Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Happy Insurrection Day. Insurrection Day when Republicans will certify the election of a quote president unquote who is constitutionally ineligible to hold the office according to the third Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Electoral count Reform Act of twenty twenty two, and who himself fomented the assault four years ago that forever ended our conceit about the peaceful transfer
of power. The illegitimate president's Republican whorees and servants may in fact trudge to the capital through a blizzard to make this prostitution of democracy official. The Democrats, they won't say any thing because this did not test well as a campaign ad, and their flaccid willingness to risk anything in our defense is further deflated by their perception that
this is a fate a compley. And since it is a fate a compley, especially because of their own cowardice, they now have to do their best to compromise and to obey in advance a group of bandits and pirates posing as a presidential administration whose only desire to compromise is to compromise Democrats, and to compromise the free press, and to compromise reality, and to compromise democracy itself. These
are those Republicans speaking yesterday. Freshman Congressen Brandon Gill quote, we want to end the woke chaos that they have unleashed on this country, saying that boys can become girls. Unquote. Brandon Gill is Dnesh de sus it is idiot son in law. Compromise with Denesh Dsuz's idiot son in law. Freshman Congressman Riley Moore quote, My constituents have sent me here to this town not to work with Democrats, but
to destroy their agenda. Unquote. Riley Moore's aunt is a senator, his grandfather was a governor, and politics is the family business. Otherwise he would still be a welder. These are the new Republicans with whom the Democrats are supposed to treat, the one party democracy Republicans, the Stalinist Republicans, the destroy any opposition Republicans. Oh, and if you think they'll learn they'll calm down, their IQ will grow to sixty or seventy. Quote.
We asked everyone not to leak. Please, for God's sake, do not give inside information to the enemy. That quote is from an old Republican, the lead Republican in the House, the creepiest Republican in the House since at least Denny Hastert Mike Johnson two days ago. He said that I don't know if by the enemy he means the Democrats or the media or both, or the temptations of his anti porn app And I no longer care which it is.
This is insurrection Day, and we all know what the Republicans would be doing today in the mirror version of this grim reality if they were in charge, and Trump were in office, and Trump had presidential immunity, and a new president was about to sign off on putting him in jail, and the Republicans would be doing what they actually did do four years ago today, only they wouldn't bother to try to be that's subtle or legal about it.
They would be gassing up the tanks. But no, the came Jeffries tells us there are no election deny on our side of the isle, because of course they will throw that right back in our face in the twenty twenty six midterms. Even though the election isn't the point. It's the fact that the president elect is constitutionally disqualified from holding the office he's been elected to, and he has corrupted everything from the judiciary to corporate ends of
the corporate state. And he's given no indication that there will be any elections in twenty twenty six. Orerever again. So Leader Jeffries and Leader Schumer are getting busy obeying in advance. January sixth, have a nice day, and no. Judge Juan Mereshwan is not a hero. He did not bring Trump to at least symbolic justice. He did not evade the Supreme Court's corruption. He is not the one
dim light in the darkest of nights. Like nearly everybody else, he is too violating historian Tim Snyder's first rule for
defying tyranny. He is not not obeying in advance. He's just covering his own ass, like the prosecutor Alvin Bragg is covering his own ass, like Democratic Congressman Tom Swazi is covering his own ass, like CNN is covering its own ass, And the self destructing Washington Post having now killed off its political cartoonist, and nearly the entire hierarchy of the Democratic Party, and almost anybody else You could
mention now it is absolutely true. It is better that Mechan did not vacate the conviction of Trump convictions and instead stuck an asterisk on Trump that allows all of us to refer to him as a convicted felon without fear of being sued for defamation by a would be dictator who intends to be a dictator not by law but by suing ordinary people into submission and bankruptcy. But the fact remains that Wan Meerschan could have done all this in October. He could have done it before the election.
Would it have altered the outcome of the election? Who the hell knows? With Merrick Garland launching his investigation into Trump in twenty twenty one rather than twenty twenty two, have altered the outcome of the election, With Joe Biden not having convinced himself that people were tired of thinking about Trump so he shouldn't newt him in some way four years ago have altered the outcome of the election, Who the hell knows. But would those things have been
the right thing to do? That answer is easy, hell yes. And Juan Merchhan not only did not do the right thing to do, he pretended to be not doing it for the sake of the nation and the presidency and fairness. And of course by not doing it, he gave Trump what Trump wanted, taking the heat out of Trump's status as a convicted felon just as the undecided voters were
making up their mind. To any of the liberals applauding him for dragging in Trump Live or by Zoom on Friday to tell him he's convicted, but he's not going to jail, probably not even getting fined, despite being found guilty of paying bribes to a pornographic actress in an attempt to interfere with the twenty sixteen election, To any
of the liberals, remember what Mershawn said. Alvin Brack had already postponed sentencing from July tenth to September eighteenth, when on September sixth Merchan postponed it again and committed his
own election interference. Quoting Mershon, adjourning decision on the motion and sentencing, if such is required, should dispel any suggestion that the Court will have issued any decision or imposed sentence either to give an advantage too or to create a disadvantage for any political party and or any candidate for any office, un quote bullshit. One postponement meant only
one thing. Advantage Trump postponent meant advantage also Mershan, because as enraged as Trump may be or may pretend to be, the only person who can use this diaphanous finding with which to damage Trump is Trump. Hell Mershon didn't even order Trump to show up to his non sentencing Friday. He can, as I mentioned, do it by zoom. And if the Jewel Meister in chief can contain himself, the
entirety of this will be forgotten by the inauguration. This next one may hit harder for me than for you, because I remember Herbert Lawrence Block of the Washington Post, her Block one word, hgr Block, our greatest and most influential political cartoonist since Thomas Nost And I remember him hating Nixon before hating Nixon was cool. And I remember
him conveying Watergate without words. And I remember I was eleven when I found out that it was HERB Block who had invented the term McCarthyism, and I remember him savaging them all up through George W. Bush until literally forty three days before he died. I remember her Block,
and in the context of her block. I was still somehow shocked that the Washington Post, which now seems to have lost more journalists even then it has lost subscribers, drove out and tell Nay's over the weekend and tell Nay's drew for her final submission to The Washington Post, the terrified corporate cowards Zuckerman, Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, extending bags of money as they cowered in front of a
giant statue of a necessarily giant Trump. She threw in Patrick soun Schong, the buffoon who owns the La Times. And in the most merciless her blocking in touch, she depicted not Bob Eiger prostrating himself at the foot of the statue, face in the dust, but rather Mickey Mouse, and the Post killed her cartoon. Twenty years there nearly and nothing like it before. So Telnay's quit on the spot. I have done that. It is not as satisfying as it sounds. You do it when you know that you
have no choice. Well, you do have some choice. You have the choice of quitting or never sleeping again. To be clear, she writes, there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoons commentary. That's a game changer and dangerous for a free press. I don't know miss Telnay's. I don't know if she will be comforted by this or more worried still, but don't worry about a free press. It is no longer a
free press. Certainly the Washington Post is no longer part of whatever free press might be left. I mean, when Bezos bribed Trump with his election night congratulations and his million dollar donation to the inauguration, at least Bezos didn't try to get away with it with some mindless excuse or word salad. The Washington Post opinions editor who killed the cartoon did do that. His name is David Shipley, and somebody, Bezos or somebody else bent on destroying the
newspaper and freedom of the press in this country. Somebody brought him into the Post two years ago. I don't know him, but I have two pieces of evidence to suggest mister Shipley is not very bright. Firstly, he said that his decision to kill this cartoon and subsequently to drive tell Nay's out, asking her to reconsider and get back to him today. I'll bet if she somehow did,
she'd get voicemail. Shipley said his decision quote was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cart and had already scheduled another column, this one a satire for publication. The only bias was against repetition, mister Shipley said this, and roughly the same moment that the homepage of The Washington Post featured four stories about Jimmy Carter and seven stories
about New Orleans and Las Vegas and exploding tesla's. If the only bias is against repetition, the Washington Post is the most biased newspaper in the world. The second piece of evidence I have that he is not very bright. Mister Shipley was married to the conspiracy theorist and all around sloppy reporter Naomi Wolf. Maybe he can hire her to replace Anne Tellny's doesn't matter. Doesn't matter post is dead. It has served its purpose, it has obeyed in advance.
