Fl media.
Hey everybody, Robert here.
As a lot of you probably know, about two months ago, my dad took al I spent most of a month in the hospital with him the ICU while he got sicker. He passed a couple of weeks ago, so I have lost some worktime. Needless to say, we'll be taking another break this week, and then we should be back with new episodes for the foreseeable future. I just needed another week to get back ahead, get myself going again for reruns.
This week, we're running a trio of great episodes that we did a couple of years ago with Tom Ryman from Game for the Unemployed about right wing talk show guys of the past, the dudes who kind of like laid down the groundwork that made Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck possible. So they're great episodes. Check them out. And I also wanted to plug the Portland Diaper Bank. Every year around this time we do a fundraiser for the Portland Diaper Bank. This is our fifth year in a row.
Last year raised nearly thirty thousand dollars to provide diapers to low income people, and over the course of the last four years, this will be our fifth year Behind the Bastards listeners have raised more than one hundred thousand dollars. So if you want to help out, just google go fund me bTB fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank. That's go fund me bTB fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank. Thanks everybody.
Fall Yeer I was a German name for paratrooper. I don't know why. I started the episode saying, Tom's why you did that?
How are how are you doing? Do you know that the German word for paratrooper is falschwormjegger.
I did not know that. Well, now you do, thank you.
They had a you know, the the Nazis had an aquatic little jeep that could go on the water. They called a sh Fimenwagen. That's sweet, that's kind of funny. Yeah, what do we call it? That's our swimming wagon head is, yeah, gijoe vehicle. It does the women, Tom, how are you feeling two pieces of ship into this? I'm vibing on some clown shoes right now you are vibing on some clown shoes. Well, right now, Tom, this exact moment, this second in time, that we both inhabit, which may be
eternal if certain philosophers are right. This very moment could go on forever, both forwards and backwards in time, could be completely encompassing, as all moments are. This moment, we're going to talk about a guy you have heard of, mister Morton Downey dances all the way down just just six my ears.
Yeah, oh yeah, that's a name. That's a name.
Yeah, Tom, what do you know about Morton Danny Jr. Oh Man Jay as we call him.
He's like a pinky ring that fell into a puddle of toxic waste and became a man. He's he's he plays the he plays the slimy journalist that Danny Glover punches in the face and Predator two, and he.
Sure is in Predator too, you god damn right, playing himself.
Yeah, he's absolutely playing himself in Predator Too, which is incredible. Yeah, easily the second best Predator movie.
It's it's easily the second Predator film. Yeah, yeah, definitely, you can't take that away from it. It is the second one of them, indisputably the second Predator film.
Yeah, I know, he's like a he's a he was sort.
Of like the uh.
The ying to Phil Dona Hughes Yang at the time, where Phil Donahue was like kind of nice and personable and Morton Downey was a real son of a bitch.
When he was a real piece of shit. Yeah.
And the fun thing about Morton Downey Junior, tom Uh is that if you start researching Morton Downey Junior, the first like Google result that tries to auto fill when you start typing his name in is is Morton Downey Junior related to Robert Downey Jr. And my answer to that is it does not appear to be. So No, just just just a fun coincidence, which is weird because he does have a famous dad, like Robert Downey Junior. Yeah, but just a completely different one. I just that's that's
very funny. Yeah, so let's let's let's let's talk about MDJ.
So.
Morton Downey Junior was born on December ninth, nineteen thirty two, in Los Angeles, California. His father was obviously a guy named Morton Downey. Yeah, two thirds of these guys are Californians.
Well that in the thirties, I'm like, fuck, he's old, like a lot of these far's ancient, dusty, old racist mummies.
That's because they were established by the time the eighties got going, and they could really start fucking some shit up for everybody.
That's true. I keep thinking that the eighties was four decades ago.
Yeah, it's been a long time since the eighties, thank god. So his father was obviously Morton Downey, which probably means nothing to everyone listening, but I meant an awful lot to people in the nineteen twenties and early thirties. Morton Downey's nickname was the Irish Nightingale, and he was one
of the most popular singers of his day. He had Morton Downey Junior, whose first name was Sean, with his first wife, Barbara Bennett, and Barbara was famous because she was the sister of two women who were famous actresses. Morton Downey Senior would ultimately have five children, four sons and a daughter. He was not a nice man, or at least, people who knew Morton Downey Junior say he did not think well of his father. There is, in fact,
significant evidence that he despised the man. He desperately wanted to succeed as a singer, and he tried repeatedly as a young man to follow in his father's footsteps. Appearing on early game shows, where his performance was reviewed positively by guys like Dean Martin. I thought he had an all right voice, but most experts agree he just didn't have what his father had. There was something lacking in his voice that like he was just never going to have the kind of career.
His dad had.
The Downey family were well to do. He grew up, you know, richish. They lived in I mean, if you want to know how well to do they were, they lived in Hyannasport in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and their next door neighbors were the Kennedys. Yeah, yes, it's like that's how much money they got.
His kids rich Ish?
Yeah, yeah, there hang in with the Kennedy's. Morton Downey Junior was good friends with Joe Kennedy. Will Or Morton Downey Senior was good friends with Joe Kennedy and as when Morton Downey Junior was a child, he would hang out regularly with the Kennedy boys, you know, like he knew Robert and JFK when they were younger. They were all buds together. I guess Downey Emmy's a bit younger.
But Downey attended New York University and like the others, and like our other subjects, seems to have immediately known he wanted a career in radio. He got a job as the program director an announcer for a radio station in Hartford, Connecticut, in the early nineteen fifties. Over the next decade and change, he was hired primarily as a DJ, although he also sang for several pop and country records and wrote a handful of songs that saw modest success.
Like Wally, George Morton, Downey Junior bounced around various markets Phoenix, Miami, Kansas City, San Diego, and Seattle. Also like Wally, he was a huge asshole and had trouble working with people. He was forced to resign from a Miami network when he gave the home phone number for a competing DJ out on the air and insulted the man's wife.
Oh like Docks, the guy on on the air.
I want to I want to hear I hear him croon. I had no idea that was his background. Oh, I mean we can't he cut an album?
