Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump filmed a commercial while standing on top of the graves of dead American war heroes. I am surprised he didn't try to sell us sneakers or trading cards or bitcoin or the rest of his shit. And his staffers assaulted a woman employee at Arlington National Cemetery, and he blamed the families of the dead because his campaign broke the law at his fascist gang of thugs is running wild with this, as if Kamala Harris has anything to do
with it. And eight days later, there still is at a Senate investigation, or a Defense Department investigation, or a real journalistic investigation, and one of them better be started, god damned immediately. And the media continued to cover up for Donald Trump. Cover up. Not the cover up of his campaign emails hacked by a foreign government and sent to the New York Times, Washington Post and Politico. Not their cover up of that story, because this time that matters.
Not the cover up of the reported ten million dollar bribing of Trump just before the twenty sixteen election by President Elcesi of Egypt. Not that cover up by the major newspapers and by the Department of Justice, which should just publicly release all it has on the Egyptian bribe, and if it won't, Biden should order it to not
That cover up. The cover up of Trump grinning like the psychotic that he is, thumbs up, violating all codes of decency and respect for veterans, which can only be re established in this country if we prosecute scumbags like Trump who helped to tear them down every day. The cover up of him illegally filming a commercial for his campaign to end democracy and filming it in a place
marked no political activity. The cover up of whoever hit an Arlington National Cemetery employee and how they hit her, and the cover up of why she is now too afraid to proceed or to go public. Where is the daily pounding on this utterly, transcendently disgusting story, this deeply meaningful story, and most importantly for the simpletons running places like the New York Times, the Washington Post in Politico,
this really easy to follow story. I give the New York Times some credit for paying some attention to this story, but even they have let it slide, even as the Trump campaign continues to use the video illegally shot not only to promote his campaign, but also to try to smear the vice president because she didn't literally dance on the graves of soldiers alongside Trump the way Trump did. But even this from the Times, this is six days old. Quote.
The family of a Green Beret who died by suicide after serving eight combat tours and is buried at Arlington express concern Wednesday that Trump's campaign had filmed his gravesite without permission, as Trump stood in an area where campaign photography is not allowed. Relatives of Master Sergeant Andrew Marcasano issued their statement two days after Trump's visit, which also included a confrontation between members of the Trump campaign and
an Arlington employee. The former president's campaign took video in a heavily restricted section of the cemetery known as Section sixty, which is largely reserved for the fallen veterans of the Iraq and acts Afghanistan wars. A woman who works at the cemetery filed an incident report with the military authorities over the altercation, but the official, who has not been identified, later declined to press charges. Military officials said she feared
mister Trump's supporters pursuing retaliation unquote. You will recall that the worker who asked them to stop was yelled at by Trump goons then abused physically in some way. We still don't know if it was a tap on the shoulder or a broken goddamn jaw. Then, when the story of how the Trump people trampled the graves of the war dead at Arlington National Cemetery, this Trump spokesclown Stephen Chung said the woman who tried to stop them was
quote suffering from a mental health episode. And this phony Trump patriot Chris las Sevida, the swift boat asshole, called her a quote despicable individual who does not deserve to represent the hollowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, and half the media, including The Times, covered up the fact that this idiot las Savita indeed wrote hollowed as in hollowed out conscience instead of the correct word, which is hallowed with an A. And by the way, when the Trump
campaign issued a statement from Senator Tom Cotton, who was a candidate for Dumbest Man Alive but he looks serious, so Trump likes him, the quote from Cotton misspelled the
word cemetery, and your goddamn right. It matters because it's the Arlington National Cemetery, and since literally the Civil War when we seized it from the trader Robert E. Lee, it has been our most hallowed ground, this cemetery, and these Trump it it's can't even get that part right, let alone the laws right, or the respect right, or the solemnity right required of anybody who goes there. I mean, do you know who the Sullivan brothers are. They are
in Arlington two. They're going to be there for a while. They're in Section MC, basically across the street from Section thirty five. They're the equivalent of about three city blocks away from where Trump shot his commercial. The former marine and former Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Kesling brought this up.