I know you're tired of that phrase, abbreviated by the sorta acronym obinad. I'll try to avoid it, but boy is it everywhere, just like the coward's doing it. Fox News reported that the truck in New Orleans in the attack there had crossed the Mexican US border two days earlier.
Sometimes they padded their initial report to say the suspect drove across the border in that truck, took him ninety minutes to retract it, by which point Trump had already implied the attack was by an immigrant rather than a native Texan who was in or was in the army. Mike Johnson is still implying it the obe in ad here. Fox had to pay Smart Mattock seven hundred and eighty seven million dollars for its lies about that company in
the twenty twenty election. Remember that, or do you remember perhaps the car bombing at Niagara Falls in November twenty twenty three, Fox reporter Alexis McAdams confirmed it was a terrorist attack and there was a hunt for a second terrorist car, and that led to conclusions that it was an Islamic terrorism, and that led to the assertion it was probably Hamas, and that led to the anchor John Roberts demanding to note those who quote perpetrated this attack
had come into this country legally. Did they come across illegally and claim asylum? Were they radicalized in this country? Were they radicalized at all? Unlike Smart Mattock the quote, perpetrators in this case did not sue Fox because they mister and Missus Villani, were from Grand Island, New York, and they were coming back from a canceled Kiss concert in Toronto and he lost control of his Bentley And they weren't terrorists. He was just a bad driver, and
they weren't suing because they were dead. And Fox was still pitching the car bomb terrorism idea the next day. But where is the obey in advance part? Well, that's Fox's most egregious, most recent self disqualification as truth tellers. But Brian Stelter, who will now kiss any manager's ass as long as he can retain his regained dream job. He wrote of Fox's disastrous error about New Orleans that quote, an erroneous early Fox News report about the New Orleans
terror attack is warping the political dialogue. The false report from Fox confuse the public and evidently President elect Donald Trump too. Quote Ah, yes, Brian erroneous, false confused When Trump exploited a lie to make it look like this was foreign terrorism, he was confused as to the reality here that this was one of the few times in the last decade Trump wasn't confused and tell Nay's goes. Brian Stelter is rehired and now with extra strength gullibility.
And we haven't even gotten to the other attack, the one in Vegas. Which story and headlines did you read headlines about the instability of Matthew Libbelsberger or his desire to see all Democrats killed. The kill democrats part was in Josh Marshall's talking Points memo. The instability was in Oh look the Washington on his notes feature on his iPhone. This man who blew himself and his tesla up in front of the Trump Hotel in Vegas had written quote
military and vets move on DC starting now. Militias facilitate and augment this activity. Occupy every major road along FED buildings and the campus of FED Buildings by the hundreds of thousands. Lock the highways around down with semis right after everybody gets in hold until the purge is complete. Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the FED government and military
by any means necessary. They all must go, and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse. So which have you heard more about the suicide car bomber and face it, that's what he was, and his hopes to have some body murder half the country all at once, Or how much that nice Elon Musk helped the police sort out what was left of his blow
him up truck? How about the New York Times on a different topic New Year's Day, in this from the Democrat who replaced George Santos, Let's try something different at how we deal with Trump? That was the headline above Tom Swazi's childish op ed. At least it had his byline on It might have been written by a kindergartner somewhere. To change and fix America requires both parties to work together.
As a Democratic member of Congress, I know my party will be tempted to hold fast against mister Trump at every turn, uniting against his bills, blocking his nominees, and grinding the machinery of the House and the Senate to a halt. That would be a mistake. Only by working together to find compromise on parts of the President Elect's agenda can we make progress for a Americans who are clearly demanding change in the economy, immigration, crime, and other
top issues. I'm no dupe. Some of mister Trump's actions offer little reassurance that he is ready to embrace the bipartisanship and compromise essential to a functioning democracy. Hey, Bud, sorry, you are a dupe. In fact, that's exactly what you are. Have you been on Mars since twenty fifteen, Democrats have repeatedly tried to compromise with this would be dictator Joe Biden is still doing it. Trump does not want progress, he does not want change, he does not want compromise.
