EPISODE 92: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:46) SPECIAL COMMENT: Their response to the extraction of Brittney Griner - unpatriotic, simple-minded, the Real-World-Is-Just-A-Fantasy-Basketball-League-And-You-Made-A-Bad-Trade - has not only reaffirmed that Republicans ARE stupid, but it has also underscored that when a glimmer of smart might sneak through, Republicans will deliberately pretend to be even more stupid, to appeal to their stupid base full of stupid people. Some are born stupid, some achieve stupidity, and some have stupidity thrust upon them. (3:50) Trump's stupid statement stupidly reminded people how HE failed to rescue Paul Whelan; Marjorie Greene's reminded people she wants to give the Russians not just an arms dealer but Ukraine. (10:00) I truly believe this is a choice: their stupidity is a language all its own, a reverse-superiority, an indecipherable code, impervious to logic or intelligence (11:28) And it was the Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from the depths of a Nazi concentration camp after the failure of the plot he participated in to kill; Hitler, who observed "Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice."
B-Block (18:58) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Moon, in New York (19:57) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: DOJ insists Trump is still hiding documents, wants lawyers cited for contempt; Who the 1/6 Committee will refer criminally (22:45) IN SPORTS: Late baseball signings, and why would an NFL team even think about signing a 49-year old receiver? (24:36) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Jim Jordan denies the tweet he tweeted, Eric Trump Trumps, and Paul Gosar's spokesman is so confident in him, he won't give the press his name.
C-Block (29:35) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: My Dad's favorite, Thurber's story of the school in which some students repeated the 4th Grade a dozen times and the baseball team was good enough to beat Ohio State: "I Went To Sullivant."
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio. Republicans are stupid, They're unpatriotic, simple minded. The real world is just a fantasy basketball draft. Face plant about the return of Brittany Grinder yesterday has not only reaffirmed that Republicans are stupid, but it is also underscored that on the rare occasion when a glimmer of smart might somehow sneak through, Republicans will deliberately pretend to be even more stupid than they are in order to appeal to their stupid base full of stupid people. Some are born stupid, some achieve stupidity, and some have stupidity thrust upon them. Like you know, Peter Doocey, the legacy higher that X News inexplicably sends to get humiliated by the Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre at the White House every day in his prisoner swap. Why did Russia get such a better deal? Look, you know I've talked about this, and I'll say this again. Here were our choices. Our choices was uh, Brittany or no one at all? Bringing home one American or no American at all? And that's We'm a prolific arms dealer who was convicted of trying to kill Americans who was called the Merchant of Death. The professional athlete is also an American citizen, so let's not forget that he was the higher draft choice. The president of the United States, any president of the United States and his diplomats managed to extract an American hostage from Russia during what is a proxy world war against Russia. And this bone head son of a bone head says it was a bad deal because he personally has determined it's a bad deal. But's the only possibility is that it is a bad deal weaponized Republicans stupidity. Trump went stupid on the grinder release quote. Why wasn't former Marine Paul Whalen included in this totally one sided transaction? He would have been let out for the asking unquote, Except Whalen was seized by the Russians on December two, eighteen. Thus Trump had two years and twenty two days as president to get Whalen back. And since Trump insists Whalen would have been let out for the asking, the only possible conclusions are either that Trump never asked, or that he asked and he was turned down. And he's now lying. Either case makes Trump looks stupid, and Trump bringing his failure up and reminding everybody about it is stupid. Why why is that the first knee jerk move to invoke your own stupidity? Could imagine if President Trump cave to Putin like this, wrote the x Trump doctor now Congress and Ronnie glug Glug Jackson, President Trump would never make a deal like this exactly. Ronnie Trump never did make a deal like that. And Whalen has been in a Russian prison ever since. Why do the fascists go stupid? What about retired marine who has been unjustly detained for years? Paul Whalen asked the lame duck Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, reverting to type. Surely an arms dealer is worth two innocent people. Again, this isn't a fantasy sports league trade. How flat out stupid? And why address Whalen's supposed innocence or anything about his background. I mean, he was court martialed out of the Marines for attempted larceny, lying, dere election of duty, more weaponized Republican stupidity. He's an American, Let's get him home. Don't bring up his relative innocence. The swamp and her perception that it meant benefits Russia is quote another reason to impeach Biden, says Marjorie Trailer Park Green, who of course wants to give Ukraine to Russia. Again, like you could tamper on the knee with a reflex hammer and her stupid bone would vibrate. Why there are only a thousand other examples only from yesterday Stephen Crowder, who must daily face the shame that he works for the idiot Glenn Beck brought up quote, the talent pool is incredibly shallow in women's basketball. A