guests would be allowed to show up
and try to make an argument, while Wally and his
audience harassed and assaulted them. I want to play this
segment from his show where he is a popular radio
d e j A on the DJ brings you two
albums to hand out to the audience. It was nineteen
four and he chastise and he chastises Wally for having
previously claimed the band were devil worshippers, which is an

(15:12):
argument Wally George made a number of times. Here's Wally's reply.
You said, you two a bunch of devil worships. They
are terrible that Christians three of the four that Chris,
you're saying, I'm wrong, You're wrong. Wally is never my God.
That's what he looks like to me, I don't want
any proof because he looks like Rick Flair with a

(15:33):
person balance getting we're getting one of the same time.
It looks like cracking down on what they call radio
shock radio. And I say it's about time. I say
the f c C should crack down. There's a lot

(15:54):
of nonstance, a lot of really filth and sexual innuendo
that little kids you're listening to. And I say, it's
about time at the FCC cracked down on these filthy
radio stations. All right, all right, that's enough of this clip.
So first off, he looks incredible. It looks incredible. He

(16:19):
looks the amazing thing about Wally looks like a carnival magician.
You you watch, he looks like a guy that ties
balloon animals. You watched thirty seconds of Wally George, and
every fake media figure from a Paul Verhoeven movie in
the nineteen nineties suddenly make because they're all him. They're

(16:42):
all Wally George. Like every media figure that like Gott
mocked in one of those like surreal nineties movies is
fucking Wally George. He looks like Julian Sands as a
TV preacher. He looks like if Julian sanj was a warlock. Yes, yes,
if a vampire bits Julian a Sanja's neck, he would tear.

(17:07):
It's incredible. He's in. For those of you who are
going to look at the picture. He has like shoulder
length white hair that can't be real. It's it's either
a wig or like so flat ironed that it just there.
Like he's got a white suit. He looks like Mr
White from the Venture Brothers, but not at I'll bite.

(17:32):
It's just an amazing, amazing commitment to a very specific aesthetic. Yeah,
he's like, this is my thing and I'm just gonna
blunt forced the nineteen eighties. A third of my body
weight is cocaine. It's he's he does. He looks like
somebody like he looks like the Shredder dumped Mutagen on
the Pilot cocaine. Yeah, like that Ian was a man.

(17:56):
That's so tom Yeah. Here's him talking to Larry Rice,
a same sex marriage advocate and an AIDS awareness activist.
Oh boy hooraye a gay pride parade. I say it

(18:17):
is very offensive. It is very offensive for gays to
be running around or groping each other in the park.
What do you think about that? I don't think I
don't think that. I don't think it's very fair for
you to make fun of people who's whose lifestyle is
not the way you want it to be. And I

(18:37):
think it's all it really. I think it's kind of sad,
you know, because like they don't hurt you what they do.
And you know, I'm down offense that you stupid, that
it's offensive and offensive. It's a lot fair, I'll tell
you what, because people like you, you're the people because

(18:58):
the problem people people who are gay. People who are gay,
they do very rough. They have it very rough in
this world, okay, because of people like you, And I
think this is very upset. I think that will make

(19:23):
it so hard for them to live that they have
a lot of like mental disorders and things. All right,
that's probably about enough of That's it's man, If you
guys listening can stomach looking up this clip, it's an
it's horrible his audience and they're just like huge nothing

(19:43):
but high school bullies, like screaming with He's said it's horrible.
He's just trying to get his point out, and he's
saying like this these completely rational things. Oh my god.
But it's also one of these a couple of things
that are interesting. Comparing Pine. Number one, you can think
back to Joe Pine, who gain I'm certain how very
regret restI views on on gay people, but asking with
genuine interest. Oh so someone who is a who's a

(20:05):
transvestor isn't necessarily a homosexual. Oh that's interesting to me,
as opposed to Wally George, who just starts screaming at
how offensive like the thought of a gay person existing.
It's like his with his flaxen shoulder length, fair and
long sleeved turtleneck with a blazer, and he's screaming about
how gay Pride parade is offensive. Roger Stone vibes. Yeah,
he definitely has that Roger Stone would wear. He does

(20:31):
look like a disguise in a Bond villain wig. Yeah. Um.
And the other thing that's different is that, you know,
Joe Pine could be We played him being very rude
to some people, but also they were all people who
could go toe to toe with him rhetorically, like Krassner.
You know, obviously he didn't respect Krastner's media trained Krassner
was ready for what he got. You know he gave

