November 7, 2022 • 46 mins
EPISODE 71: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:45) On the Friday before an election crucial to democracy, MSNBC fired its most outspoken host because Fox News complained about her. Where is the protest by Lawrence O'Donnell? By Chris Hayes? By Alex Wagner? Where is the threat to walk out, to boycott, to stand on principle, by Rachel Maddow? (3:10) NBC had to retract a fabricated Today Show story that reignited the fascists' homophobic conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi. The correspondent was not fired. The Today Show executive was not fired. The head of news was not fired. Tiffany Cross? She was fired. (7:33) Cross joked about "castrating Florida," rightly savaged Alyssa Farah, Megyn Kelly, and Clarence Thomas - and her ratings were growing. But when Tucker Carlson devoted a segment to actually suggesting she was fomenting a Rwanda-style genocide of white Americans, NBC and MSNBC went crazy. (10:10) Joy Reid said something, more personal than professional (10:30) O'Donnell said nothing; then again when he filled in for me while my father was dying in 2010 he tried to replace me as Countdown host and then stole a group of producers from me for his new show (11:36) Chris Hayes, silent now, once stood up and refused to substitute for me when I had been improperly suspended (13:30) And Maddow, who in 2009 stood up and told the president of NBC News and all the executives and talent at MSNBC that if anybody interfered with the content of her show, she would walk out because "I cannot have the audience wondering what else I have not told them" (18:41) But now Maddow is making $30 million a year and the courage to walk out when it could cost you that much, is lacking. Rachel? Will you pretend the firing of Tiffany Cross is not your problem? Or will you stand up for what is right? You know - like you used to.
B-Block (23:40) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Ace in New York desperately needs a foster or adopter, anywhere from Virginia to Maine (24:30) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: DeSantis shocked head of The Leopards Eating People's Faces Party ate his face; Musk "likes" meme with quote from American neo-nazi pedophile, and that was the BEST thing he did to Twitter over the weekend (30:19) IN SPORTS: Astros get a World Series Parade; Phillies set World Series futility records; Boston Bruins destroy reputation by signing, then dumping, bully (32:45) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Mark Levin admits his side consists of "White Supremacists" and competes with Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz padding a 50-page report to 1,050 pages, and former journalist Jason Whitlock going misogynistic, homophobic AND racist all in the same sentence.
C-Block (37:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: In memory of Vinny Vassallo, or as a few SportsCenter viewers will remember him: Vinny The Stat Man.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart
Radio on the Friday before an election crucial to the
(00:26):
safeguarding of democracy in this nation. MSNBC fired it's most
outspoken and most probably it's bravest host because Fox News
complained about her. Where is the statement of protest about
the firing of Tiffany Cross from Lawrence O'Donnell. Where is
(00:49):
the anger from Chris Hayes. Where is the condemnation of
a woman's voice silenced from Alex Wagner. Where is the
threat to walk out, to boycott, to quit, to stand
on principle from Rachel Maddow. Whatever happens in the voting tomorrow,
(01:13):
remember at all times that you and I do not
have a true friend or an ally. At MSNBC, at CNN,
at CBS, at ABC, we have television performers who will
make sure they are seen in the easy fights, but
when it is bad, who will draw a line and
fight and protect one thing and one thing alone their paychecks.
(01:37):
We have the opposition, the caged d claude, gutless and
entirely authorized official opposition. On Saturday, NBC News had to
retract the story it put on the Today show on Friday,
in which reporter Miguel al mcgare refueled the entire right
(01:58):
wing conspiracy theory about the Trump Is terrorist attack on
Paul Pelosi. Al mcgare quote did an unnamed source who
claimed Paul Pelosi didn't flee or tell responding officers he
was in distress. It was entirely untrue. Al mcgeary simply
took a right wing disinformation talking point and put it
(02:20):
on national television, even though it disagreed completely with the
on the record police account. He might as well have
been quoting Gateway pundit. By the evening, he had handed
Tucker Carlson a headline. NBC reveals explosive new details in
Pelosi attack. Has Miguel al mcgare been fired. Has the
(02:41):
vice president in charge of the Today's Show, Libby Lycet,
been fired? Has the president of NBC News, Noah Oppenheim
been fired? Has the chairman of NBC News says ar Conde,
been fired? Has the chairman of NBC Universal, Jeff Shell,
been fired? No, Tiffany Cross was fired because Tucker Carlson
complained about Tiffany Cross and between her firing and the
(03:04):
crack pot conspiracy theory. The Today Show delivered gift wrapped
to Tucker Carlson. It is evident that right now the
only discernible point of their being an NBC News and
an MSNBC is to do Tucker Carlson's heavy lifting for him.
And the faces of MSNBC, the people there who have
made NBC more money in the last decade than NBC
(03:27):
News has have to this hour, said nothing about the
firing of Tiffany Cross because she dared to anger the
propaganda machine at Fox, the one that would make Gegel's blush,
and because she dared to call a theocratic fascist on
the Supreme Court what he is, just as those faces
of MSNBC have said nothing about Al mcgare and the
(03:48):
Pelosi story, whether that was mere firing level incompetence or
it was firing level sabotage of the truth, just as
those faces of MSNBC have said nothing about the parade
of election deniers and Trump cultists and other Republicans whom
march through every week on Meet the Press, while Chuck
Todd does his best impression of Susan Collins and lets
(04:11):
them spread their lies, but is quietly confident they have
learned their lesson. NBC News is doing the work of
those who would end democracy in this country. On occasion,
they may be doing it inadvertently. It is possible Al
mcgare and the producers of The Today Show are just
incompetent morons. God knows it's happened before over there. But
(04:34):
in throwing out Tiffany Cross, they're not only silencing a
valuable voice who might have become an essential one, but
they are warning everybody else on the air at MSNBC that, yes, yes,
this company has made several billion dollars in profits in
the fifteen years since that old guy whose name alber Ding,
since that guy inadvertently made us the sole home of
(04:57):
accurate and liberal and progressive news coverage and commentary, and
since he hired Meadow as his guest host and then
spun her off to her own show, then then spun
his next guest host, O'Donnell off to his own show,
and then spun his next next guest host, Hayes, off
to his own show, and auditioned Wagner to be his
next next next guest host. They warned MSNBC and NBC News,
(05:17):
did Matto and O'Donnell and Hayes and Wagner and all
the others on the air. They're sure we have made money,
and sure Tiffany Crosses show was just about the only
one on our network with any ratings growth of any kind.
But we fired her, and we leaked it to the
Washington Post that she was fired in large part by
another African American woman because she was controversial, and NBC
(05:43):
Universal cannot be controversial right now, because you know, fascists
also by Comcast cable packages and Peacocks subscriptions, and you
could be next. And you have now heard the responses
of Mattow and Hayes and O'Donnell and Wagner. Silence, silence,
(06:06):
with just a barely perceptible vibration of fear in the background.
When asked on Comedy Central which state the Democrats could
afford to lose, Tiffany cross had made a joke about
the phallic shape of the state of Florida and said,
let's cast right Florida. Last month, she referred to Clarence
Thomas as quote justice, pubic hair and my coke can.
(06:30):
When Elissa Farah, the former Trump propagandist, became a finalist
to co host the view TV show. Cross called her
a tawdry turncoat Trump loyalist and said she had written
his wave of open xenophobia and racism all the way
to network television. And when the despicable racist Megan Kelly,
whom NBC is still paying off after having foolishly hired
(06:54):
her in the belief she could bring racist viewers to NBC,
when Megan Kelly called her the most racist person on television,
Cross responded by calling Kelly the black face expert for
having defended it on NBC. Defended black face as a
Halloween costume. You know, I would have been proud to
(07:16):
have thought of saying any of those things on television.
They're not just incisive and wounding and well crafted and
directed at the scum of the earth, like Megan Kelly,
like Clarence Thomas, but they have the added benefit of
having been true. And then Tucker Carlson devoted an entire
(07:37):
segment to Tiffany Cross and suggested her commentary was likely
to instigate an anti white movement in the United States
that would be akin to the genocide in Rwanda. If
that prediction was not so racist and so paranoid and
so syphilitic in its thinking it would be frankly hilarious.
(07:57):
Tucker Carlson suggested that all the black people would rise
up and kill us in our beds because of the
woman who hosted two hours on MSNBC on Saturdays on
Saturday mornings. But all NBC executives could see was controversy
as opposed to truth. Tucker Carlson attacks truth and at
(08:22):
NBC defending truth, defending your people, defending the true victims
of racism, defending democracy, defending America. That's, you know, sometimes controversial.
You can't do that. You you will be quiet, You
will be quiet. Alex Wagner, Chris Hayes, Laurence O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow.
