EPISODE 141: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: Where is the Department of Justice? Homeland Security? The House Democrats? The Senate Democrats? The Capitol Police Board? When those who are supposed to protect us make it a four-day week, WHO will step up to stop Kevin McCarthy's criminal collusion with Tucker Carlson on the 1/6 Security Video?
Mike Lindell.
No, seriously.
Lindell alone acts as the implications of McCarthy's Quid Pro Quo become more evident. As the argument is made that the Democrats should now release all the video to all news organizations so some of them will be prepared to push back against Carlson's Conspiracy Theories and False Flag claims, the 44,000 hours of pure unadulterated high grade brainwash is clearly designed to be used to whitewash Trump. And it fits into the Gaslight Ecosystem, which last night expanded to include an organization trying to blacklist ALL former staffers on the House January 6th Committee, and blacklist their new employers, and blacklist their new employers' clients.
B-Block (15:02) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Ron DeSantis and his press secretary are losing a battle with a newscaster who fell asleep on the air the other day; Alaska's advocate for child abuse death is censured; and George Santos not only signs on to legislation honoring a gun, but lies about it as well (19:22) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Does a publisher get to purge mildly offensive words like "fat" or "bald" from the works of a dead author? Wouldn't a warning note be enough? Upping the ante: the author is Roald Dahl, the man who created Willy Wonka. Upping the ante again: he was both an often terrible human being and an often exceptionally kind one. Upping the ante one last time: when I was seven years old, Roald Dahl and I corresponded.
C-Block (39:40) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Ben in Brooklyn (40:40) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: His most darkly humorous story, the one that prophesied Trump: "The Greatest Man In The World."
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio, Day five of the Kevin McCarthy Tucker Carlson January sixth video scandal. And finally somebody has done something. The Department of Justice, Homeland Security, the Capitol Police Board, Democrats in the House, in the Senate, paw Patrol. Lindell TV is going after Kevin McCarthy in Congress. We're going after them because they did it. Rock. Yes, Mike Lindell has done something. Mike Lindell is suing. Mike Lindell is the one actually doing something about Kevin McCarthy and House Administration Chair Brian Style lying to the Cattle Police in order to let Tucker Carlson and Fox News Perlin forty four thousand hours of security video and what Chuck Schumer called one of the worst security risks since nine to eleven, skipping Lindell's mangled attempt to explain how his Equal Protection Clause and First Amendment rights have been violated. Of course, Mike Lindell is entirely correct. Fox News will get to put out whatever they she said, and we're over here and we're not putting out any information. But we don't even know, we don't even know what they're filtering, Brandon, what's important Jar News station? Here? Obviously I wish here. There's a lot of things not important to Fox News. Right, Lindell is looking at it from the other angle that McCarthy has the right to unilaterally release this video. He just doesn't have the right to unilaterally release this video exclusively to Tucker Carlson. To me, that's debatable, or at best the secondary point. But while I want everybody arrested and the access to the video halted and memories wiped, if that is really a thing, Greg Sergeant from the Washington Post takes a slightly more practical approach, the same one Lindel just expressed. The easiest response from Democrats is not a series of legal actions like I want, but to simply do what McCarthy did, release the remaining January sixth video, but release it to everybody, specifically to networks that could answer what Fox will do with the video to gaslight the coup attempt by using the video to reinforce what actually happened, and by using the video to show how Carlson and Fox deceptively cherry picked the footage. But is anybody looking at the larger, larger picture that you have just turned video of the Trump Fox Republican Party conspiracy to overthrow the government. You have just turned that video over too, the Trump Fox Republican Party conspirators. Well, yes, somebody does see that. Lindell Fox is going to be the filter to the world and give them the stuff not gonna happen on my watch, I'll tell you that. Thanks to Ron Philipkowski and his exceptional Twitter feed for the audio from that noted liberal media outlet, Lindell TV, Lindell Suz, everybody else four day workweek, Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger's statement Monday, Schumer's statement Wednesday news that much of the House Democrats internal meeting about McCarthy's criminal deviousness and the risk he just subjected every member of Congress and the Senate and indeed the citizenry too, was led by the chair of the desmanded January sixth Committee, Bennie Thompson. And Bennie Thompson's concerns echo those of Schumer about putting the people inside the Capitol at risk. A lot of statements, no, you know, actions, and no putting the pieces together that as egregious as this illegal collusion between Kevin McCarthy and Tucker Carlson is in terms of security. It's not just lives that are at risk. Tucker Carlson will pervert this video in order to use it to support his lie that January sixth was something else. Believe whatever you want as that something else, as long as you doubt the government, as long as you salute the false flag. Whether or not Tucker Carlson believes Antifa did it, or Biden or the Trilateral Commission, or as the dominion text shows as usual, He's not actually a psychotic conspiracy theorist. He just plays one on TV. The video is not there to provide sunshine, as McCarthy and that nitwit Nancy Mace so moronically phrased it. The video is there to provide a different kind of illumination gaslight whatever does or does not happen out of the Special Council's