The Sullivans were five brothers from Iowa who served together in the Second World War on the same ship, on the light cruiser USS, you know, and it was sunk by the Japanese at Guadalcanal on November thirteenth, nineteen forty two, and they all died, all five of them, all five brothers. Trump could have taken five minutes to go and salute them, or five seconds to salute anybody at Arlington, even Robert F. Kennedy Senior the hell. As Kesling notes, this isn't the
first time Trump specifically ignored the Sullivan brothers. Waterloo, Iowa named its convention center after them, and Kesling was there when Trump campaigned there more than eight years ago. And just to be as cynical as possible, you go to the Sullivan Center, it's a layup politically. There's a big picture of them, their story, their deaths, where they are now, unbelievably tragic story. Trump didn't pose with the picture. He
didn't reference them in the speech at their center. Just like a week ago yesterday, he just went to Arlington as he'd gone to Waterloo, just to sell you more shit, and f the Sullivans and f the soldiers in Afghanistan, and especially f this Arlington employee, and after yelling at the employee, after touching or slandering her, questioning her mental health, questioning her patriotism, threatening her in some way, when it was reported that she initially filed her report then declined
to pursue it at Joint Base Meyer Henderson Hall in Virginia for fear of retaliation. This breathing cartoon spokesman Stephen Chung went in for another hit, quoting him that is ridiculous and sounds like someone who has Trump derangement syndrome. Unquote. You know who has Trump derangement syndrome? Trump Trump has
Trump derangement syndrome. He's the one with the derangement. Oh. By the way, there are two fatally flawed strains of pseudo logic operating within our newsrooms that are covering up for Trump about Arlington and all the other stories. One of these strains is, as the Inn saying goes, that this is another opportunity for news organizations with vestigial and long since expired reputations for being liberal, like The Times
could be mistaken for liberal anymore. It's an opportunity for them to comply in advance in case Trump regains power. The other pseudo logic is this claim that Trump people continued to belch that they have exculpatory video of this incident with that crazy National Cemetery employee and it'll show you and don't you dare criticize Trump because you'll look really stupid when we release the video and take our revenge. And there are eighth graders starting at school newspapers this week,
this minute. Who know there is no video that the only video Trump has he shot illegally and used all of it illegally for an illegal campaign. Add but don't try explaining that to the New York Times, the Washington Post in Politico, because for them to say there is no video requires them to say something. And the point right now is for them to not say anything. Two generations of the fascist Republicans working the refs of the media of this nation, plus the ever spiraling gyre of
the shrinking news business, have in short worked. Democracy may die in darkness, but inside the Washington Post, the real fear is the Washington Post will die because somebody there
said something. Now when others say something, When the family of the PTSD suicide whose grave was shown by Trump without that family's permission, when they say something, then then the Times or the Post or the others will go just far enough out onto that limb to point at what they said and say, oh, please, don't hurt us. Right wingers keep buying our shit newspapers. Trump blamed the family of the soldier he was supposedly honoring. It wasn't us.
We just saw it on the TV. Then and only then will they report something like this, should your campaign have put out those videos and photos? Well, we have a lot of.
People, you know, we have people, TikTok people.
You know, we're leading the internet. That was the other thing. We're so far above her on.
The end, I'm not hallowed ground so that they have.
Put out I don't know what the rules and regulations are. I don't know who did it. And it could have been them. It could have been the parents, it could have been somebody. It was your campaign's TikTok theild I put out there.
I really don't know anything about it.
All I do is I stood there and I said, if you'd like to have a picture, we can have a picture. If somebody did, if this was a setup by the people in the administration that oh Trump is coming to Arlington.