(08:48):
I have left MSNBC's seven PM host Joy read out
of this because she said something on Friday night. It
was personal and not professional. I wish it had been more,
but compared to what the other hosts did not say,
she is on the mount rushmore of putting herself at
just a little risk to defend what is right. And O'Donnell,
(09:10):
I'm not surprised Laurence O'Donnell is a snake. Laurence O'Donnell
had been buried so deep by MSNBC that when he
was pitched to me as the new guest host for
Countdown after we finally got Rachel her own show in
two thousand eight, he no longer had a valid log
in to the in house production computer. I was hesitant,
but hopeful. Then in February of two thousand ten, I
(09:33):
took about a four week leave of absence because after
seven months in the hospital, my dad was dying and
I would have to make the decision. When Laurence O'Donnell
spent that four weeks filling in for me, trying to
get me fired as the host of Countdown so he
could replace me, And when that did not work, he
sweet talked all of the producers to try to get
them to go with him to a new ten PM
(09:53):
show that he would anchor at. Three or four of
them actually went with him, and one of them told
me recently that anything I could think to do to
her as revenge for that, Laurence O'Donnell had already done
it for me. I do find myself mystified, however, about
the silence here of Chris Hayes. If you remember, and
(10:16):
I do not expect you to, I barely have kept
a diary of my career. I don't believe anybody else has.
But after the two thousand ten elections, I revealed I
had donated to the campaigns of three Democrats who had
received multiple death threats and as a result, had had
to spend excessively on security in the waning days of
their campaigns. The donations each came literally after the last
(10:39):
time I had covered or mentioned any of them on
the air. One of them was Gabby Gifford's. The suspension
for violating NBC News employee guidelines was overturned in about
forty eight hours by the NBC lawyers when they explained
to the then News president that to save money, they
had written a contract that specifically and repeatedly stated that
(11:01):
I was not an NBC News employee, so you could
not suspend me for violating the rules of NBC News employees.
Even Fox News commentators thought this was moronic, as one said, oh, no,
Alderman is a Democrat who knew before they were hoist
(11:22):
on their own petard. NBC executives asked one person to
fill in for me that night. It was Chris Hayes.
To his credit, at least in my book, he refused.
Then again, he did not have a multimillion dollar contract
with MSNBC, then did he, and a show that has
been on for nine years without showing any kind of
(11:42):
ratings growth whatsoever. We're providing anything of substance like he
could provide now by saying that what is right is
right and what is wrong is wrong. And even if
it is your boss is doing the wrong thing, maybe
because it is your boss is doing the wrong thing,
you have to stand up and say something, Chris Hayes,
as you did before. He did stand up before, and
(12:08):
so I am sad to tell you did Rachel Maddow
I told this saga at length early on in this series.
On the second of June two thousand and nine, we
were all summoned, We all the primetime hosts, all the
primetime producers, everybody who was in New York. We were
summoned to the fifty second floor of thirty Rock to
(12:29):
the office of the president of NBC, Jeff Zucker, who
displayed rare agitation and even panic, and explained that the
chairman of our parent company, GE was enraged. In response
to my mostly on air criticisms of Fox News. Fox
News was attacking GE and its chairman. His name was
Jeff Immelt, and Bill O'Reilly was attacking GE and Jeff
(12:51):
m L. And Jeff m L's own mother, a Bill
O'Reilly viewer, was attacking GE and her own son. And
Jeff m L said to Jeff Zucker, if he heard
another word about Fox News on MSNBC, or another word
about himself on Fox New was he was going to
take MSNBC off the air, immediately shut it down, fire everybody,
(13:11):
pay off all the contracts. The three hundred million dollars
in profits we had just started to earn for him
was not worth it. And for tens forty minutes or so,
we tried to work out mostly it was me and
Zuker what to do to keep this from happening. Well,
finally I suggested we should suspend all references to Fox
News while we tried to keep our CEO wasn't really
(13:33):
much of a businessman, apparently from turning off the lights
and throwing back the three million dollars, maybe two weeks,
we could stand it, three weeks, some short period of
time like that, and if it didn't work out well,
then it was going to go and explode. But we
could give it a couple of weeks and still retain
our dignity and our journalistic sincerity. And then Rachel Maddow,
(13:56):
when her show was not quite nine months old, said,
excuse me. I will not have the content of my
show dictated by any corporation, including the one I work for,
and especially one I don't work for. I will walk
out first. I cannot have the audience wondering what else
(14:17):
I have not told them. I got a little cold
as I heard her say this. She was right. I
was willing to do the same thing, but I wanted
to give it two weeks first. She added, I don't
do a lot about Fox on my show, but if
there is a story about Fox, I will not honor
this freeze. I will report it, and if I am
prevented from doing so, I will leave. Rachel Maddow threatened
(14:41):
to quit over a matter of principle, and coincidentally enough
about Fox News as well. I had done this myself
at MSNBC three times, once right after I signed a
contract to return to the network in two thousand three,
and they had broken agreement that the fascist commentator Michael
Savage would never appear on Countdown. I called a cab.
(15:02):
I was walking out the front hallway and they backed down.
Then about four and a half years later, it turned
out they had lied to me when they told me
they had given a contributor's contract to a brilliant talent
who I thought would make an even more brilliant host,
and they hadn't given her the contract, and we were
now going to lose her right then, right that moment,
to see an n because Larry King was willing to
(15:22):
pay her two fifty dollars to appear with him on
a primary night, she was short of cash. It was
Rachel Maddow, I said, if you do not hire her,
I will walk out in the middle of our election
coverage tonight. I'm not going to tell you when they
hired her. And the third time it was when they
told me that starting in two thousand eleven, conservative contributors
(15:45):
would be assigned to my show to give countdown quote balance,
And I said that was a betrayal of our audience,
and I would leave. And and it was one of
about a dozen reasons I left. I left when Rachel
(16:06):
Meadows said she'd had enough of the grind of a
nightly show. MSNBC gave her thirty million dollars per year
to do one show a week and work on other projects.
And mostly they gave her the money to prevent her
from going to serious XM radio for nearly that much money.
They gave her thirty million dollars in essence to ice
her to shut her up. And now has come a test.
(16:28):
A liberal voice edgy, maybe too wise asked for some viewers.
But to be fair, I invented MSNBC viewers. I never
heard any of them complain to any of us, were
two wise ass This liberal edgy voice has been silenced.
And they did it on a Friday afternoon, the hour
for the proverbial news garbage dump. They did it after
(16:52):
Megan Kelly complained. They did it after Tucker Carlson complained.
They did it after Fox News complained. They did it.
And Laurence O'Donnell said nothing, and Alex Wagner said nothing,
and Chris Hayes said nothing. And once upon a time,
(17:13):
that moment should have been the time when Rachel Maddow
would have said something. Because courage and ethics and leadership
and patriotism and the fight against television political content being
the sole property of corporations and the bright red line
that says I cannot have my audience wondering what else
(17:34):
I did not stand up for and who else I
did not stand up for. Those things are not expressed
when you get one page of Donald Trump's tax returns
and you spend forty five minutes hyping it to the
audience like a Carnival Barker selling mismadows magic elixir to
the Rubes. Courage and ethics and leadership and patriotism and
(17:54):
the defense of journalism is when if you say something,
they might just take your millions away from you, and
you have to decide which would you rather have taken
away from you, the millions more millions than you could
ever spend, or your ethics and your soul and the
very essence of the reason you do what you do,
(18:14):
and the very essence of why you have fought a
thousand fights for lesser things. It is in a moment
like this, the silencing of somebody else who does what
you do, somebody with no power, somebody with no millions,
somebody with no legend, somebody with no longevity, somebody with
no permanent base, the silence of somebody who is now
(18:35):
what you were in your second year. It is at
a moment like this when silence is collaboration. As I
burned countless bridges to get her her own show. Of
all the things I ever thought I would hear myself
say in the future to her or about her, these
(19:00):
words We're not in my wildest dreams, nor are my
worst nightmares. Rachel Maddow. Will you pretend this is not
your problem? Or will you stand up for what is
right here? You know, like you used to still ahead
(19:35):
to Santis versus Trump, Win Win. I haven't looked in
fifteen minutes, says Elon Musk. Turned Twitter into a site
that steals your passwords and takes your computer hostage. We're
not yet that Later today, World Series Parade time. If
the Astros get a parade, day should also have made
the Phillies walk back to Philadelphia and only the most
(19:57):
ardent of old Times Sports Center fans will recognize this name,
Vinny the Statman in memorium. That's next. This is countdown,
This is countdown with Keith Olberman and still a head
(20:19):
on countdown. Dan Crenshaw admits the big lie is a
big lie in Twitter news. Has he finished destroying Twitter yet?
The terrible hockey controversy ends when the team in question says, uh,
you know, we were kind of screwed up. It's over
and Jason Whitlock racist, sexist, and homophobic and all in
(20:39):
the same sentence. First, in each edition of Countdown, we
feature a dog in need. You can help. Every dog
has its day for Ace desperately needs a foster or
adopt anywhere from Virginia to Maine. Anybody who can come
to New York to get him. He's a big, tan
colored mix of some kind giant shepherd ears he's well behaved.
(21:00):
He was dumped because his human claimed to have suddenly
become allergic. He does not need pledges. He has pledges.
He needs somewhere to go short term or long term,
or simply put, they will kill him if you can
provide that place to land. Reply to my tweet either
in my personal account or the one about Ace that
will be in the pinned tweet on my account for
Dogs in Need at Tom Jumbo Grumbo. Ace needs a
(21:23):
home from Virginia to Main Free. Unconditional love is yours
and thank you. Poscripts to the news some headlines, some updates,
some snarks, some predictions, date line Countdown headquarters here in
(21:45):
the Sports Capsule Building in New York City, and everybody
else will tell you what they think will happen tomorrow
in the mid terms. I will make only one prediction.