(20:53):
as good as he got. This poor man Larry Rice.
Nothing against him because he's saying very reasonable things. He's
clearly not media trained. He's not, really he's not, and
he's so you can say against him. The clip is
so upsetting because you can see it, like it's part
of why, it's part of like the bad faith of
like debate me, because the tactic is just to keep

(21:13):
shouting at you these things to keep you off topic.
And it's like, not only is this guy battling this
overbearing dipshit of a host, but the entire audience is
jeering at him the whole time. It's like, I can't
imagine being in that, like even if you are media trained,
like even if you are media trained, being in that
situations like Jesus, like, I can't. I can't find footing

(21:36):
to even make my argument. No one can do well
in that kind of an environment. But no, And it's again,
it's one of those things. I do think that like
Joe Pine was someone who did want to debate people
and would debate people and would go out of his
way to get people who he who could present themselves
well on television, even if what they were saying was like,
and I'm not gonna say that maybe this was comprehensibly

(21:57):
true of everything he did, but all of Wally George
is like it is nothing, but but this is it's
just hate. I want to point out that his little
turtleneck matched the wallpaper of his set. It did it.
He's got He's got a little behind him is a
framed photo of of of a Space shuttle taking off.
It just says USA at the bottom. So his set

(22:17):
is like a little boy's room, and it's I keep
bringing up Joe Pine, like positively, not to say nice
things about Joe Pine, and please don't take this as
like me trying to defend his legacy, but to point
like how badly things have degenerated, like sixteen seventeen years
dark the differences. Yeah, I'm sitting here trying to think of, like, man,
what happened. And you know that a lot of things happened. Yes,

(22:40):
between nineteen seventy and ninety, religious right became a political block,
which it wasn't when um, when Joe Pine was on
their the religious right was not a political block. That
didn't happen until seventy nine. Um. So yeah, it's just
it's a very bleak, but very clear. He's all slide downhill.
He's proto seven hundred Club too, just the way he looks,
the way he looks, I don't know if he was
proto when did this have an underclub? Stuff? That's true

(23:01):
solid nineteen sixty six, the seven hundred Club, all I
gotta give you that. Okay, Yeah, but Tom, you know
what did come before the seven hundred Club and we'll
be there long after. Um, I don't know, I don't
know you are. You can tell me the products and

(23:23):
services Tom, that support this podcast, solid, solid throat ad Man. Uh,
we're back, and we're we're not better than ever. We
just are continually sliding down hill. No, we're not even

(23:43):
We're not even better than Ezra at this point. We're
not now, Tom. Yeah, so let's talk some more about
that horrific interview UM with Larry Rice. Upset me. Yeah,
it's really upset it. And again it's the kind of
thing like you just didn't feel that way listening to
the Joe Pine clips, even when he was being a
ship head, not that kind of well, it's it's the

(24:07):
it's it's frighteningly close to a lynch mom. Yeah, yeah,
I think if he'd ordered them, they would have. Yeah.
It's it's really alarming. It's it's a it's very upset
clip to watch. It's really fucked up, and it gets
a lot worse. And he's sucking clown to It's like
the Stoker on vacation, fucking Wally George. It's a clown name,

(24:30):
that's a clown shoe name, Wally motherfucker. So he goes
on in that interview to say here in the United States,
we don't want perverts marrying each other. And then when
they start discussing AIDS prevention, he tells Larry, I don't
want these gay AIDS carriers to spread their disease to
all of us heterosexuals. People like you were spitting at me.
I could catch AIDS from you, just a mountain a

(24:52):
ship dressed in a terrible suit. Now, when it comes
to evaluating the appeal and the impact of Wally George,
I think this pass from that Timeline article does about
the best job possible. Quote hot seat com modified old
white man anger and gave it room to fester. George's
fury was the entire point. It gave audiences permission to

(25:13):
act out their bassist impulses. During the conservative Reagan era,
the allure of the show was merely having an outlet
for anger. Period it was a contractual yelling match with
the viewers invited. Ye that makes sense. Yeah, that all
ties together seems relevant. Um, gosh, somebody somebody else really

(25:35):
rose to prominence the eighties. Gosh, who was that? And
Howard Stern. This is a big major media figure. I'm
big decetious rush Limbaugh Yeah, Trump, Yeah, Trump, Yeah, this
is this is this is the era they're all. This
is where all all of them dickheads came from, all
those real pieces of ship. Um. Now, during his rise

