October 18, 2024 • 40 mins
SERIES 3 EPISODE 52: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I suppose it is possible that Trump’s brain has liquified, and he’s cancelled half his events and all his interviews, and that he is now frantically demanding somebody FORCE Kamala Harris off the ballot and Joe Biden back ONTO it because he’s just been shown internal polling indicating he’s going to WIN two weeks from Tuesday.
Or nah. He's just been shown internal polling indicating he's going to LOSE.
Why else would he demand that she "be investigated and forced off the campaign, and Joe Biden be allowed to take back his rightful place" because 60 Minutes screwed up the editing the editing of its Harris interview?
Trump is crazy and getting crazier, but this reeks of somebody showing him internal polling indicating he’s going to LOSE two weeks from Tuesday which means that he might avoid ONE of the criminal cases that would send him off to die in prison but he ain’t going to avoid BOTH of them and as the expert on cults and cult leaders Matthew Remski wrote the other day, Trump has become one of those quote “cultic leaders who – exhausted, ill – and at the end of their cognitive rope” reduced to a “shrinking repertoire of melted talking points.”
Especially given that a network idiotically edits a clip with a presidential candidate means the. Presidential candidate has to drop out? So Harris has to drop out, and of course since Fox edited out the part where Trump talks about the enemy within, Trump also has to drop out so two Tuesdays from now it’s the presidential election between Tim Walz and Jayvee Vance?
MEANWHILE, IF SHE WINS it will have been sealed by the 24-hour span in which she looked authoritative and righteously indignant while on Fox News, followed by the moment some pro-Trump hecklers crashed her rally in Wisconsin and her response was... well, put it this way: There were no heckler survivors.
B-Block (19:04) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: BBC News cancels one of the most informative news programs in the world: "HardTalk" dead after three decades. Dead inside: Christina Bobb predicts a surge of celebrities endorsing Trump after the election because...they're all pedophiles? So she's not just One America One Reich television crazy but QAnon crazy? And Chris Licht is tanned, rested, and ready, to help rebuild the fractured media landscape he personally helped fracture.
C-Block (28:21) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: He never wrote a novel, he did write a history of The New Yorker, he did write epic short stories like “The Greatest Man In The World” and at least three that became movies. But then there are his miniatures – his polished gems. His fables. There is more cynicism, more criticism, more liberalism, per square inch, in these – than in any other examples of his writing. So this week three of the Fables of James Thurber: "The Unicorn In The Garden," "The Moth And The Star," "The Rabbits Who Caused All The Trouble."
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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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 iHeartRadio. I
suppose it is possible that Trump's brain has liquefied and
(00:27):
he's canceled half his events in all his interviews, and
that he is now frantically demanding somebody force Kamala Harris
off the ballot and Joe Biden back onto the ballot.
I suppose it is possible Trump is doing this because
he's just been shown internal polling indicating he's going to
win two weeks from Tuesday. But I have my doubts.
(00:48):
It seems far likelier to me that his brain has
liquefied and he's canceled half his events in all his interviews,
and that he's now frantically demanding somebody I don't know who,
maybe Jesus. He's frantically demanding somebody force Kamala Harris off
the ballot and Joe Biden onto it because he's been
shown internal pulling indicating he's going to lose two weeks
(01:10):
from Tuesday, which means that he might avoid one of
the criminal cases that would send him off to die
in prison, but he ain't going to avoid both of them.
And as the experts on cults and cult leaders, like
Matthew Remsky wrote the other day, Trump has become one
of those quote cultic leaders who exhausted ill and at
the end of their cognitive rope, are reduced to a
(01:31):
shrinking repertoire of melted talking points. Whatever way you pin
these odds, Trump thinks he's winning and he's gone crazy
and demanded Kamala Harris be forced off the campaign nineteen
days before the election by I don't know Batman or
Trump thinks he's losing and he's gone crazy and demanded
(01:51):
Kamala Harris be forced off the campaign nineteen days before
the election by I don't know grew I got a
ten to one in favor of losing. Either way, we are,
to paraphrase yet another movie network talking about putting a
manifestly irresponsible man in the White House, and a lot
of the nation is nodding along with blank approval, just
(02:14):
like Faye Dunaway one oh seven pm yesterday, Kamala should
be investigated and forced off the campaign and Joe Biden
allowed to take back his rightful place. He got fourteen
million primary votes, she got none. This whole sordid and
fraudulent event is a threat to democracy. Now, to be fair,
(02:35):
I edited this post out of order to read the
second half first. But this is why he thinks Kamala
Harris should be forced off the campaign by I don't know,
by Taylor Swift. This is the first half of that post.
Sixty Minutes should be immediately taken off the air election interference.
CBA should lose its license. This is the biggest scandal
(02:56):
in broadcast history. Look, it wouldn't be the biggest scandal
in my broadcast history, sir, Mind you that was merely
Trump's follow up. Seconds earlier, he had posted why won't
sixty Minutes release the fraudulent tapes of Lion Kamala's interview
with them? Could it be because Noe couldn't all right,
(03:19):
I don't read the rest of it anyway. Could it
be because it was a complete and total disaster, or
that they quote created unquote many additional new answers for her,
not just the one where she was so embarrassingly caught.
In normal times, what happened on sixty Minutes deceptively doctoring
her answers would be the end of anyone's campaign. Name
(03:39):
it happening once Now, he couldn't Kamala is slow, incoherent,
and is in no way qualified to be president of
the United States. Every Republican accusation is a confession. Release
the tapes for the good of America. We can do
it the nice way or the hard way. Unquote, we
(04:02):
can do it the nice way or the hard way.
What is this? The Ican TEENA Turner review? You know,
every now and then I think you might like to
hear something from us nice and easy. But there's just
one thing, you see, we never ever do nothing nice
and easy. We always do it nice and rough, working
(04:25):
for the man every night and day. So a television
network news operation idiotically edits a clip, this time with
a presidential candidate. So the presidential candidate has to drop out.
So Harris has to drop out. And of course, since
Fox edited out the part where Trump talks about the
(04:45):
enemy within during an interview with Harris, Trump also has
to drop out. So two tuesdays from now, it's the
presidential election Tim Walls versus JB. Vance. By the way,
this just jin Harris campaign has not issued a formal
complaint to the God of Television about a deceptive editing
(05:07):
in the Brettbear interview of the Vice president because she's
not nuts. It is possible somebody showed Trump the other
thing that Fox made news with at six pm on
Wednesday night. It's bizarre poll showing him ahead in the
popular vote by two but down in the swing states
(05:28):
by six, and thus on pace to get more votes
for a change and still lose the electoral college. That
kind of melts my mind. And I'm not even running
for president. What's interesting is that the polling pros reacted
to that poll plus two Trump nationally minus six Trump
in the swings with less than spit takes or discussed.
(05:52):
The Washington Post, Aaron Blake suggests that the electoral college
bias may not have swung to what it would have
to be here Harris plus eight, but that it also
may no longer be anybody plus anything. Blake notes that
when a Post colleague wrote his piece in early August,
he noted that Trump was running just one point better
(06:13):
in what appeared to be the tipping point state, Michigan
than he was nationally, So that was a one point
electoral college bias in Trump's favor, or at least at
that point. The tipping point state is not set in stone.
When the New York Times ran its own numbers. Last month,
the pro Trump electoral college bias was just zero point
seven points. Today, it looks like it might be even
(06:37):
less of a Trump advantage, if it is one at all.
It's not at all clear what the tipping point state
might be, since all the swing states are so close,
but right now the Washington Post polling average shows it's
either Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin. Winning all three would deliver
the two hundred and seventy electoral votes Harris needs, and
(06:57):
she leads by about two points in each of them.