Somewhere between a third and a half of the critical
Senate at House races will be too close to call
before Wednesday at the earliest, and all of the Republican
losses will be called fixes, even though Republican u when
Dan Crenshaw has revealed on a podcast that the Trump
(22:08):
thing quote was always a lie, and it was a
lie meant to rile people up, Crenshaw adding the others
they're like, yeah, we know that, but people just need
their last hurrah. They just need to feel like we
fought one last time. Trust me, it'll be fine. And
I was like, no, it won't. Dateline Tallahassee. After Trump
tagg DeSantis with a cumbersome nickname Saturday night, Ron de Sinctimonious,
(22:32):
the only gossip columnist covering the presidential campaign for The
New York Times, Maggie Haberman, tweeted several DeSantis allies, some
also close to Trump, texted last night and this morning unprompted,
expressing private anger and even discussed with Trump for his
remarks about the Florida governor. Say they're telling De Santis
and his family and his top aids to still move
(22:53):
toward twenty four bid translation. I never thought he'd eat
my face, says man who joined the Leopards eating people's faces.
Party and dateline Tallahassee speaking of Andis and his family.
His wife put this thing out. It is a commercial
that basically claims that after God created the universe in
seven days, God spent the eighth day creating run de Santis.
(23:20):
No seriously, and day God looked down on his planned
paradise and said, I need a protector. So God made
a fighter. God said I need somebody willing to get
up before dawn, kiss his family goodbye, travel thousands of miles,
(23:41):
and eat waffles. Two minutes of that Two notes. One
remember me telling you about the paranoid radio commentator I
used to back up Paul Harvey. Whoever voice that commercial
is doing a good impression of Paul Harvey. And two,
if you are now ever in the same room with
RHN De Santis after that commercial, do not stand too
close to him, because if there is a God, he
(24:02):
will soon smote him with some big time lightning and
dateline Latrobe, Pennsylvania, just before an election in which your
opponent has made the premise stick that you are not
really from Pennsylvania. Probably a poor idea for amend At
Oz to tell people at his Saturday rally with Trump
that they needed to contact ten people each to get
them to vote for Oz, and that they should do
(24:24):
it yesterday morning quote before the Steelers game. The Steelers,
as Oz's opponent, John Fetterman pointed out, had yesterday off
and that Latrobe rally also answered a question I frequently
here and I've even asked myself in the largest sense
of this question, how did America get into this mess? Well,
(24:45):
listen to this guy from Saturday at the Trump rally
in Pennsylvania, and I think you'll have your answer. In
the world is relying on the United States of America
to do the right thing. If we lose, they all lose.
And that's a big problem. You have Australians voting for us,
all these other countries. The people are voting for the
United States to win this election, and if we don't
(25:08):
win it, it's trouble for every country, not just our aly. Yes,
he's the answer to that question, how did America get
into this mess? Because we are surround that by ence.
Speaking of which, dateline San Francisco. Remember the day he
took over, when Elon Musk walked into Twitter headquarters carrying
(25:28):
a sink because he thought then saying let that sink
in would be funny. I'm beginning to think the fixture
he should have carried in with him was in fact
a toilet or maybe a burning dumpster. Upon purchase, Musk
had declared comedy is now legal on Twitter, but after
a series of verified accounts Valerie Burton, Ellity, Cathy Griffin
(25:49):
others mocked him and used his name as their account name,
Musk declared he would permanently ban anybody using anybody else's
name without specifying parody, and he then banned Griffin and
a couple of others. But he also declared widespread verify
ation will democratize journalism, even though he also eliminated verification.
(26:09):
He also announced he intended to make Twitter the most
accurate source of information about the world. He also liked
a meme supposedly including a quote from Voltaire about who
rules over you, except the quote is not from Voltaire.
It's actually from an American neo Nazi pedophile. Elon Musk
is about halfway to becoming Kanye West. More practically, several
(26:31):
tech reporters revealing that after Musk fired thousands of Twitter
employees by email Friday, many of the dismissed staffers then
got invitations to return, in part because Musk fired at
least two teams that were working on new projects that
Musk wanted to launch immediately fired all the people working
(26:51):
on the most urgent problems, which might explain why so
far people paying the eight dollar fee for Twitter Blue
have not gotten the blue check mark that was supposed
to be the whole point of paying the eight dollars.
(27:17):
This is Sports Center, Wait check that not anymore. This
is countdown with Keith Alberman in Sports World Series parade
today in Houston. Though honestly, it was such a bad
World Series that after the parade is over, they ought
to make the Philadelphia Phillies clean up the route. The
(27:37):
Phillies went up two games to one on the Astros,
and then in the last three games that got a
total of nine hits and a total of three runs
and the Astros one out. Philly's finished with the worst
team batting average in a series that lasted at least
six games one fifty nine. They struck out seventy one
times in those six games, the most in any World series.
(27:58):
Jt Real Muto struck out twelve times. Reese Hoskins and
Nick Costiano has ten times each. And this is why
baseball's playoff structure is completely invalid. The sixth placed team
in one league can get hot for a while, even
reached the World Series, as the Phillies did, but eventually
they will be blown out if they happen to face
the first place team in the other league. Like the Astros.
(28:21):
Free agency is starting. A baseball reliever, Edwin Diaz resigns
with the Mets, but a bad sign in Atlanta, oh
Their free agent shortstop Dansby Swanson has unfollowed the team
on Instagram. Thank you, Nancy Faust and total disaster. In hockey,
(28:49):
Boston's Bruins signed prospect Mitchell Miller, a top draft joyce
whose rights were then renounced by the Coyotes because he
had spent years abusing and racially taunting a developmentally challenged classmate.
After the Bruins signed Miller, they're leading players criticize the move,
and HL Commissioner Gary Bettman said, you should have asked.
Miller is not eligible to play in the NHL right
(29:11):
now and may never be. And late last night the
Bruins suddenly dropped Miller, with team president cam Neely announcing quote,
based on new information, we believe it is the best
decision at this time to rescind the opportunity for Mitchell
Miller to represent the Boston Bruins. The new information must
have been everybody is swearing at us. Also, I must
(29:33):
have missed this. When were the Bruins sold to Elon
musk Ahead in memory of Anny the stat Man. First
the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and dunning cruder
effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the Bronze
(29:54):
to Matt Gates and Jim Gordon, the Jim Jordan's the
Mutt and Jeff of the Minority Caucus on the House
Judiciary Committee. They put out and himped and pushed and
promoted a quote one thousand page report on the politicizing
of the FBI and the Department of Justice. It is
(30:14):
actually one thousand and fifty pages long, and one thousand
of the one thousand and fifty pages are just copies
of letters that Republicans have sent to the White House.
In the document, one five page letter is reproduced ninety
four different times. Two hundred and ninety of the one
thousand fifty pages are just signatures. On the other hand,
(30:36):
none of the one one thousand fifty pages say this
space is for autographs. The silver Mark Levin the Fox
News and Radio Castrato, who dropped the mask, went off
on a tirade about how Democrats support slavery and Jim Crow,
and then he gave up the secret of wall secrets,
as if that gives balance to the rise of anti
(30:57):
Semitism and the Democrat Party and the rise of racism
against the white supremacist majority. The supremacist majority. Hard to
believe that one of these fascists would actually admit that
they are white supremacists. In May two thousand seven, Bill
O'Reilly told John McCain on Fox News that the left
(31:17):
quote wants to break down the white Christian male power structure,
of which you and I are apart. Am I wrong?
And John McCain said to Bill O'Reilly about the white
male power structure, No, you're right, but our winner Jason Whitlock,
who works at the Glenn Beck website The Blaze. In
a rare triple play, Whitlock went on Tucker Carlson's hate Fest,
(31:40):
and based on that false NBC story about the Pelosi's
I mentioned a little earlier, Whitlock managed to be homophobic, misogynistic,
and racist. In one sentence, Whitlock said, of Nancy Pelosi,
let me emphasize I am quoting him, has invested in
a pair of cans at eighty two years old and
(32:00):
comes home to find out that her husband is playing
hide the Hammer with a Black Lives Matter guy and
he is not interested unquote. Whitlock then repeated that, just
in case you didn't hear his degeneracy the first time,
Jason Whitlock was once with an actual newspaper, the Kansas
City Star, and he was twice with ESPN. In fact,
(32:23):
he was once given his own ESPN website to manage,
and eighteen months later, when he still had not managed
to launch it, they fired him. And now he has
brought out on the last step down on the ladder
of life, Nazi TV. They bring him out to make
gay jokes like a trained horse that can count by
stomping one hoof on the ground. Jason have some self
(32:47):
respect to join a monastery with a vale of silence.
Whitlock two Day's worst person in the world, to the
(33:12):
number one story on the Countdown, and my favorite topic,
Me and things I promised not to tell. I had
just thought of him with fondness. At most a week
or two ago, an entire series of conversations came back
to me almost intact. He was our researcher on the
eleven PM edition of Sports Center thirty years ago, Vinny Vassallo,
(33:33):
Vinny the stat Man, as Dan Patrick had named him
long before I even got to ESPN. Vinny was invaluable
and genuinely gifted at what he did, and marvelously serene.