(25:58):
to prominence, as we stated, there were a number of
dudes inhabiting a similar field. Rush Limbug gets on the
radio a year later. Don Imus and Howard Stern, who
are less offensive figures, not much less in the case
of don Imus, are starting around this period. But the
fact that Wally George worked most prominent, worked most prominently
on TV, giving his viewers and live audience as an
outlet to invent their rage and frustration on human beings

(26:20):
made them made him unique. In his nineteen again, it's
it's like half a lynch mob, and that's half of
the appeal Wally George does. In his nineteen ninety nine autobiography,
he coined the phrase combat TV to describe the thing
that he invented. And now that's like all news programs.
Um yeah, it's just bleak. One of Wally's most popular

(26:40):
guests was a special piece of ship named Tom Metzger,
the head of a Nazi organization called White Area in Resistance.
I suppose you could critique him as again like Joe Pine,
platforming a Nazi, and he is kind of doing that.
But Wally, I don't know. Wally can't be certainly can't
be accused of equivocating on Nazism because I'm gonna play
you a clip of that next. All across this great

(27:02):
country now in our eleventh year, and we have the
putres a batman villain. As I was about to say
before we went to our break, some of you don't
know what Tom Metzker has been involved in. I'm gonna

(27:22):
go back to that case up in Oregon where some
of Tom Metzker's followers went up to Oregon and they
beat a black man to death with do applaud that,
you idiot? They beat this black man to death with
baseball bats. Followers of Tom Metzker say, he sits there

(27:49):
with that, He sits there with that smug little grin
on his face because he doesn't get his hands bloody.
He sends out, wait, he sends out, he has henchman
at his followers to do his dirty work for him. Alright, alright, alright,
So it's very it's very very telling that he had
to tell somebody in the audience stop clapping. That's exactly right,

(28:14):
point out because he is certainly not in like to
the exynthity platforms. He's mostly screaming at him. Um. But
you can see again where things have gone that, like
stop his lapping, encouraging is bringing these people in Wally.
It's fascinating, but it's also there's something so bleak about

(28:35):
that too, because there are a lot of mostly horrible
things you can say about Wally, and I'm sure Tom
went on his show because he saw it as a platform.
But Wally never for a second pretended that this guy
need to be heard out. He just had him on
to scream at it um, which, again, as bad as Wally,
George just makes him better than a lot of right
wing media today, like even it's even gone hill downhill

(28:56):
since Wally George is the point I'm making, not trying
to like praise Wally George, but it's like the even
more than this cess pool. Yeah, and I don't know,
maybe like if fucking Richard Spencer he would have heard out.
I don't know, I don't He didn't often hear people out,
so I don't know that he would have invited anyone
on that. He couldn't have just screamed at um. But
but yeah, it's um, it's a little bleak um. That said,

(29:19):
he was very happy to capitalize off the outrage that
bringing a guy like Metzker on generated. I don't want
to be praising him for yelling at Tom Metzger. He's
doing it to make money. I want to quote from
an article on Wally by o C Weekly, Orange County,
which is, for those of you who do not know
the like the Republican one of the biggest Republican stronghold
in California. Pretty Much what made those hot seat appearances

(29:41):
by Metzger in the nineteen eighties and nineties so relevant
was just how clearly the lines between good and evil
were drawn. George wore the white hat literally, and Metzger
was the bad guy if there was no great to
be found, and the audience reaction corroborated those roles. George's
last interview with Metzger was around nineteen nine two, against
the backdrop of that year's l A Riots, and George
absolutely laid into Metzker. George repeatedly scolded Mesker for being

(30:04):
un American and referred to War as a bunch of
dumb Nazis. George kicked Metzker off his stage after an
unprecedented but understandable four minutes. It was a proud moment
for Orange County Conservatism as embodied by George. It stood
up to the emblematic scourge of white supremacy. And obviously
I don't particularly agree with that take, but it's interesting
that like, this modern o c Conservative writer is looking

(30:26):
back at Wally George and be like, remember when we
yelled at Nazis supposed to marching with them in the streets.
Like I'm not trying to say that this guy is right,
because this shouldn't be a proud moment for conservatism because
also he brought him on his fucking show. Um, it's
interesting to me that this this guy looking at like
because he's I'm sure he's referring to like these mobs
you've had, like attacking vaccine sites and fucking we spawn

(30:48):
whatnot in l a um, some of which include fucking Nazis.
And he's like, remember when we used to at least
yell at Nazis. Um, It's it's bleak. Wally filmed his
show in Orange Countie, and he was a local institution
and incredibly influential to the combative form of conservatism that
exists in that enclave to this day. But as the
author of that article points out, modern o c conservatives,