kid named c. J. Pearson, who works for Praguer you that is supposedly academia and not a curse word. Yeah, well, Prager, you quote Brittney Grinder niled Paul Whalen serve guests. Which one we left to rot in a Russian prison cell? Again, Whalen was court martialed. The last president left him there. This one is still trying to extricate him. But again, and the through line here is the stupidity. I would read more of these, but you know we can't do this all day. And the stupidity is clearly not just a bug. It's a feature. The Republican Party, the home of fascism in this country, starts still with somewhere around its membership believing Trump will somehow be reinstated because he is the president right now. Of course, if he is the president right now, he can't run again in and to be reinstated would require and even Trump himself said this termination of the constitution. Try to terminate the Constitution and you are in a state of insurrection against it, and the government can just send the military to subdue you. It may be their plan, and as I said yesterday, we should roll it up and Trump with it as soon as possible. But ultimately it is still a pretty stupid plan. And then come the stupider people. Half of Marjorie Taylor Green's tweets contain a hilarious mistake which befits somebody whose head looks like a carved Halloween pumpkin come to life. We know she wanted Trump to institute quote martial law m A R S h a L L, like in Marshall Mathers or Marshall University. When she referred to a congressional meaning of only members, I was relieved she hadn't written members only. And of course there are the true lunatics. You saw the woman who insisted that there is no President Biden, that he is being portrayed by Jim Carrey and James Woods wearing masks. How stupid is that, as if you couldn't cast somebody better than James Woods. But she did underscore this obsession the farthest of the far right have with disguises and re appearances, and especially reincarnations. At least they think this is pass bole idiots. I suppose one thing to believe that John F. Kennedy is coming back senior or junior, it varies from week to week and nut job to nut job, But it is quite another to spend actual money on a campaign sign using his name. The latest Republican miraculous return is supposed to be Princess Diana. And if you somehow got past what for me is a full stop barrier, these people are dead, you might wonder why the liberal JFK or the even more liberal JFK Jr. Or the still more liberal Princess Diana would come back and have anything to do with Trump besides kicking his ass. But this would require a logic, a non stupidity lost on a group that listens to Trump, Trump, who on the same day this past summer demanded Biden take a dementia test. Trump mindlessly claimed he aced, and then moments later Trump endorsed something named j. D. Mandel in the Ohio Center at Republican primary, which was not quite JD. Vance and not quite Josh Mandel. In some the triumph of Republican stupidity is so complete that the best of the latest jokes is you could get them to support eliminating the Electoral College just by telling them they teach CRT. There sadly the jokes and the sheer inanity that inspire them obscure and awful reality. Whatever stupidity Republicans don't achieve naturally, they supplement. They are at abyss levels of stupidity in this country. And I truly believe this is a choice. The stupidity is a language all its own, a reverse superiority and indecipherable code, impervious to logic or intelligence. And I am not the first to postulate this. The Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoffer could have been writing about Taylor Green or Herschel Walker, or the entirety of q and On, or anybody who spent the pandemic doing their own research. Stupidity, the pastor wrote, is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil, it can be exposed, and if need be prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion, in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease against stupidity. Pastor Bonholfer writes, we are defenseless. It's as if von Hoffer were trapped in a room with Lauren Bobert and Tulsei Gabbard quote. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here. Reasons fall on deaf ears. Facts that contradict one's pre judgment simply need not be believed, and in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical. And when facts are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as, inconsequential, as incidental. My late friend George Carlin made a million observations on this exact topic, but the most pertinent might be one of his classic statistical observations, like the fact that literally someone somewhere is the world's worst doctor, and worse, somebody else has an appointment to see him tomorrow. To our point, George noted that if you consider the intelligence of the average American, or the lack of intelligence of the average American, it is truly terrifying to realize that that means half the people in this country are even dumber. In all this Pastrick Dietrich Bonhoffer continued, the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than when the malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous. Quoting again, upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of political or religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catch words and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being, having thus become a mindless tool. The stupid person will also be capable of any evil, and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings. End quote. Pastor Dietrich von Hoffer didn't just write all this, He lived it. What I have read you he wrote inside a German prison camp. He was a double agent, serving as a domestic spy while also sabotaging the