Tom? Oh boy, you know what, Tom, We'll play this right now. Sweet. Yeah, let's do it.
Yeah, Let's let's do this now. I need you to hear his song about the war on drugs.
What's it called? Hey there, mister dealer, Oh.
Many name, mister taler.
Push son of the minds are the kids of America? Just don't make your back.
You all the sleeves, bag on the country, garbage of all.
He's like attacking the microphone.
Yeah, so welcome to his eternal mob.
He looks like a skeleton at a costume contest dressed.
As Dan Martin.
All right, that's probably enough of Hey there, mister dealer.
God it is so this will mean more.
When you've had Dean Martin was too kind to him. He was better when he was younger too.
Yeah, his earlier, his earlier shit is I think because he's he's what, he was famous when he recorded.
He's so he was like doing a thing. Yeah, but he's still like yeah, it's yeah.
Yeah, I don't think he had a bad voice and the stuff you can hear from younger. There's a good documentary about his tours.
But yeah, he is.
He is going real agro there, and it's because you know, he was already a name at that point. He was he was doing a bit or maybe he just like was out of his mind because that's what being famous does to you.
After a while, I.
Don't know, you can see the cocaine, just like in an aura. Yeah, yeah, it followed him around. In nineteen sixty eight, Morton took a break from his work, his career, which was again he was kind of a mix of a DJ and a kind of a pinch hitter in the music industry, coming into do background vocals and stuff to work on that campaign for his good childhood friend Bobby Kennedy. When Kennedy was assassinated, Morton wrote a book of poetry with the title Quiet Thoughts Make the Loudest Noise.
The book was a way of processing grief, and you can still find a handful of hardcover copies on Amazon for like one hundred and forty eight dollars. Yes, I am not buying one of them, but I did transcribe one of the poems he wrote specifically about Robert Kennedy's death, from the documentary Avocatur And I'm going to read that
to you now. Row upon row of grief racked followers, sunken cheeks replacing their years ago happy faces, saying proudly for their departed friend, their final hope and wondered why a man must die to be a hero, and whether we honor only those our own selfish hearts destroy.
Yeah, I don't think sunk in cheeks is what he meant to say, But but yeah, it's kind of you know, it's kind of profound, that's right.
He's certainly like a man who's thinking about like the nature of Yeah, yeah, that it was thoughtful. You wouldn't call him a shallow man based on that. He's a man who's trying to process complicated and sorrowful emotions in an artistic way. Clearly a person capable of not just feeling grief, but of expressing it artistically. He continued to sing occasionally, and he made his living as yet another disc jockey until in nineteen eighty three, the same year
that the Wally George TV Show starts. A year before Rush Limbaugh gots on talk radio, he gets a job as a talk radio host on WDBO in Orlando, Florida. So yeah, and again they're both kind of writing this wave of right wing populism in the rise of the religious right and Ronald Reagan like they're part of a thing. They're not starting it, but they are also influencing the way this thing grows. So Wally George and Morton Danny Junior both rode that right wing wave and helped to
shape it. Morton Danny Junior was even more incendiary and control uncontrolled than Wally. He lost his first talk show gig after he punched a guest, an abortion rights activist named Bill Baird, who he then called a son of a bitch.
So how many episodes in that?
So?
Yeah, Wally George screams at people and stuff, and I think shoved some folks a few times. Or Nanny Junior just cold cock some motherfucker Like months into his first talk show and again a radio talk show.
I wonder if you can hear like the meat sound on the microphone.
I haven't found this audio, but I bet it's great.
Next.
According to the New York Times quote, mister Downey was soon hired by KFBKAM Radio, a news talk station in Sacramento, California. There, he told a joke in which he used the word chinaman several times, angering Tom. Yeah, not that surprising, is it, Tom? So Yeah, he tells a joke in which he uses the word chinaman several times, which pisses off Tom Chin, a Chinese American member of Sacramento City Council who was listening in his car.
Why. I wonder why that bothered him.
I wonder why he got angry at that. Mister Chin called the station. According to the councilman and to Paul R. Errand then the station's program director, mister Chin was put through to mister Downey, who let loose a verbal tirade against him. Mister Downey was discharged the next day. So he tells a racist joke on air. It offends a member of the city council who calls, and then he proceeds to be racist to that guy, lafe on.
The air and loses his job. Yeah, yeah, that's usually probably should be what happens.
Yeah, yeah, Now the station had to obviously had to shit can Morton Downy.
June I liked that.
He was like, Oh, I'm sorry, I'll just be racist to you directly. Then, Yeah, do you do what would you like me to just be a piece of shit to your face? I did not mean to do it to your back on the air. Absolutely not. Oh forgive me, let me be an asshole directly.
To let me be an asshole directly to you, I don't mean to be rude. So they had to fire him. But he was also and you'll you'll hear different things about how popular he was. By some accounts he was he was very successful. By some accounts just modestly successful. I can't tell you which. But he did well enough that the station was like, well, this guy's built an audience.
They're very dedicated, and so when he leaves, they decide they need to replace him with another right wing firebrand, someone who can stir up the same kind of populist rage but also isn't quite as racist. You know, they picked Tom I don't know who followed him into the job. You might have heard of this guy, little fella. He might know his name, Rush Limbaugh. Oh that's how Rush gets His first big political gig.
Was Morton Downey being too racist on the issue.
It was too racist, and so Rush Limbaugh came in and said, I can be slightly less racist than that for a while, for a little while. Eventually I'll be much more racist than that. I could be slightly less racist to people's faces. Yeah again, for a while, for a while.
I love like, man, that was too racist. Let's get Russian here, let's get you get that Rush Limbaugh hit in air. Yeah, we would tone things down somewhat.
Tom, Where do you go when you've just gotten fired from your right wing radio job for being too much of a racist?
Uh? Television?
No?
I mean?
But what city do you go to?
Mmm?
Portland? I don't know. No, Cleveland, Cleveland? Oh yeah sure, yeah, yeah.
Yeah you get yeah, you get your ass on down to Cleveland. Hey, our rivers are very rarely on fire, unlike Cleveland. So he gets hired by w E. R. E a M. To improve the poor ratings of its talk show department. He was forced out there when he again hurled racial slurs at an elected leader. This one of your municipal court seeing this coming, who could have guessed?