That looks so bad for us. There ought to be a story in every newspaper every day demanding that the Trump campaign released the video showing it was the woman employee who attacked the Trump campaign goons, you know, the video that doesn't exist, because otherwise he gets away with it, like he's getting away with the Egypt bribe, like he's getting away with whatever was in the emails the Iranians hacked,
because this election foreign hacking matters. Like he's getting away with saying Kamala Harris treated Mike Pence terribly because she told him to stop interrupting him during the debate, as opposed to you know, the whole gallowsy hangy thing that Trump did. Like he's getting away with the Willie Brown helicopter flight logs from when Brown slimed Kamala Harris. He's
going to release them from ten years ago. Only it wasn't ten years ago, and they didn't talk about Harris, and for that matter, it wasn't Willie Brown, and it wasn't ten years ago, and it wasn't a helicopter, and it wasn't in San Francisco. He's getting away with it, and you get away with it when the media covers up for you so thoroughly, so automatically, as the Times and the Post and the politico operations of this world and all but a few others are so thoroughly, so
automatically defaulting to covering up for Trump. Not wanting to touch it, it's too much trouble. It's a third rail. Nothing good can come of it. Everybody knows he's crazy. We can't report this. They're doing it so thoroughly that the Trump campaign and the Trump psychopaths don't even have to bother to cover it up themselves anymore. By the way, the Arlington National Cemetery employee slimed and manhandled by the Trump campaign in ways we still don't know, she doesn't
have to in effect press charges. The army can take it from here. The evidence is the commercial. The Trump physical attack on her is almost unbelievable, but in one context it's unnecessary to this story. The laws were broken, whether they beat her over the head with a tire iron or they said sorry, ma'am and bowed on the way out and the breeze was too strong for her. But you're not going to read about that either, because the media is so so broken. It was broken in
twenty sixteen. It tried with some success to fix itself in twenty twenty, but it's now broken in new and worse your waves. Joe Scarborough, who has unsuccessfully tried to purge from the Internet all those photos of Trump standing next to him like he Scarborough was also a tombstone, and both of them are grinning like con men giving
the thumbs up sign. Joe Scarborough his show followed up on the CNN Kamala Harrison interview last week with a focus group of mixed race voters, and sure enough, one of them, a guy named Adul Ali, just happens to echo this Trump insult to everybody in the world, almost word for word, quoting from the Scarborough focus group. I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black, and now she wants to be known as black. I don't know is
she Indian or is she black? Unquote this Adul Ali is a Trump podcaster running for Congress as the Republican in the North Carolina twelfth Congressional district as a Trumpist. And guess you never mentioned that. Joe Scarborough and his people and MSNBC, and they matter of factly told the website Mediaite. Sure they knew he was a Republican running for Congress, they just didn't mention it. That's where we are again. The media is pitted against the Democratic candidate
because bluntly, liberals do not punish bad media. I don't care about that. I think the Democratic candidate can handle it. For herself. What I'm worried about is this also coincides with the reality that the media is pitted against democracy as a result of this stand up for democracy. You guys, you're all going to wind up in the camps with us. You saw this from Politico. Next question, Harris evades questions
about her identity. This was in the wake of the CNN interview with Kamala Harris, which admittedly didn't provide a lot of headlines. And Kamala Harris did, as I've said before, showed respray I could never muster in thirty five thousand lifetimes. They read her the Trump quote about turning black and she just went same old playbook. Next question. It was a dignified answer to a piece of shit. Next question,
Harris evades questions about her identity. Well, the blowback on this the ratio of let me see if I've got this right. The ratio on the tweet was fifty seven million, two three. That's a lot, isn't it. I made those numbers up, but what the hell it's Politico. Politico then changed in a matter of I guess three hours or so to Harris sidesteps the spotlight when it comes to her identity, and of course the picture of her from the video still says next question, Harris evades questions, and
then they did a little thread for the record. This replaces a deleted tweet to better reflect Harris's response. It's a funny way to spell apology. We're idiots, We're Politico, We're run by a German right winger. We have retreads who got fired from every other news organization in the world. You saw this from the New York Times. They got something wrong, they tried to fix it. They got it wrong again in a different way. If you saw this.
The Moms for Liberty can get a bit carried away, one of their local chapters, once accidentally quoted Atoll Hitler, He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future. Well, well, well that's fun. Accidentally, the Moms for Liberty can get a bit carried away, one of their local chapters, once quoted Adolf Hitler. He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future. A correction was made on September first, twenty
twenty four. At the Times wrote an earlier version of this article incorrectly said that a local chapter of Moms for Liberty had accidentally quoted Adolf Hitler in a newsletter. The group, which later issued an apology, was aware that the quote was from Hitler when the newsletter was published. Well, the Times correction is wrong. They didn't just acknowledge that they were aware Hitler, said that they defended quoting Hitler.
They defended quoting Hitler after people in their own organization threatened to shut this chapter of Moms for Liberty, which is a brand name. After that, then finally they apologized, you saw this from Puck News, from this perpetual hot and cold running clown Dylan Buyers representing the closed ranks of political media. Fascist propaganda dits are not really fascist propagandists. It's just stiff. Fox News is just another flavor of news right, and it's like MSNBC. It's a different kind.