very Nazi spy networks he supervised. He was part of the group that tried to assassinate Hitler on July four. They hanged Pastor bon Hoffer. On April nine, the stupid people hanged him three weeks to the day before, the one all the stupid people looked up to. Hitler killed himself against stupidity, we are defenseless. The stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and being easily irritated becomes dangerous. But as always the weapons we have, the only weapons we have, are to be found in truth and the willingness to use the words we have been given. These people, Republicans, fascists, they are stupid. The last time their stupidity was overlooked, ignored, apologized for, they coughed up Hitler. The last time they were allowed to run one of the most powerful nations in the world, they nearly destroyed the world. We begin to fight them by not being afraid to draw the link between modern stupidity and modern Hitler's, by not being afraid to call the stupid stupid to their face and dangerous. This we must resume. At some point in this country, we stopped shaming stupidity. We stopped looking at the Peter Doocey's and the Marjorie Trailer Park Greens and the Elon Musk's and saying, no matter what their power or influence or success, we must call them what they are. They are still stupid, and in their brainless response to something as straightforward and positive as the rescue of Brittany Grinder, they are stupid. Let us never flag in our exertions or our willingness to call them that still ahead. The Justice Department wants a judge to find Trump's gang in contempt of court because it is convinced, even after the latest find that he is still hiding classified documents somewhere. Congressman Paul goes our spokesman says, own a fool would believe he doesn't believe in the Constitution. And the spokesman is so committed, so believing in his boss, that the spokesman will not give his name to the media. And James Thurber's grammar school where he was a scholar in the fourth grade, and the rest of the class was between sixteen and twenty two years old, and their baseball team was good enough that they figured they could beat Ohio State. I went to Sullivant In Friday's with Therber. That's next, This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith old woman still a head on Countdown Friday's with Theurber. I went to Sullivant. I went to Sullivant was my father's favorite Thurber story. It is of an educational world in which kids could be forced to repeat the fourth grade for a year. Were two years, we're twenty years coming up first. In each edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in need you can help. Every dog has its day. Let's talk about Moon in New York. Moon is a calm, sweet faced German shepherd with gentle eyes. She was not just homeless, but as she wandered the streets, limping due to a bad leg, she was getting skinnier and skinnier, and nobody did anything. The Trina and Friends Rescue finally grabbed her and just in time, she was literally starving to death. Moon is safe now, but in addition to time to recover, she's going to need antibiotics and treatment for the bad leg and eventually a loving home. They're doing a fundraiser on Cuddly for Moon, and you can find Moon there where you can find her on my Twitter feeds. I thank you and Moon thanks you. Post Scripts to the news some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions. State Line Washington, there was more to that discovery of even more stole unclassified documents in a Trump storage facility in Florida. This week, The Washington Post reports a the Justice Department is still convinced that Trump is still hiding more classified documents somewhere. The Post also reports the Justice Department has asked a judge to hold Trump's office and lawyers in contempt of court for failing to fully comply with the subpoena from May to turn over everything classified and sign a new document guaranteeing that everything classified has been turned over. The impeccable Ryan Goodman of Just Security underscores one quote in this report from the Washington Post. Trump's side has taken the position that such a request is unreasonable, that no lawyer could sign such a blanket certification in good faith or advise any client to do so. But Goodman notes that in June, after the semi co operative search at Mari Lago, Trump's own lawyers drafted and signed exactly that kind of blanket certification and it wasn't accurate, and Evan Corcoran, Trump lawyer wrote it, and Christina Bob Trump lawyer signed it, and Trump has since demoted Bob back to being a talking head on Trump trump Propaganda TV Dateline. Also Washington there are at least five people about whom the nine eleven Committee is considering making criminal referrals. Trump obviously, his chief of staff, and kup Henchman, Mark Meadows, and three men who might also be charged for being the dumbest lawyers in the universe, Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, and Rudy Giuliani. This first CNN it is notable and it has been noted that the criminal referrals really don't mean anything. Any evidence the nine eleven committee has might mean something. Not so at the referrals, you could make criminal referrals. In fact, why haven't you dateline Moore County, North Carolin nd of The lights are back on the blackout caused by domestic terrorism against two power substations. There is almost over still no arrests nor explanations, especially since an anti lgbt Q activists who boasted about knowing why it happened referring to a drag show, was visited by the county sheriff, who, instead of interrogating her, parayed with her. This is Sports Center Wait, check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman in sports Bunch of eight baseball free agent signings, Mets center fielder Brandon