That's virtually the same as her two point edge in
national polls. So it's looking like electoral college bias could
be more or less a wash quote well, not having
a two or three point finger on the good old
electoral college scale. That could also have freshly added to
(07:21):
Trump's deranged syndrome, especially since Morning Consult Now reports its
polling shows neither of them ahead in any of the
battleground states outside the margin of error. Therefore, Kamala Harris
must be forced off the campaign by Icontina Turner. It
occurs to me that I have not circled back yet
(07:42):
to the other thing. Of note I mentioned earlier, Trump
keeps bailing out on things. Trump was supposed to speak
at an NRA Guns Don't Kill people, People with guns
kill people rally at Savannah, Georgia next Tuesday. Then evidently
he canceled, claiming a scheduling conflict, and so the NRA
canceled the entire show. But he's also canceled another interview
(08:05):
technically postponed. Doesn't look like it's ever going to happen.
Suddenly dropped out of a CNBC interview, as Joe Kernan's
two pay revealed live on the air the other day,
But now Brian Stelter says Trump was to do a
separate interview next Monday with the former CNN business reporter
Christine Romans for Adult NBC. This is per Brian Stelter,
(08:26):
who wrote, I learned of another planned Trump interview that
was suddenly scrapped. NBC News thought it had secured to
sit down with Trump to discuss the economy and other matters.
According to three sources with knowledge of the matter, the
interview was expected to take place in Philadelphia on Monday,
and correspondent Christine Romans was set to be the interviewer.
I'm told, but then it was called off by the
(08:48):
Trump team. The interview was quote postponed, one of the
sources said, and NBC is in discussions to reschedule it. Well,
take a number just TV. That's NBC canceled, CNBC canceled,
sixty minutes, canceled, an town hall probably canceled, and of
course the second debate against the vice president, presumably because
(09:12):
he has to spend that time those days meeting with
whoever is going to force Harris out of the campaign,
and I believe that's Liam and Noel Gallagher, by thea
by On top of everything suggesting something out of public
sight that has gone desperately wrong inside the Trump campaign,
his health or its health or both. He has also
(09:36):
gone into reruns. Here are two reruns. Here is Trump
back to the She's not allowed to be two different races,
when I had convinced myself she was only one, followed
by Trump with an unfortunate slip in which, days after
Vance insisted the January sixth insurrectionists were knuckleheads who had
nothing to do with Trump. Trump refers to those January
(09:57):
sixth insurrectionists as.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
We they have a woman who is black, Leah would
say she's Indian, but she is black, but she really
a lot of people didn't know which is true.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
But I learned about it just a couple of months ago.
You know the fact that she's black, or that she's Indian,
the fact that she's black. I thought she was Indian
until a couple of months. The thing's changed. I mean
a lot of people because if you follow baseball, Sammy
Sosa kind of you know, you sometimes have to respect
people they Samish, right, So I thought maybe she was
doing a Sammy Sosa the other way, Sammy Chase right.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
There were no guns down there. We didn't have guns.
The others had guns, but we didn't have guns. And
would I say, we these are people that walk down
This was a tiny percentage of the overall which nobody
sees and nobody nobody shows.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
But that was a day of love. We us them
what ebbs the third rerun that we can do it
the nice way or the hard way? Threat, that's that's
a rerun. And I would be more alarmed about that,
except he just referred to the January sixth ers as US,
And all I know is that the last time he
(11:10):
and they the US, to which he refers tried the
hard way. They all lost anyway. And by the way,
this time Joe Biden will have the tanks and the aircraft.
But you have a nice day out there, Donnie Dorko.
(11:37):
By the way, Judge Tanya Chudkin told Trump, we're doing
it the hard way. She was to release the Jack
Smith footnotes yesterday, and his mouthpieces put in a last
minute appeal asking for it to be delayed, just to
pick a random date Thursday, November after the election. He
(11:58):
wanted more discovery. She gave him a fifty page rulely
basically reading f you discover this, but giving him a
little bit more information on Mike Pence's handling of classified info.
When it comes out, we'll see, let's see what else.
Jim Mattis, Trump's first secretary of Defense, told Bob Woodward
that Mark Milly was right when Milly said Trump was
(12:21):
the most dangerous man ever, and that Milly was right
to call Trump a fascist. And there is a new
book about Mitch McConnell coming out in a week before
the election, in which McConnell is quoted after the twenty
twenty election, but before January sixth as calling Trump stupid,
as well as being ill tempered, a despicable human being,
(12:41):
and a narcissist. Yeah. Thanks, boys, If you had said
any of that while he was still in office, they
would be building statues of you right now. And then
the fun of the day there was the burn of
the campaign Lacrosse, Wisconsin. If Kamala Harris wins, it will
(13:07):
be because of the events of a twenty four hour
span in which she went on Fox News and kicked
Brettbear's ass and kicked Fox's ass and called them out
and came right up to the line of looking angry
without actually getting there, and then said this. In Lacrosse, Wisconsin, yesterday,
(13:29):
Harris's rally was crashed by pro Trump supporters. There were
no survivors. Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally. No,
(13:53):
I think you meant to go to the smaller one
down the street out. Also of interest, here, a Trump
(14:17):
attorney and spokesmodel insists there's about to be a flood
of celebrity endorsements of Trump. Because it wasn't really clear
what she was saying, She's kind of stupid, something about
democrats are all pedophiles, or celebrities are all pedophiles or
all Democrats are celebrities. I don't know. Jesus has something
(14:38):
to do with it again, even though, of course it
was the Republicans who put the big picture windows between
the bathrooms and the hallways in the middle school in Pennsylvania.
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Oberman.
(14:58):
Oberman a little Yankee Stadium tribute to Larry David. Between
(15:24):
his introduction and the voice of the Great Yankee p
I announce a Bob Shepherd and the music he heard there,
the bach Takata and Fugue State still ahead on this
initiative countdown. Third Bird time. He never did write a novel.
He did write a history of the New Yorker magazine.
(15:44):
He did write epic short stories like The Greatest Man
in the World, and at least three short stories that
became movies. But then there are his miniatures, his polished gems,
his ships built inside wine bottles, his fables. There is
more cynicism, more criticism, more liberalism per square inch in
(16:05):
these fables than in any other examples of his great writing.
The Fables of James Thurber next on Fridays with Herber first,
there are still more new idiots to talk about the
daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger
effects specimens who constitute today's day worst worst persons, Persons
in the world b the Bronze Worse BBC News. It
(16:31):
has canceled after three decades. A news show with the
improbable name of Hard Talk, which it ran on the
BBC UK News Channel and globally on BBC World News.
Not my favorite show because it often fell into confrontation
and every once in a while the kind of automatic
contradiction heard in the fabulous Monty Python sketch. I'd like
(16:52):
to have an argument, please, you know, good morning? What's
good about it? That kind of stuff. They also ran
the same episode like like six times a day any who.
On the other hand, the number of times I found
myself watching it anyway once a day because the topics
could range from the latest from the Middle East with
(17:12):
the president of prime minister, former military chief or an
artist or writer explaining defending, chronicling their own work, or
the topic whether or not the Prime Minister of Finland
was gonna have to resign because there was video of
her at a disco drinking and the interviewee for half
an hour was the Prime Minister of Finland talking about
(17:33):
her own evening at the disco. Panic at the disco,
they got great guests, and you'd rather have a great
guest challenged by an interviewer, usually Steven Sacker, than just
nodded at, Oh, tell me more about how wonderful you
are again. Sometimes it just fell into gainsaying for the
(17:53):
hell of it. I'm not sure it ever once got
American politics right. But now the BBC has canceled this,
this little window into the world what's actually happening behind
the scene in Uzbekistan. They've canceled it, I assume so
so the BBC News channels can add a one hundred
and seventy third different business update to its daily schedule,
(18:16):
because the BBC News channels are quickly morphing into the
BBC Business News Channels, as all news channels around the
world have been doing for years. And that's exactly what
news and the world needs. More glorification of money. Good evening.
