Fall schworm Jagger. That was a German named for paratrooper. I don't know why I started the episode saying, Tom, how are you? How are you doing? Do you know that the German word for paratrooper is falseh room jagger? I did not know that. Well, now you do, thank you. They had, you know, the Nazis had an aquatic little jeep that could go on the water. They called a schwimmin wagin. That's sweet, that's kind of funny. What do we call it? That's our swimming wagon? Head is ye vehicle?
It does the old Tom? Yeah, 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, the second in time that we both inhabit, which may be eternal if if certain philosophers are right, this very moment could go on forever, both forwards and backwards in time, be completely encompassing, as all moments are. This moment we're going to talk about
a guy you have heard of. Mr Morton Downey dances all the way down just just my ears. Yeah, that's a name. That's a name. Yeah, Tom, what do you know about Morton Danny Jr. J As we call him. He's like a pinky ring that fell into a puddle of toxic waste to became a man. He's he's played. He plays the slick, he plays the slimy journalist that Danny Glover punches in the face and Predator to And he sure isn't Predator to you, God damn right playing himself. Yeah,
he's absolutely playing himself in Predator to, which is incredible. Yeah, easily the second best Predator movie. It's it's easily the second Predator film. Yeah, definitely, you can't take that away from it. It is the second one of the Insure dobly the second Predator film. Yeah, I know, he's like, he's he's uh. He was sort of like um the uh the yeng to Phil Donna Hughes Yang at the time, where Phil Donna Hue 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. And the fun thing about Morton Downey Junior, Tom Uh is that if you start researching Morton Downey Jr. 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 just just just a fun coincidence, which is weird because he does have a famous dad like Robert Downey Jr. Um, but
just a completely different one. I just that's that's very funny. Yeah. Um, so uh, let's let's let's let's talk about m d j. So. Morton Downey Jr. Was born on December nine, nineteen thirty two, in Los Angeles, California. His father was obviously a guy named Morton Downey. Two thirds of these guys are Californians. Well that in the thirties, I'm like, funk, he's old, 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 ship up for everybody. That's true. I keep saying at the eighties was four decades ago. Yeah, it's been a long time since the eighties, thank god. So. Um. His father was obviously Morton Downey, which probably means nothing to everyone listening, but it 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 Jr. 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 Jr. 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 alright 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 rich Ish. Um they lived in I mean, if you want to know how well to do they were, they lived in Hyannas Sport in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
And their next door neighbors worth the Kennedy's. Yeah, yes, it's like that's how that's how much money they got. His kids which ish Yeah, Yeah, they're hanging there, hanging with the Kennedy's. Morton Downey Jr. Was good friends with Joe Kennedy. Well, Morton or Morton Downey Senior was good friends with Joe Kennedy one and um as When Morton Downy Jr. Was a child, he would hang out regularly with the Kennedy boys, you know, like he knew Robert
and JFK when they were younger. Um, like they were all buds together. I guess down 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 and 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 Jr. 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, like doc's the guy on live 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 he cut an album? Tom? You know what, Tom, We'll play this right now, see 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,
Mr dealer man? Mr dealer pushes. So that's the kids of America. Just make that Dyn sleeves bag country comb a la. He's like attacking the microphone. Yeah, feel welcome to his eternal laugh. He looks like a skeleton at a costume contest, dressed his team. All right, that's probably enough of Hey there, Mr dealer, So this will mean more when you've had Dean Martin was too kind to him.
He was better when he was younger too, his earlier his earlier ship is I think because he's he's he was famous when he recorded, so he was like doing 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 but yeah he has he has going real agro there um.