But his real value to me as a friend was
the reality that, whereas there were a lot of good
things to being at a workplace that dealt with virtually
nothing but sports, intellectual variety was not one of those
(33:58):
good things. There was a lot of discussion about music
and a little about television, but mostly about sports, again
and again and again and again. Then one day, a
production assistant he's an executive there now, saw on my
desk my copy of God's Chinese son a book about
the nineteenth century Taiping Rebellion in China, and he asked
(34:20):
it was any good, and I said yes. He said,
nineteenth century China fascinated him. He was thinking of buying
the book, and I said, don't borrow mine, But for
God's sakes, can we then sit and talk about it afterwards?
I think we may be the only people here who
know that there was in nineteenth century. I mean, for
the longest time, I literally could find nobody else at
ESPN who even watched what might have been the funniest
situation comedy in American television history, which was on then
(34:44):
in real time, called The Larry Sanders Show. It was
on HBO. It was not slapstick, it was not mainstream.
It cost money. And then one day we were at
the show planning meeting that started our day at ESPN,
the one in the conference room that had the beautiful
view of the empty lot across the street that was
reputed to be actually a tox waste dump site, and
(35:06):
somebody said something and I used the phrase, hey, no,
of the Larry Sanders Show character Hank Kingsley, and only
one person laughed, and it was Vinny our researcher, and
he said, in his archetypical New England accent, KO should
have known you were the other guy watching Larry Sanders.
After the meeting broke, Vinnie and I sat there throwing
(35:27):
lines at each other from this amazing program depicting the
behind the scenes story of a TV talk show host,
part Letterman, part Leno, part Carson, with Gary Schandling in
the title role and Jeffrey tamboras Kingsley and the insane
Rip Torn as Artie, the producer whose last name was
never mentioned, not once, and who could never go back
to New York again because of cops or the mob
(35:50):
or a woman or something. From then on, every day
after a new episode of Larry Sanders, we would dissect
it like the fanboys we were, and often on the
stage of Sports Center during the show, when he would
hand me one of his cards, Vibe by seven white
index cards with the score and anything else relevant he
could find in those pre internet days that was supplied
(36:12):
to Dan or to me. In the moments before we
were to do the highlight of a game, Vinny would
mutter a line from Arti or Hank or Larry or
yet better than that it would be written in one
corner of my card. Larry Sanders was on, if I
remember right at ten PM on Wednesdays. We Sports Center.
(36:33):
We were on at eleven or eleven thirty on Wednesdays.
So to watch it meant recording it, and to record
it meant VHS cassettes and timers, and finally sitting down
when you got home at one am or one thirty
or whenever, because you could not wait until the next
day to watch, at least not if you were Vinny
the stat Man or one of his anchors Ko. And
(36:55):
finally there came the night. I can see myself watching
in my living room in Southington, Connecticut on the big
rear screen projection TV. I had the only house in
the whole neighborhood with lights on at that hour. I
can see myself enjoying the new Larry Sanders Show so
much because it's not just funny, it's about my industry.
(37:16):
And already the producers, every producer I've ever worked with,
rolled into one undulating mess, and in this one episode
in the middle of the night, already is helping Larry
rehearse a sketch in which he rides a horse, and
in the middle of the rehearsal, Larry complains about his groin,
and already the producer shouts Ice Ko Vinny Ice for
(37:40):
Larry's balls. I thought it was hallucinating Ko Vinny. Of
all the names possible for two never to be seen
stage hand characters on The Larry Sanders Show, they chose
the names Ko and Vinny. The odds against that coincidence
were impossibly high. I had to rewind the tape and
(38:01):
watch it again, which is when the phone rang at
one thirty or so of a Wednesday night Thursday morning. KAYO,
it's Finny. Did you hear it? Did you really say it?
Or am I hallucinating Ko and Vinny like they knew
we were watching? The only problem is now I'll spend
every episode wondering We're ever gonna see us on the show?
I mean them on the show. You know what I mean?
(38:23):
In that way and many others, Vinny Vassallo helped me
adjust to this strange new world of ESPN, to which
I moved directly from a top floor condo in Beverly Hills.
And he was I used the word before serene. His
job was as high pressure as Dan's or mine or
anybody else's on the eleven PM Sports Center at certain
times far more so, he was alone at a desk
(38:46):
in an alcove to our right, and he had to
keep track of and right by hand anything interesting about
and update constantly and hand to the correct anchor these
cards detailing as many as forty different sporting events in
one night. One of these nights, say in April, when baseball,
basket ball, and hockey we're all going at full volume
(39:06):
at the same time, and he's wearing a headset and
the producers talking to him. Dan had made him special
with that nickname of Vinny the Statman, and during commercial breaks,
Dan would often shout the name at him looking for information.
I only called him Vanner Vinny. We talked a lot
about Larry Sanders. We talked a lot about the things
that made ESPN and often maddening place to work. We
(39:26):
talked a lot about other people there that made our
show an often maddening place to work. But he almost
always smiled, either sincerely or satirically, And more than once
he talked me off ledges and talked me into putting
down the figurative grenades, or at least the memo I
was going to send. I believe I cannot swear to this,
(39:47):
but I believe that it was Vinny on the job.
On the night of the most famous or probably infamous
research crisis in the history of sports, Center May three,
a brand new production assistant races into the studio from
the editing rooms with the shot sheet the list of
plays that the headed edited highlights will show, and she
(40:10):
tells all who will listen that she has to talk
to Dan about these highlights. So which one is Dan?
Because there's a really tough name in the highlights, and
she wants to make sure Dan knows how to say it.
The Detroit Tigers have used a rookie picture making his
home debut in Detroit, and that picture's name is Ben
(40:30):
blow Doll. There's a silence just like that one, and
then I say, no, it's not and Benny stifles a
laugh and he says, I don't think so. And the
floor director says, one minute back, I will have the
first two highlights of the segment that will begin after
that one minute. Then Dan will do his blow Doll highlight.
(40:52):
I should be worrying about my two games, but seen
by now Dan has begun to projectile sweat at the
thought of saying Ben blow Doll on national television. So
Vinny says, KO, what do we do? Do you know
what he's talking about? Out what she's talking about, you
know what anybody's talking about? And I say no. That's
that's why I'm kind of sure it's not blow Doll,
because if his name really were blow Doll, I would
(41:14):
have heard of him. Come to think of it, if
it were blow Doll, he would have changed it. Right.
Dan Patrick is now an abject terror. What do I say?
I tell him to skip the name. At this point,
the production assistant interrupts, cheerfully. He can't skip it. He
told me to make a big deal out of it.
There's about thirty seconds of him. It's a long time
(41:34):
in one highlight, and even in now, the terrible truth
has emerged. The new production assistant has been pranked into
putting in highlights things that are not highlights. And the
person who's going to pay the price for this prank
is Dan Benny. I say, get the Tiger Media Guide,
(41:54):
get the American league Red Book. Pronunciation has got to
be in one of them. Maybe both throw me the
one you find first. Thirty seconds, shouts the stage manager.
For God's sake, says Dan. Benny tosses me the Tiger
Media guy that goes a good twenty ft right to
my hands. I opened it, and then he opens up
the American League Master media guy the red book. Ten
(42:15):
seconds we find the name and the pronunciation simultaneously. Five
seconds he and I shout to Dan as if we
had rehearsed it. It's bloom doll, bloom doll. There is
a one second pause. From the corner of my eye,
I can see Dan hyperventilating. The director then accused me
in my earpiece, and I say, we rejoin you with
the highlights from the American League. During the next commercial break,
(42:39):
the studio erupts with laughter. Many of asato comes out
from the research alcove to hand. Dan and I are
cards for the next segments games good old Benny blow Doll,
bloom Doll. He says, we'll have to put his picture
up here somewhere, and I say, ice, Ko, Benny, Ice
for Dan's you got the idea. The email came in
(43:04):
Friday night from one of our other great researchers at ESPN. Later,
the head of that department Craig Wax. It was a
link to an obituary in the Worcester Telegram. The obituary
was of Vinny Vasselo, and he had been sick. The
funeral is today in Worcester, mass There are references in
this obituary to dialysis and two contributions to the American
(43:28):
Diabetes Association and to mitochondrial research. Then he died in
a nursing facility in Farmington, Connecticut, fifteen minutes from the
ESPN campus in Bristol. He died last Tuesday. I think
it had been a couple of decades since I talked
to him, but I had always felt as if he
had been nearby. Yet there were facts in there. I
(43:50):
never knew he was one of ten kids, No wonder,
dealing with us two idiots was so easy, and he
had two sons, Camden and Dalton. I known that he
had moved within ESPN from research into management, somewhere in
the office, maybe the legal department, human resources. Then he
(44:10):
went back into production and research and producing, and then
he left the company and he went to work for
the Nesson Sports Network in Boston, and he came back
to ESPN to work as a producer I did not know.