(31:11):
though very much the descendants of Wally George, often lack
his very minimal ethical convictions. Quote Prescient of what occurred
in Charlotte's Ville and Trump's reaction to it, the interview
with Metzger captured a moment in time when conservative Republicans
rallied openly against white supremacy in the Nazis. Watching that
episode at his equal parts antiquated and orwellian, with George
orchestrating an audience full of young, mostly white conservative Orange

(31:33):
County men and fomenting and rallying viciously against Metzger, and
what he stood for. To riff on Trump's own axiom,
George made it clear that there were not very fine
people on both sides. In a fitting into the segment,
George stood up behind his desk and led his audience
in a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, with particular
vocal emphasis on the last line, with liberty and justice
for all. He then expanded on that theme to his

(31:55):
audience as he looked deploringly at Metzger, reminding him the
phrase meant to encompass all races, all religions, and all creeds.
And yeah, it's uh, it's bleak. I mean, I feel
like George Wally's old. Wally's the kind of dude that
would have this guy on to scream at him. Not
because he really personally finds his politics all that distasteful.

(32:20):
I don't think he cares about any I don't think.
I'm sure he finds the because I don't think he
cares about politics much. No, it was just one I
don't know. It was just a thing, creating a situation
where he could be the good guy and generate, you know,
ratings for his TV show. I don't know. I I
refuse to applaud him for any partner. And I'm not
quoting this to applaud him. I'm quoting because it's interesting

(32:42):
to see someone writing from that perspective of the county
Conservative going, remember when we when we didn't like Nazi,
Remember when we remember when we had at least that
line that crossed And when you're looking back at Wally
george standards, we believed in things, and there's this guy
like calls a dude who flipped his desk over the
next tabula. We should turn the country with this, we

(33:04):
should tour the country even anything he believes in. He
doesn't believe in a goddamn thing. Um. Now, it is
unclear to me whether or not Wally George, living in
the modern era, would have fully embraced, embraced the white
nationalist authoritarian politics that have since devoured the gop I
suspect so in a way that I don't know if
Joe Pine would have as racist as I'm sure Joe

(33:24):
Pine was. Joe Pine at least was in World War Two. Like,
I think he might fight not he might brush up
against that a little bit. Yeah, I think if he
saw a dude with a swastika flag, in a march.
He'd be like, well, fuck those guys. Whatever happening over there,
whatever happening over there. I don't like that flag. Yeah.
Um so yeah, it's I don't know. I can't say

(33:46):
what Wally would have done clearly. Um. But if we're
to judge purely off his TV appearances, maybe no. If
we were to judge what we know about him morally,
probably yes. He he seems cut from the same grift cloth. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
and Ali is It's worth noting one of the very
first conservative political voices to use a phrase that has
since become infamous, We must make America great again. Wally

(34:09):
said this regularly on his show throughout the nineteen eighties
and early nineteen nineties. Alongside Rush Limbaugh. He also popularized
phrases like liberal lunatics, calling his detractors strippers, mud wrestlers,
and bimbos of all sizes and shapes. By the nineteen nineties,
Hot Seat was no longer close to unique. Jerry Springer
and Rush Limbaugh had both entered TV by then. Russia's

(34:31):
foray didn't last long, but in nineteen ninety six, Fox
News started up and provided a much more respectable venue
for far right hate speech. Meanwhile, Jerry Springer delivered a
gleefully a political approach to combat television that more people
found appealing than Wally's right wing rants. The fact that
Springer himself was a much more pleasant person than may
have had something to do with this. In nineteen George's

(34:54):
wife left him in the least surprising turn of she
took their seven year old daughter with her, Thank God
Jesus Christ. We do not know how many times Wally
was married, at least four, some sources say as many
as six times. Like that. It's like a fucking legend,
Like we don't know. It's like, we don't really know
how many of course, that fucking crip keeper looking dude,

(35:17):
we don't know. I don't know how many wives he's
got locked in a closet like wives surviving exactly. Yeah,
Wally had several kids, but he was not really a
father to any of them. Like he would have kids,
but he was no one's father. I think it's fair
to say, man, judging by his his set, I thought
he would have delighted in having little kids, having a
little kid around you guys in the rocket ships and

(35:41):
blue turtlenecks. His most prominent child Tom was the actress
Rebecca de Mornay. Um, yeah, that's his daughter, Wally, just daughter.
Tell us about Rebecca de Mornay. Oh, they have kind
of the same hair, like you can see it. M man,