office. The point of the next twenty months for Trump and his insurrectionist mob is to make the guilty look innocent and the innocent look guilty, and moreover, to make the investigators look guilty, poison the prosecutorial well. It has so far worked spectacularly for Donald Trump. In almost any other era of American history, he would long ago have been imprisoned, or have fled the country or worse. But in literally the days after the coup attempt, Trump inspired and shaped Trump was suddenly being defended by vermin like Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy went from suggesting Trump should resign the presidency that night to fulsomely thanking him and groveling to him by name. Two years to that night later, when his succession of deals with sundry devils got him elect, did Speaker of the House. One of those devils was Tucker Carlson. And now McCarthy has just paid him his due. And the video will not just be used as part of the grand excuse by Trump cultists when they believe or pretend to believe that January sixth was Pelosi's fault, or the FBI's fault, or your fault. The video will be used as yet another arm of an octopus of revenge, threat and retaliation. And while the Tucker Carlson crime story stalled yesterday, a new and nauseating story emerged. This one is about a dark money group called American Accountability Foundation. AAF, and last night Politico reported that this AAF has sent out a letter to hundreds of recipients on Capitol Hill, mostly in government, some outside it. The letter designed to wreak revenge on staffers who worked on the House January sixth Committee. Quoting this letter, AAF has put together a cheat sheet outlining their new firms and the firm's clients, so you can be sure you and your staff aren't inadvertently taking a meeting with a company that hires staff that hates your boss. It is important to remember that even one of these former J six investigators is not listed as a lobbyist on this specific account. The billings brought in by the clients listed below benefit all staff at the J six Investigators new firm. Unquote translation, if you dared to investigate Trump on behalf of the United States Congress, and you dared to investigate sedition, and you dared to investigate treason, this AAF group will not merely try to blacklist you. It will intend to blacklist your new employer, and it hopes to blacklist or new employer's clients. The letter also invites recipients to let AAF know if AAF left anybody off the list. Political notes AF was co founded by one Thomas Jones, a former Ted Cruz presidential campaign staffer and thus obviously a man certainly embittered enough to last the rest of his life. AAF has also been linked, by reporting in The New Yorker, to the American Accountability Foundation and something called the Conservative Partnership Institute, which is itself connected to Clita Mitchell and Mark Meadows. It's the blacklist method of the nineteen fifties, except the smearing can be done now not just by an elected McCarthy, but also by a television channel that has completely untethered itself from the most elementary journalistic standards, yet is perceived by its audience as not just accurate but principled. The soul limitation on Fox News's effectiveness in turning the real into the unbelievable and the unbelievable into the real is the short attention span of its viewers. In order to be able to pay attention to the propaganda, they need a constant churn of new outrages. On Fox Now, Kevin McCarthy has given Tucker Carlson forty four thousand hours of raw propaganda from which he can choose anything and which he can alter to quote prove unquote anything. And as of this hour, with the Capitol Police Board and DOJ and DHS and Schumer and Jeffreys and everybody else who should be doing something but are in fact all a wall, the only thing standing between McCarthy and Brian Style and Carlson and this mother load of forty four thousand hours of raw, unprocessed brainwash is the diligence and the proactivity of one lone gallant man, Mike Lindell. We are so screwed, still ahead of us. In this edition of Countdown, George Santos' is back co sponsoring legislation to honor a gun. Turns out he's lying about that too. The Alaska legislator who you heard here actually claiming it's better for society when victims of child abuse in Alaska are killed, gets a slap on the wrist. Should we retroactively edit the words of a dead author to make it easier to sell his books in the twenty first century? The author is the creator of Willy Wonka. His name was Royal Dall. And not only is this a huge issue, but when I was a kid Royal Doll, and I corresponded and on Fridays with Thurber his story that basically prophesied the coming of Trump, the darkly comic the greatest man in the world. That's next. This is countdown, you know, this is countdown with you know, Keith Olberman ahead the Royal Doll controversy. Sixty years ago. Dall used words like fat in his kid's book like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The publisher is now taking them out in hopes of selling more copies of Willy Wonka. I actually have personal experience with two parts of this story, and I've been privileged to edit for taste the works of a truly great writer. And I actually used to correspond when I was a kid with Royal Dahl ahead first time for the daily rout of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute today's Where's persons in the world. The Bronze Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his press secretary Brian Griffin, Yes, Brian Griffin, like the name of the dog On Family Guy. Griffin and his boss are apparently deep into an appendage swinging contest with NBC News, quoting Griffin, to all the bookers and producers reaching out to our office from NBC News and MSNBC for Governor Ron DeSantis to join your shows. This will be the standard response from our office until Andrew Mitchell apologizes and your track record improves. I think we need to take a step back. There will be no consideration of anything related to NBC Universal or its affiliates until and at least Andrea Mitchell kirt, Wait, what does that mean? Until and at least did this kid me? Until and unless, until and at least Andrea Mitchell