And it's because you know, he was already a name at that point and 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 and a kind of a pinch hitter in the music industry, coming in to 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 a hundred and forty eight dollars. I am not buying one of them, but I did transcribe one of the poems he wrote
specifically about Robert Kennedy's death. Um from the documentary A Bocketur and I'm gonna 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 sunken cheeks is what he meant to say, but um, but yeah, that's kind of you know, it's kind of profound, right, Al. He's certainly like a man who's thinking about like the nature of Yeah, that was it was thoughtful. You wouldn't call him a shallow man based on that, Um, he's a man who's trying to process complicated, in sorrowful emotions in a in an artistic way. Clearly a person capable
of not just feeling grief, but of expressing it artistically. Um. 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 w d b O in Orlando, Florida. So yeah, and again they're both kind of writing this wave of right wing populism and 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 Jr. Both rode that right wing wave and helped to shape it. Morton Danny Jr. 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. Uh and I think shoved some folks a few times. Or Nanny Jr. Just called Cox 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 on the microphone. I haven't found this audio, but I bet it's great. Next. According to the New York Times quote, Mr Downey was soon hired by kf b K a M 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, um um? So yeah, he tells a joke in which he uses the word chinaman several times, which pisces off Tom Chin, a Chinese American member of Sacramento City Council who was listening in his car. And why I wonder why that bothered him? Wonder why he get angry at that? Mr Chin called the station. According to the councilman and to Paul our errand then the station's
program director. Mr Chin was put through to Mr Downey, who let loose a verbal tirade against him. Mr Downey was discharged the next day. So he tells a racist joke on air. It offends the member of the city council who calls, and then he proceeds to be racist to that guy laugh 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 shoot can Morton.
Danny 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 ship to your face? I did not mean to do it to your back on the air, absolutely not. Forgive me. Let me be an asshole directly to me, to be an asshole directly to you, I don't mean to be rude. Um. 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 I can't tell you which. Um, 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 still stir up the same kind of populist rage, but also isn't quite as race sist. You know, they picked Tom. I don't wanna know who followed him into the job. You
might have heard of this guy, little fella. He might know his name, Rush Limbaugh. Oh yeah, that's how Rush gets his first big political gig. It was Morton Downey being too racist on the air. It was too racist, and so Rush Limbaugh came in and said, I can be slightly less racist than that. I can for a while, for a little while. Eventually I'll be much more racist than that. I could be slightly less racist. Two people's faces. Yeah again for a while, for a for a while.
I love like, man, that was too racist. Let's get Rush in here. Let's get you get that Rush Limbach hit in here. 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 television No? I mean, but what city do you go to? I don't know. Cleveland? Cleveland? Yeah, you get you get your ass on down to Cleveland. Hey, our rivers are very rarely on fire, um, 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 hurld racial slurs at an elected leader. This one of you municipal court judge? Who seeing this coming? Who could have guessed? Wally George, the man who punched an abortion rights activist and lost his first radio show, lost his second for screaming racial slurs at a city councilor would lose his third show for screaming racial slurs at a municipal court Judgeops among us, who among us has not on a bad day hurld
racial slurs at a circuit court judge? Or where was those of us who have not gone to jail have done that? Um? So while his former employer wrestled with a lawsuit as a result of this, Morton Downey Jr. Moved to Chicago to do it all over again. And so during both of the state Yeah the strategy Chicago Yeah, Chicago forgives all sense. During his first two dalliances with talk radio, Morton Downey Jr. 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, um, but for now you'll have to be satisfied with this quick description of Lyndon courtesy of a New York Times obituary. And again this is the source of of Morton Downey Junior's Executive Intelligence Report quote. Lyndon Larus, the quixotic, apocalyptic leader of a cult like political organization who ran for president eight times once more a prison cell,
died on Tuesday. He was nineties six. Defining what yeah, all right, that's a motherfucking sentence as an entire sentence, Defining what Mr Laruche stood for or 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 did
he a lot of them. He was a fascist Tom he was a fascist political cult leader, was like, we don't know what the funk he believed. He believed in Lyndon Laruge 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 college campuses. Laruche argued that environmentalists were trying to wipe out the human race, which is a claim that
Alex Jones now parents. He believed Clean 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 Jr's intel of finding a couple of consistent threads in his belief structure that perhaps his obituary could have latched onto he may and I think they may have gotten into that later. That was like the first two paragraphs. I just read
that obituary and was like, my god, that is a sentence. Yeah, that first sentence almost knocked me out of my chair. Yeah, what a fucking life. The president eight times once from prison, but it was a tax thing. I think, um again, we'll do I'll have to read into him and we'll do a whole episode on Lyndon Laruche. He's quite a character.