He wants submission. And speaking of submission, does anybody remember at Kirsten Cinema? So the Republicans want to ram it through the Senate by asking the Senate parliamentarian filibuster rules and let them stuff immigration policy into a funding bill. And if the parliamentarian says f no, they would then simply vote in the Senate to ignore the parliamentarian, to break the rules of the filibuster. So Semaphore asks Kirsten
about this quote. I've heard rumors that there's going to be a movement to pressure Senate Republicans to overrule the parliamentarian in order to enact policy in reconciliation. That would be a backdoor elimination of the filibuster and very dangerous. Stop laughing, she said, backdoor elimination. I took a lot
of heat for that. She goes on. I did repeatedly tell my Democratic colleagues that their attempts to use the reconciliation tool to achieve immigration reform would be against the reconciliation rules would be ruled out of order that I would not be willing to overturn. That's what Kirsten Cinema thinks happened when she stopped Democrats that's from tampering with the filibuster. That's how she rationalized killing improvements. Kirsten, Kirsten, Kirsten,
look at me. This is somebody out here in the real world actually talking to you. Now, this is not just your own ego inside your own echo chamber. You were warned that if you stop the Democrats from doing anything to the filibuster, the Republicans would do stuff to the filibuster anyway, and what has happened. You stop the Democrats from doing something to the filibuster, and the Republicans have now done it. Anyway, two more more to take
with you. I guess they're leavening moments. In case you thought Republicans in office would do nothing except lying Trump's pockets, here is a surprise for you, you cynical bastard. The Office of Congressional Ethics has gotten a new name. The Republicans say it will now be called the Office of Congressional Conduct, which is at least an admission that there are no
longer any ethics in Congress. And I am happy to say that, in the spirit of Tom Squase, I have a compromise fix for Trump and the half staff flags during his inauguration. He is in an utter rage, even for him, that the nation will continue to observe as usual mourning for a former president recently deceased. He explains the flags must be returned to normal height because no
president has ever been mistreated more than he. Lincoln, McKinley, Garfield, and JFK might argue this point, but the Trump motto is, after all, how I pity me? Well, as I said, I have a fix, the great compromiser me just tell Trump that the flags at half staff are not just about Jimmy Carter. They're also a sign of extra special
respect for him. They are in advance memory of him, that the nation has decided to offer Trump a unique opportunity to see this sign of honor while he's still alive, and tell him that if he goes along with this, a picture of him saluting that flag at half staff for Jimmy Carter and for himself, that will be so special it will get him next week's cover of US News and World Report. Also of interest here in this all new edition of Countdown, how I did not become
an actor fifty years ago and how Trump did? Plus worst persons and you'll never guess whose birthday it is and what she's doing next? And your hint is she's my ex and apparently she was RFK Junior's ex. If FaceTime counts, that's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead on Countdown. Remember Flacco. There is a new book out about Flacco, The Owl, The Central Park Owl, literally you must buy it. And Why I'm not an actor. It's a terrifying story first, believe
it or not. There's still more new idiots to talk about the daily roundup of the miss grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days. Other worse persons in the world Lebron's worse. No, not the late newscaster Aaron Brown, but those who covered his passing. Aaron Brown was seventy six years old when he died last week. I worked with him at CNN in two thousand and
one and two thousand and two. I found him to be well, you know my reputation that was him, a very gifted newscaster and a very calming presence, especially since he was at CNN on nine to eleven getting used to his office and the layout of where the bathrooms were. When the planes hit the towers and they put him on the air, he went to work literally for orientation meetings. Fifteen or sixteen hours later he got off the air after talking about the worst terrorist attack in American history.
He did exceptional work. He continued to do it almost every day, as I did and others did in the thirty forty days after the attacks, and he did other great things in his career. But I was a little bit surprised by the nature of the coverage. Aaron was not easy during the first break, maybe a month after nine to eleven and I had been working at CNN along with ABC Radio during that time, and I was
on his show as a correspondent and a commentator. Aaron was going to take a day off, and I was going to take a day off, And it was the same day off and his Seattle Mariners, he had worked in local news in Seattle, were playing the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium. And I had my season tickets then, and I said, come up to Yankee Stadium. Let's just forget this for a couple of hours and have a good time up there. And he looked at me like
I had just suggested. He pushed pins inside his brain, like just you know, hit yourself over the head with a mallet. He would have responded to it better. Why would I want to do that? Why would I want to do that? I have a day off, Why would I want to do that? And all he talked about was the Seattle Mariners. I never quite figured Aaron Brown out. So the encomia from Jeff green Field and Jeff Tubin, two people I liked with and worked with also and
respect greatly to this day. And Jeff Greenfield, who was the man for whom I was the principal backup host when he had a show on CNN at this same time, when Aaron Brown was on the air as the principal news anchor at CNN. I appreciate them, I believe them utterly. However, the one from Anderson Cooper, I'm not so sure about. Let me read from Oliver Darcy's newsletter. CNN mourned the loss of former anchor Aaron Brown, who died Sunday at seventy six. Anderson Cooper praised Brown as a great writer
and broadcaster. Anderson Cooper was just starting at CNN in two thousand and one about the time I was. He was a couple of months ahead of me. But for a while he and I were at the same point in whatever he saw as the race to the top at CNN, and Aaron Brown was in the distant future for us. And Anderson didn't like that Anderson was the principal backup to Aaron Brown. I was just a correspondent.
I never hosted Aaron Brown show. And Anderson Cooper spent most of the time that I knew him working at CNN together for about a year and a half. He spent most of his time trying to unseat Aaron Brown, get his show from him, and if not, get his show from him every night at ten o'clock, supplant him as the number one anchor at CNN, and he managed
to do it. Now, he didn't do it because of any of his own machinations, because I don't think Anderson Cooper is that good at machinations, nor that means spirited Aaron did it. They seem to have left off in the obituaries, the story of how Aaron Brown basically stopped being the number one newscaster at CNN, and in fact
stopped being a newscaster of any kind. On February first, two thousand and three, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during landing and spread a debris field across Louisiana and Texas. It was a nightmare of biblical proportions, to use the cliche, and it killed all seven astronauts on board and traumatized America at a time when we were still pretty traumatized
from nine to eleven. I was not supposed to resume my news career until about a week later, so I missed this story and was at home watching it play out, and the secondary story that developed, which was where in the hell is CNN's primary anchor Aaron Brown. All the news anchors it happening on a weekend were either off or on vacation, and the Associated Press report from the time noted Tom Brokaw was snorkeling off the Virgin Island Saturday morning when he saw the boat's captain forty feet
away frantically waving, I can just hear this. Tom Brokaw was snorkeling off the Virgin Islands. He was on the air later that day. The lead anchors for ABC and CBS made it on the air too. Peter Jennings apparently drove in from the island. Dan Rather was on the air by seven thirty am Pacific time, but, returning to the Associated Press article, not CNN's Aaron Brown, whose absence
until Sunday night was the source of much speculation. Brown, it turns out, was playing golf in the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic at Lakinta in Palm Desert, which was televised on CBS midday Saturday, after the network ended several hours of shuttle coverage. CNN sources said Brown, who was promoted as the network's lead anchor when he was hired away from ABC two years ago, told the network he wasn't
available to come to work. The decision infuriated some executives as well as some on his staff, the CNN sources said, Brown, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment, but was quoted Sunday in the Palm Springs Desert Sun as saying that didn't make sense to go to New York. Going to CNN's Los Angeles office, as he said, didn't make any sense because I didn't have any clothes. A note that is now too late for Aaron to hear it. They sell
clothes in Los Angeles. Brown also told the Desert Sun, I felt like I was in two places today and it was difficult. I felt a profound sadness at what happened. It's horrible. A golf tournament, even a fun one, it didn't matter. It took the fun out of it today for me. How about everybody else in America, especially the ones on top of the Space Shuttle. Again, as I said, it was his obituary. He's gone. There's no reason to include all this in great detail. As you bid farewell
to a man who was a newscaster. And a prominent one twenty years ago. But still you think mention this somewhere in perhaps less blunt terms than I have in rereading the coverage from two thousand and three when Aaron Brown refused to come in to cover the big story of the day because he didn't have any clothes and it took all the fun out of him. Today, Tom Brokaw snorkeled here from the Virgin Islands to cover the store. Needless to say, CNN was in quite a mess in
two thousand and three. I've told those stories many times, and I will not belabor my being negative about a guy who just died last week by adding to them. But at one point in the mornings, they tried this group Paul Is as the main host, Jack Cafferty as the side host, Anderson Cooper doing the news updates at the bottom and top of the hour, and the third person in to liven it up me that lasted eight days back to worse persons and the runner up Worser.