Wally George, the man who punched an abortion rights activist and lost his first radio show, lost a second for screaming racial slurs at a city councilor would lose his third show for screaming racials? Is it a municipal court judge? Oos among us.
Has not on a bad day a hurled racist slurs at a circuit court judge?
Or or yeah, those of us who have not gone to jail have done that. So while his former employer wrestled with a lawsuit. As a result of this, Morton Downey Junior moved to Chicago to do it all over again. So during both of these strategy yeah the OK strategy Chicago, Yeah,
Chicago forgives all sense. During his first two dalliances with talk radio, Morton Downey Junior had a regular segment on his shows called the Executive Intelligence Report, which is him reading from a magazine published by Lyndon LaRouche.
We're gonna have to do a whole.
Episode on Lyndon LaRouche at some point, but for now you'll have to be satisfied with this quick description of Lindon courtesy of a New York Times obituary. And again, this is the source of Morton Downey Junior's execus Kative Intelligence Report quote. Lyndon LaRouche, the quixotic, apocalyptic leader of a cult like political organization who ran for president eight times once more. Prison cell died on Tuesday. He was ninety six. Defining what mister LaRue is yeah right, that's
a motherfucking sentence, is an entire sentence. Defining what mister Larouge stood for was no easy task. He began his political career on the far left and ended it on the far right. He said he admired Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, and Ronald Reagan and loathed Hitler the composure Richard Wagner and other anti Semites, though he himself made anti Semitic statements and boy Diddy a lot of them. He was a fascist tom He was a fascist political cult leader.
I liked the obituary was like, we don't know what the fuck he believed.
He believed in Lyndon Larouge having a bunch of like he had a bunch of followers who basically it was a cult, like they lived for this man, and they would go out and proselytize on the street. They would hand out papers at call campuses. LaRouche argued that environmentalists were trying to wipe out the human race, which is a claim that Alex Jones now parrots. He believed Queen
Elizabeth was trying to murder him personally. He argued that Jews had founded the KKK, and he described Indigenous Americans as lower beasts. So this is the source of Morton Downey Junior's intel I'm finding a couple of consistent threads in his belief structure that perhaps his obituary could have latched onto it. May I think they may have gotten into that later. That was like the first two paragraphs. I just I read that obituorian was like, my god, that is a sentence.
Yeahah, that first sentence almost knocked me out of my chair. Yeah, what a fucking life the president eight times once from prison?
But what it was a tax thing? I think.
Again, we'll do I'll have to read into him and we'll do a whole episode on Lyndon Larouge. He's quite a character. Yeah, yeah, the head of Morton Downey Junior's Intel program. Now, the fact that Morton Downey Junior platform this guy is very and it's arguably more fucked up because Morton Downey Junior did not really like him. As he told The New York Times, I decided I was going to be as friendly towards these people and get as much information out of them as I could, because
someday I would expose them. Now that's bullshit. It's true that he did eventually get Lyndon Larushe on his TV show, and he tore him apart like it was a very aggressive interview with Lyndon, but he also continued to spread Laruche's newsletter and other publications after that point, calling the fascist cult leader's intelligence information quote the second or third best in the world.
Based on what Morton Downey Junior he Morton Downey Junior doesn't know nice build cast member of Predator two.
Yeah, mother, I mean he did make the top ten look look in fairness, that's more than either of us have ever done in terms of predators.
That's true.
But I'm not out here saying this is the second or third most reputable intelligence support in the world.
No, you're not.
No, based on your experience, which is you and I both did get to look at the Predator costume.
Yes, oh wait, no, this was it. I didn't well, oh you weren't there that it wasn't, But I saw the video.
It was rad It seems like a.
Just knowing that I was that close to something that had touched Morton Downey Junior was was just powerful. Tom was really powerful. You know what else has touched Morton Downey Junior in a sexual man?
He's products and services. Probably they fucked him. They fucked him.
Products and services have been inserted into Morton Downey Junior.
Absolutely, that is again the only promise we make about our sponsors. So if he seems fine with us, so I'm just gonna continue.
Yeah, that's an AD that's an AD throw, that's an AD throw baby.
Oh we're back.
So by nineteen eighty seven, Rush Limbaugh's show had exploded in popularity. Wally George was the talk of Orange County. This is kind of the height of the Wally George Show too. And despite Morton's mixed success on radio, a station in New York slash New Jersey, I guess it covered both decided let's give this guy a TV show. And I think they're looking at Wally George over in OC They're seeing Rush Limbubloup in the radio and they're like, this guy could be a could be a hit on TV.
And in fairness, they're not wrong.
He was.
Yeah, he was filmed in Secaucus. The Morton Downey Junior Show was cut very much in the shape of Wally George's hot seat. In fact, Wally even had Morton on his show in the late nineteen eighties and it was immediately hostile. And I'm first going to play this clip Morton Donny Junior on the Wally George, Oh boy.
It's really a Freddy versus Jason moment. Just say two rats fighting over a dead cat.
Oh boy.
And I have to say before if you're wondering what Morton Downey Junior looks like, well so if he gets this clip together, remember Iron Giant, Remember the bad guy from Iron Giant. He looks like Christopher Sleazy Fed. Yeah, he looks like he looks like Shooter mcgavett. It looks like yeah he does. Who is the same I was blew me away to learn that Shooter mcgafvin and the Fed from uh uh uh the Iron Giant are the same guy.
Incredible thing. He looks like he looks like Shooter McGavin with novelty teeth. Yeah, he looks like Shooter McGavin if Shooter McGavin did like birthday parties for children.
Oh, here it is.
You.
You're coming up with the usual simplistic answers. Wally that conservatives who don't know what the hell they're talking about.
Stop.
I've got an audience out here.
You've got an audience of monkeys.
Out here will do everything that you tell him to do. He's not wrong.
I'm warning you the next time you don't warn me, Punk God.
Lolly.
George looks incredible, man.
He looks like the entertainment direct that a cruise ship, but like a bad cruise ship.