corrects the blatant lie she made about the Governor. DeSantis says that slavery in the aftermath of slavery should not be taught to Florida school children. Blah blah blah blah blah. Please feel free to pass this up and around the network. So Ron de Santis and his press secretary of being snowflakes about Andrea Mitchell. Seventy six year old Andrea Mitchell who fell asleep while live on MSNBC the other day. Governor's campaign for president's going to be an awfully short one. If you have to keep drying his tears about Andrea Mitchell. For God's sakes, our runners up Alaska State Legislature, David Eastman, he has now been censured for well you heard this. I played it the other day. In the case where child muse is fatal, obviously it's not good for the child, but it's actually a benefit to society because there aren't needed for government services and whatnot over the whole course of that child's life. Through the chair, can you sit at again to say a benefit for society? Talking dollars, Now, you've got one point five million dollar price tag here for victims of fatal child abuse. It gets argued periodically that it's actually a cost savings because that child is not going to need any of those government services that they might otherwise, you know, be entitled to receive and need based on growing up in this type of environment. Through the chair, Representative, I guess that would be the idea if I can use a really bad analogy when you hit somebody. Yeah, he actually said that during I'm hearing at the Alaska State Legislature, So he was centured. And that's two centers now for Representative Eastman, who was also at a Trump rally in DC on January six, twenty twenty one. The vote on this centure was thirty five in and one against, and the one vote against was by Eastman. But our winners, Congressman Barry Moore and George Santos More of Alabama introduced and Santos is now signed on as co sponsor of a bill to declare the AR fifteen the national gun of America. You know, the AR fifteen, the current slogan for which is a thousand mass murderers. Can't be wrong. Apart from the cynical death cult issue here, there's something about the AR fifteen. More and Santos don't know. It was designed and for decades sold exclusively by Colts Firearms. Colts Firearms, which in twenty twenty one was sold to a company based in Prague. So the gun More and this pathetic Santos want to call the national gun of America is check Congressman Barrymore and George Santos, and you know what you can do with those AR fifteen lapel pins, Boys, two days, Worst Parsons and the post scripts to the news. Some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Well just one headline this time. Please tell me where to send my Royal Doll letters so they can be sanitized for my protection. If the name Royal Doll does not immediately ring a bell for you. He was the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and thus the creator of Willie Wonka, and he wrote James and the Giant Peach, and all of his kids books combined have sold about a quarter of a billion copies dead since nineteen ninety. Two years ago, Forbes placed Doll first on its list of the top earning dead celebrities, ahead of Prince and Michael Jackson. Royal Doll made about five hundred and thirteen million dollars in twenty twenty one, compared to thirteen million by the late John Lennon. And that is where the problems began. And if you have not heard about the problems, the first is Royal Dall was often, as somebody on Twitter put a succinctly, he was often the C word. He was at times anti Semitic, racist, misogynistic, and cruel, and his writing was at times anti Semitic, racist, misogynistic, and cruel. None of that has ever really slowed down his book sales, though largely because first kids who read books are actually smarter than nearly every adult thinks they are. And second, it seemed then and now that the more problematic a lot of Doll's characters were the smarter he made them. The Umpa Lumpas of Willie Wonka are not Doll's finest moments. On the other hand, they do run everything in the chocolate factory. They know everything about the ticket winning kids and their foibles. And when Violet turns into a giant blueberry, and when Vuca gets devoured by squirrels, it is the umpa Oopas who know how to save them. So apparently the umpaal Oopas are doctors, or at least paramedics. Anyway, the reason Royal Doll made thirteen million dollars thirty one years after he died was that his estate sold the rights to the books to Netflix. By then, the book publishers had already brought in a company of so called sensitivity readers to rewrite the more troublesome parts of Doll's work. We're seeing the first results of this now, and it is literally what George Orwell described in his novel nineteen eighty four, erasing the past, replacing it with a new past and leaving no indication that any editing or changing was done. While I'm assuming it still says that in nineteen eighty four, presumably all of that could be edited out of orwell, and we'd never know, right. But it's even worse than that, because the edits are being made not because of some pure, if misguided desire to make changes reflecting the changes in morays and respect changes even the author might want to make. They're being done so that the books, according to the publisher, can continue to be enjoyed by all today, meaning they did this to literally sell more books. This is not even about well intentioned censorship. It's about profit. And if all that were not bad enough, the rewriting of Royal Dahl has from a quality viewpoint, gone about as well as the so called restoration of the painting of Jesus in Spain in twenty twelve. The painting is now known as monkey Christ or Potato Jesus. Apart from the wholesale elimination of words like fat and ugly, the publishers have decided to take out references that no kid would ever notice. She went to India with Rudyard Kipling becomes She went to ca Fournia with John Steinbeck. Why in his story The Witches, Raoul Dahl has the hero believe that all witches are bald and wear wigs and gloves, and that's a way to check. Don't be foolish. My grandmother said, you can't go around pulling the hair of every lady you meet, even if she is