One is sweet, one is sour. You decide which is witch. Not even the fascist propagandists whose names came up in the dominion lawsuit and are shown in texts trying to get their own network to take back their call of Arizona for Joe Biden in twenty twenty, they're not really fascist propagandists. They're the same as everybody else. This is what Dylan Byers wrote first, The perceived bias of television
news networks is almost always a red herring, bullshit. Of the three well known popular television networks, add Fox and CNN. Let's make it five. I've worked for NBC, I've worked for Fox, I've worked for CNN. I worked locally for ABC and CBS. Why it's a complete set. Guess what. The perceived bias of television news networks is almost never a red herring. Actually, but he goes on all available evidence suggests foxes Brett Bhar and Martha McCallum would be
equally responsible moderators or interviewers of either candidate. Likewise, NBC's Less Your hold In, Savannah Guthrie, by the Way, Savannah Guthrie and Less Your Whole perfectly nice people, Ciphers, there's nobody there. They're television performers. At one point each of them was a newsman or newswoman. But they're Cipher's. Martha McCallum is a Republican who often advocates for right wing causes on her show and takes a right wing slanted
point of view. And as I said, Brett Behar is in this huge lawsuit, demanding that his own network, and he's the newsman, added, demanding that they put Arizona back in play, because it's making everybody look bad for all the mission creep. Dylan Byers right, anybody knows creeps. It would be Dylan Byer's for all the mission creep and
conflicts of interest in TV news. These days, all of the major companies, yes, even Fox, employ capable newsmen and women whose reputations, like those of the network that employ them, depend on their ability to moderate a debate or conduct an interview with journalistic integrity. I'm waiting for the punchline to this, in which it turns out Dylan Byers does not own a TV of any kind. To a quick run of the polls New York Times in Swing States, the number one issue in Swing states for women voters
is no longer the economy. It is abortion. ABC ipsos Harris by six over the weekend. Favorable's good for her and for Walls, not so hot for the Republicans, widening her advantage among women. In the new ABC News IPSOS poll, she now leads by thirteen points, fifty four to forty one. Among the men, Trump leads by five fifty one forty six,
which is declared not statistically significant. Between the lines to use the phrase the female male change occurs among pasty white people quoting it, White women have gone from thirteen points for Trump pre convention to a virtual dead heat
Trump plus two now. White men from plus thirteen points for Trump before the convention to plus twenty one points now, according to the ABC News polling director, So the women are all even and the men are even more for Trump than they were before and in this isn't really a poll, this is the oops. Those were internal numbers. I didn't know they'd go public where they went public.
In the Boston Globe, Tom Mountain, who had served as one of several vice chairs of the former president's effort in Massachusetts, wrote in an email to Trump volunteers in the state that the campaign has determined that New Hampshire is no longer a battleground state, advis supporters to instead direct their attention to Pennsylvania. The GOP, the Boston Globe says, had been bullish about winning New Hampshire before President Biden
dropped out. In the email, Mountain, former official with the Massachusetts GOP, said Trump was quote sure to lose by an even higher margin in New Hampshire than he did in sixteen and twenty. Citing campaign data slash research. Can you guess where I'm going with this? For the joke that ends this segment, he claimed, resources the Globe continues would be suspended and the campaign would not send Trump or high profile surrogates such as his sons. Well, thank
goodness for small blessings New Hampshire. The email was obtained by the Globe and confirmed with multiple recipients. Trump campaign official Tom Mountain has now resigned, thus making a molehill out of a mountain. Just sitting there on a tee. All right, if you're new here, thanks for responding to the advertising, appreciate it. I put a new one of these out, usually forty minutes to an hour in length. Every night, just after midnight, a version goes up on
YouTube about five am. So this is the Tuesday edition or the Monday Bulldog edition that you're listening to now starting next Monday, now, next Sunday night about midnight. That'll be five nights a week. Though the one Sunday night Monday morning, that's going to be real short eight minutes unless I get worked up, and of course, as you know, I never get worked up. Four is about the maximum I can handle. We got eight weeks to go until
the election. If I can ask you to do something like listen, the least I can do is actually add the fifth piece. Anyhow, back to this one. Also of interest here, it is amazing to watch right wing racists and misogynists goes so nuts over somebody like Kamala Harris. I don't know if you notice this, but she's a woman of color that the misogynists and racists and their defenses melt and they all default to assuming she's where she is because of quote puppet masters and or quote
oral sex. Worst persons in the world is next. This is countdown. This is countdown. With Keith Olberman still ahead of us on this ediative countdown. The college year has just begun. The pro football year starts day after tomorrow. These things may combine to mean many things for you. For me, they combine into only one story. The day one of the most infamous mistakes in football history led my college professor to have to talk himself out of taking it out on everybody in his course by failing
us all f's for everybody. You get an F, and you get an F, and you get an F next, and things I promised not to tell first. There are still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the miscrants, morons and dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two day's worst persons in the World's fellow's name is Peter J. Hassen. He is an editor. The editor. It's hard to say they won't assume responsibility at the Free Beacon, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's free.