The cops have come on now, and they're pulling Morton Downey Junior off the show and tackling.
He gets tackled by jor total Roger Stone vibes from that guy with.
Like a.
And obviously all of that was set up ahead of time. The plan was always I suspect for Morton Downey Junior to get tackled by sheriff's deputies on the seat of Wally Joege's on seat.
It seems so extreme, and he's already so famous at that point that they wouldn't Yeah, they would not dare do that to him and listen to staged.
Yeah, I mean while yeah, yeah, it's it's very funny and and honestly, I can't tell you it may not have been pre planned as much as both men just naturally knew going in. This is how this is going to end. Like I'm I'm Morton Danny Junior and the Wally george Show. Of course, I'm going to get tackled off stage during like a nearly physical fight between the two of us. This is just how this has to happen. I am naturally enough of a right wing shithead firebrand
that jet that's just in my blood. Well, the thing that at the moment we were on a ca Amra together, this was what had to happen, right.
Whoever wins, we lose. Yeah, the real fredge Jason situation. The thing that stuck out to me was when there's a scene, well not a scene. I'm fucking talking about this like it's a movie because it's so stage.
Uh.
There's a part in the clip where Wally George stands up after uh uh morton down. He says, don't don't warn me. He stands up like he's gonna fight, but he buttons his He buttons his coat. He buttons his fucking coat. That's a thing you do when you know you're gonna be on camera. You do the opposite when you know you're about to start throwing hands, is you want to unbutton that coat.
So it's like, yeah, you want to un button You might even want to take that. If you're really gonna throw hands, you take that shirt off and you fold it on the table where you say, all right, here's how things are gonna go, you know.
So the fact that he's stoo up and buttoned his jacket, it's like, yeah, yeah, you know you're not going to course of course, yeah that it would have been very fun.
But I don't think either of well, actually, no, Morton Danny Junior definitely threw a punch. He punched that guy who came on his radio shift to.
Every you know, all the all the what a terrible piece of shitty is and all the funny things we're going to do to make fun of him on this episode, Morton Downy doesn't look like.
He hasn't been in a fight.
No, No, Morton Downey Junior wouldn't have survived to this age if he hadn't learned a couple of things about fighting, because that's a man who pisses people off. Yeah, Wally George is a man who was very careful to never piss anyone off until he felt like he wouldn't get the shit beaten out of him, like he was an adult and polite society.
That was a kid who hid.
Yeah, he can bully into giving you an extra ride on the Teacups at the Curb.
Now Morton Danny Junior was different from Wally George and in fact, well he started off as way more out of control. Again, he got fired from his first job for assaulting a guest. He toned it down for his actual TV show, not much, but in an intelligent way. He was actually in a lot of ways, he was kind of a mix between Wally George and Joe Pine because like Wally George he would be like a lunatic a bunch of the time and like very loud, get
into fights on stage and whatnot a showman. But Joe Pine he could actually sit down and have conversations with people, even once he disagreed with without just screaming at them, And there were actual debates on his show. So he was not the same as Wally and I think that's why he was. He made more of an impact because Wally George was never anything but just like pure id and there was a little bit of thinking on the Morton Downey Junior show. I'm not saying that to praise it,
just to like characterize what he was doing. It was a bit different than Wally George. He opened his first episode with the words certain things really burn my buns, and that more or less summed up the focus. Morton was irritated by a lot of things feminism, environmentalism, social justice, and he wanted to make his audience angry too. Like Wally, he was happy to platform people with differing beliefs so long as they would get into arguments with him. That
made good television. His show was an immediate success, and its wide audience meant that some of his guests became stars in their own right. One of his early interviews was a little known congressman you might have heard of tom named Ron Paul. Now Morton Downey Junior. What a friendly introduction of Ron Paul. Here he brings the congressman up on stage by saying, we're going to talk to a man who could be snorting cocaine in the Oval office.
Because again, Ron Paul, the thing that like, one of the things that made him prominent early on is he's for the decriminalization or legalization of all drugs. And Morton Downey Junior is, as a Republican in this period of time, an art drug warrior. So here's here's Ron Paul on the Morton Downey Junior show.
Now, would you believe that the government should stay out of our personal business all together?
Ye?
Matter of fact?
Is all right, that's good guys, but also happens to be my personal business if I want to kill my four year old kid. Right, No, no, no, no, wait a minute, wait, you're giving you're giving libertarian a distorted explanation. Oh sir, your people gave it to yourselves and your platform.
No, let me explain that.
The answer is that we allowed to do what we want.
We even permit people smoke. Serious happened.
That happens to be the most deadly drug in the United States.
You know, three.
Appreciated.
Maybe we ought to make it will need a banded.
I wish you'd bean it.
Right now.
You can buy it out on the street and pay five out.
So you see what a number one?
Ron Paul really comes across as a reasonable man in that interview. Yeah, yeah, but you see, you see what I'm talking about. He's kind of a mix of Wally George and Joe Pine because he's way more aggressive and rude than Joe Pine. But he's also he's not just shouting over him. Ron Paul gets and he'll he'll he'll quiet his audience.
Down and whatnot.
Like he's he's he's he's found this middle level between the two men that's certainly not like, I mean, he's a bully, he's a dick, but he's not what Wally George was. It's not quite that same level of like it's not as much of a lynch mob the audience.
Yeah, still a lot.
Of audience participation, but yeah, less violently fascist, Yeah, but still the bad faith arguments still, of course, in the same way that Joe Pine was bad faith that exactly.
You know, they all have this in common. Yea, they all have this in common.
And I just think it's interesting how Morton, I think, is very consciously mixing Joe Pine with Wally George in order to kind of like Wally went way too far. Joe Pine is not far enough for today's TV. Nobody would listen to Joe Pine today.
Yeah, he's too.
Calm, you know, He's like, he wants to maintain he wants the same kind of controversy and intense emotions of Wally George, but he wants to maintain firm control of the show.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly that's exactly it, and this is probably why his show. And also you know the fact that when he has people on emibly disagrees with, he does allow them more of a chance to make their point. Ron Paul gets to say a lot in this interview, and this is I don't want to say this is like the reason he became prominent, but this
is a decent part of it. This is a significant reason for his like why he started to become well known, and it's in part because he does get he looks good up there.