It's shared by Nancy Base, the idiot Congresswoman, with what her former communications director Natalie Johnson describes as quote your botched, cheap hooker inspired boob job unquote and David Freeman, the disgraced ex Texas cop who posts online under the moronic name Gunther Eagleman because he couldn't think of anything that
sounded more Germanic Gunter Egelman. All right, here's a sequence of tweets Fox News was first US Appeals Court upholds Trump verdict in e Gen Carrol defamation case, and then the link to the Fox story. Nancy Mace retweets this and says, I hope George Stephanopoulos sees this, to which
Gunther Eagleman Gunta Eagleman responds, Mike drop boom. It apparently did not occur to Nancy Mace or Guntor Eagleman that the US Appeals Court uphold holding the Trump verdict in the Egen Carroll defamation case was siding with Egen Carroll against our illegitimate president elect. Nancy Mace deleted hers no, no, no, no, not the boob job the tweet, but our winner again.
Second reference Oliver Darcy of the Media newsletter status. Now, let me be clear, this is one of those times when worst person in the world is not meant to be taken literally. Oliver Darcy does great work, is a great guy has great principles, maybe the last person in his field with principles. It's possible to look over media criticism and say, principle okay, And he has one percent. This guy, Darcy, he's got ninety eight percent of all
the principles in the field. But but however, however, something he has written in his preview of the year in media in twenty twenty five has just scared the living crap out of me. I will just quote it. It's very brief. Who will New York Magazine hire to Phil it's now vacant Washington correspondent role, And what will Olivia Newsy do next? Oh no, don't tell me, Dear God, don't tell me. Don't make me think about it. Please, I don't want to know. I don't want to guess.
I don't want to speculate. After the Biden article scandal last year and the hints from her ex fiance that she had some kind of dream like while still awake experience last year and them trying to get the other one arrested and get the FBI involved and restraining orders and hacking, and then trying to get them fired, and she did lose her job, and I don't know what the hell happened to him. He's still on a leave of absence from Politico. They don't even mention him anymore.
And then the RFK Junior FaceTime fiasco. Please please don't tell me what she's gonna do next. Please don't do anything this year. Just sit back, Olivia, just let it all wash away. Look, the Aaron Brown should be your role model. I didn't even mention the day he played at the Bob Hope Desert Classic instead of coming in to cover the Space Shuttle blowing up. It'll go away if you wait long enough. What will she do next?
How in the hell could anybody say? Plus, I'm not sure the answer to that question, what will she do next? Is not destroy the world as we know it. It's bad enough. Today's January sixth, as I managed to remember, still all these years later, January sixth is also Olivia's birthday. Oliver, could you have cut that out for Space Darcy? Two days worse person? I mean this kidding, Lee, I feel better now. Things I promised not to tell in my
career as an actor, which lasted twenty four hours. But first, some headlines, some updates, some snark, and some postscripts to the news. This is the Countdown podcast, and these are the places where there's news. Date line, Central Park, New York. You remember Flacco, don't you, The giant Eurasian eagle owl, not eagle, but eagle owl who escaped from, was liberated from, moved out of his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo here in fun city. And this is how time passes.
That happened two years ago next month. Flacco died one year ago next month due to what in fact our
typical hazards of living here, bad apartment buildings and poison. Flacco, nearly two feet tall with a wingspan of about six feet, was an amazing resident of this city who spent his year of freedom living all around Manhattan, and who chose roost after roost around the park and basically lived like you would live if you could fly, sampling everything that was wonderful about New York and living everywhere you could
find with a good view of the park. It was a privilege to be his neighbor and to know he was out there, and to see him occasionally and know he was there enjoying the hell out of himself. And now he has been memorialized in a startlingly beautiful book called Finding Flacco. I don't do book recommendations here, but you have to get this one. The authors are noted New York birders Jacqueline Emery and David Lay. It is a coffee table sized edition of two hundred and twenty
three pages. As they joke about good books, it's a great book. Also. It can be doubling as a weapon if you need one, if you need to smack somebody in the head while you run away. Every page is more beautiful than the last, and it's just stunning. Flacco was many things, but for most of them was photogenic. And there must be four hundred pictures of him in there, bright and glowing with his orange eyes and a golden
and almost brindle coat of feathers. And his story is documented from photos of him in the wild to photos of him on construction sites and somebody's balcony, and all the personal stories about all of us interacting with him and seeing him and looking for him and knowing he was there. The book is fifty bucks, and it is cheap. At fifty bucks, I was genuinely surprised they have not
charged more. They have a website for this Flaco book flacobook dot com, or it is available at all the online booksellers finding Flaco and I do not do book plugs here. Get the book and you will have him with you always. Dyline, Queens, New York. Okay, this is not breaking news. It's not nearly as beautiful as Flacco. It is about a book, though, and in fact it
is at least eighty five years old, this news. But I only found about it last Friday, and I'm still stunned because it's about a place I first went to in the year nineteen sixty four, and I have visited this area hundreds of times, and I never knew this Here were read The Great Gatsby, one of the top
five American novels ever. F Scott Fitzgerald and Bob Redford is in the movie, and Fitzgerald's imagery about the wanton destruction of America and society and morals by the rich of the nineteen twenties is illustrated in The Great Gatsby two symbols, and one of them is this recurring image of the ash heaps. The ash heaps, the big piles of blah, black leftover charred remains of God knows what ash heaps that violated the landscape in that zone where
New York City turned into Long Island. The ash heaps ten feet high twenty thirty ubiquitous in The Great Gatsby. They are what comes when people who don't care how they make money or how they live their lives despoil the land. Ultimately, they are metaphors for those people, maybe for us. Well, Friday, I found out the ash heaps were real. I never knew that. I mean, I guess if press I would have said, yeah, it must have been some Moreover, Fitzgerald in the book wrote where they were,
and I never made the connection. I mean, he didn't give the literal address, but he basically gave it away. He said, where the roads and the railroad join up to run along the same corridor from the city to the Hamptons, that's where the ash heaps were. Turns out, there are photographs. The ash heaps were real, and they were uglier and more menacing, and they covered a larger
area even than Fitzgerald described. And it turns out they were centered around the intersection of one hundred and twenty sixth Street and Roosevelt Avenue in the Corona and Flushing areas of Queens here in big city. And you know what's there now where Gatsby's ash heaps were one hundred
and twenty six in Roosevelt. Nothing much, just the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center where they play the US Open every year, and City Field where the New York Mets play and where their old home, say Stadium used to be, dating back to nineteen sixty four, and where the nineteen sixty four sixty five New York's World Fair was and the nineteen thirty nine New York's World Fair.