How much money do you have? Our next guest has
more money than you do. We'll ask him how he
got more money. You can sit there and see quietly
(18:39):
as he explains. The runner up speaking of which worser.
Christina Bob, the Ilse, the she Wolf of the ss
of the Trump campaign, you know her. She was the
Trump attorney so stupid that the other Trump attorneys got
her to sign the document vowing for the completeness of
(19:01):
the search of the classified materials Trump stole and stan
marri A Lago. She signed it, not the other ones.
This was while she was also on the air on
one of the fascist feeds Flomax Channel or news Aryan
Nation or One America, one Reich or whatever one it
(19:21):
was she was on. She's the one with the extremely
narrow head, and this paranoid, delusional, light bulb head shaped
person has announced that she expects a rash of celebrities
to now endorse Trump, especially after the election, because while
(19:42):
because it turns out, Christina Bob is on top of
everything else a QAnon slanderer. Let me quote her from
the podcast Steak for Breakfast, hosted by I don't know,
Charlie Kirk Hannibal Lecter. I don't know. I think there's
one Trump Nazi who does all these podcasts, and they
(20:03):
just change his name from show to sho to make
it sound like there's three hundred and seventeen different ones
quoting Bobby Christina or whatever her name is on celebrities.
I also think there might be a little bit of
the Diddy effect where they want to be like, I'm
not a pedophile, you know, like I'm not part of
that camp. So it's a little bit more socially acceptable,
(20:24):
that is, to endorse Trump because the Left is so
evil and I don't know what other word to use
other than flat out demonic at this point, with the
fact that they want to normalize pedophilia, madam f you,
nobody wants to do that. They want to make pedophiles
basically a type of protected class. Like I said, the
woman is out of her mind. I don't mean that
in the legal sense of the world word. I just mean,
(20:46):
you know, protecting pedophile rights or whatever the heck they're
going after all of the weird transgender stuff they're doing.
And then you have these the Ditty Case, the Epstein List,
Who the hell is on the Epstein List? Dramatic pause,
and the music. Everybody knows. Everybody knows that it's the
Democrats supporters that are protecting that Epstein List and are
(21:07):
quite honestly protecting the ditty list. Because it's in the
Biden Department of Justice that has that evidence right now.
They're the ones that rated that place, so everybody knows
they're a bunch of Democrats. This is a lawyer talking.
I'd like to see your diploma, please, diploma from the
crackerjack Box School of Law. I didn't know there was
such a place. Just a reminder that when Trump or
(21:28):
the sycophantic lizard people around him are really lying, the
tell is that phrase everybody knows it means they just
made something up. Everybody knows Christina Bob is actually eighty
three years old. Stuff like that. On the other hand,
to go on that long about this and you begin
to think, once again, why is this woman? Why are
(21:50):
they all in the Trump camp so obsessed with kids
and sex? They spend half of their time talking about it,
passing laws about it. What kids' bathrooms like are in schools,
what kids can go into, which bathrooms. They put viewing
windows in the bathrooms in a middle school in Hanover, PA,
(22:10):
supposedly to make sure they could tell if any of
the kids were vaping in there or being truants. Did
you go to school today, honey, yes, what you do?
I went to the bathroom for eight hours. If that
was a suggestion from the Department of Education a window
in a middle school kid's bathroom, Jamie Comer would be
conducting a hearing on it, and this idiot Christina Bob
(22:32):
would be the first witness. I don't know where the
far rights obsession with the sex and and gender preferences
of miners came up, but I look at Christina Bob
and that herman munster head of hers and I think,
doctor during the delivery, did you have too tight a
grip on the foresips or something? But the winner the
worst Chris slecked. Oh he's back, the man who ran
(23:01):
CNN into the ground. That spent a lot of time
here quoting Oliver Darcy's media newsletter status because it really
is the best of a bunch, and Brian Stelter's new
return to CNN newsletter, which I think he is named Management.
Isn't it wonderful? It's just so kiss ass. Mister Darcy
had a big scoop this week. Let me quote some
(23:22):
of it and I'll annotate it as I go. Chris Lickt,
he writes, is ready to step back into the public spotlight.
I'm ready to step back into being twenty eight years
old again. Nobody asked me to, and nobody's gonna let me.
But I'm ready to step back into being twenty eight
years old again. And Chris lick is ready to step
(23:43):
back into the public spotlight. The x CNN chief, who
was dismissed last year after a tumultuous run atop the
news network, is scheduled to deliver remarks at two industry
conferences following the November election. After spending more than a
year exiled in the wilderness, the former CNN boss is
cautiously re emerging with the aim of a playing a
(24:05):
to be determined role restoring trust in media institutions amid
the current polarized environment. Quote. I made a conscious decision
not to be seen for a while and not be
heard from unquote. Got to say that was a good
idea by Chris Lickt, his first But given everything that
(24:28):
is happening, both of these conferences are after the election,
there's going to be a huge discussion over how things
go forward, depending on who wins. During our phone conversation,
Lickt appeared to be in high spirits. Okay, Olivery Darcy,
I think you're close there. In that last description, what
licked is saying here is if Trump wins and the
news outlets that have not filated him yet, like Licht's
(24:52):
CNN filated him every day, if they erupt in fight
or flight fear, because Trump would have won, Chris Lickt
is ready to lead them all in flight right away,
right away. Lickt wanted to use our time to relay
that he is genuinely unnerved and worried about the corrosive
(25:13):
effects that the broken information environment is having on the country.
He underscored that without a functioning media, the fabric that
makes up civilization erodes, imperiling us all, and he repeatedly
said he wanted to be part of the solution, whatever
that may be. Quote. Everyone is still struggling to find
the right answer to engage with the public in a
way that can reverse the trend of people losing trust
(25:36):
in institutions. Lickt said, I think it's an existential crisis
for society, and that is not specific to any news organization.
It is just mass media in general, and it's a
problem that the country has to solve. It is an
absolute threat to society. Mister Darcy adroitly and politely notes
that Chris lick was quote no bystander to the problem
(25:59):
he describes that is a threat to society, corrosion. That's
a nice euphemism. Chris Lickt is battery acid. If he
believed in a moment in journalism, he'd never would have
associated himself with that manipulator Joe Scarborough, or that opportunist
Stephen Colbert, or especially the clown college owning CNN, for
(26:23):
whom the word news is just a brand name. To
be fair, Oliver Darcy went after him. Lickt lived up
to his reputation we're down to it. Quote. When I
asked Lickt how a year later he'd used his time
at CNN, or whether he had any regrets, he declined
to answer. I'm not going there, Licht replied. Anybody who
(26:48):
knows Chris Lickt knows he's going there. Licht said he
has changed his news consumption habits in taking information quote
much more like a normal civilian. When pressed as to
what exactly that means, Licht said he definitely watches much
less cable news and tries to sample a lot of
different types of information from a lot of different sources.