wearing gloves. Just you try it and see what happens. That would be an admonition not to believe that everybody with a wig is a witch. It has now been changed to don't be foolish, my grandmother said. Besides, there are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs, and there's suddenly nothing wrong with that. It's like Shakespeare. Now. Look, it is one thing if you are giving a public reading of Tom Sawyer, and you may want to drop a couple of words here and there. I have performed James Thurber's stories since twenty ten on TV, on radio, on this podcast in person. His epic story By the Way, Forecasting Trump the Greatest Man in the World is coming up shortly. Thurber's daughter Rosie offered me the right to edit anything I felt I needed to edit for time or for taste and said there was plenty in there. Her dad would be mortified by today that he wrote. Letting me edit it though, was like saying, hey, you have a heart, so that means you can perform heart surgery. But the goal in doing that is to change as little as possible. There are adjectives that were once perfectly normal and seemingly liberal, and once thought even to be complimentary that you really need to just skip. So when you're reading them aloud, just skip them, but erase them permanently forever from Thurber's books, when maybe a note to new readers would be sufficient warning. Plus, if I'm changing anything about Thurber while transforming his work into a different medium like podcasts, I am necessarily going to edit things. A movie might leave out nine tenths of any novel, but just reading a novel aloud might change something as important as the emphasis on the way certain words were said from the way the author intended that emphasis to be. Besides which, all those changes are temporary. I'm not altering Thurber's text. I'm altering my reading of his text. And the same goes for Royal doll And a lot of people saying this are people who do not like Royal Doll. Sir Salomon Rushti wrote he was a self confessed anti Semite with pronounced racist leanings, and he joined in the attack on me back in nineteen eighty nine. Royal Doll was no angel. But this is absurd censorship, puffin books, and the Doll estate should be ashamed, because that's the point. If we're going to edit or otherwise circumscribe every book or author, or film or producer with a significant problem, we're going to wind up with a world library of about fifty books and ten films. I mean, this is in Florida, and artists, like people, are rarely all good or all bad, and often they have huge disturbing flaws which can, in their own way, teach you what not to do or be in life. The publishers defended doing this on the premise that Roal Doll's works have always been edited and modified, that he permanently changed the description of those umpa loompas several times to make it less offensive, And again that misses the point. He made those changes, not his publishers, not his literary estate, not you, not me, him. And if you're wondering why I'm going on so long, about this. It's because this is personal for me. I think I learned that truth that almost everybody is a mix of good and bad, often in big, bright, ugly letters, often with extraordinary self contradictions. I learned all that from Royal Doll. Sometime in the second half of March nineteen sixty six, a letter unlike any other I had seen before arrived at our little house in the suburbs of New York City, where my parents packed me off each morning to the third grade. The words par Avian were printed in the upper left, and the postmark was from somewhere called Great Missenden, and the addressee was me. It was a letter from Royal Doll. I had a number of very special teachers in my life, but the first of them was Missus Marjorie Plant, who survived an entire school year of me in nineteen sixty five and nineteen sixty six. We sidled down the hallway to miss Ritz for an hour or so of math every day, but the rest of the time we were Missus Plant's class, and when she was not leading us out to the glorious natural meadow in the pond just behind the elementary school and teaching us the name of every plant and every tree, every bird. She was reading to us, or getting us to read to her, or one day asking each of us to name our favorite author. Well, I didn't hesitate. My dad read to me each night, and it's probable somebody else's book was first. And I know he later read me Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming. But the first books for me were Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach by Royal Dahl. And I don't know how many times Dad read each of them to me, but I do know that somehow those books conveyed to me that books didn't just happen, that a grown up like my dad had written them deliberately for kids to read and to listen to. And this man had clearly included jokes that the kids would get, but the grown ups didn't seem to notice. And this was this man's job, the way being a draftsman and later an architect was my dad's job. That you could do this and people would pay you. This is how I understood about this. A thousand other writers and broadcasters flashed out the details and the specifics for me, But the man who opened the first door into the world in which perhaps I could write for a living was Roaldall. So Keith, who's your favorite author, Missus Plant asked Roaldall missus Plant, knowing her and knowing me, she probably said I knew it, And soon after she explained that we had an assignment that day. We were all going to write. Great I thought, I'll write another book. I had already written something like forty books in missus Plant's class, two or three pages with illustrations, with construction paper, covers, with staples, with titles. I wasn't just going to be a writer like Roal Doll. I already was one. Not a book today, Keith, she said, I want you all to write a letter to your favorite author. I know how to get your letters to your author, so you don't have to worry about that part. You can ask them anything you want in the letter. You can tell them anything about yourself, but I especially want you to tell them why you like their books, and who you are and how old you are. And on that day, in March nineteen sixty six, my favorite author