And that's what happened to Fitzgerald's ash heaps. And every time you go to the tennis or through the Mets game, or you just watch either of them on TV, that's what you're seeing, the ash heaps. Two points about this. To New York Mets fans, this explains everything. Of course, Sar Stadium is built on ash heaps, and in the kind of irony that fiction like the Great Gatsby and authors like fitzg year Old might have dreamed of suggesting
or implying, but only reality can enact. The main stadium at the National Tennis Center is named for yet another tennis immortal. It is called the Arthur ash Stadium. Still ahead on this all new Big Show. Trump, as you know, is an actor, a bad actor. But as I was reminded this weekend, anybody can be a great actor for a span of from five to fifteen seconds. Ask Trump, ask orson wells or as in this next edition of Things I promised not to tell. Ask me fifty years ago.
For literally one day, twenty four hours, I was convinced by somebody who should have known, that not only should I become an actor, but if I did, I would become a great actor. Things I promised not to tell about my stunning performance in the Odd Couple. First, we have not done this in a long time, featuring a
dog in need whom you can help. Every dog has its day, but this story is near and dear to my heart, and especially to the heart of my newest pup, Kit, who turned seven months old on Saturday and is just fine. Other than his belief than any time of the day or night is the time to wrestle with his family or bark. While I am recording, Kit came to me needing PDA surgery. The ceiling off of a duct between
the vessels near your heart or in your heart. Oversimplifying, Obviously, the duct is between the vessels that carry oxygenated blood to the heart and the vessels near your heart that carry deoxygenated blood from your heart back to the lungs to be reloaded. All mammals have this duct. It seals off the moment you or your baby or your dog take your first breath, or it doesn't seal off, and
that's where the PDA surgery comes in. Left that way, it will produce a terrible, inconsistent heartbeat, and sooner or later it will burst, and it will fill the lungs with fluid, and it will kill you or your dog or kit. Happily, surgery not only works, it cures. Basically, you fix this and you get a normal life expectancy. It is delicate surgery. It's costly, it's precise, and it's terrifying because the younger the puppy is, or the human baby or whatever. The better kit was two pounds and
six ounces. I have been through a lot of surgeries with my dogs, counting oral surgeries. I think this was the tenth. Nothing has scared me more. He's so little. Then the surgeon reminded me, you know we do do this on kittens. He would be a big kitten. Kit's fine. You barely can tell where the incision was, and the incision ran from his armpit to his knee. So Kit is fine, and now I want Tippy to be fine too. I nearly wound up with Tippy instead of Kit. It
was pure logistics and timing that made it otherwise. Tip is in Virginia. Kit is in the northeast and was so. American Maltese Association Rescue, where I got Kit and where Tippy is, has taken care of and taken responsibility for this nine month old pup and Tippy's PDA surgery, and frankly, we need the money to foot the bill. This is more or less my rescue. I don't have anything to
do with it in terms of running it. But Kit came to me through AMAR, and so did Ted, and so did my late lamented boys Mi Nay, the Jumper and little Mishoe. So I can tell you this organization is one hundred percent about the dogs, and the money will go to Tippy's recovery, and you don't have to worry about any of that. And we could use any dollar you can spare. There is a giving grid set up for Tip. Just go to givinggrid dot com search for Tippy. You'll find him. Anything you can spare will
help Tip. Thanks you, Kit, thank you, and as always I thank you. Finally, on the countdown things I promised not to tell, and I was listening to somebody and I can't remember who it was in the past couple of days talk about Donald Trump, Man of faith. I remember. It's something that dawned on me when I was about sixteen seventeen years old and has been proven true every year since, which is everybody can be a great actor
for five to fifteen seconds. Some can be a great actor for five seconds to fifty years, but anybody, given enough takes, as we say, can be a great actor for from five to fifteen seconds. I base this on
two stories that don't have anything to do with Trump. I, for one day, one twenty four hour period, in the spring of nineteen seventy five, was going to abandon my then fairly well formed plan of becoming a sports broadcaster and writer, and probably a news reporter as well, abandon them entirely to become an actor, on the advice of somebody who had seen me working towards a media goal and had seen me act, and he suddenly blurted out that I should do the latter, and I will tell
that story last. The other piece of evidence that I have is of one of the great tragic stories of actual actors, Orson Wells. Whatever else you might have thought of him, and what you might think of him in terms of creativity, now that it's impossible to judge Citizen Kane as if you had never seen any of the thousand innovations of Citizen Kane before. Orson Wells was a great actor. Now he was not necessarily the most varietous of actors. He could not perhaps appear in a thousand
different styles. You always knew it was him, and he was almost always over the top. But if you wanted an over the top performance, whether it was as Citizen Kane or as the man behind the original thing that made him famous, the nineteen thirty eight War of the World's radio broadcast, or anything else, the wine commercials. The outtake on the famous radio wine commercials where he berates the writer and the producer of these wine commercials for half an hour on a sixty second spot that he
was supposed to read whatever the context it is. Orson Wells was a great actor, an over the top, wonderful, loud, no subtlety, no variation performer, one of the best of all time. But by I guess nineteen seventy he had basically given up. Orson Wells was tortured for thirty years because a the greatest movie he ever made, and to that point, anybody ever made, he made in his first movie.