(27:11):
More importantly, Lick said he has spent his time out
of the public eye trying to learn from an array
of people he has met over scores of meals, coffees,
and drinks. In fact, Lick told me he's held hundreds
of meetings talking to people outside my bubble, outside my
comfort zone. Okay, so not just personal trainers this time, coffees, meals, drinks,
(27:38):
hundreds of meetings talking to people he doesn't know. Oh,
I get it now, Chris Lick is now panhandling. As
the British say, he's living rough quote. I am working
on some interesting things, he said, nothing that I'm ready
to talk about. But there's a lot of exciting things
happening in this space, as you know. And so I'm
(28:02):
just trying to figure out where i can be helpful, Chris,
I'm just trying to figure out where I can be helpful.
Where you ask, May I suggest Venezuela licked two days
worst person Ben Now to the number one story in
(28:37):
the countdown. And since it's the weekend, it's Fridays with Thurber.
You don't see a lot of new fables anymore. These days.
People aren't writing as many fables as they used to.
There was ASoP around five to eighty BC, and then
James Thrber around nineteen thirty nine, and that's pretty much it.
Fables require animals to stand in for people. They need
(28:57):
to be short, they need to be precise, They need
to end with a moral. They should be, if not
laugh out loud, funny, at least cry and thought provoking.
Three years ago, it was my privilege to write the
foreword to Michael J. Rosen's new volume James Thurber Collected Fables,
which includes many of the fables that had not previously
been published in a book. Despite my forward, I suspect
(29:21):
you will enjoy that book anyway. Thurber published most of
his fables and most of everything else in the New
Yorker magazine. He collected twenty eight of them in his
nineteen forty volume, Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated.
His further Fables for Our Time, came out in nineteen
fifty six and is heavily influenced by the era of McCarthyism.
(29:42):
Many of the fables are classics, some are sleepers, all
are great. Let me give you three of them to
carry you through the weekend, Starting with maybe maybe the best,
little misogynistic, but damned fun and certainly the best of
them in terms of being known to the public. The
(30:03):
Unicorn in the guard by James Thurber. Once upon a
sunny morning, a man who sat in a breakfast nook
looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white
unicorn with a golden horn, quietly cropping the roses in
the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where
(30:25):
his wife was still asleep, and woke her. There's a
unicorn in the garden, he said, eating roses. She opened
one unfriendly eye and looked at him. The unicorn is
a mythical beast, she said, and turned her back on him.
The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden.
(30:45):
The unicorn was still there. He was now browsing among
the tulips. Here, unicorn, said the man, and he pulled
up a lily and gave it to him. The unicorn
ate it gravely with a high heart. Because there was
a unicorn in his garden. The man went upstairs and
(31:06):
roused his wife again. The unicorn, he said, ay to lily.
His wife sat up in bed and looked at him coldly.
You are a booby, she said, and I'm going to
have you put in the booby hatch. The man, who
had never liked the words booby and booby hatch, and
who liked them even less on a shining morning, when
(31:29):
there was a unicorn in the garden, thought for a moment,
we'll see about that, he said. He walked over to
the door. He has a golden horn in the middle
of his forehead, he told her. Then he went back
to the garden to watch the unicorn, but the unicorn
had gone away. The man sat down among the roses
(31:50):
and went to sleep. As soon as the husband had
gone out of the house, the wife got up and
dressed as fast as she could. She was very excited,
and there was a gloat in her eye. She telephoned
the police, and she telephoned a psychiatrists. She told them
to hurry to her house and bring a straight jacket.
When the police and the psychiatrist arrived, they sat down
in chairs and looked at her with great interest. My husband,
(32:12):
she said, saw unicorn this morning. The police looked at
the psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist looked at the police. He
told me it ate a lelly, she said. The psychiatrist
looked at the police, and the police looked at the psychiatrist.
He told me it had a golden horn in the
middle of its forehead. She said, had a solemn signal
(32:34):
from the psychiatrist. The police leaped from their chairs and
seized the wife. They had a hard time subduing her,
for she put up a terrific struggle, but they finally
subdued her just as they got her into the straight jacket.
The husband came back into the house. Did you tell
your wife you saw unicorn, asked the police. Of course not,
(32:57):
said the husband. The unicorn is a mythical beast. That's
all I wanted to know, said the psychiatrist. Make her away.
I'm sorry, so h what. Your wife is as crazy
as a jaybud. So they took her away, cursing and screaming,
and shut her up in an institution. The husband lived
happily ever after. Moral don't count your boobies until they
(33:20):
are hatched. The Unicorn in the Garden by James Thurber
I promised three. Here's the second one. It's a little
less joyful and silly. The rabbits who caused all the
trouble by James thurber within the memory of the youngest child.
(33:43):
There was a family of rabbits who lived near pack
of wolves. The wolves announced that they did not like
the way the rabbits were living. The wolves were crazy
about the way they themselves were living because it was
the only way to live. One night, several wolves were
killed in an earthquake, and this was blamed on the rabbits,
for it is well known that rabbits pound on the
(34:06):
ground with their hind legs and cause earthquakes. On another night,
one of the wolves was killed by a bolt of lightning,
and this was also blamed on the rabbits, for it
is well known that lettuce eaters cause lightning. The wolves
threatened to civilize the rabbits if they didn't behave, and
the rabbits decided to run away to a desert island,
(34:28):
but the other animals who lived at a great distance
shamed them, saying, you must stay where you are and
be brave. This is no world for escapists. If the
wolves attack you, we will come to your aid in
all probability. So the rabbits continued to live near the wolves,
(34:48):
and one day there was a terrible flood which dround
a great many wolves. This was blamed on the rabbits,
for it is well known that carrot nibblers with long
ears caused floods. The wolves descended upon the rabbits for
their own good and in prison them in a dark
cave for their own protection. When nothing was heard about
(35:09):
the rabbits for some weeks, the other animals demanded to
know what had happened to them. The wolves replied that
the rabbits had been eaten, and since they had been eaten,
the affair was a purely internal matter. But the other
animals warned that they might possibly unite against the wolves
unless some reason was given for the destruction of the rabbits.
So the wolves gave them one. They were trying to escape,
(35:33):
said the wolves. And as you know, this is no
world for escapists. Moral run, don't walk to the nearest
desert island. The rabbits who caused all the trouble by
James Thurber and one last one. And I have mentioned
(35:55):
this before in other settings, but I'll mention it again.
I have a tattoo that pertains to this particular one,
and I have an ex girlfriend running around who has
the moral to this one on her shoulders. I wonder how.
She ever, explained that The Moth and the Star by
James Thurber, a young and impressionable moth once set his
(36:21):
heart on a certain star. He told his mother about this,
and she counseled him to set his heart on a
bridge lamp instead. Stars aren't the thing to hang around,
she said, lamp saying the thing to hang around. You
get somewhere that way, said the moth's father. You don't
get anywhere chasing stars. But the moth would not heed
(36:43):
the words of either parent. Every evening, at dusk, when
the star came out, he would start flying toward it,
and every morning at dawn he would crawl back home,
worn out with his vain endeavor. One day, his father
said to him, you haven't burned a wing in months, boy,
and it looks to me as if you're never going to.
All your brothers have been badly burned flying around street lamps,
(37:05):
and all your sisters have been terribly singed flying around
house lamps. Come on, now, get out of here and
get yourself scorched. Big stropping muth like you without a
muck on him. The moth left his father's house, but
he would not fly around street lamps, and he would
not fly around house lamps. He went right on trying
to reach the star, which was four and one third
(37:26):
light years or twenty five trillion miles away. The moth
thought it was just caught in the top of the
branches of an elm over there. He never did reach
the star, but he went right on trying night after night.
When he was a very very old moth, he began
to think that he really had reached the star, and
(37:48):
he went around saying so. This gave him a deep
and lasting pleasure, and he lived to a great old age.