But yeah, the head of Morton Downey Jr's Intel program. Now, the fact that Morton Downy Junior platform this guy is very fucked up, and it's arguably more fucked up because Morton Downey Jr. 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 Laruche on his TV show and he tore him apart like it was a very aggressive interview with Lyndon, but he also continued to spread Larusha's newsletter and other publications after that point, calling the fascist cult leaders intelligence information quote the second or third best in the world based on what Morton Downey Jr.
Morton Downey Junior doesn't know. Ninth build cast member of Predator to 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. But I'm not out here saying this is the second or third most reputable intelligence with mort in the world. No, you're not. No, based on your your experience, which is you and I both did get to look at the predator costume. Yes, O wait, No I didn't. Well you
weren't there. That wasn't to but I saw the video. It was radem just knowing that I was that close to something that had touched Morton Downey Jr. Was It was just powerful, Tom, really powerful. You know what else has touched Morton Downey Jr. In a secual These products and services Probably they fucked him. They fucked him. Products and services have been inserted into Morton Downey Jr. Absolutely, That is again the only promise we make about our sponsors.
So if he seems fine with us, so I'm just going to continue. That's an ad that's an AD throw. That's an AD throw. Baby. Oh we're back. So by nine seven, Rush Limbaugh 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 Limbabo 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 c Caucus. The Morton Downey Junior Show was cut very much in the shape of Wally George his hot seat. In fact, while he 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 more than Daddy Jr. On the It's really a Freddie versus Jason moment, say, two rats fighting over a dead cato. And I have to say before if you're wondering what Morton Downey Jr. Looks like, well, so if he gets this clip together, remember Iron Giant, Remember the bad guy from Iron Giant. He looks like Christopher's sleazy fed. Yeah, he looks like he looks like Shooter McGavin. He looks
he does who was the same. I was blew me away to learn that Shooter McGavin and the fed from uh the Iron Giant are the same guy. Incredible thing it he looks like he looks like Shooter McGavin with novelty teeth, Shooter McGavin. If Shooter McGavin did like birthday parties for children here it is. You're you're coming up with the usual simplistic answers. Wally that conservatives who don't know what the hell they're talking about. I've got an
audience out here. You've got an audience of monkeys out here. We'll do everything that you tell them to do. He's I'm wrong. I'm warning the next time you don't warn me. Punk God, Wally George looks incredible a man. It looks like the entertainment director and a cruise ship, like a bad cruise ship. The cops have come on now and they're pulling Morton Downey Jr. Off the show and tackling he gets tackled by here, total Roger Stone vibes from that guy. Was like yeah, And obviously all of that
was set up ahead of time. The plan was always I suspect from Morton Downey Junior to get tackled by share stepput Saw on the seat of Wally George's hot 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 stage. Yeah, I mean while yeah, yeah, it's it's very funny. Um and and honestly, I can't tell you it may not have been pre planned as much as both men just naturally
new going in. This is how this is going to end. Like I'm I'm Morton Downy Jr. 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 ship head firebrand that that's just in my blood. The thing that the moment we were on a camera together, this was what had
to happen. Right, whoever wins, we lose. Yeah. The real Freddy Jason situation they stuck out to me was when there's a scene, were not a scene. I'm talking about this like it's a movie because it's so stage. Uh, there's a part of the cliff where Wally George stands up after uh, Morton Downey says, don't don't warn me. He stands up like he's going to fight. But he he says, he buttons his coat. He buttons his fucking coat. That's the thing you do when you know you're gonna
be on camera. Do you do the opposite when you know you're about to start throwing hands as you want to unbutton that coat? So it's like you want to but you might even want to take that if you're really gonna throw hands, you take that shirt off and you folded on the table. What you say, All right,
here's how things are gonna go, you know. So the fact that he stood up and buttoned his jacket, it's like, yeah, yeah, you know you're not gonna course of course, yeah that it would have been very fun, but I don't think either of well, actually, no, Morton Downy Jr. Definitely threw a punch. He punched that guy who came on his radio cheft to every you know, all the all the what a terrible piece of shitty is and all the funny things we're gonna do to to make fun of him.