He makes a lot of sense.
And I think a lot of people, like listening to Ron Paul on the Morton Downey Junior Show, would be like, well, this is actually a reasonable man, especially considering the kind of like angry young men who would watch the Morton Downey Junior Show.
I'm sure a lot of them got into Ron Paul watching.
This in a way that like with Wally George, that I'm sure never happened because he never let people say that much. And yeah, I mean it's hard to watch the Ron Paul interview and dislike the man where Joe Pine was always chivalrous to his female guests, though even though he disagreed with Morten felt no need to hold his punches. At one point he had on a vegan, which is again that was like the first thing we saw Joe Pine doing is like talking to a vegan so he can make fun of him, which is a big,
a long reoccurring thing in like right wing politics. And yeah, she made the point, this vegan that Morton's talking to you made the point that vegan diets were healthier, to which Wally responded, I eat raw hamburger, I eat raw fish. I smoke four packs of cigarettes a day. I have about four drinks a day. I'm fifty five years old, and I look as good as you do, which is gonna be funny later, although you do have to be fair like he looks a lot younger than Joe Pine does.
When Joe Pine was like forty, Joe Pine looked like a pyramid, like a pyramid made man.
He says he's smoking four packs of cigarettes a day. Joe Pine is smoking for backs of cigarettes an hour, like he sees he's on his commute.
Yeah.
So one of his most popular sparring partners was feminist lawyer Gloria Allred, who again gained a lot of her popularity because of the Morton Downey Junior Show. This is a big vector for a lot of people who are who are still prominent today. Again not the only reason, but like, this is a big show, this is a significant cultural moment, and she has a big role in it. She's a regular guest, and she and Downey would like spar a lot constantly. You might have expected her to
hate him, like, given her politics and his politics. They certainly fought like Heena is on the air, but as the documentary of Vakatur makes clear, the two got along. This was a game and they were both happy to play it in order to make themselves famous. And I'm gonna have Sophie play this clip. This is from the documentary of Vakatur, which I really do recommend.
Anyone who had breasts was a feminist.
There are almost no feminists who have ever burned a bra, So let me get that straights.
No feminist who ever had anything that they needed to wear a bra.
For Between us, there was a certain amount of sexual tension, likewise on your jockstrap.
But in any case, how does she know she has a tape measure on her tongue?
Like Jesus, I know, right, that's just gross all around.
Do you feel like I need a shower?
But also you see the difference again when Wally George never had any like it wasn't yelling at people he was like friendly with, Like clearly he wanted that with some of them, Like he was willing to like talk with Blaze and be like, hey, we could have a good thing going. He was able to find people who were media trained, who were talented in their own right, who could go on and have show arguments with him to keep the crowd braying. But there was nothing he didn't.
He didn't again, he didn't believe in shit. But while Wally George like couldn't. I guess I don't think Wally when Morton Jenny Junr was willing to do, was someone get in hits on him verbally, like he wanted that kind of sparring, you know, because that's good TV. I think Wally George was just too brittle a man to accept that. Yeah, yeah, Morton I think never would have taken anything really personally because he's a showman and he gets that like, well, I'm having Gloria on, Like neither
of us believe in anything. We just are using this as a vehicle for our own personal fame. Yeah, and we can say, like, have whatever fights we.
Want to have.
And yeah, they would have made a good couple because they're both the same person more or less.
So.
Eight months into its run, the Morton Downey Junior Show was a wildfire hit. The New York Times sent in a reporter to watch the show as it was taped, and his recollection does a good job of setting up the mood. Quote Sean Morton Downey Junior, Sean to his friends, mort mort to the adoring t shirted fans crowding the New Jersey Television studio audience, smoked and paste and spewed venom.
You're not licking the butts of the boots of the bureaucracy that doesn't give a damn about the American people, he commanded. Bureaucratic bitch, he shouted. As the congregation and as unruly as any splatter film crowd at the nearby Low's Metal Plaza eight jumped up and loudly voiced its approval. So, yeah, that's the it's it's combative. But as you saw from that glare already quote, don't cheer it like somebody getting in a hit. On Morton too. It's not the same
like we're getting closer to Springer here. We're getting closer to Springer here. That's right, that's more about the spectacle. They just want to see him, They just want to see shit fly.
Yeah.
Mort was separated from later imitators, people like Jerry Springer, and from people like Wally.
George, who was a little.
Earlier by his willingness to physically confront his guests. He came very close to getting into fights on several occasions. And his studio, Yeah, his studio was the first in television to put the audience through a metal detector.
Oh man.
And I'm sure there was a mix of that's practical because he has somebody might get fucking stabbed, but also that's like, that's another thing we can rag about. It's like, this is TV is so hot, we gotta have a metal detector for the audience.
The audience, that's how in Yeah, this show is Yeah, it's a gimmick.
As with Wally George, his live audience particularly skewed towards young and disaffected men, a lot of the same kind of guys who would have been in the alt right and would have been like edgy Kids Online Today. The documentary of Acatur includes interviews with some of these audience members, including Joshua Rothman, who is now a history professor who was part of Wally's regular audience when he was like fucking like, it looks like he's like sixteen in this.
I'm sure he was a little older. But here's here's Joshua explaining the appeal of showing up to a taping of More Show.
If you guys and that other grem went over there, like japads, this is him as a kid, I shove it wor up all right.
Just was also sort of perfect for seventeen year olds because it had no nuance at all.
Everything was black or white, and seventeen year olds.
Card everything is either totally one thing or totally the other.
There is no middle. We are amer Car, We're number one. You know what I think. I think Donald Trump should take his game and just go to hell. Yeah that's all that's all you got, man.
Yeah, it looked like he was gonna say something colorful for sixteen year old you know, So that that says a lot of it right there.
Yeah, both like we didn't have YouTube if you're a kid and you want to, like you feel like you have something to say, you could get on TV. As long as you're willing to like shout something stupid. Morton Downey Junior will put your ass on television.
Yeah, as long as you to get possibly beaten up by him on the air.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's can I know, I get I get it, I get it. It's yeah. He's given them not only.