Peter Jay Hassen is we think the person behind the big story on the far right that Kamala Harris should not be president of the United States because nowhere in her past resumes, autobiographies, or campaigns does it say she worked at McDonald's. You may have heard she worked at McDonald's, new, writes Peter J. Hassen. And there's a picture of Mickey De's at least the logo the Golden Arches. And next to a picture of that is picture of Kamala Harris
looking concerned as she holds a microphone. New Kamala Harris's missing summer job at McDonald's job. Uh Kamala Harris is missing summer job at McDonald's job. The guy has a blue check on Twitter x and he didn't edit this. Kamala Harris is missing summer job at McDonald's job. I got a new job for you, fella, and it is not in the grammar police her resume and job application a year after graduating college free beacon obtained through FOIA.
Didn't mention it. Yeah, okay, neither to either of her books or either of the biographies on her exclusive report from Chuck Somebody and Andrew and Simon something Peter Jay Hassen editor, He offers subscriptions to his feed in which he writes things like Kamala Harris's missing summer job at McDonald's job, her resume, job and job application job a year job after graduating job college job, beginning to sound like a money Python script. In any event, I'd like
to just point something out. This is the Vice president of the United States. Why on her resume, even when she was just a graduate from university, why would she include a summer job. A summer job at McDonald's. No offense to anybody who's ever had a summer job at McDonald's, but I just point something out. I have not had a lot of jobs in the real world. I've been in media almost all of my life. However, one summer I had a job once with real work involved in it,
something between freelance and independent contractor. I was sixteen years old, and I managed to figure out that instead of trying to buy and sell the Baseball cards that came on the back of Hostess cupcakes and other Hostess confectionery and baked goods in the summer of nineteen seventy five, instead of simply buying the boxes retail or maybe even wholesale, there was a place called the host Store in which they would sell day old or two day old or
a couple hours passed the expiration date, bread and other baked goods for lower prices, and then if they didn't sell, I wondered what happened to them. My dad and I went to the one nearest our home. We went in and talked to the guy, and he said, well, after that, they'd all go in that dumpster over there. I swear to God, as big a dumpster as I've ever seen
in my life. The ones in the dumpster fire memes not as big as this dumpster, and in that dumpster were all the boxes with the baseball cards on them. And where do they go from here? Well, we send them to Jersey and they feed them to the hogs. My job, and I created this job. I was a
job creator at age sixteen. My job was I paid this guy a fee to hop into this dumpster with an exact o knife and cut the baseball cards off the boxes for the boxes and the now you know, three week old twinkies and ding dongs and everything else that they sold went out to New Jersey to be fed to the pigs. The smell of a six day old twinkie is contrary to rumor that they have the shelf life of a cockroach or a rat or I
don't know, radioactive carbon dating material. A six day old twinkie left out in the elements begins to smell six or seven hundred of them, and the bugs that accompany them they smell bad too. But I went in there for hour after hour cutting these things off, and frankly, I was able to sell them for about a dollar apiece. I must have gotten about a thousand of them. You know what. I did not mention this on any of my job applications in the let's see forty forty five,
now forty nine years since then. This is what I was doing forty nine years ago, and for some reason I left it off my resume. I have a copy outside of this studio right now of my resume from nineteen seventy nine, which includes things that I don't know why I put them on, like my height and weight. Who needs a height and weight on a resume? But there it was, I guess for television purposes. I don't know what I was thinking. It says height and weight.
It does not say hostess, dumpster diver, hostess thrift chop dumpster diver in nineteen seventy five, and I had no intention of running to be attorney general of any state or a senator or vice president of United States, were president of the United States. I didn't put it on my resume. And I've written, now I guess, three books that have included at least in part autobiographies. I have mentioned it in any of those. Either I didn't put
it on my resume. And this guy Hassen, you know him, Kamala Harris is missing summer job at McDonald's job Hassen he's in the Daily Caller News Foundation. I'm confident that he hasn't put that on his resume. Kamala Harris didn't put her job at McDonald's on her resume, which would be the same thing as you know, if she worked at the Free Beacon, she wouldn't say, put that on her resume either. Morons the runner up the silver Now it gets a little darker. Tulsy Gabbard. You remember Tulsa Gabbard.