(36:01):
that's that's fucked up. I mean, I mean, she's in
hand that rocks the Cradle. She's in that The Sweet
Three Musketeers, you know, the Disney one with with Oliver
Platt and Charlie Sheen and keep it Sutherland Umn't that
TV version of the Shining She is in that TV
version of the shot. That's a man that just shattered
my entire universe. Didn't expect that, didn't expect that, didn't

(36:24):
expect to learn that today? Did you know? That's that's
too late. I was gonna say, was she the one
that the that the wife took? But now she was
our refective warning was already in movies at that point.
I think she was. You know, he was just having
kids in abandoning him left and right. M you know
who else has kids in abandons them? The person the
sponsors are responsible for these delightful products. Not a single

(36:48):
one of them, not a single one of them, raise
their own kids. Well that's gonna help biscuit sponsors. Robert,
thank you, Sophie, thank you, so be. Look, I think
some people you don't like to like raise their kids
in a loving environment, and some people like the song
A Boy Named Sue and think that that's a good
way to raise a kid. And both options are equally respectable.

(37:08):
And what does that have to do with our sponsors. Well,
if you can abandon your kids as long as you
name them Sue, it's fine. As the song shows, they'll
turn out Okay, we'll also learn how to fight. Will
also accept ramblin Man. Ramblin Man share absolutely great great
child rearing advice in ramble Man. All right, well that's
going to lead us. Dads. We're back, and we're all

(37:33):
just silently appreciating the song A Boy Named Sue, which
again contains all of the parenting lessons. Anyone listening to
this will ever need to know, certainly anyone we're talking
about will certainly ever ever, So, Rebecca de Mornay, am
I saying her name right as far as I know?

(37:53):
All right, yeah, you know she is obviously, Um what's
she in? What's what's her big ship? I just rattled?
Are you serious, Tom, Okay, Well, my brain doesn't work, Tom,
and C is probably your biggest right hand that rocks
the cradle. I'm sorry, I'm on I'm on drugs, and
it's more that I I'm most mostly sober now. It's

(38:14):
more that I was on drugs for thirteen straight years. Um,
my memory doesn't do so great. Remember you knew me
during Remember that I was not smoking. Yeah, you were
there for that. That night I gave everybody way too
much night You put Dave in the hospital hallucinating. Yeah,
I mean, in fairness, Dave. Dave decided the hospital was

(38:34):
the right place to be at that. That's true. I
haven't been able to watch uh, Back to the Future
since we were coming up during that when we realized
we had grossly misjudged the amount of post taken a
whole lot. It was something like sixty sixty doses or so.

(38:56):
Um so. His most prominent child was the actress Rebecca
to Morne, who fucking hated Wally George. He like publicly
attacked him, and Wally blasted her in interviews as bitter,
twisted and out to ruin me. I found an old
l A Times article that provides more context to Wally
during the down swing of his career. You know she's
my daughter, don't you, asks George. He can't help basking

(39:19):
in the reflected glory of her celebrity status, even while
conceding that she grew up in England without knowing him
and wants nothing to do with him. Now, what really
bothers bothers me more than anything is that she's given
interview saying I never tried to contact her until after
she became a star. It's not true I embarrass her.
She hangs out with left wing actors like Robert de
Niro and Jack Nicholson and Harry Dean Stanton. You don't

(39:39):
like me because I bad mouth Hollywood. They've convinced her
I'm bad for her career. I just love that that
that trifecta's Jack Nicholson famed leftists all. It's very funny. Um.
In fact, yeah, sorry, yeah, it's very funny. And it's

(40:03):
one of those things like probably nothing would have maybe
saved his career more than if he'd actually like made
up with his daughter and like done a big TV
special about it. Um. But she never gave into that ship.
Like that's clearly what he wanted was some kind of
like big public you know, for show, right, he obviously
didn't give a shit about her, He abandoned. No, I'm sure,
but I'm sure absolutely yeah yeah yeah um. By the

(40:28):
mid nineteen nineties, George's audience was too small for the
Nielsen Company to rate, which means it reached less than
twenty four thousand households in the Los Angeles area. As
a result, in order to chase notoriety and attention, he
was forced to find weirder and weirder guests for Hot Seat.
One frequent attendee was Odorous Urungus, the lead singer for Guards.
Loved Tom turns his head. Odorus loved Wally, telling one interviewer, Honestly,