In uh, he's.
Given them an outlet.
Yeah, and it seems like they, like we were talking about with the crowd of Wally's show, it's it's more that it's it's not necessarily the political views. It's there latching onto this sort of maximum anger anything goes kind of environment.
It's this space where they can let out, like every seventeen year old is angry as shit about a bunch of different things. And you could get on Morton Downey Junior's show and you could either express real anger with something or what's probably more common, you could express the anger inside you and just throw it at anything, like it doesn't matter. He just wants you to be loud and yelling and he'll be happy with you. And there's no you can be edgy if you want to just
say something fucked up on TV. He can, He'll let you do that. It's like shit posting too, like all of this like four chance stuff. You can see those impulses. He's giving people an outlet for them.
Yeah, And they show the clip from their homemade video that they that they made, like a sketch that they did, these kids who yeah, pretending to be Morton Downey Junior. So it's clear that it's it's his like bombastic, this character that he is that they're latching onto less than his views. It's more just the way he speaks and the way he behaves and the way he's sort of you know, it's like when people would chant, when people would chant Jerry Jerry, Yeah exactly, people would get into fights.
It's nothing to do with Springer himself.
Yeah, And it's it's nothing to do these kids don't care about I'm sure didn't. I mean, I'm sure at the time they agreed with whatever political shit he was saying, but they didn't think about policy. Were fucking seventeen year olds like they were just they identified with the way that he expressed emotion and the way that he let them do it.
And as they identified with an angry white man of being an angry white man on television and being colorful about it.
Yeah, Morton absolutely played the role of a religious extremist. Again, I don't think he believed in anything, certainly not God, but he knew that fights over religion could make good television. And I'm going to play an excerpt here from an episode titled God Versus Atheism. And we don't think that shows us if they forced to pray when they don't want to.
Any child is free to pray at any time that he wants.
In the public schools today, we.
Say we're going to give you a minute to pray anytime you want.
No, they the government doesn't tell children when.
To pray, what to pray, how to pray, or even.
If they doesn't.
Reths like you and Madam y'all had I made sure we can't even say in the Pledge of Allegiance the word God anymore in a public school because of you, guys.
Yeah, it's the same shit you see nowadays. It's a stupid, useless argument we're still making.
Yep, Yeah, exactly. Later on in that same interview, Downy tells his atheist guest, this is a nation of freedom, are you a religion, then you have no fucking freedom, just like like.
Nine year old arguments.
You know, yeah, I don't even know what the fuck that's supposed to be.
Now.
While the Morton Dannie Junior Show had lots of yelling and fighting, some of its most sinister impacts came from the segments that were calm, thoughtful debates. In my research, I came across a roundtable discussion from nineteen eighty eight about black crime featuring Reverend Al Sharpton. Who's another person who really the Morton Downey Junior Show massively increased his platform, his profile, Like he owes a lot of his fame
to the Morton Downey Junior Show. It made him, It helped make him into like a regular fixture on TV. While the authority or while the audience does hoot and holler some the discussion is very simple and it's kind of chilling because one of Morton's guests here goes on an extended tirade about black on white crime statistics, which is like a major argument point for fucking neo Nazis today. So here that is, in.
The United States, nineteen eighty six, more murders were committed by blacks twelve percent of the population than we're committed by whites eighty five percent of the population. These are the numbers right here, right out of the Justice Department figures, and you can check them later if anyone has any doubts on that. When you check the murder figures in interracial crime, now interracial means that you have a perpetrator
of one race and of another race. When you check those figures, yeah, you find and I'll just get to the conclusion of it. You find that a black in nineteen eighty four, a black crack Jesus was over fifteen times more likely the murder of white than the white was the murderer.
Wright.
That's enough of this. So obviously this guy statistics are very flawed. And one of Morton's other guests, doctor Gloria Toot, does point this out pretty much immediately, and we're going to play that clip now too. Here's her like slapping back on this.
Number One, your credit is erroneous. Crime is being reduced in America, not simply by black but by Americans in general. We have mest crime in nineteen eighty seven than we
had ten years ago. Number Two, with the Justice Department and state and local government officials and crime have admitted that the reporting statistics are an era as it relates to the crime reported by minorities and crimes reported about white Number three also has now been acknowledged by those officials that in many instances, the white criminal is not is up convicted or even arrested, whereas your minority is.
Now.
I could go on and on and on, but the fact toy is gaining. I'm just not accurate, and we.
Do ourselves at disservice and we.
Don't look at what the problem is.
So obviously that's a more productive debate than was ever had on the Wally George Show. It seems more like the kind of stuff you might have heard on Joe Pine. And in fairness, he is bringing on people to contradict and argue with this guy talking about black on white crime. So you could call this, on one level, a more responsible and productive debate than a lot of what you
see on right wing TV today. But I can't help but see in this echoes of the kind of fascist platforming that would become much more common in later years without the measured pushback that Morton's show at least gave it the specter of black on white crime and high crime rates among black people are two of the most
virulent and productive talking points of the fascist right. I could go on a rant about Dylan Roof here, who he claims inspired to go on his massacre by reading about black on white crime, but this discussion has very deep roots. And I'm kind of torn between seeing Morton here as someone who handed it better than some people in the right, because he did have two very well prepared black guests to counter this line of argument, or whether I'm just more unsettled by the fact that he
put this fucking argument on television at all. Like, I don't know kind of where to land on that, but it leaves me feeling unsettled.
Yeah.
No, I don't trust anything that any of these people do. So it's he just did it for Rady. He knew this was a hot button issue for a lot of people. Yeah yeah, And he had a full panel so that he could maximize the outrage and the controversy and just you know, you don't get one person on there to talk about their views because that's not going to start a fight. You have to get somebody else on there to contradict what they're saying or counter what they're saying.
Yeah, yeah, that's I think what's going on here. But you know who won't platform people spreading Nazi talking points about race related crimes, Tom.
Hopefully the fine people bringing us these products and services.
Yeah, they absolutely do not, unless it's in which case.
Wo boy, here's ads. All right, we're back. Oh yeah.