had written me back. I had a sense immediately of it being a special occasion. I believe only one author besides Royal Dall replied to anybody in our class. I do know the school thought it was a big enough deal to call the town newspaper to do a story on it. It's not as if I forgot the story, or the letter or the sense of wonder at its arrival either. But despite the coverage and the weekly Hastings News, it still seemed like a very private family kind of thing. And then in twenty ten somebody told me maybe it was the publisher, that the private family thing had made it into the authorized biography of Royal Dall, a book called Storyteller by Donald Sturrock. He this next part I did not. I think it's okay for me to bother it here, quoting mister Sturrock, his stories were encouraging children the world over to read books, and that many of them loved his stories so much that they felt impelled to write and tell him so. The current rate of letters from children in the US is between fifty and sixty a week. He had written to Mike Watkins in nineteen sixty six. I try to answer them all with a postcard. Roald was always a diligent and engaging correspondent, and if he was in the right mood and thought a child's letter particularly imaginative, he or she would receive a fuller and more memorable response. When the sports journalist and television anchorman Keith Ullerman was seven years old and head of maps in his class at school, he wrote to Dahl from Hastings on Hudson in New York and told him at some length about his own writing ambitions and successes. Roald's reply was thoughtful, generous, and full of gentle ironic humor. My dear Keith, he began, it was wonderful to receive a letter from a fellow author. It meant so much more than the usual ordinary message from a mere reader. As head of maps, you will be able to calculate very easily what a long way your letter had to travel in order to reach me in this little village, thousands of miles. The postman, an elderly fellow who comes on foot, knocked on the door this morning and said, I have a letter from you, from k Ulderman of Hastings, USA. I said, how do you know? He said, it says so on the envelope. He is a very inquisitive postman, and he likes to know who is writing to me. Who is Ulderman asked the postman. I opened the letter and read it. He is a writer, I said, He has written more books than me. Ulderman's parents later told the local newspaper that the letter had given the boy the kick of his young life. Missus Ulderman added that it just about proves that there are still some very nice people left in this old, beat up world. If all adults acted with such loving attention to children, would it not be wonderful? Dall was quite sincere when he argued that he thought children alone were decent judges of whether a book written for them was any good or not. In nineteen sixty two, he had written to a child critic of James and the Giant Peach to tell him that up to now, a whole lot of grown ups have written reviews, but none of them have really known what they were talking about, because a grown up talking about a children's book is like a man talking about a woman's hat. The author mister Sturrock not only put me in the Authorized Biography of Royal Doll, he also put me in the index there. I am right between David Ogilvie, the advertising legend, and Sir Lawrence Olivier. Left out of Sturrock's account and the quotes from my mother was the fact that Mom was a fan of the actress Patricia Neil, Roal Dall's wife, and she had read horror stories about their marriage and about Neil's stroke and Doll's tough love during her recovery. As I began to appreciate her point of view and Doll's books at the same time and his letter to me, I began to formulate a theory that not everybody was just one thing, that you could be good and bad and shouldn't be judged on just half of yourself. Naturally, I wrote my new penpal back he had mentioned having a son about my age. In fact, Theo Doll had been born in New York, just like I was, but at the age of four months in his baby carriage, Theo was hit by a cab and his injuries were so profound that for a while he was blind, and Royal Doll himself had helped to develop a shunt used to drain swelling in Theo's brain to make his life better and more worth While I did not know any of this when I mentioned among the mundane details that a seven year old was likely to tell an adult in a letter that my middle name was Theodore. Or I also apparently included some poems I had written. And I know this because sure enough, Royal Dahl wrote back again. This next letter did not come for nearly a year. My dear Keith. It begins dated February second, nineteen sixty seven. Your last letter was a very good one, so were the poems. Imagine the impact of that from your favorite writer right after your eighth birthday. But Dahl went on, I hope you will not become a poet when you grow up, because poets have a terribly hard time earning a living. I am writing a musical film, he went on, for Dick van Dyke, based roughly on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang the Flying Motor Car. Could I have mentioned liking this book by a different author in my letter to him, or did he just decide to announce it to me. We'll be making it here in England next summer and you can go and see it in nineteen sixty eight when you are nine years old. You will be impressed at the things this car is going to do. With love from Royal Doll I'm sure I wrote again. I can almost remember he did not write back. I do not recall holding it against him, nor do I now. I do recall that when I followed his instructions and went to see his movie, I think, in fact it was my tenth birthday party in early nineteen sixty nine. I was disappointed. Too much girl chasing, not enough car flying. Still almost no one is all good or all bad, and every new reissue of every Royal Doll book could include a twenty page treatise about what was bad about him and the negativities in that book and his other writings, just so long as it is included instead of rather than in addition to the nonsensical rewrites that Puffin Publishing is produced. Also, I think it might be appropriate to mention that though the letters from kids just in the US just in