He had gotten a paralegal degree and worked for a
time at the Superior Court in Middletown in Connecticut. Next part,
I knew it's there in the obit. I'll read it.
(44:31):
His prodigious knowledge of sports earned him the on air
nickname from the sportscasters at ESPN of Vinny the stat Man.
He was the Google for sports before there was Google,
and he could be counted on to deliver the data.
And there's a photo. I couldn't tell you how old
it is or how old he is in it. The
(44:53):
hair is a little shorter, but the reassuring and serene
smile is there. Veniva Salo was sixte years old. Thanks
(45:20):
for listening. Follow this podcast if you can tell a
friend if you would. We are number one among news
and political podcasts not produced by a network. I'd like
to keep it that way. These are our credits. Most
of the music, including our theme from Beethoven's Ninth, was arranged, produced,
and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle. They
are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by
(45:40):
John Philip Chanelle, guitarist Bassed and drums by Brian Ray,
produced by t k O Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have
been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports
music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, and it
was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Musical comments come from Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium
(46:01):
organist ever. Our announcer today was Kenny Maine. Everything else
is pretty much my fault, so that he's countdown for
this the six and seventy first day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coo against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Arrest him now while we still can. I'll
be back with a new episode tomorrow. Till then, I'm
Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
(46:30):
Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart
Radio on the Friday before an election crucial to the
(00:26):
safeguarding of democracy in this nation. MSNBC fired it's most
outspoken and most probably it's bravest host because Fox News
complained about her. Where is the statement of protest about
the firing of Tiffany Cross from Lawrence O'Donnell. Where is
(00:49):
the anger from Chris Hayes. Where is the condemnation of
a woman's voice silenced from Alex Wagner. Where is the
threat to walk out, to boycott, to quit, to stand
on principle from Rachel Maddow. Whatever happens in the voting tomorrow,
(01:13):
remember at all times that you and I do not
have a true friend or an ally. At MSNBC, at CNN,
at CBS, at ABC, we have television performers who will
make sure they are seen in the easy fights, but
when it is bad, who will draw a line and
fight and protect one thing and one thing alone their paychecks.
(01:37):
We have the opposition, the caged d claude, gutless and
entirely authorized official opposition. On Saturday, NBC News had to
retract the story it put on the Today show on Friday,
in which reporter Miguel al mcgare refueled the entire right
(01:58):
wing conspiracy theory about the Trump Is terrorist attack on
Paul Pelosi. Al mcgare quote did an unnamed source who
claimed Paul Pelosi didn't flee or tell responding officers he
was in distress. It was entirely untrue. Al mcgeary simply
took a right wing disinformation talking point and put it
(02:20):
on national television, even though it disagreed completely with the
on the record police account. He might as well have
been quoting Gateway pundit. By the evening, he had handed
Tucker Carlson a headline. NBC reveals explosive new details in
Pelosi attack. Has Miguel al mcgare been fired. Has the
(02:41):
vice president in charge of the Today's Show, Libby Lycet,
been fired? Has the president of NBC News, Noah Oppenheim
been fired? Has the chairman of NBC News says ar Conde,
been fired? Has the chairman of NBC Universal, Jeff Shell,
been fired? No, Tiffany Cross was fired because Tucker Carlson
complained about Tiffany Cross and between her firing and the
(03:04):
crack pot conspiracy theory. The Today Show delivered gift wrapped
to Tucker Carlson. It is evident that right now the
only discernible point of their being an NBC News and
an MSNBC is to do Tucker Carlson's heavy lifting for him.
And the faces of MSNBC, the people there who have
made NBC more money in the last decade than NBC
(03:27):
News has have to this hour, said nothing about the
firing of Tiffany Cross because she dared to anger the
propaganda machine at Fox, the one that would make Gegel's blush,
and because she dared to call a theocratic fascist on
the Supreme Court what he is, just as those faces
of MSNBC have said nothing about Al mcgare and the
(03:48):
Pelosi story, whether that was mere firing level incompetence or
it was firing level sabotage of the truth, just as
those faces of MSNBC have said nothing about the parade
of election deniers and Trump cultists and other Republicans whom
march through every week on Meet the Press, while Chuck
Todd does his best impression of Susan Collins and lets
(04:11):
them spread their lies, but is quietly confident they have
learned their lesson. NBC News is doing the work of
those who would end democracy in this country. On occasion,
they may be doing it inadvertently. It is possible Al
mcgare and the producers of The Today Show are just
incompetent morons. God knows it's happened before over there. But
(04:34):
in throwing out Tiffany Cross, they're not only silencing a
valuable voice who might have become an essential one, but
they are warning everybody else on the air at MSNBC that, yes, yes,
this company has made several billion dollars in profits in
the fifteen years since that old guy whose name alber Ding,
since that guy inadvertently made us the sole home of
(04:57):
accurate and liberal and progressive news coverage and commentary, and
since he hired Meadow as his guest host and then
spun her off to her own show, then then spun
his next guest host, O'Donnell off to his own show,
and then spun his next next guest host, Hayes, off
to his own show, and auditioned Wagner to be his
next next next guest host. They warned MSNBC and NBC News,
(05:17):
did Matto and O'Donnell and Hayes and Wagner and all
the others on the air. They're sure we have made money,
and sure Tiffany Crosses show was just about the only
one on our network with any ratings growth of any kind.
But we fired her, and we leaked it to the
Washington Post that she was fired in large part by
another African American woman because she was controversial, and NBC
(05:43):
Universal cannot be controversial right now, because you know, fascists
also by Comcast cable packages and Peacocks subscriptions, and you
could be next. And you have now heard the responses
of Mattow and Hayes and O'Donnell and Wagner. Silence, silence,
(06:06):
with just a barely perceptible vibration of fear in the background.
When asked on Comedy Central which state the Democrats could
afford to lose, Tiffany cross had made a joke about
the phallic shape of the state of Florida and said,
let's cast right Florida. Last month, she referred to Clarence
Thomas as quote justice, pubic hair and my coke can.
(06:30):
When Elissa Farah, the former Trump propagandist, became a finalist
to co host the view TV show. Cross called her
a tawdry turncoat Trump loyalist and said she had written
his wave of open xenophobia and racism all the way
to network television. And when the despicable racist Megan Kelly,
whom NBC is still paying off after having foolishly hired
(06:54):
her in the belief she could bring racist viewers to NBC,
when Megan Kelly called her the most racist person on television,
Cross responded by calling Kelly the black face expert for
having defended it on NBC. Defended black face as a
Halloween costume. You know, I would have been proud to
(07:16):
have thought of saying any of those things on television.
They're not just incisive and wounding and well crafted and
directed at the scum of the earth, like Megan Kelly,
like Clarence Thomas, but they have the added benefit of
having been true. And then Tucker Carlson devoted an entire
(07:37):
segment to Tiffany Cross and suggested her commentary was likely
to instigate an anti white movement in the United States
that would be akin to the genocide in Rwanda. If
that prediction was not so racist and so paranoid and
so syphilitic in its thinking it would be frankly hilarious.
(07:57):
Tucker Carlson suggested that all the black people would rise
up and kill us in our beds because of the
woman who hosted two hours on MSNBC on Saturdays on
Saturday mornings. But all NBC executives could see was controversy
as opposed to truth. Tucker Carlson attacks truth and at
(08:22):
NBC defending truth, defending your people, defending the true victims
of racism, defending democracy, defending America. That's, you know, sometimes controversial.
You can't do that. You you will be quiet, You
will be quiet. Alex Wagner, Chris Hayes, Laurence O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow.
(08:48):
I have left MSNBC's seven PM host Joy read out
of this because she said something on Friday night. It
was personal and not professional. I wish it had been more,
but compared to what the other hosts did not say,
she is on the mount rushmore of putting herself at
just a little risk to defend what is right. And O'Donnell,
(09:10):
I'm not surprised Laurence O'Donnell is a snake. Laurence O'Donnell
had been buried so deep by MSNBC that when he
was pitched to me as the new guest host for
Countdown after we finally got Rachel her own show in
two thousand eight, he no longer had a valid log
in to the in house production computer. I was hesitant,
but hopeful. Then in February of two thousand ten, I
(09:33):
took about a four week leave of absence because after
seven months in the hospital, my dad was dying and
I would have to make the decision. When Laurence O'Donnell
spent that four weeks filling in for me, trying to
get me fired as the host of Countdown so he
could replace me, And when that did not work, he
sweet talked all of the producers to try to get
them to go with him to a new ten PM
(09:53):
show that he would anchor at. Three or four of
them actually went with him, and one of them told
me recently that anything I could think to do to
her as revenge for that, Laurence O'Donnell had already done
it for me. I do find myself mystified, however, about
the silence here of Chris Hayes. If you remember, and
(10:16):
I do not expect you to, I barely have kept
a diary of my career. I don't believe anybody else has.
But after the two thousand ten elections, I revealed I
had donated to the campaigns of three Democrats who had
received multiple death threats and as a result, had had
to spend excessively on security in the waning days of
their campaigns. The donations each came literally after the last
(10:39):
time I had covered or mentioned any of them on
the air. One of them was Gabby Gifford's. The suspension
for violating NBC News employee guidelines was overturned in about
forty eight hours by the NBC lawyers when they explained
to the then News president that to save money, they
had written a contract that specifically and repeatedly stated that
(11:01):
I was not an NBC News employee, so you could
not suspend me for violating the rules of NBC News employees.