On this episode, Morton Downey doesn't look like he hasn't been in a fight. No, No, Morton Downy Jr. Morton Downey Jr. Wouldn't have survived to this age if he hadn't learned a couple of things about fighting, because that's a man who piss his 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 ship beating out of him, like he was an adult
and polite society. That was a kid who hide bully into giving you an extra ride on the teacups at the carnival like now moren Downy Jr. 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. Um. He toned it down for his actual TV show, Um, not much,
but in a in an intelligent way. He was actually in a lot of ways, he was kind of a mix between Wally George and and Joe pine Um because like Wally George, he would be like a lunatic a bunch of the time and like very loud, getting too fights on stage and whatnot. A showman, but like Joe Pine, he could actually sit down and have conversations with people, even once he disagreed with about just screaming at them,
and there were actual debates on his show. Um 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 of thinking on the Morton Downey Junior show. Not I'm not saying that to praise it, just to like characterized 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 it's 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 Jr. Not 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 Jr. Is, as a Republican in this period of time, an arch drug warrior. Um. So here's here's Ron Paul on the Morton Downey Junior Show. You believe that the government should stay out of our
personal business altogether? What happens 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, sir, Your people gave it to yourselves and your platfor no. Let me explain that the answer is that we are a lot of do what we want. We even permit people smoke, siretutes happen that happens to be the most deadly drug and not of states today.
Maybe we ought to abandoned. I wish you'd band it right right now. You can buy it out on the street. Hey, five dollars a pack. Do you see what a number one? Ron Paul really comes across as a reasonable man in that interfield? Yeah? Yeah, um, but you see that, 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 he 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. Um, 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.
Um 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 by you know, they all have this in common. They all have this in common, and I just think it's interesting how Morton. I think it's 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. He's too calm, you know, he's he's like he wants to maintain he wants the same kind of controversy and and intense emotions of of Wally George, but he wants to main same firm control of the show. Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly That's exactly it, um. And this is probably why his show. And also you know the fact that when he has people on embally 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 Danny Junior Show, would be like, well,
this is actually a reasonable man um. I suspect, especially considering the kind of like angry young men who would watch the Morton Danny Junior Show. I'm sure a lot of them got into Ron Paul watching this um in a way that like with Wally George, that I'm sure never happened because he never let people say that much.
UM and yeah. I mean it's hard to watch the Ron Paul interview and dislike the man um where Joe Pine was always chivalrous to his female guests, though even though he agreed with Morton, 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 we can make fun of him. Um, which is a big, a long reoccurring thing in like right wing politics.
Um and yeah, she made the point this vegan that that 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 smoked 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 four packs of cigarettes an hour, like he sees here. 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 um 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 Hey and is on the air. But as the documentary of Vocatur 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 club. This is from the documentary of Vocatur, which I really do recommend. Anyone who had breasts was a feminist, saying almost no feminist who have ever burned a brass So let me get that straight. Whoever had anything that they needed to wear a bra for? Between us, there was a certain amount of sexual attention, likewise on your jockstrap, but in how does she know she has a tape measure on her tongue? Like Jesus,
Yeah right, that's just that's just gross all around. I feel like I need a shower. But also you you see the difference again when Wally Wally George never had it 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 ship. But while Wally George like couldn't. I guess I don't think Wally, when Morton Jenny Jr. Was willing to do was have 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 Enny, I don't I think never would have taken anything really personally because he's a showman and he gets that like, well, I'm Evan Gloria On Like, neither of us believe in anything. We just are using this as a vehicle for our own personal fame 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. Ye. 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 Jr. Shawn to his friends more mort to the adoring t shirted fans crowding the New Jersey Television studio audience, smoked in paste and spewed venom. You're not licking the beauties 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 unruly, as unruly as any Splatter film crowd at the nearby Lows Metal Plaza eight jumped up and loudly voiced its approval. So, yeah, that's the it's it's combatitive. But as you saw from that glare alrd quote, they'll cheer it like somebody getting in a hit on Morton too. There's it's not the same Springer here. We're getting closer to Springer here. It's right,
it's more about the spectacle. They just want to see him, They just want to see fla. 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 brag about. This TV is so hot, we gotta have a metal detector for the audience. That's how intense this show is. Yeah, it's a 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 was 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 it 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 gram went over there, like you pads a kid, I shove.