(40:54):
of all the talk shows we've been on, everything from
Springer to Joan Rivers to Jimmy Fallon, it was our
favorite one, that cheesy little public access show with that
weirdo Wally George. He kicked ass on all of those
other multimillion dollar, fucking Hollywood TV creation constructed human being Yuck.
Those people really made me sick. Yeah, fucking guar. I mean,
I get why a man who dresses up as a

(41:14):
monster for a living would enjoy being on Wally George's show. Yeah,
I mean that was their whole thing. They just wanted
to offend people and shock. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get
why Wally George and him hit it off. Dexter Holland,
lead singer of The Offspring, was also a guest on
The Wally George Show and described it as punk, which
I do think gets it something important For many of

(41:35):
his young fans, especially, the appeal wasn't that Wally was
right wing. It was the rock because they weren't. And
it wasn't that they didn't hate right wing or they
weren't left wing. They just didn't care about politics. They
liked that he was raucous, violent and unhinged, and they
liked that as members of his live audience, they could
be raucous, violent and unhinged. They could scream and shout
at people and threatened them and sometimes even get into

(41:55):
fucking fights on the show. And there's more than a
little Wally George in the alt rights d in a like,
I don't care as much about the politics that I'm
claiming as I do about getting to offend you. You know,
that's Wally George and that's a big part of modern conservatism. Now,
other regular guests who sparred with Wally expressed a belief
that he was not really conservative. He was a showman

(42:15):
first and foremost, and would happily platform anyone fringe enough
to be entertaining. Still, there was more than a hint
of lynch mob to Wally's audience. Nicolas Shrek, lead singer
of the of Radio Werewolf, recalled it was like Wally
was a microcosm of Hollywood taking over politics. In a way,
it could seem harmless or like it was just a joke,
but when we were actually in the studio and while
he was presenting me as a scapegoat for all societal ills,

(42:38):
the audience was whipped into a genuine frenzy. They did
not take it as a joke, and it felt very
dangerous to be there. It's easy to think he was
a humorous phenomenon, but it was part of the whole.
It was a very violent craziness to the eighties that
I don't think Americans can remember exactly how it was.
I went to a Ronald Reagan rally in nineteen eighty
four and I sensed that same inherent violence. You know,
the novel Lord of the Flies did me of that. Yep,

(43:02):
there's a lot in there. It feels a little relevant,
doesn't it. Yeah, Shrek onto something there. Yeah, that's that's
like I said, that's one of the main things about
watching that clip that was so unpleasant and upsetting is
is is how close it is to a lynch mob.
It's just like he's a big goofball. Like we had
a lot of fun talking about how ridiculous he looks,

(43:23):
but like that is a frightening there's no judg Yeah,
that's nothing funny about absolutely not. No that I have.
I have. I have gone toe to toe with more
or less of that audience in the street with a
bunch of weapons on their side. It's the same fucking people.
It's fair, same motivation. It's it's a man. It's so
it's so parallel to like Trump, because like Trump himself,

(43:43):
the man, it's a big stupid idiot that's ridiculous looking,
and you can just look at him have just as
easily been a Democrat if that had been the easy
way to get what he wanted. Yeah, just look at
that big stupid asshole. But then you look at the
crowds that follow him, like, oh, there's nothing funny about that, Like,
it's not at all humorous. No, it's just scared. Wally's
health started to fall apart in the early nineteen nineties.

(44:05):
I know, Tom, this is really going to break your
heart yourself here, don't tell me I can't take it.
By ninetee, he had to quit recording new episodes of
his show, But since Hot Seat had been daily for
like a decade, the show stayed in reruns for another decade,
and Wally would regularly record new introductions and conclusions to
various best of episodes. He died in two thousand three

(44:27):
of pneumonia. So we have a lot to thank cigarettes
and pneumonia for but none of them work fast enough.
Satan called home another angel, another one of his glorious angels.
Speaking of Satan's angels, Tom hadn't plugtles to plug. That's
the end. That's the end of part two. We gotta,

(44:49):
we gotta, we gotta, we got we got one more.
We got one more in the chamber. All ran a
little longer, So all right, Well, yeah, I run a
podcast network with my buddy David Bell. We worked at
Crack together. If you want to head up a Patreon
dot com slash Games for unemployeed. You can support our network.
We do a bunch of free podcasts. We also do
a bunch of exclusive podcasts just for patrons like uh

(45:10):
Fox Folders, Maniac, Tom and Jeff, watch Batman, and Start
Mix Puturama. So check that out if you would please. Yeah, assholes,
do it. Yeah you're gonna do not do it. I'm sorry,
I love you all. Anyways, the episode is over.