So Reverend Al Sharpton was another media figure who got a massive early boost to his career thanks to the Morton Downey Junior Show. Maybe not early, but he got this really increased a lot of his visibility. He and Morton were regular sparring partners, and they also were clearly friends. Al made for great television. At one point, he called another guest a punk F word in a moment of rage. In fact, it was Al's friendship with Morton Downy Junior that would prove to be the downfall of the Morton
Downey Junior Show. From the Chicago Tribune quote, it all came to a head when the show began focusing on the case of Tijuana Brawley, a fifteen year old African American girl who claimed to have been raped by six white men, including a police officer and had KKK another vile words scrawled on her body. Show after show was devoted to this case, many featuring the Brawley advisor and
then relatively unknown Al Sharpton. Downy beat that story to death, and his ratings began to plummet, especially after Brawley's accusations were deemed false by a grand jury. So it does seem to be a case where Brawley was lying. I think it's because she'd like stayed out late and like had to come up with an excuse and it just was like a kid doing a dumb thing, and then it blew up and became national news. It's a very
sad story. I think she's still like, for the rest of her life will owe money to one of the people she accused.
Who suit her.
It's like pretty fucked uptail and Morton Danny Junior jumped on it and took it as a crusade, not because he cared about this woman and thought that it was true, but because you know, it was TV and he's Morton Danny Junior.
Shit and issue of the day. It's a Zac sat mentality behind the debate. We just listened to yep, yep, exactly now. The Tawana Brawley case led to one of the most infamous moments of nineteen eighties television, when Mort had Al Sharpton on with a black, white right wing activist named Roy. The stated goal of the episode was to determine who was the leader of Black America. Both in it.
It's so boy, Tom, it's a little more complex than is it Sharp Dinner?
Ennis?
But that's kind of like the inference that, like, yeah, both Innis and Sharpton receive a chorus of booze when they're introduced, because that's the kind of show this is.
Oh boy.
Mort starts the interview by bringing up comments Sharpton made criticizing Ennis. Sharpton goes on a rant, calling Ennis a sellout, and then this happens, and it's in us speaking at the start of this, Oh ahead.
I'm one of the few, none bigger than black leaders.
Run.
I will say, let me stay now, let's deal with the facts. Let's go to a record tonight. We want to deal with the records and the facts. Please do it on this program, your program.
You heard me.
You have me on tape defending this man. Recently, even after the Shenanigans with him and the others a lot of crap.
You'll have time, brother ship. Yeah, he was pushed out sharp.
He just he just shoved his s down onto the stage and a bunch of dudes rush up to start shoving ship balls.
Yeah.
He pushed him right off the stage. He pushed him right off the damn stage. Yeah, ship, Yeah, And it went fucking viral. This moment was huge. Every TV show, like every news show had the clips of this fucking weeks, like in a way that like no genocide today goes as viral is this clip of Al Sharpton getting shoved off a stage went which is not a great didn't because I know, gret, I bet I know, yeah, because yeah, yeah, I bet you Yeah, I bet we all to.
It's Yeah.
After the Tawana Brawley case fell apart, nothing could abate the downward slide of Morton's ratings. The next year, in nineteen eighty nine, he made a desperate stab at regaining his relevance. He filed a police report claiming three skinheads had jumped him, beaten him up, and drawn a swastika on his forehead and an airplane bat in an airport bathroom.
The police almost immediately came forward and said that the facts of the case as he had reported it to them, or is he reported it to the media, did not align with like what he had said. Basically, he said, like he's fucking lying. We have no evidence that any of this is true. We can't substantiate any of his claims. And it came out later one of his friends hastified,
like he faked it. He like drew a swastika, Like the photos that he gave the cops are different from like the photos that he put up on TV of like the swastika on his forehead, Like he just like faked getting jumped by skinheads to try to drum up like a media controversy. He's just a desperate scumbought bag. He made several comeback scumbought.
Yeah, Android created only to be a scumbag.
Just a shit droid full of just spew and poop. So he made a few and comeback attempts, and he tried to make a living doing talk radio, and he maintained actually a surprisingly robust career in movies you've already mentioned. He's Knife Bills and Predator too. He was in Revenge of the Nerds three Sure, which is really quite a film. He was in The Silencer. He was in Tails of the Crypt to name but a few episodes, although Wally George really should have been the one Entails from.
The Grip honestly. Yeah.
In nineteen ninety six he was diagnosed with lung cancer, which was embarrassing. Yeah, how dare you really? We have we have to thank comrade cigarettes for getting two thirds of these guys out of the planet critical support to chain smoking. This was embarrassing. To live by the sword, Robert, you die by the sword. And he had he made a big deal about being a smoker on the year, kind of like the way kind of Bill Hicks did. If you listen to some of like those routines.
He would talk on a cigarette and like every clip we've yes, yeah, and he would talk about like these aren't bad for me. I look better than you.
You know we read that clip a little bit earlier, were you?
And he does fore it back? Does motherfucker looks? Yeah, he doesn't look good. He does look good. He's all teeth. Yeah, he had, he had. He had made so much hay out of like being a smoker. He had autographed cigarette seed promised never to quit, but then he gets lung cancer, and so he immediately becomes an anti smoking activist, begging people to stop. He told one interviewer, I used a cigarette as a combat weapon, and I never gave much thought to the chance that the cigarette would most likely
kill me. Just very funny, mmmm or yeah. Morton died in two thousand and one, but his influence lives on. When his show was canceled in nineteen eighty nine, a TV reviewer with the Chicago Tribune wrote that the cancelation quote removes from our lives one of the most abrasive people ever to appear on television. But do not think that this represents a move towards a calmer climb. Downy wetted people's appetites for confrontational TV. There will be someone to take his place. That's a that's.
Pressure be a few someones. Yeah.
In an opinion column for CNN, Michael Smerconish makes this point quote. When Fox News launched in nineteen sixty six, it adopted the talk radio playbook, and NBC briefly gained viewers by giving Keith Olberman a Downey like platform for his diatribes against President George W.
Bush.