nineteen sixty six totaled around what twenty five hundred, he'd tried to answer them all with a postcard or if you were very lucky, a letter, or if you were very very lucky two letters, And to mention forty three years later in his official biography, still Ahead on Countdown Friday's with Thurber and Somebody once described the work of James Thurber as optimistic cynicism. This week's story ain't that optimistic. Maybe his darkest and certainly his most prescient piece, The Greatest Man in the World. First, in each tradition of countdown, we feature a dog in need. You can help. Every dog has its day to Brooklyn and Ben. Ben was astray, picked up and brought to the New York Pound a week ago today, one week and they are already ready to kill him. He's a two year old Shepherd mix. He was starving. He has a heart murmur. He's terrified, and surprisingly enough, he was growling and starling. But he was also taking treats gently, and he clearly knows his commands model citizen. Maybe not should he die because he was astray after one week? No where you can help defray the costs for a rescue to get Ben out and train him. If you can pledge some money, you will find Ben on my Twitter feeds. Your retweets will also help. I thank you, and Ben thanks you. To the master work of James Thurber. There is a short film of this story. I don't think it really does it justice. I don't think anything does it justice. Occasionally real life does do it justice. I've thought, I've seen this story playing out in real time in this country almost every day for about seven years. Sit back and relax, if relaxes the right word for it. For the Greatest Man in the World by James Thurber. Looking back on it now from the vantage point of nineteen forty, one can only marvel that it had not happened. Long before it did. The United States of America had been ever since Kitty Hawk blindly constructing the elaborate petard by which, sooner or later it must be hoist. It was inevitable that someday there would come, roaring out of the skies a national hero of insufficient intelligence, background, and character successfully to endure the mounting orgies of glory prepared for aviators who stayed up for a long time or flew a great distance. Both Lindberg and Bird, fortunately for national decorum and international amity, had been gentlemen, So had our other famous aviators. They wore their laurels, gracefully, withstood the awful weather of publicity, married excellent women, usually fine family, and quietly retired to private life and the enjoyment of their varying fortunes. No untoward incidents on a worldwide scale marred the perfection of their conduct on the perilous heights of fame. The exception to the rule was, however, bound to occur, and it did in July nineteen thirty seven, when Jack Pal Smirch erstwhile mechanics helper in a small garage in Westfield, Iowa, flew a second hand single Breasthaven Dragonfly three monoplane all the way around the world without stopping. Never before in the history of aviation had such a flight as Smirch has even been dreamed of. No one had even taken seriously the weird floating auxiliary gas tanks invention of the mad New Hampshire professor of astronomy, doctor Charles Lewis Gresham, upon which Smirch placed full reliance. When the garage worker, a slightly built, surly unprepossessing young men of twenty two, appeared at Roosevelt Field early in July nineteen thirty seven, slowly chewing a great quid of scrap tobacco, and announced nobody ain't seen no flying yet. The newspapers touched briefly and satirically upon his projected twenty five thousand mile flight. Aeronauticle and automotive experts dismissed the idea, curtly implying that it was a hoax of publicity stunt. The rusty, battered second hand plane wouldn't go, the Gresham auxiliary tanks wouldn't work. It was simply a cheap joke smirch. However, after calling on a girl in Brooklyn who worked in the flap folding department of a large paper box factory, a girl whom he later described as his sweet but duty climbed nonchalantly into his ridiculous plane at dawn the memorable seventh of July nineteen thirty seven, spit a curve of tobacco juice into the still air, and took off, carrying with him only a gallon of bootleg gin and six pounds of salami. When the garage boy thundered out over the ocean, the papers were forced to record in all seriousness that a mad, unknown young man his name was variously misspelled, had actually set out upon a preposterous atta to span the world in a rickety one engine contraption, trusting to the long distance refueling device of a crazy schoolmaster, when nine days later, without having stopped once, the tiny plane appeared above San Francisco Bay, headed for New York, spluttering and choking, to be sure, but still magnificently and miraculously aloft the headlines, which long since had crowded everything else off the front page. Even the shooting of the governor of Illinois by the Valetti Gang swelled to unprecedented size, and the news stories began to run to twenty five and thirty columns. It was noticeable, however, that the accounts of the epoch making flight touched rather lightly upon the aviator himself. This was not because the facts about the hero as a man were too meager, but because they were too complete. Reporters who had been rushed out to Iowa when Smirch's plane was first sighted over the little French coast town of Sara Lee Lemaire to dig up the story of the great man's life, had promptly discovered that the story of his life could not be printed. His mother, a sullen short order cook in a shack restaurant on the edge of a tourist's camping ground near Westfield, met all inquiries as to her son with an angry and the hell with him Helpie drowns. His father appeared to be in jail somewhere for stealing spotlights and lap robes from tourists automobiles. His young brother, a weak minded lad, had but recently escaped from the Preston, Iowa Reformatory and was already wanted in several Western towns where the theft of money order blanks from post offices. These alarming discoveries were still piling up at the very time that pal Smirch, the greatest hero of the twentieth century, blear eyed, dead for sleep, half starved, was piloting his crazy junk heap high above