His parents, and his brothers and his sisters had all
been burned to death when they were quite young. Tomorrow,
who flies afar from the sphere of our sorrow is
(38:09):
here today and here tomorrow. The Moth and the Star
by James Thurber. I've done all the damage I can
(38:33):
do here. Thank you for listening. But now back to
five episodes a week, posting nightly just after midnight Eastern.
Follow me for the podcast promo videos. They'll tell you
when the thing is out there. Those videos up here
on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, x, Instagram, and tickbook. I
think there is a tickbook isn't there? Once again, there
(38:56):
is a Monday countdown, and please send this podcast to
somebody who does not yet know they need to listen,
but they need to listen. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle,
the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most
of our music. Mister Shanelle handled the orchestration, the keyboards.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass and the drums.
It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy
(39:19):
musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Nancy Faust. The sports theme is the Olderman theme from
ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy
of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my friend
Larry David performing as Bob Sheffield. Everything else is pretty
(39:40):
much my fault. Let's countdown for today, two weeks and
four days until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the
one three and eighty second day since convicted felon dissociative
fugue Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
government of the United States, use the election, use the
mental health system, use presidential immunity to keep him from
(40:02):
doing it again, while always I'll have a chance. The
next schedule Countdown is Monday. Bulletin says the news requires
until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(40:34):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
suppose it is possible that Trump's brain has liquefied and
(00:27):
he's canceled half his events in all his interviews, and
that he is now frantically demanding somebody force Kamala Harris
off the ballot and Joe Biden back onto the ballot.
I suppose it is possible Trump is doing this because
he's just been shown internal polling indicating he's going to
win two weeks from Tuesday. But I have my doubts.
(00:48):
It seems far likelier to me that his brain has
liquefied and he's canceled half his events in all his interviews,
and that he's now frantically demanding somebody I don't know who,
maybe Jesus. He's frantically demanding somebody force Kamala Harris off
the ballot and Joe Biden onto it because he's been
shown internal pulling indicating he's going to lose two weeks
(01:10):
from Tuesday, which means that he might avoid one of
the criminal cases that would send him off to die
in prison, but he ain't going to avoid both of them.
And as the experts on cults and cult leaders, like
Matthew Remsky wrote the other day, Trump has become one
of those quote cultic leaders who exhausted ill and at
the end of their cognitive rope, are reduced to a
(01:31):
shrinking repertoire of melted talking points. Whatever way you pin
these odds, Trump thinks he's winning and he's gone crazy
and demanded Kamala Harris be forced off the campaign nineteen
days before the election by I don't know Batman or
Trump thinks he's losing and he's gone crazy and demanded
(01:51):
Kamala Harris be forced off the campaign nineteen days before
the election by I don't know grew I got a
ten to one in favor of losing. Either way, we are,
to paraphrase yet another movie network talking about putting a
manifestly irresponsible man in the White House, and a lot
of the nation is nodding along with blank approval, just
(02:14):
like Faye Dunaway one oh seven pm yesterday, Kamala should
be investigated and forced off the campaign and Joe Biden
allowed to take back his rightful place. He got fourteen
million primary votes, she got none. This whole sordid and
fraudulent event is a threat to democracy. Now, to be fair,
(02:35):
I edited this post out of order to read the
second half first. But this is why he thinks Kamala
Harris should be forced off the campaign by I don't know,
by Taylor Swift. This is the first half of that post.
Sixty Minutes should be immediately taken off the air election interference.
CBA should lose its license. This is the biggest scandal
(02:56):
in broadcast history. Look, it wouldn't be the biggest scandal
in my broadcast history, sir, Mind you that was merely
Trump's follow up. Seconds earlier, he had posted why won't
sixty Minutes release the fraudulent tapes of Lion Kamala's interview
with them? Could it be because Noe couldn't all right,
(03:19):
I don't read the rest of it anyway. Could it
be because it was a complete and total disaster, or
that they quote created unquote many additional new answers for her,
not just the one where she was so embarrassingly caught.
In normal times, what happened on sixty Minutes deceptively doctoring
her answers would be the end of anyone's campaign. Name
(03:39):
it happening once Now, he couldn't Kamala is slow, incoherent,
and is in no way qualified to be president of
the United States. Every Republican accusation is a confession. Release
the tapes for the good of America. We can do
it the nice way or the hard way. Unquote, we
(04:02):
can do it the nice way or the hard way.
What is this? The Ican TEENA Turner review? You know,
every now and then I think you might like to
hear something from us nice and easy. But there's just
one thing, you see, we never ever do nothing nice
and easy. We always do it nice and rough, working
(04:25):
for the man every night and day. So a television
network news operation idiotically edits a clip, this time with
a presidential candidate. So the presidential candidate has to drop out.
So Harris has to drop out. And of course, since
Fox edited out the part where Trump talks about the
(04:45):
enemy within during an interview with Harris, Trump also has
to drop out. So two tuesdays from now, it's the
presidential election Tim Walls versus JB. Vance. By the way,
this just jin Harris campaign has not issued a formal
complaint to the God of Television about a deceptive editing
(05:07):
in the Brettbear interview of the Vice president because she's
not nuts. It is possible somebody showed Trump the other
thing that Fox made news with at six pm on
Wednesday night. It's bizarre poll showing him ahead in the
popular vote by two but down in the swing states
(05:28):
by six, and thus on pace to get more votes
for a change and still lose the electoral college. That
kind of melts my mind. And I'm not even running
for president. What's interesting is that the polling pros reacted
to that poll plus two Trump nationally minus six Trump
in the swings with less than spit takes or discussed.
(05:52):
The Washington Post, Aaron Blake suggests that the electoral college
bias may not have swung to what it would have
to be here Harris plus eight, but that it also
may no longer be anybody plus anything. Blake notes that
when a Post colleague wrote his piece in early August,
he noted that Trump was running just one point better
(06:13):
in what appeared to be the tipping point state, Michigan
than he was nationally, So that was a one point
electoral college bias in Trump's favor, or at least at
that point. The tipping point state is not set in stone.
When the New York Times ran its own numbers. Last month,
the pro Trump electoral college bias was just zero point
seven points. Today, it looks like it might be even
(06:37):
less of a Trump advantage, if it is one at all.
It's not at all clear what the tipping point state
might be, since all the swing states are so close,
but right now the Washington Post polling average shows it's
either Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin. Winning all three would deliver
the two hundred and seventy electoral votes Harris needs, and
(06:57):
she leads by about two points in each of them.
That's virtually the same as her two point edge in
national polls. So it's looking like electoral college bias could
be more or less a wash quote well, not having
a two or three point finger on the good old
electoral college scale. That could also have freshly added to
(07:21):
Trump's deranged syndrome, especially since Morning Consult Now reports its
polling shows neither of them ahead in any of the
battleground states outside the margin of error. Therefore, Kamala Harris
must be forced off the campaign by Icontina Turner. It
occurs to me that I have not circled back yet
(07:42):
to the other thing. Of note I mentioned earlier, Trump
keeps bailing out on things. Trump was supposed to speak
at an NRA Guns Don't Kill people, People with guns
kill people rally at Savannah, Georgia next Tuesday. Then evidently
he canceled, claiming a scheduling conflict, and so the NRA
canceled the entire show. But he's also canceled another interview
(08:05):
technically postponed. Doesn't look like it's ever going to happen.
Suddenly dropped out of a CNBC interview, as Joe Kernan's
two pay revealed live on the air the other day,
But now Brian Stelter says Trump was to do a
separate interview next Monday with the former CNN business reporter
Christine Romans for Adult NBC. This is per Brian Stelter,
(08:26):
who wrote, I learned of another planned Trump interview that
was suddenly scrapped. NBC News thought it had secured to
sit down with Trump to discuss the economy and other matters.