It 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 problem. Everything is either totally one thing or totally the other. There is no middle. We are we're number one. You know what I think. I think Donald Trump should take his board game and just go to hell. Yeah that's all that's what you got, man. Yeah, it looked like he was going to say something colorful sixteen years you know, so that that says a lot
of it right there. Um, both like we didn't have YouTube. If you were a kid and you want to, like you feel like you have something to say, you could get on TV if as long as you're willing to like shout something stupid, Morton Downey Junior will put your ass on television as long as you're to get possibly beaten up by him on the air. Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, I know, I get I get it, I get it. It's yeah, he's given them not only in uh, he's
giving them an outlet. Um. Yeah, and it seems like they like we we're 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 they're latching onto this sort of maximum anger. Anything goes this kind of environment. It's this space where they can let out like every seventeen year old as angry as ship about a bunch of different things.
And you could get on Morton Downey Junior 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 and there's no you can be edgy. If you want to just say something funked up on TV, he can. He'll let you do that. It's like ship posting to like all of this like
four chance stuff. You can see those impulses. He's giving people an outlet for them. Yeah, And they showed the clip from their homemade video that they that they made like a sketch that they did these kids, yeah, pretending to be Morton Downey Jr. 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 it's 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 ship
he was saying, but didn't think. They're 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 they're identified with an angry white man being a hungry white man on television and being colorful about it. Yeah. Um, 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 gonna play an exerpt here from an episode titled God Versus Atheism. Now, we don't think to pray when they don't want to. Any child is free to praying any time that he wants. In the public schools today, we just say we're gonna
give you a minute to pray any time you want. No, they the government doesn't tell children when to pray, what to pray, how to pray, or even if they don't like you and Madam God in the and made sure we can't even say in the Bredge of Allegiance the word God anymore in a public school because of you, guys. Yeah, it's the same ship you see in nowadays. Stupid useless argument we're still making. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Later on in that same interview, Downey 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 old arguments. You know, yeah, I don't even know what the funk that's supposed to be. Um. Now. While the Morton Danny 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 night about black crime featuring Reverend Al Sharpton, who is another person who really The Morton Downy Junior Show massively increased his his platform, his profile, like he owes a lot of his fame to the Morton Danny Junior show. UM. It like it. It made him and it helped make him into like a regular
fixture on tv UM. While the authority or while the audience does hoot and holler some the discussion is very civil 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, more murders were committed by blacks twelve percent of the population, then we're committed by white 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 inter raciel crime, now inter raciel means that you have a perpetrator of one race and another race. Figures. Yeah, you find and I'll just get to the conclusion of it. You find that the black was more likely to murder of white than a
white was. That's enough of this. So obviously this guy's statistics are very flawed, and one of Morton's other guests, Dr. Gloria Toot does point this out pretty much immediately. We're going to play that clip now too. Here's her like slapping back on this. Number one, your credit is coloneous. Crime is being reduced in America, not justid by blacks, but by Americans in general. We have less crime in
N seven than we had ten years ago. Number two, The Justice Department and state and local government officials in 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, it has now been acknowledged by those officials that in many instances the white criminal is not is not convicted or even arrested, whereas your minority is. Now, I could go on and on and on, but the fact that he has given
are just not accurate. And we do ourselves at disservice when we don't look at what the problem is. So obviously, Um, 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. Um. 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 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
uh and productive talking points of the fascist right. I could go on a rant about Dylan Roof here, who was 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 um 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 it leaves me feeling unsettled. Yeah, No, I I don't trust anything that any of these people do. So it's I he just did it for Ray. He knew this was a hot button issue for a lot of people, and he had a full panel so that he could maximize the outrage and the controversy and just you know, you 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 uh, I think, I think what's going on here. But you know who won't platform people spreading Nazi talking points about race related crimes, Tom Hope, hopefully the fine people bringing us these products and services. Yeah, they absolutely do not, um unless it's in which case, oh boy,