Every time you think there is some sort of bottom for old skunk hair, turns out you are mistaken. Tulsi, of course, is still mad that her bid for the presidential nomination in twenty twenty earned her exactly two delegates. She is, now, though, dropped below that red line of respectability where you have to now not say her name without putting an obscenity in the middle of it. You know,
Tulsey effing Gabbard. That's her name now, because, as I quote also twitter x, Harris's CNN interview exposed her as insecure and weak, which of course is exactly the qualities
that will make her again. Grammar is not Tulsi's strength, which of course is exactly the qualities that will make her the perfect puppet uh oh, controlled by the faceless power hungry warmongers who run our country right now, she will be the dream quote president unquote for the You're ready puppet masters, Tulsy Gabbard writes, puppet masters, because she'll
be so easy to control and influence. I don't know how many people there are left in this country who would not recognize the phrase puppet masters for what it is. The American Jewish Center and the SPLC, the Southern Poverty Law Center both identify the phrase puppet masters, the one Telsy Gabbard used. They identify that phrase as an anti Semitic trope. It's jew hate in common parlance, and Tulsey Gabbard just used it and also made a grammatical mistake
in there. So her next stop book is clearly to become an editor of the Free Beacon. But our winner, how do you top that? Well, you move from anti semitism to pure misogyny and racial hatred and just grossness. And that's Eric Ericksson. It's hard to believe now, but Eric Erickson, who's always been kind of a schmuck, has seen the entirety of the right wing movement move past him as they have gone into proverbial you know, hostess,
thrift shop, dumpster diving. He stayed right where he was schmuck, and now he's seen as some sort of moderate who doesn't want Trump or Harris. But this is how disoriented Kamala Harris, being a woman of color, being an intelligent person, being a woman, How all these things have disoriented them beyond their ability to shot the f up. You remember Eric Ericson, apart from the joke I always use about him that he's one of those guys like Lars Larson and Hugh Hewitt, came from a family so poor we
could only afford the one syllable for our name. In the immediate aftermath of when the Maga gun nut shot at Trump, he put out a tweet blaming it on MSNBC in Comcast. He's also the guy who, three weeks ago, barely three weeks ago, wrote at this point, the GOP has so devastated Tim Walls, I wouldn't be surprised to see Josh Shapiro show up at the DNC as their vice presidential pick. Well, of course, as we know he got that one right. Well, Eric's misogyny and racism is
now leaking out of his ears. This is Eric Ericksson talking about the Vice president of the United States and how she got to that position and what she's doing now running for president. This is him.
People who were so willing to say, oh, we have to support Kamala Harris because she's going to stop Donald Trump. You know what, She's an authoritarian Kamala Harris. Did you pay attention to her record as Attorney general in California? You really want me to believe that we have to save democracy by voting for Kamala Harris. If Kamala Harris could get in office and ensure she'd never leave again,
she'd do it. Kamala Harris has done nothing but climbed the ladder of power since the moment she got up off her knees in front of Willie Brown.
To put it bluntly to you, every Republican accusation is an admission. Just remember that I would make the same slander about Eric Erickson. But if you've ever seen Eric Erickson, if you go look up the video that I just played there, you would know that if ever in his life he had gotten down on his knees they would need a winch to get him upright again. Eric Erickson, you're worse than Tulsey Gabbard two days worse person and Lord.
Finally to the number one story on the countdown and my favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell so September again. I literally don't know anybody whoever shakes the childhood dread of back to school days in August and the beginning of September. Third grade, high school, college doesn't matter. Forty four degrees, ninety four degrees, doesn't matter.
It's September and by now. The dread, even if you liked school, remains until the day you die, especially if it invokes memories like the one I have about the day I nearly failed a for credit course in college because of a fumble in a professional football game. Forty four years ago. This week, I actually walked reluctantly but proudly into a class at Cornell University. If I remem correctly.