Even Fox News commentators thought this was moronic, as one said, oh, no,
Alderman is a Democrat who knew before they were hoist
(11:22):
on their own petard. NBC executives asked one person to
fill in for me that night. It was Chris Hayes.
To his credit, at least in my book, he refused.
Then again, he did not have a multimillion dollar contract
with MSNBC, then did he, and a show that has
been on for nine years without showing any kind of
(11:42):
ratings growth whatsoever. We're providing anything of substance like he
could provide now by saying that what is right is
right and what is wrong is wrong. And even if
it is your boss is doing the wrong thing, maybe
because it is your boss is doing the wrong thing,
you have to stand up and say something, Chris Hayes,
as you did before. He did stand up before, and
(12:08):
so I am sad to tell you did Rachel Maddow
I told this saga at length early on in this series.
On the second of June two thousand and nine, we
were all summoned, We all the primetime hosts, all the
primetime producers, everybody who was in New York. We were
summoned to the fifty second floor of thirty Rock to
(12:29):
the office of the president of NBC, Jeff Zucker, who
displayed rare agitation and even panic, and explained that the
chairman of our parent company, GE was enraged. In response
to my mostly on air criticisms of Fox News. Fox
News was attacking GE and its chairman. His name was
Jeff Immelt, and Bill O'Reilly was attacking GE and Jeff
(12:51):
m L. And Jeff m L's own mother, a Bill
O'Reilly viewer, was attacking GE and her own son. And
Jeff m L said to Jeff Zucker, if he heard
another word about Fox News on MSNBC, or another word
about himself on Fox New was he was going to
take MSNBC off the air, immediately shut it down, fire everybody,
(13:11):
pay off all the contracts. The three hundred million dollars
in profits we had just started to earn for him
was not worth it. And for tens forty minutes or so,
we tried to work out mostly it was me and
Zuker what to do to keep this from happening. Well,
finally I suggested we should suspend all references to Fox
News while we tried to keep our CEO wasn't really
(13:33):
much of a businessman, apparently from turning off the lights
and throwing back the three million dollars, maybe two weeks,
we could stand it, three weeks, some short period of
time like that, and if it didn't work out well,
then it was going to go and explode. But we
could give it a couple of weeks and still retain
our dignity and our journalistic sincerity. And then Rachel Maddow,
(13:56):
when her show was not quite nine months old, said,
excuse me. I will not have the content of my
show dictated by any corporation, including the one I work for,
and especially one I don't work for. I will walk
out first. I cannot have the audience wondering what else
(14:17):
I have not told them. I got a little cold
as I heard her say this. She was right. I
was willing to do the same thing, but I wanted
to give it two weeks first. She added, I don't
do a lot about Fox on my show, but if
there is a story about Fox, I will not honor
this freeze. I will report it, and if I am
prevented from doing so, I will leave. Rachel Maddow threatened
(14:41):
to quit over a matter of principle, and coincidentally enough
about Fox News as well. I had done this myself
at MSNBC three times, once right after I signed a
contract to return to the network in two thousand three,
and they had broken agreement that the fascist commentator Michael
Savage would never appear on Countdown. I called a cab.
(15:02):
I was walking out the front hallway and they backed down.
Then about four and a half years later, it turned
out they had lied to me when they told me
they had given a contributor's contract to a brilliant talent
who I thought would make an even more brilliant host,
and they hadn't given her the contract, and we were
now going to lose her right then, right that moment,
to see an n because Larry King was willing to
(15:22):
pay her two fifty dollars to appear with him on
a primary night, she was short of cash. It was
Rachel Maddow, I said, if you do not hire her,
I will walk out in the middle of our election
coverage tonight. I'm not going to tell you when they
hired her. And the third time it was when they
told me that starting in two thousand eleven, conservative contributors
(15:45):
would be assigned to my show to give countdown quote balance,
And I said that was a betrayal of our audience,
and I would leave. And and it was one of
about a dozen reasons I left. I left when Rachel
(16:06):
Meadows said she'd had enough of the grind of a
nightly show. MSNBC gave her thirty million dollars per year
to do one show a week and work on other projects.
And mostly they gave her the money to prevent her
from going to serious XM radio for nearly that much money.
They gave her thirty million dollars in essence to ice
her to shut her up. And now has come a test.
(16:28):
A liberal voice edgy, maybe too wise asked for some viewers.
But to be fair, I invented MSNBC viewers. I never
heard any of them complain to any of us, were
two wise ass This liberal edgy voice has been silenced.
And they did it on a Friday afternoon, the hour
for the proverbial news garbage dump. They did it after
(16:52):
Megan Kelly complained. They did it after Tucker Carlson complained.
They did it after Fox News complained. They did it.
And Laurence O'Donnell said nothing, and Alex Wagner said nothing,
and Chris Hayes said nothing. And once upon a time,
(17:13):
that moment should have been the time when Rachel Maddow
would have said something. Because courage and ethics and leadership
and patriotism and the fight against television political content being
the sole property of corporations and the bright red line
that says I cannot have my audience wondering what else
(17:34):
I did not stand up for and who else I
did not stand up for. Those things are not expressed
when you get one page of Donald Trump's tax returns
and you spend forty five minutes hyping it to the
audience like a Carnival Barker selling mismadows magic elixir to
the Rubes. Courage and ethics and leadership and patriotism and
(17:54):
the defense of journalism is when if you say something,
they might just take your millions away from you, and
you have to decide which would you rather have taken
away from you, the millions more millions than you could
ever spend, or your ethics and your soul and the
very essence of the reason you do what you do,
(18:14):
and the very essence of why you have fought a
thousand fights for lesser things. It is in a moment
like this, the silencing of somebody else who does what
you do, somebody with no power, somebody with no millions,
somebody with no legend, somebody with no longevity, somebody with
no permanent base, the silence of somebody who is now
(18:35):
what you were in your second year. It is at
a moment like this when silence is collaboration. As I
burned countless bridges to get her her own show. Of
all the things I ever thought I would hear myself
say in the future to her or about her, these
(19:00):
words We're not in my wildest dreams, nor are my
worst nightmares. Rachel Maddow. Will you pretend this is not
your problem? Or will you stand up for what is
right here? You know, like you used to still ahead
(19:35):
to Santis versus Trump, Win Win. I haven't looked in
fifteen minutes, says Elon Musk. Turned Twitter into a site
that steals your passwords and takes your computer hostage. We're
not yet that Later today, World Series Parade time. If
the Astros get a parade, day should also have made
the Phillies walk back to Philadelphia and only the most
(19:57):
ardent of old Times Sports Center fans will recognize this name,
Vinny the Statman in memorium. That's next. This is countdown,
This is countdown with Keith Olberman and still a head
(20:19):
on countdown. Dan Crenshaw admits the big lie is a
big lie in Twitter news. Has he finished destroying Twitter yet?
The terrible hockey controversy ends when the team in question says, uh,
you know, we were kind of screwed up. It's over
and Jason Whitlock racist, sexist, and homophobic and all in
(20:39):
the same sentence. First, in each edition of Countdown, we
feature a dog in need. You can help. Every dog
has its day for Ace desperately needs a foster or
adopt anywhere from Virginia to Maine. Anybody who can come
to New York to get him. He's a big, tan
colored mix of some kind giant shepherd ears he's well behaved.
(21:00):
He was dumped because his human claimed to have suddenly
become allergic. He does not need pledges. He has pledges.
He needs somewhere to go short term or long term,
or simply put, they will kill him if you can
provide that place to land. Reply to my tweet either
in my personal account or the one about Ace that
will be in the pinned tweet on my account for
Dogs in Need at Tom Jumbo Grumbo. Ace needs a
(21:23):
home from Virginia to Main Free. Unconditional love is yours
and thank you. Poscripts to the news some headlines, some updates,
some snarks, some predictions, date line Countdown headquarters here in
(21:45):
the Sports Capsule Building in New York City, and everybody
else will tell you what they think will happen tomorrow
in the mid terms. I will make only one prediction.
Somewhere between a third and a half of the critical
Senate at House races will be too close to call
before Wednesday at the earliest, and all of the Republican
losses will be called fixes, even though Republican u when
Dan Crenshaw has revealed on a podcast that the Trump
(22:08):
thing quote was always a lie, and it was a
lie meant to rile people up, Crenshaw adding the others
they're like, yeah, we know that, but people just need
their last hurrah. They just need to feel like we
fought one last time. Trust me, it'll be fine. And
I was like, no, it won't. Dateline Tallahassee. After Trump
tagg DeSantis with a cumbersome nickname Saturday night, Ron de Sinctimonious,
(22:32):
the only gossip columnist covering the presidential campaign for The
New York Times, Maggie Haberman, tweeted several DeSantis allies, some
also close to Trump, texted last night and this morning unprompted,
expressing private anger and even discussed with Trump for his
remarks about the Florida governor. Say they're telling De Santis
and his family and his top aids to still move
(22:53):
toward twenty four bid translation. I never thought he'd eat
my face, says man who joined the Leopards eating people's faces.