Nimo returns to New York. He gets eight years, hundred sixty two million dollars. There's a political joke there. Will leave it out. The Mets also signed free agent reliever David Robertson, who finished last year with the Phillies, who began his career with the Yankees. Red Sox fans are still ready to sack Fenway Park after star shortstops Andre Bogarts walked away from their last place team to join the San Diego Padres. And Jason Heyward, who when he reached the Atlanta Braves back in two thousand ten, was thought to be the game's next superstar, has signed with the Dodgers. It is a minor league contract with an invitation to spring training. He is thirty three years old now, and his buddy and fellow former Brave Star prospect Freddie Freeman, is the very well paid Dodger first baseman and from football former San Francisco fort Star receiver says he is ready, willing and able to return to his original team and help out and catch passes for them. Terrell Owens t O is forty nine. He broke in in He caught his last NFL pass in two thousand ten. No idea if the Niners are interested, but this would not be some sort of record. The NBA Cleveland Cavaliers reached out to the great Wilt Chamberlain, who had not played basketball in seven seasons and was then forty five years old, and tried to talk him out of retirement, and five years later the New Jersey Nets called Wilt when he was fifty. I had fridays with Thurber and his childhood at the Sullivan School in Columbus, Ohio, where several players on the middle school baseball team. We're between the ages of sixteen and twenty two years old. First the daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world. The Bronze. Jim Jordan's not even in power yet and already lying in Congress. Representative Eric Swalwell asked him about a tweet on the House Judiciary Republicans at count, the home page for which notes it is run by Jim Jordan's the tweet the infamous Kanye Ellen Trump tweet. Jordan's response was that tweet was on our account. That so, no, it's my time. That was not on our account, you know, Jim. The top photo on the page just a graphic reading House of Representatives Judiciary Committee ranking member Jim Jordans and the description reads official Twitter for the House Committee on the Judiciary Republicans established ranking Member Jim Jordan's, but it's not their account, but Jim Jordan's still knows. It was removed fire. The runner up, Oh look, it's an audio Daily double today Eric Trump moron twin number two. Eric did a streaming show with this woman, Julie Green, who claims God tells her what's gonna happen next Tony. She's gotten everything wrong for the last two years, meaning God is either pranking her or she has a tumor anyway. Eric explained how he serves his Lord by making his kids say the Pledge of Allegiance week up at four thirty in the morning, every single morning. I say the Pledge of Allegiance to my five year old and my three year old. In fact, they say them now, and they do so beautifully. And then I say the Lord's Prayer, and I say to other little family prayers that we have, and then I make them say something that's meaningful to them. I do this every single night at seven forty five, no matter where I am in the world. If I can't be there, on doing it on face time with with my wife and kids. They see my and and honestly, guys, that's how I live a clean, positive life. Of course, between four thirty in the morning and seven at night, Eric Trump spends his time siphoning money away from cancer charities and back into the Trump organization. But our winner, Congressman Paul goes Are the dentist you always behave and looks like he's just emptied an entire tank of his own laughing gas. Congressman goes Are is desperately trying to avoid blame and maybe arrest. After his tweet Wednesday praising and endorsing Trump's call to terminate the Constitution or parts of it. I support and agree with the former president, goes Our wrote, unprecedented fraud requires unprecedented cure unquote, or at least it did until goes Are deleted the tweet without any explanation. Now there's an explanation, goes Are spokesperson. Spokesman is the actual identification, told the website The Hill quote. Those who claim either Trump or Congressman goes Are don't believe in the Constitution, are acting in bad faith, or are low i Q people unable to comprehend our language or our actions. End quote, said the spokesman who refused to give his name to the Hill website. The spokesman for Paul Goes are so supportive of the congressman and confident and he's not going to be arrested that he wouldn't give his own name. Today's worst Person in the World to the number one story on the Countdown and Friday's with Thurber. And I don't know when I went to Sullivant became my father's favorite Thurber story. I suspect it was in the hospital when I was reading to him in the last six months of his life. I know I read it to him at least half a dozen times, the first five by his request. The last time he did not request it. In fact, and this is the most perverse kind of compliment I think any writer has ever received. I read this story to him. It was the last thing that I read to him. In fact, it was the last thing he did on earth, was to listen to this story in a state of semi consciousness. He waited till the end of it. He took one deep, satisfied breath, and he died. I don't recommend this, but I think it does speak to the quality of the writing I went to Sullivant by James Thurber. I was reminded the other morning by what I don't remember, and it doesn't matter, of a crisp September morning last year when I went to the Grand Central to see a little boy of ten get excitedly on a special coach that was to take him to a boys school somewhere north of Boston. He had never been away to school before. The