And what do you do after that? It's nineteen forty one, you're about twenty seven, twenty eight years old, and there's nowhere to go but down, And he went down. Also, he didn't exactly help those people who might have been trying to help him erase that reputation. He was incapable of suffering fools gladly, or incapable of suffering almost anybody gladly, you know, my reputation. His reality was like a thousand
times that. Okay, So that's Orson Welles. And by the time nineteen seventy or so rolls around, he's been beaten up and he's given up. His life has only what ten years or so to go. He's reduced to doing wine commercials, and he just doesn't care anymore. He's probably about four hundred pounds and he just doesn't care anymore. But he is still a brilliant actor for five to
fifteen seconds at a stretch. Mike Nichols, the great director of The Graduate and a thousand other wonderful films, and the former comedy partner of Elaine May, Nichols and May one of the great comedy teams of all time, breakers of all kinds of taboos and traditions in the late fifties and early sixties, and then he suddenly veered off to direct and was brilliant told this story about filming Orson Wells in one of the great underrated films of
all time. One of the greatest movies of all time was dismissed because in retrospect, how on the hell you're going to make a movie out of Catch twenty two? And when they put Catch twenty two out, it wasn't as great as the novel, which would have required a movie of maybe forty five forty six hours long, with seventeen simultaneous scenes going on and plot twists that you ever never understood. Catch twenty two was supposed to be
in a book a kind of Kaleidoscope on fire. That's the feel you get from reading it, and you're not quite sure what's going on for three hundred pages, and somehow Mike Nichols translated this into an excellent film. In fact, I think, I think a classic film, and it's just now being rehabilitated fifty years later to being well okay. One of the streamers did a series of Catched twenty two a couple of years ago, and it tried to unpack the complexity and left us with a rather boring
Second World War story. Mike Nichols film did not do that. Mike Nichols film gives you, at least that very similitude, like you're sort of reading Catch twenty two and it comes to life. And one of the reasons is Orson Wells makes a cameo in which he plays a general
who doesn't care, so he's perfect for the role. But Mike Nichols told a story about the acting of Orson Wells by this year nineteen seventy and how he didn't care anymore and to the degree to which he didn't care anymore, and it was an extraordinary story, and it underscores my point emphasized by Trump and my own personal experiences that anybody can be a great actor for from
five to fifteen seconds. He said, Nichols, that is that by the time they got a hold of Orson Wells to play General Dreadle, he directed Nichols, that is directed Orson Wells personally, and I'm sure was quite nervous in doing so. And he said, how would you like to approach this scene? And Wells just looked at him inside and went, I don't know the lines. I don't have any idea of the context. I have never read the script, I don't know the book, I don't know these other actors.
This is what I want you to do. Tell me exactly what it is you want me to say. Tell me exactly where you want me to stand, Tell me exactly how you want me to address and who you want me to address as I deliver my lines. Tell me when we are in close up, tell me when we are taking a second shot for cover. And let's get this done. But between each take, I want you to repeat to me exactly the way you want me to say, exactly the line you want me to say.
And Mike Nichols had never contemplated this form of acting before, and so Mike Nichols said, well, let's try that Orson and I believe I don't know. I'm just guessing that Orson. Wells responded by saying, please call me mister Wells in
any event. They go and shoot one of I believe Wells's two film scenes in Catch twenty two, and Mike Nichols says, all right, stand over here a look towards Martin Balsam as you say this, and just tilt your head slightly back so I can see under the visor and not get too much of a shadow the visor on your hat. And you say, if he wants to accept a metal while naked, what business is it of yours? Emphasizing yours, and Wells goes, he wants to turn of yours. Say it to me again, he wants to accept a
metal while naked? What business is it of yours? I've got it, please roll, and Wells delivers it, and then delivers it a second time exactly correctly. Do you have enough? Are we doing the wide shot of this? All right?
I'll wait, and then they widen out and shoot the same scene again, and he delivers the line again, asking Mike Nichols to remind him to do this line one more time, how he wants it done, and he does it again, and Mike Nichols said, the entirety of Orson Wales's performance in Catch twenty two, one of the great cameos in one of the great underrated, maybe the greatest, most underrated film of all time, is done this way.
The mina bird theory of acting. Never Mind Lee Strasbourg, never mind realism, never mind summoning emotions, never mind any of this stuff from that guy in that awful serious succession in his theories of acting, Brian Cox. Never mind that the mina bird theory, which dovetails with my idea that Trump could actually stand there and pretend that the only God he believes in is not him and for five to fifteen seconds be among the greatest actors of
all time. This theory came to me first on the day I referred to from the Year of Our Lord nineteen seventy five, when I I was pretty much convinced, even at that late date, with my college career already mapped out in front of me, I was going to
change courses and become an actor. Two friends of mine were performing as a project and we all had these as seniors at Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York, a special project, something that kept us out of class the last month or so, on the theory that graduating seniors weren't showing up anyway, we might as well give them something to do well. My two friends Ron and Eric did the Odd Couple, and they asked me, as a sometimes member of the group of the acting group at
Hackley School, to portray Speed, the accountant. And Speed is an interesting role and has a couple of funny lines and most notably starts to play with the first lines of the play. And the first night I came out and sat down at the poker table in the darkness of our chapel at Hackley School, there was a giant cleek light where my light where my butt was supposed to be on this chair, and I had to move
it quickly before the lights came out. Otherwise we would have rewritten the Odd Couple, in which the first scene is not Speed saying excuse me, sir, aren't you the one they called the Cincinnati Kid or whatever it was. Instead it would have been curtain rises. Speed is shown moving a giant cleeglight out of the view of the audience, got it out of the way, hit it somewhere, reprimanded the staff not for the last time, and we proceeded
with the play. We were only giving two performances, and we had done I think two dress rehearsals, and it had gone fairly well. My major concern as a sixteen year old actor who was doing it just for experience in front of a crowd while talking, had no goal whatsoever of becoming an actor. Enjoyed parts of it, but
really was worried about forgetting my lines. Well I did, okay, didn't forget my lines, kind of enjoyed it, enjoyed the flow of it, enjoyed working with the pacing of it and trying to time my lines exactly right and how loud I should be to be heard in the back of the chapel. And then something happened about I don't know.
Midway through one of the early scenes I was in, I started to deliver a line from backstage down to a character who was seated closer to the audience, and as I said the words, and we'd done it in two dress rehearsals and countless other scene rehearsals, I thought intuitively. It just came to me. Don't say it yet, widen your eyes and stare at the guy before you say it.