Party and dateline Tallahassee speaking of Andis and his family.
His wife put this thing out. It is a commercial
that basically claims that after God created the universe in
seven days, God spent the eighth day creating run de Santis.
(23:20):
No seriously, and day God looked down on his planned
paradise and said, I need a protector. So God made
a fighter. God said I need somebody willing to get
up before dawn, kiss his family goodbye, travel thousands of miles,
(23:41):
and eat waffles. Two minutes of that Two notes. One
remember me telling you about the paranoid radio commentator I
used to back up Paul Harvey. Whoever voice that commercial
is doing a good impression of Paul Harvey. And two,
if you are now ever in the same room with
RHN De Santis after that commercial, do not stand too
close to him, because if there is a God, he
(24:02):
will soon smote him with some big time lightning and
dateline Latrobe, Pennsylvania, just before an election in which your
opponent has made the premise stick that you are not
really from Pennsylvania. Probably a poor idea for amend At
Oz to tell people at his Saturday rally with Trump
that they needed to contact ten people each to get
them to vote for Oz, and that they should do
(24:24):
it yesterday morning quote before the Steelers game. The Steelers,
as Oz's opponent, John Fetterman pointed out, had yesterday off
and that Latrobe rally also answered a question I frequently
here and I've even asked myself in the largest sense
of this question, how did America get into this mess? Well,
(24:45):
listen to this guy from Saturday at the Trump rally
in Pennsylvania, and I think you'll have your answer. In
the world is relying on the United States of America
to do the right thing. If we lose, they all lose.
And that's a big problem. You have Australians voting for us,
all these other countries. The people are voting for the
United States to win this election, and if we don't
(25:08):
win it, it's trouble for every country, not just our aly. Yes,
he's the answer to that question, how did America get
into this mess? Because we are surround that by ence.
Speaking of which, dateline San Francisco. Remember the day he
took over, when Elon Musk walked into Twitter headquarters carrying
(25:28):
a sink because he thought then saying let that sink
in would be funny. I'm beginning to think the fixture
he should have carried in with him was in fact
a toilet or maybe a burning dumpster. Upon purchase, Musk
had declared comedy is now legal on Twitter, but after
a series of verified accounts Valerie Burton, Ellity, Cathy Griffin
(25:49):
others mocked him and used his name as their account name,
Musk declared he would permanently ban anybody using anybody else's
name without specifying parody, and he then banned Griffin and
a couple of others. But he also declared widespread verify
ation will democratize journalism, even though he also eliminated verification.
(26:09):
He also announced he intended to make Twitter the most
accurate source of information about the world. He also liked
a meme supposedly including a quote from Voltaire about who
rules over you, except the quote is not from Voltaire.
It's actually from an American neo Nazi pedophile. Elon Musk
is about halfway to becoming Kanye West. More practically, several
(26:31):
tech reporters revealing that after Musk fired thousands of Twitter
employees by email Friday, many of the dismissed staffers then
got invitations to return, in part because Musk fired at
least two teams that were working on new projects that
Musk wanted to launch immediately fired all the people working
(26:51):
on the most urgent problems, which might explain why so
far people paying the eight dollar fee for Twitter Blue
have not gotten the blue check mark that was supposed
to be the whole point of paying the eight dollars.
(27:17):
This is Sports Center, Wait check that not anymore. This
is countdown with Keith Alberman in Sports World Series parade
today in Houston. Though honestly, it was such a bad
World Series that after the parade is over, they ought
to make the Philadelphia Phillies clean up the route. The
(27:37):
Phillies went up two games to one on the Astros,
and then in the last three games that got a
total of nine hits and a total of three runs
and the Astros one out. Philly's finished with the worst
team batting average in a series that lasted at least
six games one fifty nine. They struck out seventy one
times in those six games, the most in any World series.
(27:58):
Jt Real Muto struck out twelve times. Reese Hoskins and
Nick Costiano has ten times each. And this is why
baseball's playoff structure is completely invalid. The sixth placed team
in one league can get hot for a while, even
reached the World Series, as the Phillies did, but eventually
they will be blown out if they happen to face
the first place team in the other league. Like the Astros.
(28:21):
Free agency is starting. A baseball reliever, Edwin Diaz resigns
with the Mets, but a bad sign in Atlanta, oh
Their free agent shortstop Dansby Swanson has unfollowed the team
on Instagram. Thank you, Nancy Faust and total disaster. In hockey,
(28:49):
Boston's Bruins signed prospect Mitchell Miller, a top draft joyce
whose rights were then renounced by the Coyotes because he
had spent years abusing and racially taunting a developmentally challenged classmate.
After the Bruins signed Miller, they're leading players criticize the move,
and HL Commissioner Gary Bettman said, you should have asked.
Miller is not eligible to play in the NHL right
(29:11):
now and may never be. And late last night the
Bruins suddenly dropped Miller, with team president cam Neely announcing quote,
based on new information, we believe it is the best
decision at this time to rescind the opportunity for Mitchell
Miller to represent the Boston Bruins. The new information must
have been everybody is swearing at us. Also, I must
(29:33):
have missed this. When were the Bruins sold to Elon
musk Ahead in memory of Anny the stat Man. First
the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and dunning cruder
effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the Bronze
(29:54):
to Matt Gates and Jim Gordon, the Jim Jordan's the
Mutt and Jeff of the Minority Caucus on the House
Judiciary Committee. They put out and himped and pushed and
promoted a quote one thousand page report on the politicizing
of the FBI and the Department of Justice. It is
(30:14):
actually one thousand and fifty pages long, and one thousand
of the one thousand and fifty pages are just copies
of letters that Republicans have sent to the White House.
In the document, one five page letter is reproduced ninety
four different times. Two hundred and ninety of the one
thousand fifty pages are just signatures. On the other hand,
(30:36):
none of the one one thousand fifty pages say this
space is for autographs. The silver Mark Levin the Fox
News and Radio Castrato, who dropped the mask, went off
on a tirade about how Democrats support slavery and Jim Crow,
and then he gave up the secret of wall secrets,
as if that gives balance to the rise of anti
(30:57):
Semitism and the Democrat Party and the rise of racism
against the white supremacist majority. The supremacist majority. Hard to
believe that one of these fascists would actually admit that
they are white supremacists. In May two thousand seven, Bill
O'Reilly told John McCain on Fox News that the left
(31:17):
quote wants to break down the white Christian male power structure,
of which you and I are apart. Am I wrong?
And John McCain said to Bill O'Reilly about the white
male power structure, No, you're right, but our winner Jason Whitlock,
who works at the Glenn Beck website The Blaze. In
a rare triple play, Whitlock went on Tucker Carlson's hate Fest,
(31:40):
and based on that false NBC story about the Pelosi's
I mentioned a little earlier, Whitlock managed to be homophobic, misogynistic,
and racist. In one sentence, Whitlock said, of Nancy Pelosi,
let me emphasize I am quoting him, has invested in
a pair of cans at eighty two years old and
(32:00):
comes home to find out that her husband is playing
hide the Hammer with a Black Lives Matter guy and
he is not interested unquote. Whitlock then repeated that, just
in case you didn't hear his degeneracy the first time,
Jason Whitlock was once with an actual newspaper, the Kansas
City Star, and he was twice with ESPN. In fact,
(32:23):
he was once given his own ESPN website to manage,
and eighteen months later, when he still had not managed
to launch it, they fired him. And now he has
brought out on the last step down on the ladder
of life, Nazi TV. They bring him out to make
gay jokes like a trained horse that can count by
stomping one hoof on the ground. Jason have some self
(32:47):
respect to join a monastery with a vale of silence.
Whitlock two Day's worst person in the world, to the
(33:12):
number one story on the Countdown, and my favorite topic,
Me and things I promised not to tell. I had
just thought of him with fondness. At most a week
or two ago, an entire series of conversations came back
to me almost intact. He was our researcher on the
eleven PM edition of Sports Center thirty years ago, Vinny Vassallo,
(33:33):
Vinny the stat Man, as Dan Patrick had named him
long before I even got to ESPN. Vinny was invaluable
and genuinely gifted at what he did, and marvelously serene.
But his real value to me as a friend was
the reality that, whereas there were a lot of good
things to being at a workplace that dealt with virtually
nothing but sports, intellectual variety was not one of those
(33:58):
good things. There was a lot of discussion about music
and a little about television, but mostly about sports, again
and again and again and again. Then one day, a
production assistant he's an executive there now, saw on my
desk my copy of God's Chinese son a book about
the nineteenth century Taiping Rebellion in China, and he asked
(34:20):
it was any good, and I said yes. He said,
nineteenth century China fascinated him. He was thinking of buying
the book, and I said, don't borrow mine, But for
God's sakes, can we then sit and talk about it afterwards?
I think we may be the only people here who
know that there was in nineteenth century. I mean, for
the longest time, I literally could find nobody else at
ESPN who even watched what might have been the funniest
situation comedy in American television history, which was on then
(34:44):
in real time, called The Larry Sanders Show. It was
on HBO. It was not slapstick, it was not mainstream.