To get into Professor Joel Silby's nineteenth Century American history course eight credits spanning two semesters, I had to get special permission from the History department because I was not a history major. I just took all the history classes they would let me, and this was one of the
best ones. And I remember Professor Silby's first lecture and the accent and the mannerisms that quickly identified him not only as a fellow native New Yorker, but as a Brookly Knight and a Brookly Knight fan of as he
quickly told us the New York Football Giants. What Professor Joel Silby said next, cause the I think it was two hundred or so other students in the lecture hall to laugh, all of them except me, because I was the sports director of the Cornhill student owned radio station, and in those days, you could actually know everything about and everybody in all the national sports off the top
of your head. And usually that meant you could figure out all the teams in all the sports that had the lightest chance of succeeding, and all the teams and all the sports that did not. And the New York Football Giants did not. I want you to know, I graded the papers, not the teaching assistance me and I happened to be a lifelong, therefore long suffering fan of
the New York Football Giants. I saw my first Giants game in nineteen forty five, and over the years I happened to have developed this habit of grading your papers on Sunday afternoons and evenings right after I watch my New York Football Giants. So, to some degree great or small, your grade will depend on how well the New York Football Giants do in this nineteen seventy eight National Football League season. One hundred and ninety nine of Joel Silbey's
students laughed. I emitted a low moan, since they had gone to five NFL championship games in the six seasons ending in nineteen sixty three and lost all five. By the way, the Giants had had exact actly two winning seasons, and they had lost nine of fourteen games the year
before nineteen seventy seven. Though they had opened this nineteen seventy eight season with a narrow victory over a very bad Tampa Bay team, and the first half of their schedule had as many as four more opponents who they might be better than they would be lucky to win
two games in the second half of the season. When I got back to the radio station, I looked at the Giants' schedule and Professor Silby's class schedule and I circled one critical day when the schedules converged Sunday, November nineteenth, nineteen seventy eight. Our term papers were due on Thursday the sixteenth. He could actually read them all after the Giants Eagles game that night. In the following day. Amazingly, your New York Football Giants actually opened the season winning
three of their first four. In the middle of October, they were still five and three, and in the history lecture room, Professor Sylvie was very happy, and he often recreated highlights of his his glorious Giants pleasing success, and he was furiously fanboying on the new quarterback they'd brought in from the Canadian League, Joe Pisarchick. If you are a football history fan, or god forbid, a fan of the New York Football Giants, you already know where I'm
going with this. The Giants lost the next three games, and then our term papers were due on November sixteenth, and Joel Sylbey turned morose. And I was at the radio station watching the Giants Eagles game of the nineteenth on a big black and white TV in the lounge when my nightmare unfolded impossibly. The Giants led the much better Philadelphia Eagles fourteen to nothing. After the first quarter. Pisarcik threw two touchdown passes. After the third quarter, it
was still seventeen to six Giants. Then the Eagles scored, and they were driving to go ahead with a minute and a half left in the game, when the impossible happened deep in Giants' territory. The Philly quarterback threw an interception with eighty three seconds left and in possession of the ball. The Giants led seventeen thirteen. The crowd at the radio station was ecstatic. I was even more ecstatic.
All the Giants now had to do was stall and have the quarterback fall on the ball, maybe twice, as if he had heard me. The quarterback, Joe Pisarcik, fell on the ball. Then he nearly killed me by handing the ball off to his running back Larry Zanka, who plowed up the middle to get a first down and
burn another thirty seconds off the clock. The Eagles called their last time out thirty one seconds left, thirty one seconds to my grade in Joel Silbey's nineteenth century American history class, probably ending up being half or maybe even a full grade. Better than I deserved. All Joe Pisarchi had to do was fall on the damn ball again
and it was over. However, on the Giants sideline, offensive coordinator Bob Gibson decided that the safe play, the winning play, was for Jopisarcik to hand the ball off again to Larry Zanka. Now that might have been the right play, only Bob Gibson and everybody else failed to tell Larry Zanka. Larry Zanka assumed he was there just to block for Joe Pisarcik, as Joe Pisarcik collapsed to the turf and
ran out the clock and got me a better grade. Instead, Pisarchik handed the ball to where Zanka's hands should have been, except Larry Zanka was in the blocking stance, and Pisarchik in fact handed it off directly to Larry Zanka's helmet. I screamed. The ball bounced once off the turf and directly into the hands of Philadelphia cornerback Herman Edwards. I continued to scream. There was nobody near Edwards, and he scooted twenty six yards into the end zone and the
Giants lost the damn game. Nineteen to seventeen. In the last seconds, and as the Giants fans at the radio station shouted or moaned or swore, I could see Professor Joel Sylvie shutting off the TV, grabbing our papers and sentencing us to hell, and I continued to scream. Our term papers were returned on Tuesday the twenty first, just before school broke for Thanksgiving. I actually was thankful I got either a B or a B plus. I can't find the paper. It should be somewhere in a box.