According to three sources with knowledge of the matter, the
interview was expected to take place in Philadelphia on Monday,
and correspondent Christine Romans was set to be the interviewer.
I'm told, but then it was called off by the
(08:48):
Trump team. The interview was quote postponed, one of the
sources said, and NBC is in discussions to reschedule it. Well,
take a number just TV. That's NBC canceled, CNBC canceled,
sixty minutes, canceled, an town hall probably canceled, and of
course the second debate against the vice president, presumably because
(09:12):
he has to spend that time those days meeting with
whoever is going to force Harris out of the campaign,
and I believe that's Liam and Noel Gallagher, by thea
by On top of everything suggesting something out of public
sight that has gone desperately wrong inside the Trump campaign,
his health or its health or both. He has also
(09:36):
gone into reruns. Here are two reruns. Here is Trump
back to the She's not allowed to be two different races,
when I had convinced myself she was only one, followed
by Trump with an unfortunate slip in which, days after
Vance insisted the January sixth insurrectionists were knuckleheads who had
nothing to do with Trump. Trump refers to those January
(09:57):
sixth insurrectionists as.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
We they have a woman who is black, Leah would
say she's Indian, but she is black, but she really
a lot of people didn't know which is true.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
But I learned about it just a couple of months ago.
You know the fact that she's black, or that she's Indian,
the fact that she's black. I thought she was Indian
until a couple of months. The thing's changed. I mean
a lot of people because if you follow baseball, Sammy
Sosa kind of you know, you sometimes have to respect
people they Samish, right, So I thought maybe she was
doing a Sammy Sosa the other way, Sammy Chase right.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
There were no guns down there. We didn't have guns.
The others had guns, but we didn't have guns. And
would I say, we these are people that walk down
This was a tiny percentage of the overall which nobody
sees and nobody nobody shows.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
But that was a day of love. We us them
what ebbs the third rerun that we can do it
the nice way or the hard way? Threat, that's that's
a rerun. And I would be more alarmed about that,
except he just referred to the January sixth ers as US,
And all I know is that the last time he
(11:10):
and they the US, to which he refers tried the
hard way. They all lost anyway. And by the way,
this time Joe Biden will have the tanks and the aircraft.
But you have a nice day out there, Donnie Dorko.
(11:37):
By the way, Judge Tanya Chudkin told Trump, we're doing
it the hard way. She was to release the Jack
Smith footnotes yesterday, and his mouthpieces put in a last
minute appeal asking for it to be delayed, just to
pick a random date Thursday, November after the election. He
(11:58):
wanted more discovery. She gave him a fifty page rulely
basically reading f you discover this, but giving him a
little bit more information on Mike Pence's handling of classified info.
When it comes out, we'll see, let's see what else.
Jim Mattis, Trump's first secretary of Defense, told Bob Woodward
that Mark Milly was right when Milly said Trump was
(12:21):
the most dangerous man ever, and that Milly was right
to call Trump a fascist. And there is a new
book about Mitch McConnell coming out in a week before
the election, in which McConnell is quoted after the twenty
twenty election, but before January sixth as calling Trump stupid,
as well as being ill tempered, a despicable human being,
(12:41):
and a narcissist. Yeah. Thanks, boys, If you had said
any of that while he was still in office, they
would be building statues of you right now. And then
the fun of the day there was the burn of
the campaign Lacrosse, Wisconsin. If Kamala Harris wins, it will
(13:07):
be because of the events of a twenty four hour
span in which she went on Fox News and kicked
Brettbear's ass and kicked Fox's ass and called them out
and came right up to the line of looking angry
without actually getting there, and then said this. In Lacrosse, Wisconsin, yesterday,
(13:29):
Harris's rally was crashed by pro Trump supporters. There were
no survivors. Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally. No,
(13:53):
I think you meant to go to the smaller one
down the street out. Also of interest, here, a Trump
(14:17):
attorney and spokesmodel insists there's about to be a flood
of celebrity endorsements of Trump. Because it wasn't really clear
what she was saying, She's kind of stupid, something about
democrats are all pedophiles, or celebrities are all pedophiles or
all Democrats are celebrities. I don't know. Jesus has something
(14:38):
to do with it again, even though, of course it
was the Republicans who put the big picture windows between
the bathrooms and the hallways in the middle school in Pennsylvania.
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Oberman.
(14:58):
Oberman a little Yankee Stadium tribute to Larry David. Between
(15:24):
his introduction and the voice of the Great Yankee p
I announce a Bob Shepherd and the music he heard there,
the bach Takata and Fugue State still ahead on this
initiative countdown. Third Bird time. He never did write a novel.
He did write a history of the New Yorker magazine.
(15:44):
He did write epic short stories like The Greatest Man
in the World, and at least three short stories that
became movies. But then there are his miniatures, his polished gems,
his ships built inside wine bottles, his fables. There is
more cynicism, more criticism, more liberalism per square inch in
(16:05):
these fables than in any other examples of his great writing.
The Fables of James Thurber next on Fridays with Herber first,
there are still more new idiots to talk about the
daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger
effects specimens who constitute today's day worst worst persons, Persons
in the world b the Bronze Worse BBC News. It
(16:31):
has canceled after three decades. A news show with the
improbable name of Hard Talk, which it ran on the
BBC UK News Channel and globally on BBC World News.
Not my favorite show because it often fell into confrontation
and every once in a while the kind of automatic
contradiction heard in the fabulous Monty Python sketch. I'd like
(16:52):
to have an argument, please, you know, good morning? What's
good about it? That kind of stuff. They also ran
the same episode like like six times a day any who.
On the other hand, the number of times I found
myself watching it anyway once a day because the topics
could range from the latest from the Middle East with
(17:12):
the president of prime minister, former military chief or an
artist or writer explaining defending, chronicling their own work, or
the topic whether or not the Prime Minister of Finland
was gonna have to resign because there was video of
her at a disco drinking and the interviewee for half
an hour was the Prime Minister of Finland talking about
(17:33):
her own evening at the disco. Panic at the disco,
they got great guests, and you'd rather have a great
guest challenged by an interviewer, usually Steven Sacker, than just
nodded at, Oh, tell me more about how wonderful you
are again. Sometimes it just fell into gainsaying for the
(17:53):
hell of it. I'm not sure it ever once got
American politics right. But now the BBC has canceled this,
this little window into the world what's actually happening behind
the scene in Uzbekistan. They've canceled it, I assume so
so the BBC News channels can add a one hundred
and seventy third different business update to its daily schedule,
(18:16):
because the BBC News channels are quickly morphing into the
BBC Business News Channels, as all news channels around the
world have been doing for years. And that's exactly what
news and the world needs. More glorification of money. Good evening.
How much money do you have? Our next guest has
more money than you do. We'll ask him how he
got more money. You can sit there and see quietly
(18:39):
as he explains. The runner up speaking of which worser.
Christina Bob, the Ilse, the she Wolf of the ss
of the Trump campaign, you know her. She was the
Trump attorney so stupid that the other Trump attorneys got
her to sign the document vowing for the completeness of
(19:01):
the search of the classified materials Trump stole and stan
marri A Lago. She signed it, not the other ones.