It cost money. And then one day we were at
the show planning meeting that started our day at ESPN,
the one in the conference room that had the beautiful
view of the empty lot across the street that was
reputed to be actually a tox waste dump site, and
(35:06):
somebody said something and I used the phrase, hey, no,
of the Larry Sanders Show character Hank Kingsley, and only
one person laughed, and it was Vinny our researcher, and
he said, in his archetypical New England accent, KO should
have known you were the other guy watching Larry Sanders.
After the meeting broke, Vinnie and I sat there throwing
(35:27):
lines at each other from this amazing program depicting the
behind the scenes story of a TV talk show host,
part Letterman, part Leno, part Carson, with Gary Schandling in
the title role and Jeffrey tamboras Kingsley and the insane
Rip Torn as Artie, the producer whose last name was
never mentioned, not once, and who could never go back
to New York again because of cops or the mob
(35:50):
or a woman or something. From then on, every day
after a new episode of Larry Sanders, we would dissect
it like the fanboys we were, and often on the
stage of Sports Center during the show, when he would
hand me one of his cards, Vibe by seven white
index cards with the score and anything else relevant he
could find in those pre internet days that was supplied
(36:12):
to Dan or to me. In the moments before we
were to do the highlight of a game, Vinny would
mutter a line from Arti or Hank or Larry or
yet better than that it would be written in one
corner of my card. Larry Sanders was on, if I
remember right at ten PM on Wednesdays. We Sports Center.
(36:33):
We were on at eleven or eleven thirty on Wednesdays.
So to watch it meant recording it, and to record
it meant VHS cassettes and timers, and finally sitting down
when you got home at one am or one thirty
or whenever, because you could not wait until the next
day to watch, at least not if you were Vinny
the stat Man or one of his anchors Ko. And
(36:55):
finally there came the night. I can see myself watching
in my living room in Southington, Connecticut on the big
rear screen projection TV. I had the only house in
the whole neighborhood with lights on at that hour. I
can see myself enjoying the new Larry Sanders Show so
much because it's not just funny, it's about my industry.
(37:16):
And already the producers, every producer I've ever worked with,
rolled into one undulating mess, and in this one episode
in the middle of the night, already is helping Larry
rehearse a sketch in which he rides a horse, and
in the middle of the rehearsal, Larry complains about his groin,
and already the producer shouts Ice Ko Vinny Ice for
(37:40):
Larry's balls. I thought it was hallucinating Ko Vinny. Of
all the names possible for two never to be seen
stage hand characters on The Larry Sanders Show, they chose
the names Ko and Vinny. The odds against that coincidence
were impossibly high. I had to rewind the tape and
(38:01):
watch it again, which is when the phone rang at
one thirty or so of a Wednesday night Thursday morning. KAYO,
it's Finny. Did you hear it? Did you really say it?
Or am I hallucinating Ko and Vinny like they knew
we were watching? The only problem is now I'll spend
every episode wondering We're ever gonna see us on the show?
I mean them on the show. You know what I mean?
(38:23):
In that way and many others, Vinny Vassallo helped me
adjust to this strange new world of ESPN, to which
I moved directly from a top floor condo in Beverly Hills.
And he was I used the word before serene. His
job was as high pressure as Dan's or mine or
anybody else's on the eleven PM Sports Center at certain
times far more so, he was alone at a desk
(38:46):
in an alcove to our right, and he had to
keep track of and right by hand anything interesting about
and update constantly and hand to the correct anchor these
cards detailing as many as forty different sporting events in
one night. One of these nights, say in April, when baseball,
basket ball, and hockey we're all going at full volume
(39:06):
at the same time, and he's wearing a headset and
the producers talking to him. Dan had made him special
with that nickname of Vinny the Statman, and during commercial breaks,
Dan would often shout the name at him looking for information.
I only called him Vanner Vinny. We talked a lot
about Larry Sanders. We talked a lot about the things
that made ESPN and often maddening place to work. We
(39:26):
talked a lot about other people there that made our
show an often maddening place to work. But he almost
always smiled, either sincerely or satirically, And more than once
he talked me off ledges and talked me into putting
down the figurative grenades, or at least the memo I
was going to send. I believe I cannot swear to this,
(39:47):
but I believe that it was Vinny on the job.
On the night of the most famous or probably infamous
research crisis in the history of sports, Center May three,
a brand new production assistant races into the studio from
the editing rooms with the shot sheet the list of
plays that the headed edited highlights will show, and she
(40:10):
tells all who will listen that she has to talk
to Dan about these highlights. So which one is Dan?
Because there's a really tough name in the highlights, and
she wants to make sure Dan knows how to say it.
The Detroit Tigers have used a rookie picture making his
home debut in Detroit, and that picture's name is Ben
(40:30):
blow Doll. There's a silence just like that one, and
then I say, no, it's not and Benny stifles a
laugh and he says, I don't think so. And the
floor director says, one minute back, I will have the
first two highlights of the segment that will begin after
that one minute. Then Dan will do his blow Doll highlight.
(40:52):
I should be worrying about my two games, but seen
by now Dan has begun to projectile sweat at the
thought of saying Ben blow Doll on national television. So
Vinny says, KO, what do we do? Do you know
what he's talking about? Out what she's talking about, you
know what anybody's talking about? And I say no. That's
that's why I'm kind of sure it's not blow Doll,
because if his name really were blow Doll, I would
(41:14):
have heard of him. Come to think of it, if
it were blow Doll, he would have changed it. Right.
Dan Patrick is now an abject terror. What do I say?
I tell him to skip the name. At this point,
the production assistant interrupts, cheerfully. He can't skip it. He
told me to make a big deal out of it.
There's about thirty seconds of him. It's a long time
(41:34):
in one highlight, and even in now, the terrible truth
has emerged. The new production assistant has been pranked into
putting in highlights things that are not highlights. And the
person who's going to pay the price for this prank
is Dan Benny. I say, get the Tiger Media Guide,
(41:54):
get the American league Red Book. Pronunciation has got to
be in one of them. Maybe both throw me the
one you find first. Thirty seconds, shouts the stage manager.
For God's sake, says Dan. Benny tosses me the Tiger
Media guy that goes a good twenty ft right to
my hands. I opened it, and then he opens up
the American League Master media guy the red book. Ten
(42:15):
seconds we find the name and the pronunciation simultaneously. Five
seconds he and I shout to Dan as if we
had rehearsed it. It's bloom doll, bloom doll. There is
a one second pause. From the corner of my eye,
I can see Dan hyperventilating. The director then accused me
in my earpiece, and I say, we rejoin you with
the highlights from the American League. During the next commercial break,
(42:39):
the studio erupts with laughter. Many of asato comes out
from the research alcove to hand. Dan and I are
cards for the next segments games good old Benny blow Doll,
bloom Doll. He says, we'll have to put his picture
up here somewhere, and I say, ice, Ko, Benny, Ice
for Dan's you got the idea. The email came in
(43:04):
Friday night from one of our other great researchers at ESPN. Later,
the head of that department Craig Wax. It was a
link to an obituary in the Worcester Telegram. The obituary
was of Vinny Vasselo, and he had been sick. The
funeral is today in Worcester, mass There are references in
this obituary to dialysis and two contributions to the American
(43:28):
Diabetes Association and to mitochondrial research. Then he died in
a nursing facility in Farmington, Connecticut, fifteen minutes from the
ESPN campus in Bristol. He died last Tuesday. I think
it had been a couple of decades since I talked
to him, but I had always felt as if he
had been nearby. Yet there were facts in there. I
(43:50):
never knew he was one of ten kids, No wonder,
dealing with us two idiots was so easy, and he
had two sons, Camden and Dalton. I known that he
had moved within ESPN from research into management, somewhere in
the office, maybe the legal department, human resources. Then he
(44:10):
went back into production and research and producing, and then
he left the company and he went to work for
the Nesson Sports Network in Boston, and he came back
to ESPN to work as a producer I did not know.
He had gotten a paralegal degree and worked for a
time at the Superior Court in Middletown in Connecticut. Next part,
I knew it's there in the obit. I'll read it.
(44:31):
His prodigious knowledge of sports earned him the on air
nickname from the sportscasters at ESPN of Vinny the stat Man.
He was the Google for sports before there was Google,
and he could be counted on to deliver the data.
And there's a photo. I couldn't tell you how old
it is or how old he is in it. The
(44:53):
hair is a little shorter, but the reassuring and serene
smile is there. Veniva Salo was sixte years old. Thanks
(45:20):
for listening. Follow this podcast if you can tell a
friend if you would. We are number one among news
and political podcasts not produced by a network. I'd like
to keep it that way. These are our credits. Most
of the music, including our theme from Beethoven's Ninth, was arranged, produced,
and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle. They
are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by
(45:40):
John Philip Chanelle, guitarist Bassed and drums by Brian Ray,
produced by t k O Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have
been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports
music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, and it
was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Musical comments come from Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium
(46:01):
organist ever. Our announcer today was Kenny Maine. Everything else
is pretty much my fault, so that he's countdown for
this the six and seventy first day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coo against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Arrest him now while we still can. I'll
be back with a new episode tomorrow. Till then, I'm
Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
(46:30):
Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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