And I don't remember. I've looked several times over the years, in the nearly fifty years since, I have looked through the script of the End Couple trying to find the scene. I can't remember which it is. It's one of three or four different scenes. But at some point I looked at in my soul and said, pause and stare at him, stare daggers at him, and it got a laugh. Not Neil Simon, the author of the play, not his laugh,
my laugh. There was no planning involved in this whatsoever. Then, before delivering the line, which I was trying to do so I wouldn't forget the rest of the lines and get out of my rhythm, something else told me stand up. I rose slowly and got a second laugh. Then something else told me innocently, not even really hearing the applause or the laughter from the audience, but just knowing that but what was supposed to happen next was not what
we had rehearsed. I then moved downstage, kind of like I was approaching a bomb that was about to go off, and I looked at this guy and kind of tilted my head to the side and delivered the line. And as I started to deliver the line, I got a third laugh, to the point where I had to repeat the line, which got its own laugh, which was Neil Simon's laugh. The kid responding to me with his laugh
line got a little titter from the audience. And then I started to turn back to go back to my seat on stage, and stopped and turned back at him again, just raised my eyebrows and again said nothing, and I got another laugh. Then I walked and sat down, and the way I sat down, with utter defeat and a slump into the chair, I got a fifth laugh of my own. It was only then that I realized that none of this was prepared, and none of this was
what we were planning to do. And as anybody who ever directed a bunch of kids, no matter how serious they were about it in anything, knows that the most important thing about being the adult in the room is keeping the plan intact. You don't want somebody suddenly getting some sort of creative muse telling him to start acting
and walking around the stage in new ways. During the first performance, and I realized that our advisor, mister Clark, who was the director, John Clark, was going to verbally beat the hell out of me. God knows he had in the past. John Clark was the faculty advisor to the Hackley Dial, our student newspaper, to the yearbook, to the radio station where I was Chris Berman's protege for a year and then became the sports director after Chris graduated,
and the drama group. So there wasn't a lot of media at Hackley, but but there were four separate entities, and he was in charge of all of them. So he'd known me a long time, and we'd had many many disputes, like the time they threatened to throw me out of school for an editorial I wrote for the newspaper. In any event, we get to the intermission and I come off the stage and John Clark is just looking at me, But he doesn't look at me like I'm insane or I have just broken all the rules of
Hackley School drama group. He looks at me and he said, I want to talk to you afterwards, not now, I want to talk to you afterwards about that scene. And I said, I'm sorry, I just yid, No, no, no, you don't have to be sorry. Just something happened there that we should talk about. Don't worry about it. I wanted to reassure you don't worry about it, which I've never heard him say before. He always wanted me to worry about it. So we finished the play and it
was really good. For a high school group doing the odd couple. It was pretty good. I was pretty good, And the guy had delivered the line too was pretty good. And the guy who played Murray the cop was pretty good. And Ron and Eric as Felix and Oscar, they were
pretty good. We get off the stage and everybody says goodbye, and some of the parents come backstage, and some of the guys in the audience come backstage, and kids in the class come backstage, and everybody says, that was really worth it, which is about the highest compliment you can give high school actors. And then John Clark takes me aside and he said, tell me what made you get up and pause before you delivered that line in the first act. And I said, I don't know. It just
felt like the right thing to do. Right then. You didn't plan it? No, God, no, what about the second thing, well, it seemed to be consistent with what the speed had just done. And I have to admit that I heard the laugh, and they seemed to be in a mood to laugh. This would make me laugh, So I got up and I did that. He said, when you gave him the double take on the way back before you slouched into the chair. I said, I don't know where
that came from. He said, listen, you and I have gone back and forth about this newspaper and the radio station and the yearbook, and your desire to become a sportscaster, and I'd just like to tell you something. What you exhibited on stage tonight was called instinct. I could teach this class and this drama group for a thousand years with a thousand students every year, and nobody else would
ever have anything resembling that. I suppose I could get together twenty professional actors and not one of them would have that kind of instinct in a ten year span. I know you want to become a sportscaster, and I'm sure you will become that if you choose to proceed that way. You've already gotten into Cornell, and you already have your plans and you're already working on this magazine over here, and working on this book about sports cards
you're already involved in. You're already going on the route. Drop it, drop it right now and become an actor. If you become an actor, you will become one of the great actors of our time. And I, of course just laughed. I went, Okay, what's the joke? He said, Have you ever known me to joke with you? Have I ever been really nice to you? No, mister Clark, have I ever been really nice to anybody here? To
your knowledge. I don't like to think of myself and this was one of the first times I heard an adult, particularly one of my teachers, use this term. I don't like to think of myself as being an asshole to everybody, but I don't think of myself as being gratuitous and unnecessarily friendly to everybody either. Listen to me, this was like, this was like watching Olivier step on to the stage for the first time. And I said, did he do a lot of comedy? And now John Clark laughs and went,
that's it, that's your instinct. There are professionals out there who have their own TV series who pray every night for that instinct, do not let it go to waste in sports casting. And I said, you're serious, and he said, I'm serious. Neil Simon would say the same thing to you. Well that got to me and I thought, you know, and I said this to him. You know what I did like out there? And this was my third or
fourth play. And again it had been just to join the group and get a little experience performing in front of a crowd, which I figured I'd have to do as a sportscaster. I just I just began for the first time to kind of enjoy the applause. I mean, if you're broadcasting or on ESPN, or on MSNBC, or on network radio or doing a podcast, you don't hear
any applause. I mean, sometimes there are public events in which you might get a mighty roar, might go up from the crowd, but often years go by between those events, and you have to just sort of assume that they're out there applauding. And when you do that, of course, you turn very slowly but very surely crazy. Yes, they're all out there in the dark Norma Desmond Alderman. But back to nineteen seventy five and the odd couple. We
were to present it again the next night. The next night, the second of two performances, and now there was a buzz going into this because of my performance as speed, to the point where one of the two I can't remember which, either Felix or Oscar, came to me beforehand
and said, don't show us up again. He was very upset. Well, we did the performance, and it came time for that scene, and now I knew where it was and what my instincts had told me to do the previous night, and I knew they wouldn't be naturally, would not be absolutely organic, they would be me with some rehearsal involved. And when it came time to deliver that line and I stared at that kid before giving it, I got a bigger laugh.