the region which the lamentable story of his private life was being unearthed, headed for New York and a greater glory than any man of his time had ever known. The necessity for printing some account in the papers of the young man's career and personality had led to a remarkable predicament. It was, of course, impossible to reveal the facts, for a tremendous popular feeling in favor of the young hero had sprung up like a grass fire when he was halfway across Europe. On his flight around the Globe. He was therefore described as a modest, chap taciturn blonde, popular with his friends, popular with girls. The only available snapshot of Smirch, taken at the wheel of a phony automobile in a cheap photo studio at an amusement park, was touched up so that the little vulgarian looked quite handsome. His twisted leer was smoothed into a pleasant smile. The truth was in this way kept from the youth's ecstatic compatriots. They did not dream that the Smirch family was despised and feared by its neighbors in the obscure Iowa town, nor that the hero himself because if numerous unsavory exploits had come to be regarded in Westfield as a nuisance and a menace, Pal Smirch had, the reporters discovered, once knife the principle of his high school, not mortally, to be sure, but he had knifed him, and on another occasion, surprised in the act of an stealing altarcloth from a church, he had bashed the sexton over the head with a pot of Easter lilies. For each of these offenses he had served a sentence in the reformatory. Inwardly, the authorities, both in New York and in Washington, prayed that an understanding providence might, however awful, such a thing seemed, bring disaster to the rusty, battered plane and its illustrious pilot, whose un heard of flight had aroused the civilized world to hosannas of hysterical praise. The authorities were convinced that the character of the renowned aviator was such that the limelight of adulation was bound to reveal him to all the world as a congenital hooligan, mentally and morally unequipped to cope with his own prodigious fame. A trust, said the Secretary of State, at one of the many secret cabinet meetings called to consider the national dilemma, A trust that his mother's prayer will be answered, by which he referred to missus Emma's Smirch's wish that her son might be drowned. Was, however, too late, for that Smirch had leaped the Atlantic and then the Pacific as if they were mill ponds. At three minutes after two o'clock on the afternoon of July seventeenth, nineteen thirty seven, the garage boy brought his idiotic plane into Roosevelt Field for a perfect three point landing. It had, of course been out of the question to arrange a modest little reception for the greatest flyer in the history of the world. He was received at Roosevelt Field with such elaborate and pretentious ceremonies as rocked the world. Fortunately, however, the warren and spent hero promptly swooned, had to be removed bodily from his plane, and was spirited from the field without having opened his mouth once. Thus he did not jeopardize the dignity of his first reception, a reception illumined by the presence of the Secretaries of War and the Navy, Mayor Michael J. Moriarty of New York, the Premier of Canada, Governor's Panamon Groves, McFeeley and Critchfield, and a brilliant array of European diplomats. Smirch did not, in fact come two in time to take part in the gigantic hullabaloo arranged at City Hall for the next day. He was rushed to a secluded nursing home and confined in bed. It was nine days before he was able to get up, or, to be more exact, before he was permitted to get up. Meanwhile, the greatest minds in the country, in solemn assembly, had arranged a secret conference of city, state, and government officials, which Smirch was to attend for the purpose of being instructed in the ethics and behavior of heroism. On the day that the little mechanic was finally allowed to get up and dress, and for the first time in two weeks, took a great chew of tobacco, he was permitted to receive the newspaper men this by way of testing him out. Smirch did not wait for questions. Use guys, he said, and the Times Man winced. Use guys can tell a cock eyed world that I put it over on Lindbergh. See yeah, man, an, I said, I'm two frogs. The two frogs. It was a reference to a pair of gallant French flyers, who, in attempting to flight only halfway round the world, had two weeks before unhappily been lost at sea. The Times Man was bold enough at this point to sketch out for Smirch the accepted formula for interviews in cases of this kind He explained that there should be no arrogant statements belittling the achievements of other heroes, particularly heroes of foreign nations. To hell with that, said Smirch, I did it. See I did it, and I'm talking about it, and he did talk about it. None of this extraordinary interview was, of course printed. On the contrary, the newspapers, already under the discipline direction of a secret directorate created for the occasion and composed of statesmen and editors, gave out to a panting and restless world that Jackie, as he had been arbitrarily nicknamed, would consent to say only that he was very happy, and that anyone could have done what he did. My achievement has been I fear slightly exaggerated. The Times Man's article had him protest with a modest smile. These newspapers stories were kept from the hero, a restriction which did not serve to abate the rising malevolence of his temper. The situation was indeed extremely grave for Powell. Smirch was, as he kept insisting, raring to go. He could not much longer be kept from a nation clamorous to lionize him. It was the most desperate crisis the United States of America had faced since the sinking of Lusitania. On the afternoon of the twenty seventh of July, Smirch was spirited away to a conference room in which were gathered mayors, governors, government officials, behaviorist, psychologists, and editors. He gave them each a limp moist paw, and a brief, unlovely grin hi, he said. When Smirch was seated, the Mayor of New York arose, and, with obvious pessimism, attempted to explain what he must say and how he must act when presented to the world, ending his talk with a high tribute to the