This was while she was also on the air on
one of the fascist feeds Flomax Channel or news Aryan
Nation or One America, one Reich or whatever one it
(19:21):
was she was on. She's the one with the extremely
narrow head, and this paranoid, delusional, light bulb head shaped
person has announced that she expects a rash of celebrities
to now endorse Trump, especially after the election, because while
(19:42):
because it turns out, Christina Bob is on top of
everything else a QAnon slanderer. Let me quote her from
the podcast Steak for Breakfast, hosted by I don't know,
Charlie Kirk Hannibal Lecter. I don't know. I think there's
one Trump Nazi who does all these podcasts, and they
(20:03):
just change his name from show to sho to make
it sound like there's three hundred and seventeen different ones
quoting Bobby Christina or whatever her name is on celebrities.
I also think there might be a little bit of
the Diddy effect where they want to be like, I'm
not a pedophile, you know, like I'm not part of
that camp. So it's a little bit more socially acceptable,
(20:24):
that is, to endorse Trump because the Left is so
evil and I don't know what other word to use
other than flat out demonic at this point, with the
fact that they want to normalize pedophilia, madam f you,
nobody wants to do that. They want to make pedophiles
basically a type of protected class. Like I said, the
woman is out of her mind. I don't mean that
in the legal sense of the world word. I just mean,
(20:46):
you know, protecting pedophile rights or whatever the heck they're
going after all of the weird transgender stuff they're doing.
And then you have these the Ditty Case, the Epstein List,
Who the hell is on the Epstein List? Dramatic pause,
and the music. Everybody knows. Everybody knows that it's the
Democrats supporters that are protecting that Epstein List and are
(21:07):
quite honestly protecting the ditty list. Because it's in the
Biden Department of Justice that has that evidence right now.
They're the ones that rated that place, so everybody knows
they're a bunch of Democrats. This is a lawyer talking.
I'd like to see your diploma, please, diploma from the
crackerjack Box School of Law. I didn't know there was
such a place. Just a reminder that when Trump or
(21:28):
the sycophantic lizard people around him are really lying, the
tell is that phrase everybody knows it means they just
made something up. Everybody knows Christina Bob is actually eighty
three years old. Stuff like that. On the other hand,
to go on that long about this and you begin
to think, once again, why is this woman? Why are
(21:50):
they all in the Trump camp so obsessed with kids
and sex? They spend half of their time talking about it,
passing laws about it. What kids' bathrooms like are in schools,
what kids can go into, which bathrooms. They put viewing
windows in the bathrooms in a middle school in Hanover, PA,
(22:10):
supposedly to make sure they could tell if any of
the kids were vaping in there or being truants. Did
you go to school today, honey, yes, what you do?
I went to the bathroom for eight hours. If that
was a suggestion from the Department of Education a window
in a middle school kid's bathroom, Jamie Comer would be
conducting a hearing on it, and this idiot Christina Bob
(22:32):
would be the first witness. I don't know where the
far rights obsession with the sex and and gender preferences
of miners came up, but I look at Christina Bob
and that herman munster head of hers and I think,
doctor during the delivery, did you have too tight a
grip on the foresips or something? But the winner the
worst Chris slecked. Oh he's back, the man who ran
(23:01):
CNN into the ground. That spent a lot of time
here quoting Oliver Darcy's media newsletter status because it really
is the best of a bunch, and Brian Stelter's new
return to CNN newsletter, which I think he is named Management.
Isn't it wonderful? It's just so kiss ass. Mister Darcy
had a big scoop this week. Let me quote some
(23:22):
of it and I'll annotate it as I go. Chris Lickt,
he writes, is ready to step back into the public spotlight.
I'm ready to step back into being twenty eight years
old again. Nobody asked me to, and nobody's gonna let me.
But I'm ready to step back into being twenty eight
years old again. And Chris lick is ready to step
(23:43):
back into the public spotlight. The x CNN chief, who
was dismissed last year after a tumultuous run atop the
news network, is scheduled to deliver remarks at two industry
conferences following the November election. After spending more than a
year exiled in the wilderness, the former CNN boss is
cautiously re emerging with the aim of a playing a
(24:05):
to be determined role restoring trust in media institutions amid
the current polarized environment. Quote. I made a conscious decision
not to be seen for a while and not be
heard from unquote. Got to say that was a good
idea by Chris Lickt, his first But given everything that
(24:28):
is happening, both of these conferences are after the election,
there's going to be a huge discussion over how things
go forward, depending on who wins. During our phone conversation,
Lickt appeared to be in high spirits. Okay, Olivery Darcy,
I think you're close there. In that last description, what
licked is saying here is if Trump wins and the
news outlets that have not filated him yet, like Licht's
(24:52):
CNN filated him every day, if they erupt in fight
or flight fear, because Trump would have won, Chris Lickt
is ready to lead them all in flight right away,
right away. Lickt wanted to use our time to relay
that he is genuinely unnerved and worried about the corrosive
(25:13):
effects that the broken information environment is having on the country.
He underscored that without a functioning media, the fabric that
makes up civilization erodes, imperiling us all, and he repeatedly
said he wanted to be part of the solution, whatever
that may be. Quote. Everyone is still struggling to find
the right answer to engage with the public in a
way that can reverse the trend of people losing trust
(25:36):
in institutions. Lickt said, I think it's an existential crisis
for society, and that is not specific to any news organization.
It is just mass media in general, and it's a
problem that the country has to solve. It is an
absolute threat to society. Mister Darcy adroitly and politely notes
that Chris lick was quote no bystander to the problem
(25:59):
he describes that is a threat to society, corrosion. That's
a nice euphemism. Chris Lickt is battery acid. If he
believed in a moment in journalism, he'd never would have
associated himself with that manipulator Joe Scarborough, or that opportunist
Stephen Colbert, or especially the clown college owning CNN, for
(26:23):
whom the word news is just a brand name. To
be fair, Oliver Darcy went after him. Lickt lived up
to his reputation we're down to it. Quote. When I
asked Lickt how a year later he'd used his time
at CNN, or whether he had any regrets, he declined
to answer. I'm not going there, Licht replied. Anybody who
(26:48):
knows Chris Lickt knows he's going there. Licht said he
has changed his news consumption habits in taking information quote
much more like a normal civilian. When pressed as to
what exactly that means, Licht said he definitely watches much
less cable news and tries to sample a lot of
different types of information from a lot of different sources.
(27:11):
More importantly, Lick said he has spent his time out
of the public eye trying to learn from an array
of people he has met over scores of meals, coffees,
and drinks. In fact, Lick told me he's held hundreds
of meetings talking to people outside my bubble, outside my
comfort zone. Okay, so not just personal trainers this time, coffees, meals, drinks,
(27:38):
hundreds of meetings talking to people he doesn't know. Oh,
I get it now, Chris Lick is now panhandling. As
the British say, he's living rough quote. I am working
on some interesting things, he said, nothing that I'm ready
to talk about. But there's a lot of exciting things
happening in this space, as you know. And so I'm
(28:02):
just trying to figure out where i can be helpful, Chris,
I'm just trying to figure out where I can be helpful.
Where you ask, May I suggest Venezuela licked two days
worst person Ben Now to the number one story in
(28:37):
the countdown. And since it's the weekend, it's Fridays with Thurber.
You don't see a lot of new fables anymore. These days.
People aren't writing as many fables as they used to.
There was ASoP around five to eighty BC, and then
James Thrber around nineteen thirty nine, and that's pretty much it.
Fables require animals to stand in for people. They need
(28:57):
to be short, they need to be precise, They need
to end with a moral. They should be, if not
laugh out loud, funny, at least cry and thought provoking.
Three years ago, it was my privilege to write the
foreword to Michael J. Rosen's new volume James Thurber Collected Fables,
which includes many of the fables that had not previously
been published in a book. Despite my forward, I suspect
(29:21):
you will enjoy that book anyway. Thurber published most of
his fables and most of everything else in the New
Yorker magazine. He collected twenty eight of them in his
nineteen forty volume, Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated.