The model for each was a toned down version of that which Downey had established. Entertainment masked a news constant conflict, good guys versus bad guys and preordained outcomes. But Downey's influence extended beyond media outlets and should be appreciated as more than just another contributing factor to the decline of America's cultural health. The media paradigm he fathered has taken a toll on the way in which we are governed.
There has been a noticeable uptick in incivility and polarization among our leaders in the exact same period in which the media has moved to the extremes, in part because of the power that Downey's successors exert over primary voters now. In this columns Murconish cites Brian Rosenwald, a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania who did his doctoral dissertation on talk radio. Rosenwald writes Downey's heirs have fostered polarization through
their influence in primary elections. Republican members of Congress must fear infuriating talk radio and cable news hosts because media personalities can use their platforms to offset several major advantages, including significantly greater fundraising and name recognition, held by incumbents in primary elections. Hosts demand purity from elected officials, label compromises treason, and glorify Congress's rhetorical bomb throwers such as
Senator Ted Gruz. Yeah, it's pretty pretty good. There's some quotes in this that are talking about like polarization in Washington that notes that like as late as the nineteen seventies, the typical member of one party voted with his colleagues his party members just over sixty percent of the time, and that those numbers have raised every decade. In twenty ten, Democrats voted together ninety one percent of the time, Republicans
eighty nine percent of the time. Unfortunately, those able to reverse those trends have ceded the debate to the loudest voices. A Gallup survey released in January have found that more Republicans regard themselves as independent forty three as more Americans regard themselves as independent forty three than Democrat thirty or Republican twenty six percent. But any ground gained by the non partisan ranks continues to be offset by higher political
interest resting at the political extremes. It's all about passion. As documented by Pew Research Center this past spring, liberals and conservatives exceed moderates and independence in their levels of political interest, which translates into voter participation. So it's got Most people have been turned off by this hyper partisanization, but those who stay in the game just get angrier and angrier at each other, and it just makes for
an angrier country and more. And Danny Junior was certainly the most successful person on TV doing it before our modern media era because Molly George was kind of a marginal figure. He was influential in OC and influential to other media figures, but more than Danny Junior had a national show right like he was everywhere.
I knew who he was, and I was a little kid. I didn't even really know why I knew who he was.
People knew Morton Downey Junior. He was kind of this perfect synthesis, and that's what it took to really get like this kind of specific kind of right wing media off the ground was a synthesis of Joe Pine and Wally George. Morton Downey Jr. Was the first guy to do that and you know. He eventually he flew too close to the sun and drew a swastika on his own forehead. But you know, like the Tale of air just this in the Tale of Itchlor it did happen in an airport.
Tom, that's true.
Yeah, Oh, what a dope, What a dope.
Yeah, three people I didn't I don't like very much. Well, if it's any consolation, they're all super dead.
They are very dead, two thirds of them because they smoked too much.
A man, But it's a it's a good thing they didn't do like irreparable damage to the country.
Yeah, thankfully we're sailing right along.
That's a good, good thing. Like the beginning, Like the seeds they planted haven't grown at a terrifying fucking forests of races.
Oh yeah, no, that never happened. Speaking of which, I'm gonna open my news app for the first time since nineteen ninety one. See what's been happening. Oh, dear Tom, I have some bad news about the Twin Towers. You may want to sit down for this one. Damn it did they smoke too many cigarettes.
Too in a way?
Tom in away, Oh Tom, that brings us to the end of our long journey.
Oh thanks, thanks, thanks.
For sitting through this with me and a lot of clicks. I now I have a fuller picture of Moreton Downy Junior in my mind.
Glad that was for It's the only goal I've ever had for this show, which is why this is our final episode. All Right, Tom, what do you gotta I'm just I'm just just exhausted sad.
Now, yeah, I'm just sad. Now, I'm exhausted sad. I'm gonna get it. I'm gonna get a flaxen Wally George Wig.
I am gonna get a wall George Wig. I need to I need to do something to recharge after this. Maybe I'll watch Hot Rot again or.
Uh watch Predator.
To watch Predator too, You're right with Gary Busey, Thank god. By the way, Lover punches Morton Downy right in the face. The best thing about Gary Busey's role in that is that Wally George could absolutely have played Gary Busey's character in that movie.
He's playingly George.
In that movie, and fucking Morton Downey Junior is in it too.
My god, what a film.
Uh.
I'm gonna get this Predator because he's on a mirror. I kind of want to rewatch Revenge of the Nerds three and see what the fuck Morton Danny Junior.
Was doing and that shit. I wouldn't, yeh, I didn't. I didn't really enjoy watching it the first time. At least Predator too has.
I think they were on the beach if I'm remembering right, it was on it was in like the Bahamas or something.
I think it's Nerds and Nerds in Paradise, that's right. I think that's one of the seals. At least Jesus Christ.
Revenge of the Nerds whole movie is a bastard. It's the Morton Downey of a film series. You can do it. You could do an episode on just the Revenge of the Nerds Jesus Christ.
All right, well you gotta plug anything, tom Oh sure.
I have a podcast network Gameplean Employed, and I do with my partner, my podcasting partner David Bell, also from Cracked. He is from from Cracked. Yeah, we all used to work there, we did, Tom. You can check it out a Gamelean not game flannplay dot patreon dot com, slash Gamepley Unemployed, where you can check out our Patreon. We got all kinds of cool stuff on there, like exclusive podcasts and other things that we do with our patrons. It's it's a lot of funny.
You check it out.
I also do Right Again Collider and I write for some more news with your friends Cody and Katie Robert.
Yeah yeah, I mean friends, enemies, yeah, frenemies, eternal eternal opponents, And also write for one hot talk at all kinds of that.
You can find me. Just google me. I'm out Google tom Ryman. Find him at his home, you.
Know, please do Yeah, no, docks me on attack him in an airport bathroom and draw swastika on his forehead to improve his career for unclear reason, I really do wonder what was the what was the game plan there, Morton?
How is this going to help? He was gonna he was gonna make that in like three months of show.
Yeah, hunting down the Nazis who beat him up.
Yeah, he had a whole plan. He had a whole pitch. Deck Man.
God, I wish we'd all just agreed to, like, see what he was going to do first before I do what.
I kind of see where he's going with us. Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.