hero's courage and integrity. The Mayor was followed by Governor Fannaman of New York, who, after a touching declaration of faith, introduced Cameron Spottiswood, second Secretary of the American Embassy in Paris, the gentleman selected to coach Smirch in the amenities of public ceremonies. Sitting in a chair with a soiled yellow tie in his hand and his shirt open at the throat, unshaved, smoking a rolled cigarette, Jack Smirch listened with a leer on his lips. I get you, I get you, he cut in nastily. You want me to act like a softy huh, you want me to act like that memony memedy baby faced Lindberg Huh, well, nuts to that. See. Everyone took in his breath sharply. It was a sigh and a hiss. Mister Lindbergh began a United States Senator purple with rage, and mister bird Smirch, who was pairing his nails with a jackknife, cut in again. Boyd, He exclaimed, Oh, for God's sake, that pick. Somebody shut off the blasphemies with a sharp word. A newcomer had entered the word the room. Everyone stood up, except Smirch, who was still busy with his nails, and he did not even glance up. Mister Smirch, said someone sternly. The President of the United States. It had been thought that the presence of the Chief Executive might have a chastening effect on the young hero, and the former had been, thanks to the remarkable cooperation of the press, secretly brought to the obscure conference room. A great painful silence fell. Smirch looked up, waved a hand at the President. How are you coming, he asked, and began rolling a fresh cigarette. The silence deepened. Someone coughed in a strained way. Jees, it's hot, ain't it, said smirch. He loosened two more shirt buttons, revealing a hairy chest and the tattooed word sadie enclosed in a stenciled heart. The great and important men in the room, faced by the most serious crisis in American history, exchanged worried frowns. Nobody seemed to know how to proceed. Come on, come on, said smirch. Let's get the hell out of here. Why do I start cutting in on the parties? Eh? And when is there gonna be this in it? He rubbed a thumb and forefinger together meaningly. Money, exclaimed a state senator, shocked Pale. Yeah, money, said pal, flipping his cigarette out of the window. And big money. He began rolling a fresh cigarette. Big money, he repeated, Frowning over the rice paper. He tilted back in his chair and leered at each gentleman separately, the leer of an animal that knows its power, the leer of a leopard loose in a bird and dog shop. Ah, for God's sake, let's get someplace where it's cool, he said, I've been cooped up plenty for three weeks. Smirch stood up and walked over to an open window, where he stood staring down into the street nine floors below. The faint shouting of newsboys floated up to him. He made out his name, hot Dog, he cried, grinning ecstatic. He leaned out over the sill Yo, tell of babies. He shouted down, hot Diggity Dog. In the tense little knot of men standing behind him, a quick, mad impulse flared up. An unspoken word of appeal of command seemed to ring through the room, yet it was deadly silent. Charles K. L Brand, secretary to the Mayor of New York City, happened to be standing nearest Smirch. He looked inquiringly at the President of the United States. The President, pale Grimm, nodded shortly. Brand, a tall, powerfully built man wants to tackle at Rutgers University, stepped forward, seized the greatest man in the world by his left shoulder and the seat of his pants, and pushed him out the window. My god, he's fallen out the window, cried a quick witted editor. Get me out of here, cried the President. Several men sprang to his side, and he was hurriedly escorted out of a door toward a side entrance of the building. The editor of the Associated Press took charge, being used to such things crisply, he ordered certain men to leave, others to stay quickly. He outlined a story which all the papers were to agree on, sent two men to the street to handle that end of the tragedy, commanded a senator to Saab and two congressmen to go to pieces nervously word he skillfully set the stage for the gigantic task that was to follow, the task of breaking to a grief stricken world the sad story of the untimely accidental death of its most illustrious and spectacular figure. The funeral was, as you know, the most elaborate, the finest, the solemnest, and the saddest ever held in the United States of America. The monument in Arlington Cemetery, with its clean white shaft of marble, than the simple device of a tiny plane carved on its base, is a place for pilgrims in deep reverence to visit. The nations of the world paid lofty tributes to little Jackie Smirch, America's greatest hero. At a given hour, there were two minutes of silence throughout the nation. Even the inhabitants of the small, bewind ordered town of Westfield, Iowa, observed this touching ceremony. Agents of the Department of Justice sought to that one of them was especially assigned to stand grimly in the doorway of a little shack restaurant on the edge of the tourist's camping ground just outside the town. There, under his stern scrutiny, Missus Emma Smirch bowed her head over to Hamburger stakes sizzling on her grill. Bowed her head and turned away so that the secret service man could not see the twisted, strangely familiar leer on her lips. The Greatest Man in the World by James Thurber Countdown has come to you from the studios of Alderman Broadcasting Empire World Headquarters in the Sports Capsule Building in New York. Thank you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel. They are the Countdown Musical Directors, produced by Tko Brothers. All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel guitarist, bass and drums by Brian Ray. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments from Nancy Fauss The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Richard Lewis, and everything else was pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this the seven hundred and eightieth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him now while we still can. The next schedule countdown is Monday. Until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good Morning, gonna have to noon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.