coach was squirming with youngsters. You could tell after a while the novitiates shining and tremulous and a little odd from the more aloof boys who had been away to school before. But they were very much alike at first glance. There was for me, in case you thought I was leading up to that, no sharp feeling of old lost years in the tense atmosphere of that coach. Because I never went away to a private school. When I was a little boy. I went to Sullivant School in Columbus. I thought about it as I walked back to my hotel. Sullivant was an ordinary public school, and yet it was not like any other I have ever known of. In seeking an adjective to describe the Sullivant School of my years eight, I can only think of tough. Sullivant School was tough. The boys of Sullivant came mostly from the region around Central Market, a poorish district with many families of the laboring class. The school district also included a number of homes of the upper classes, because at the turn of the century, one or two old residential streets still lingered near the shouting and rumbling of the market, reluctant to surrender their fine old houses to the encroaching rabble of commerce and become as a last. They now have more vulgar business streets. I remember always, first of all, the Sullivant baseball team. Most grammar school baseball teams are made up of boys in the seventh and eighth grades, or they were in my day, But with Sullivant it was different. Several of its best players were in the fourth grade, known to the teachers of the school as the terrible fourth. In that grade you first encountered fractions and long division, and many pupils lodged there for years like logs in a brook. Some of the more able baseball players have been in the fourth grade for seven or eight years, then two. There were a number of boys who had not been in the class past the normal time, but were nevertheless deep into their teens. They had avoided starting to school by eluding the truant officer until they were ready to go to long Pants, but he always got them in the end. One or two of these fourth graders were seventeen or eighteen years old, but the dean of the squad was a tall, husky young man of twenty two who was in the fifth grade. The teachers of the third and fourth had got tired of having him around as the years rolled along and had pushed him on. His name was Dana Wainey, and he had a mustache. Don't ask me why his parents allowed him to stay in school so long. There were many mysteries at Sullivant that were never cleared up. All I know is why he kept on in school and didn't go to work. He liked playing on the baseball team, and he had a pretty easy time in class because the teachers had given up asking him any questions at all years before. The story was that he had answered but one question in the seventeen years he had been going to classes at Sullivant, and that was what is one use of the comma the commie, said Dana embarrassedly, unsnarling his long legs from beneath a desk much too low for him. Is used to shoot marbles with commies was our word for those cheap ten cent marbles, in case it wasn't yours. The Sullivan School baseball team of nine five defeated several high school teams in the city and claimed the high school championship of the state, to which title it had, of course, no technical right. I believe the boys could have proved their moral right to the championship, however, if they had been allowed to go out of town and play all the teams they challenged, such as the powerful Dayton and Toledo Nines. But their road season was called off after a terrific fight that it occurred during one game at Mount Sterling or Piqua or Zenia, I can't remember which. Our first baseman, Dana Wayney, crowned the umpire with a backed during an altercation overcalled strike and the fight was on. It took place in the fourth inning, so of course the game was never finished. The battle continued on down into the business section of the town and raged for hours with much destruction of property. But since Sullivan was ahead of the time seventeen to nothing, there could have been no doubt as to the outcome. Nobody was killed. All of us boys were sure our team could have beaten Ohio State University that year, but they wouldn't play us. They were scared. Wayney was by no means the biggest or toughest guy on the Grammar School team. He was merely the oldest, being about a year the senior of Floyd, the center fielder who could jump five feet straight into the air without taking a running start. Nobody knew, not even the Board of Education, which once tried to find out whether Floyd was Floyd's first name or his last name. He apparently only had one. He didn't have any parents, and nobody, including himself, seemed to know where he lived. When teachers insisted that he must have another name to go with Floyd, he would grow sullen and ominous, and they would cease questioning him because he was a dangerous scholar in his schoolroom brawl, as Mr Harrigan, the janitor found out one morning when he was called in by a screaming teacher. All our teachers were women to get Floyd under control. After she had tried to whip him and he had begun to take the room apart, beginning with the desks. Floyd broke into small pieces the switch she had used on him. Some said he also ate it. I don't know, because I was home sick at the time with mumps or something. Harrigan was a burly, iron muscle janitor, a man come from a long line of coal shovelers, but he was no match for Floyd, who had to be sure the considerable advantage of being more aroused than Mr Harrogan. When their fight started, Floyd had him down and was sitting on his chest in no time, and Harrigan had to promise to be good and to say that's what I get ten times before Floyd would let him up. I don't suppose I would ever have got