And when I rose from my seat and looked at him before going over to talk to him and deliver the line right on top of his head, I got another bigger laugh. And when I stood next to him, I added a second or two paws before saying the line basically to the top of his head, and I got twice the laugh I had the night before, and now it was rehearsed, it wasn't just a question of instinct. Now I was adding to instinct, and I went, hey, I like this. And at the intermission John Clark just
looked at me gave me a thumbs up. He said, whenever you have the instinct, don't change the words. Never change the words. But feel free to do the business. The stairs, the walks, the motions, the double chakes, the larger than life noises like my dog's barking out there. Do it when it comes to you, naturally, when Kit interferes, do it, Hey, Kit, quiet down. So now we go
out to do the second half of the play. And again I have checked the script of The Odd Couple, and I can't remember what it was, but there is a scene in The Odd Couple in which one of the other actors has to say a line otherwise Felix cannot come back in from the kitchen. And if you do it exactly wrong, where you forget the line entirely, Felix will be out in the kitchen forever for eternity. Your play, instead of being less than two hours, will
take many millennia. Well, sure enough, the youngest kid in our cast, a guy named Ron, had very few lines in the play. He was one of the poker players, and he was supposed to say, hey, Felix, come on in here with that sandwich or whatever the line was. And he forgot my greatest fear, and it hadn't happened to me, and I hadn't seen it before. My greatest fear was forgetting the line, and here it was happening
next to me, and the poor kid panicked immediately. He was, I believe, a sophomore, so he was two years younger than everybody in the cast except me. He was probably about my age, maybe a little younger. And he froze. And when I say he froze, I mean as Scoop
the accountant. One of my props I had with me was a notepad and a pen and some pencils in my vest pocket, and I wrote the line down for this poor guy and handed it to him on a piece of paper, and he was so frozen, so terrified, so distraught at what had happened, that he could not even recognize that that was the line that had to be said. So mister Clark in the back signaled to us, turned the lights off, brought the curtain down symbolically, since there was not a real curtain, and that was the
end of the performance. I believe we went out and finished the play, but by that point a lot of people had left backstage. Twenty four hours after John Clark had put into my head the idea that I could be the greatest actor of a generation in the same dressing area, with the same makeup, lights, nity mirrors. Poor Ron, who had just screwed up the play by freezing, with the worst possible outcome unless you fell off the stage
into the crowd. Ron took about three steps off the stage and into that back dressing area and face planted and started to wail. I don't know how many times in your life you have seen an otherwise healthy and uninjured sixteen year old boy suddenly begin to scream while crying to unravel like a toddler, But not in anger, not in demand, not in selfishness, but in guilt, his
horror that he had screwed up the play. The idea that you could do that by simply forgetting the line and get so screwed up that you couldn't even recognize the line when it was literally staring you in the face. I went white as a sheet for twenty four hours. I had contemplated the idea that I was going to
give up the whole sports casting thing. And I'd already gone home and looked at the Cornell catalog that I'd gotten to see what the arts classes were like, and if they would admit somebody who was not in the arts college to trying out for the plays, and what the student related, non Cornell class work might be there, and if I could do that and try a little of that, and try a little sportscasting and see what worked out. And at that point I went to hell
with this. I never want to be this close to this happening again, let alone have it happened to me. So as Orson Wells by nineteen seventy and Catch twenty two had given up his great ability, had given up his stage work, had given up everything that required him to actually work rather than perform for five to fifteen
seconds at a time. In nineteen seventy five, at the age of sixteen, at the start of what would have been an otherwise I don't know, thirty three thirty four Oscar career, I don't know what it would have been. I said, I will never act again, nor will I ever go see a live performance again. I can't be this close to this horrible thing happening to anybody ever again, No, sir, I believe. The next performance I saw was Amadaeus on Broadway in nineteen eighty one. It took a girl named
pat McAllister to see it. I was trying to impress her, and I have to admit I sat there half in mortal terror of doing something wrong that would send her away, and half in mortal terror of somebody up there in the stage freezing. It was a terribly uncomfortable experience, more for the latter than the former. I did not see, I think another live performance, maybe one or two, until I went to see Book of Mormon in twenty eleven. Just couldn't do it. My memories of Ron overwhelmed my
memories of the great acting career that never was. I would have been three orson Wells. And yet when people have come to me the Simpsons Family, Guy BoJack Horseman, the movie I've told you about previously, that I was in dead solid perfect and I realized that at no point did I have to act for more than five
to fifteen seconds at a stretch. I took comfort and was able to perform because like Trump up there pretending to be faithful, pretending to be the most religious man on earth and fooling them, Like Orson Wells with his five to fifteen seconds mimicry of Mike Nichols's version of what he should say for his character in Catch twenty two for five to fifteen seconds, anybody can be a great actor, anybody, even me, even Trump. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
I should tell you more about mister Clark and the validation of this story. That's nineteen seventy five. One day I was walking into my office, or perhaps I was already seated in my office at CNN in the lobby of World Trade Center number one in nineteen eighty two or nineteen eighty three, as the CNN National Sports Correspondent, which was my third full time job in broadcasting. I was twenty four to twenty five years old, and we opened.
We had a giant glass wall where everybody in the lobby could stare at what we were doing and not hear a word. We were saying the definition of TV news. But in the lobby we could see thousands of people pass through the crossroads of the Nation. Was not Grand Central. It was having an office with a big picture window in the lobby of the World Trade Center. And one day I saw mister Clark walking across, and it was
no question that was him. He was in a bow tie, as he had been often in Hacke seven eight years previously. And I just went, my god, it's mister Clark walking past my TV office. Because I did not go into the acting profession, and so I ran out and flagged him down. And he turned around and did a double take and shook his head a couple of times to make sure I was not an apparition, and went, Keith, my god, what are you doing here? And I said, well, as you know, I didn't go into acting. He burst
into laughter. He remembered the entirety of the story. That poor kid Ron, Oh my god, I think he's still back there in the chapel, crying his eyes out. I said, I can't even go to a show live after that. I understand completely. I guess you made your right course, your my choice there and took the right course. Where you know you're working here, you're working. I sometimes I'm in this building. Let's have lunch I said, what do you do. You're not at Hackley anymore? Are you teaching?
I said, where would you be teaching around here? And when I'm not teaching? I worked for the Port Authority which owned the World Trade Center, built the World Trade Center, and I didn't ask he was rushing off to do something else. I did not find out what John Clark was doing for the Port Authority. All I can be sure of was it probably did not involve the odd couple or telling some kid somewhere that he would be
the next rate actor. Thanks for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneil the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and fithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my friend Stevie van zandt everything else was as ever my fault. Get the Flacco book, Finding Flacco, and help our friend Tippy if you can. Let's countdown for today, two weeks until we inaugurate a constitutionally ineligible president. Just four and seventy six days until
the scheduled end of his lame duck term. The next scheduled countdown is next Thursday. This Thursday, I guess I hope to announce a new schedule for this series. Three a week, two and a half a week. I hope to make that announcement by next Monday. All I wanted to do was retire. As always, bulletins is the news warrants till next time. I'm Keith Olremman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Oldreman is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.