There was a rumor which I was never able to confirm, that my B or B plus was the highest grade in the class. I can confirm. I saw classmates most far more prepared and astute than myself, most of them
history majors, looking at their grades and blanching visibly. One girl cried, a C, really a C. Professor Joel Silbey said much of our grade would depend on how well the New York Football Giants did in that nineteen seventy eight National football season, and my god, they had just sustained a loss so bad that it has still talked about to this day. My classmates did not listen, and I only am escaped alone to tell thee there is a PostScript. The PostScript takes place thirty two and one
half years later. I returned to Cornell in March of twenty eleven to give a lecture and teach a series of classes to students who no longer afterwards felt they had gotten their full money from the university. My alma mater was very kind to me. They gave me a tour of the secret places they never would have shown me when I was a struggling student, like where they
kept Cornell's copy of the Gettysburg address. And they promised me something special for lunch the first day, And sure enough I was dropped off at a restaurant, and there, rising from a table to greet me with applause, were Cornell's official historian and former Professor Glenn Altschuler, and their very famous history professor Walter Lefeber, and I swear Professor Joel Silby, and they were fans of mine. Of course,
I could not leave well enough alone. After a few minutes of very pleasant conversation with mister alt Schuller and Professor la Faber and Professor Silby, I brought up the nineteen seventy eight term paper Joe pisarcik handoff story. Professor la Faber looked at Professor Silby like Professor Silby was out of his mind. Is that true? And Sylby smiled and said, yes, yes it is. And then Joel Silby looked off into the distance as if he were peering
backwards through time. Nineteen seventy eight, that's when you could really enjoy being a professor. He then looked back at me and smiled, Keith, you won't believe this, but I actually graded those papers pretty fairly, and I didn't follow through on my original plan. After the fumble, I actually turned off the TV and I sat there for a few minutes, and I asked my soul if it was okay for me to take my revenge on the universe by failing all of you. Gulped Oh, said Sylby. It
was so great to be a professor back then. I laughed so much I had tears in my eyes. And then Sylbe said, okay, okay, maybe I was a little unfair to you guys, but you know, it's the Giants and you have to take this as a whole. The year they won their first Super Bowl, what was that eighty six. The final exam in that class was like two days after they finished the regular season, fourteen and two, eight o'clock in the morning. So I go to the
final see, which I never do. And I waited until they were all sitting there sweating, and I said, remember last September when I told you your grade will depend on how well the New York Football Giants doing this nineteen eighty six National Football League season. And it was just silence, and I said, well, if you didn't notice, they went fourteen and two, and I haven't been this happy since when they won the title in nineteen fifty six.
So guess what, there's no final exam. And nobody moved, so I said it again, there's no final exam, Go home, go study for something else. Y'all get a's. And then there was a couple of seconds of silence, and they all simultaneously realized I was not kidding, and everybody cheered and ran out into the sunshine. So with me and professors Altschuler and la Faber, now in tears, Sylby said, see it evens out, and I said, the hell it does. I graduated in nineteen seventy nine, How does it canceled
final in nineteen eighty six. Even it out for me, Fella. Joel Silby thought for a second and then he said, Wow, I am buying you lunch forty six years ago. Forty six years ago? What did I say? Forty three? Twenty three? It was nineteen seventy eight. See, I was considered a math prodigy. However, this was when I was still very short and had blonde hair, all of which has changed. I just like to add and subtract numbers. Now I'm
not even any good at that anymore. When we got finally to algebra, I would just sit and stare at the board and ask the math teacher which side was the question and which side was the answer? And I turned my head upside down, so I was looking upside down. That's when he said, take the class, pass fail and I'll pass you forty nineteen seventy eight. It was AnyWho, I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Please share this podcast with somebody who
does not yet listen. And again, if you're just joining us after the advertising, thank you kindly. Brian Ray and John Phillip Chanel, the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration in keyboards, mister Ray was on the guitars, bass, and drums, and it was pretty by Tko Brothers. Yes, every day we do this. It was four days a week, and it's four days a week this week. Next week
I'm gonna start doing it five days a week. And as I said, Mondays will be brief. In any event. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music we do sports segments periodically. The Old Woman theme from ESPN two was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. And my announcer today is my friend Larry David. Everything
else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the sixty fourth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the one three hundred and thirty first day since convicted Feldon Donald J. Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States use the September eighteenth sentencing hearing. If it happens, use the mental health system. Use president immunity. The Supreme Theocratic Court has
given it to you. President Biden. I say, if it's official, it's legal. Have fun. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news requires until the next one on Keith Olderman good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.