through Sullivan School alive if it hadn't been for Floyd. For some reason, he appointed himself my protector, and I needed one. If Floyd was known to be on your side, nobody in the school would dare be after you and chase you home. I was one of the ten or fifteen male pupils in Sullivan School, who always are almost always knew their lessons, and I believe Floyd admired the mental prowess of a youngster who knew how many continents there were and whether or not the sun was inhabited. Also, one time, when it came to be my turn to read to the class, we used to take turns reading American history allowed I came across the word ducane and knew how to pronounce it. That charmed Floyd, who had been slouched in his seat idly following the printed page of his worn and penciled textbook. How do you know that was Duquesne boy, he asked me after class. I don't know, I said, I just knew it. He looked at me with round eyes. Oh that's something he said. After that word got around that Floyd would beat the tar out of anybody that messed around with me. I wore glasses from the time I was eight, and I knew my lessons, and both of those things were considered pretty terrible at Sullivant. Floyd had one idiosyncrasy, though, in the early nineteen hundreds, long warm, furry gloves that came almost to your elbows were popular with boys, and Floyd had one of the biggest pairs in school. He wore them the year round. Dick Peterson was an eithern greater figure on the baseball team and in the school than Floyd was. He had a way in the classroom of blurting out long, deep rolling be u for no reason at all. Once he licked three boys his own size single handed, really single handed, for he fought with his right hand and held a mandolin in his left hand all the time. It came out uninjured. Dick and Floyd never met in Mortal Kombat, so nobody ever knew which one could beat, and the scholars were about evenly divided in their opinions. Many a fight started among them after school when the argument came up. I think school never let out at Sullivant without at least one fight starting up, and sometimes there was many as five or six raging between the corner of Oak and sixth Streets and the corner of Rich and Fourth Streets four blocks away. Now and again, virtually the whole school turned out to fight the Catholic boys of the Holy Cross Academy in Fifth Street near town for no reason at all. In winter with snowballs and ice balls, in other seasons with fists, brick bats, and clubs. Dick Peterson was always in the van, yelling, singing, bey anging, whirling all the way around. When he swung with his right or if he hadn't brought his mandolin his left and missed. He made himself the pitcher on the baseball team because he was the captain. He was the captain because everybody else was afraid to challenge his self election except Floyd. Floyd was too lazy to pitch, and he didn't care who was captain because he didn't fully comprehend what that meant. On one occasion, when Earl Battock, a steam fitter's son, had shut out Mound Street School for six innings without a hit, Dick took him out of the pitcher's box and went in himself. He was hit hard and the other team scored, but it didn't make much difference because the margin of Sullivan's victory was so great the team didn't lose a game for five years to another grammar school. When Dick Peterson was in the sixth grade, he got into a saloon brawl and was killed. When I go back to Columbus. I always walked past Sullivant School, and I have never happened to get there when classes were letting out, so I don't know what the pupils are like. Now. I am sure there are no more Dick Peterson's and no more Floyd's, unless Floyd is still going to school there. The playyard is still entirely bare of grass and covered with gravel, and the sycamore still lining the curve between the schoolhouse fence and the Oak Street car line. A street car line running past a schoolhouse is a dangerous thing as a rule, but I remember no one being injured while I was attending Sullivant. I do remember, however, one person who came very near being injured. He was a motorman on the Oak Street line, and once when his car stopped at the corner of six to let off passengers, he yelled at Chudy Davidson, who played third base on the ball team, was a member of the Terrible Fourth to get out of the way. Shooty was fourteen years old but huge for his age, and he was standing on the tracks taking a chew of tobacco. Come on down off of that con I'll not keep locked off, said Shooty, and what I can only describe as a sullivant tone of voice. The motor man waited until Shooty moved slowly off the tracks. Then he went on about his business. I think it was lucky for him that he did. There were boys in those days. I went to Sullivant by James Thurber. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. If you're not following, or subscribed or whatever to this podcast, please do so, and please stop somebody on the street and get them too as well. Maybe we could make this podcast popular in prisons. Here are the credits. Most of the music, including our theme from Beethoven's Ninth, was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle. They are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle, guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by t Ko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis. Courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments from Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was Jonathan Banks, breaking bad. Everything else pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this the seven hundred and third day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him now while we still can. We'll have a new edition Monday. Until then, I'm Keith Olverman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.