here's ads. All right, we're back. Oh yeah. So Reverend Al Sharpton was another media figure who got a massive lee boost to his career thanks to the Morton Downey Jr. Show. I want 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 Jr. 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 Tajuana 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 and other vile words scrawled on her body. Show after show was devoted to this case, many featuring the Brawley adviser
and then relatively unknown Al Sharpton. Downey 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 had like stayed out late and had to come up with an excuse, and it just was like a kid doing a um thing, and then it blew up and became national news. It's it's
a very sad story. I think she's still like for the rest of her life, will oh money to one of the people she accused to suit her. It's like pretty fucked up tail and Moreton Danny Jr. Jumped on it and took it as a crusade, not because he cared about this woman and thought that it was true, um, but because you know it was TV and he's more Danny Jr. The day. It's exact same 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 sharpened on with a black, white right wing activist named Roy Inness. The stated goal of the episode was to determine who was the leader of Black America both in it's so but um um, it's a little more complex than is
it Sharpen or Inness? But that's kind of like the inference that like, yeah, um, both Inness and Sharpen received a chorus of booze when they're introduced, because that's the kind of show this is. Mort starts the interview by bringing up comments Sharpton made criticizing en Us. Sharpton goes on a rant, calling us a sellout and then this happens, and it's in a speaking at the start of this, 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 the 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 in tape defending this man recently, even after the shenanigans with him and the other is a lot of crap. Let brother, you have your time, brother ship. Yeah, he just pushed out, He just he just shoved his ass down onto the stage and a bunch of dudes rush up to start shoving ship balls. Yeah. He kissed
him right off the stage. He pushed him right off the day him stage. Yeah 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 ol Sharpton getting shoved off a stage went um, which is not a great because yeah because yeah, yeah, yeah, I bet yeah, but we all do um. Yeah. After the Tawanna Brawley case fell apart.
Nothing could abait the downward slide of Morton's ratings. The next year, in nine 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 and 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 he is he reported to the media did not align with like what
he had said. Basically said like he's fucking lying. We have no evidence that any of this is true. Um that we can't substantiate any of his claims. And it came out later one of his friends testified, like he faked it. He like drew a swatstika, 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 scum bought bag. He made several comeback Yeah, and Android created to be a scumback, just a ship droid full of just spewing poop. So he made a few different comeback attempts, and he tried to make a living doing talk radio, and he maintained actually surprisingly robust career in movies. You've already mentioned He's nine Bills and Predator to He was in Revenge of the Nerds three, which is really quite a film. Uh,
he was in The Silencer. He was in Tales of the crypt to name but a few episodes, although Wally George really should have been the one in Tales from the Crops. Yeah. Yeah. In six he was diagnosed with lung cancer, which was embarrassing. Yeah, how dare you really? We have we we have to thank Comrades Cigarettes for getting two thirds of these guys out of the planet critical support to chain smoking. Um, this was embarrassing. By
the sword, you die by the sword. And he had he made a big deal about being a smoker on the air, kind of like the way kind of Bill Hicks did. If you listen to some of like those routines um a cigarette and like every clip we've yeah, 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, and he does. He does, mother looks. He doesn't look good. He doesn't look good. Um,
he's all teeth. Yeah. He had, he had, He had made so much hay out of like being a smoker. He had autographed cigarettes. Seed promised never to quit. But then he gets lung cancer and so he immediately comes 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 this cigarette would most likely kill me, which is very funny or Yeah. Morton died in two thousand 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 Downey wetted people's appetites for confrontational TV. There will be someone to take his place. That's a that's prescient. 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 diet tribes against President George W. Bush. The model for each was a toned down version of that which Downey had established. Entertainment masked his news constant conflict,