His further Fables for Our Time, came out in nineteen
fifty six and is heavily influenced by the era of McCarthyism.
(29:42):
Many of the fables are classics, some are sleepers, all
are great. Let me give you three of them to
carry you through the weekend, Starting with maybe maybe the best,
little misogynistic, but damned fun and certainly the best of
them in terms of being known to the public. The
(30:03):
Unicorn in the guard by James Thurber. Once upon a
sunny morning, a man who sat in a breakfast nook
looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white
unicorn with a golden horn, quietly cropping the roses in
the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where
(30:25):
his wife was still asleep, and woke her. There's a
unicorn in the garden, he said, eating roses. She opened
one unfriendly eye and looked at him. The unicorn is
a mythical beast, she said, and turned her back on him.
The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden.
(30:45):
The unicorn was still there. He was now browsing among
the tulips. Here, unicorn, said the man, and he pulled
up a lily and gave it to him. The unicorn
ate it gravely with a high heart. Because there was
a unicorn in his garden. The man went upstairs and
(31:06):
roused his wife again. The unicorn, he said, ay to lily.
His wife sat up in bed and looked at him coldly.
You are a booby, she said, and I'm going to
have you put in the booby hatch. The man, who
had never liked the words booby and booby hatch, and
who liked them even less on a shining morning, when
(31:29):
there was a unicorn in the garden, thought for a moment,
we'll see about that, he said. He walked over to
the door. He has a golden horn in the middle
of his forehead, he told her. Then he went back
to the garden to watch the unicorn, but the unicorn
had gone away. The man sat down among the roses
(31:50):
and went to sleep. As soon as the husband had
gone out of the house, the wife got up and
dressed as fast as she could. She was very excited,
and there was a gloat in her eye. She telephoned
the police, and she telephoned a psychiatrists. She told them
to hurry to her house and bring a straight jacket.
When the police and the psychiatrist arrived, they sat down
in chairs and looked at her with great interest. My husband,
(32:12):
she said, saw unicorn this morning. The police looked at
the psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist looked at the police. He
told me it ate a lelly, she said. The psychiatrist
looked at the police, and the police looked at the psychiatrist.
He told me it had a golden horn in the
middle of its forehead. She said, had a solemn signal
(32:34):
from the psychiatrist. The police leaped from their chairs and
seized the wife. They had a hard time subduing her,
for she put up a terrific struggle, but they finally
subdued her just as they got her into the straight jacket.
The husband came back into the house. Did you tell
your wife you saw unicorn, asked the police. Of course not,
(32:57):
said the husband. The unicorn is a mythical beast. That's
all I wanted to know, said the psychiatrist. Make her away.
I'm sorry, so h what. Your wife is as crazy
as a jaybud. So they took her away, cursing and screaming,
and shut her up in an institution. The husband lived
happily ever after. Moral don't count your boobies until they
(33:20):
are hatched. The Unicorn in the Garden by James Thurber
I promised three. Here's the second one. It's a little
less joyful and silly. The rabbits who caused all the
trouble by James thurber within the memory of the youngest child.
(33:43):
There was a family of rabbits who lived near pack
of wolves. The wolves announced that they did not like
the way the rabbits were living. The wolves were crazy
about the way they themselves were living because it was
the only way to live. One night, several wolves were
killed in an earthquake, and this was blamed on the rabbits,
for it is well known that rabbits pound on the
(34:06):
ground with their hind legs and cause earthquakes. On another night,
one of the wolves was killed by a bolt of lightning,
and this was also blamed on the rabbits, for it
is well known that lettuce eaters cause lightning. The wolves
threatened to civilize the rabbits if they didn't behave, and
the rabbits decided to run away to a desert island,
(34:28):
but the other animals who lived at a great distance
shamed them, saying, you must stay where you are and
be brave. This is no world for escapists. If the
wolves attack you, we will come to your aid in
all probability. So the rabbits continued to live near the wolves,
(34:48):
and one day there was a terrible flood which dround
a great many wolves. This was blamed on the rabbits,
for it is well known that carrot nibblers with long
ears caused floods. The wolves descended upon the rabbits for
their own good and in prison them in a dark
cave for their own protection. When nothing was heard about
(35:09):
the rabbits for some weeks, the other animals demanded to
know what had happened to them. The wolves replied that
the rabbits had been eaten, and since they had been eaten,
the affair was a purely internal matter. But the other
animals warned that they might possibly unite against the wolves
unless some reason was given for the destruction of the rabbits.
So the wolves gave them one. They were trying to escape,
(35:33):
said the wolves. And as you know, this is no
world for escapists. Moral run, don't walk to the nearest
desert island. The rabbits who caused all the trouble by
James Thurber and one last one. And I have mentioned
(35:55):
this before in other settings, but I'll mention it again.
I have a tattoo that pertains to this particular one,
and I have an ex girlfriend running around who has
the moral to this one on her shoulders. I wonder how.
She ever, explained that The Moth and the Star by
James Thurber, a young and impressionable moth once set his
(36:21):
heart on a certain star. He told his mother about this,
and she counseled him to set his heart on a
bridge lamp instead. Stars aren't the thing to hang around,
she said, lamp saying the thing to hang around. You
get somewhere that way, said the moth's father. You don't
get anywhere chasing stars. But the moth would not heed
(36:43):
the words of either parent. Every evening, at dusk, when
the star came out, he would start flying toward it,
and every morning at dawn he would crawl back home,
worn out with his vain endeavor. One day, his father
said to him, you haven't burned a wing in months, boy,
and it looks to me as if you're never going to.
All your brothers have been badly burned flying around street lamps,
(37:05):
and all your sisters have been terribly singed flying around
house lamps. Come on, now, get out of here and
get yourself scorched. Big stropping muth like you without a
muck on him. The moth left his father's house, but
he would not fly around street lamps, and he would
not fly around house lamps. He went right on trying
to reach the star, which was four and one third
(37:26):
light years or twenty five trillion miles away. The moth
thought it was just caught in the top of the
branches of an elm over there. He never did reach
the star, but he went right on trying night after night.
When he was a very very old moth, he began
to think that he really had reached the star, and
(37:48):
he went around saying so. This gave him a deep
and lasting pleasure, and he lived to a great old age.
His parents, and his brothers and his sisters had all
been burned to death when they were quite young. Tomorrow,
who flies afar from the sphere of our sorrow is
(38:09):
here today and here tomorrow. The Moth and the Star
by James Thurber. I've done all the damage I can
(38:33):
do here. Thank you for listening. But now back to
five episodes a week, posting nightly just after midnight Eastern.
Follow me for the podcast promo videos. They'll tell you
when the thing is out there. Those videos up here
on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, x, Instagram, and tickbook. I
think there is a tickbook isn't there? Once again, there
(38:56):
is a Monday countdown, and please send this podcast to
somebody who does not yet know they need to listen,
but they need to listen. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle,
the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most
of our music. Mister Shanelle handled the orchestration, the keyboards.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass and the drums.
It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy
(39:19):
musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Nancy Faust. The sports theme is the Olderman theme from
ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy
of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my friend
Larry David performing as Bob Sheffield. Everything else is pretty
(39:40):
much my fault. Let's countdown for today, two weeks and
four days until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the
one three and eighty second day since convicted felon dissociative
fugue Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
government of the United States, use the election, use the
mental health system, use presidential immunity to keep him from
(40:02):
doing it again, while always I'll have a chance. The
next schedule Countdown is Monday. Bulletin says the news requires
until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(40:34):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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