good guys versus bad guys, and preordained outcomes. But Downey's influence extended beyond media outlets and should be appreciated, is 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 and 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 Mrconish sites Brian Rosenwald, a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania who did his doctoral dissertation on talk radio. Rosenwald rights 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 all actions, hosts demand purity from elected officials, label compromises treason, and glorify Congress Congress's rhetorical bomb throwers
such as Senator Ted Gruz. Yeah, um, 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, and two Democrats voted together of the time Republicans of the time. Unfortunately, uh, those able to reverse those trends
have ceded the debate to the loudest voices. A Gallop survey released in January you found that more Republicans regard themselves as independent forty three. Uh, there's more Americans regard themselves as independent forty three than Democrat thirty or Republican. But any ground gained by the nonpartisan 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 this past spring, liberals and conservatives exceed moderates and independence and their levels of political interest, which translates
into voter participation. So it's it's got Most people have been turned off by this, this hyperpartisanization, but those who stay in the game just get angrier and angrier at each other, and it it just makes for an angrier country and moren Downey Jr. Was certainly the most successful person on TV doing it before our modern media era because moly George was kind of a marginal figure. He was he was influential and o c and influential to other media figures. But MORETN Danny Junior had a national
show right like because he was everywhere. Um, I knew who he was, and I was a little kid. I didn't even really know why I knew who he was what people knew. Morton Downey Jr. Um, 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 It, just this in the Tale of It, it did happen in an air force tom So that's true. Um, what a dope, What a dope. Yeah, three people I didn't I don't like very much. Um well, if it's any consolation, they're all super dead. They are very dead, two thirds of them because they smoked too much. Bam. But it's a it's a good thing they didn't do like irreparable damage to the country. Thankfully. We're sailing right
along and that's a good thing. Like the beginning, Like the seeds they planted haven't grown at a terrifying fucking forests of racist Oh yeah no, that never happened. Speaking of which, I'm gonna open my news app for the first time since nineteen 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, Tom, that that brings us to the
end of our long journey. Thanks, thanks, thanks for sitting through this with me and a lot of clips. I now know I have a fuller picture of Morton Downey's Jr. In my mind. Glad that 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. Now, I'm just sad. Now I'm exhausted, and I'm sad. I'm gonna get it. I'm gonna get a Flaxen Wally George Wig. I'm gonna get a Wally George Wig. I need to I need
to do something to recharge after this. Maybe I'll watch hot Rod again or or uh watch Predator to watch Predator too. You're right with Gary Busey. Thank god. By the way, Lover punches Morton Downey right in the face. The best thing about Gary Busey's rolling that is that Wally George could absolutely have played Gary Busey's character in that movie. He's playing George in that movie, and fucking Morton Downey Jr. Is in it too. My god, what a film. I'm gonna get this Predator because he's on
a merry. I kind of want to rewatch Revenge of the Nerds three and see what the Danny jan Your was doing in that ship. I wouldn't. I didn't. I didn't really enjoy watching it the first time. At least Predator to has I think the beach if I'm remembering right, it was on it was in like the Bahamas or something. I think it's Nerds in Para, Nerds in Paradise, that's right. I think that's one of the samples. At least Jesus Christ Revenge of the Nerds. That whole movie is a bastard.
That's it's the Morton Downey of film series could do what you could do an episode on just the Revenge of the Nerds Jesus Christ. All right, Well you gotta plug anything, tom oh? Sure? Um, I have a podcast network game an employed that I do with my partner, my podcasting partner, David Bell, also from Cracked, um from Cracked. Yeah, we all used to work there, we did. Um. You can check it out gamely not game dot com, Patreon dot com, slash gamefully Unemployed, where you can check out
our patreon. We got all kinds of cool stuff on their, like exclusive podcasts and other things that we do with our patrons. It's it's a lot of funny to check it out. Else to do, right Aget Colleider and I write for some more news with your friends Cody and Katie Robert. Yeah yeah, I mean friends, enemies friend me yeah, frien ofmies uh, eternal eternal opponents um and also right for dog um. It's all kinds of that. You find me,
just google me, Google tom Ryman. Find him at his home, you know, please do Yeah, no, docs me on attack him in an airport bathroom and draw swastika on his forehead to improve his career. And 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 shows, hunting down the Nazis who beat him up. Yeah, he had a whole plan. Yeah, he had a whole
pitch dick. God, I wish we'd all just agreed to, like, see what he was going to do first before I do want to kind of see where he's going with us. It's obviously this is all bullshit, but let's see how long he rides this. Yeah, very funny. All right, Well that's the episode