Media, Politics, and Democracy

SERIES 3 EPISODE 53: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: You are HERE - at this spot in the map of madness where the New York Times and Politico tried to get away with lying and reporting Trump’s Saturday Arnold Palmer Penis Length monologue – the first thing he has seemed actually INTERESTED in, in weeks - was just ‘telling golf stories.’ You are HERE - where Howard Kurtz actually held Trump more accountable than the Times or Politico or nearly every major news organization.

You are HERE where the Times has been front row for one of the greatest unprecedented political stories in human history – just on a sell-more-newspapers, first draft of history level – I mean it’s up there with the rise of Hitler and the mid-press conference suicide of the Pennsylvania State Treasurer and the death of President Faure of France with his mistress atop him and both of them atop the presidential desk – the Madness of King Trump – and the Times could have owned this story for all time but the Sulzberger-Kahn idea of how to cover this presidential race was to finally look at the Trump Penis Envy and try to explain or analyze it and come up with only two possible explanations: frustration or a desire to entertain. Not: Trump is a full-on KKK level racist and a rapist-in-spirit if not in absolute literal legal fact, and/or Trump is absolutely, positively nuts.

You are HERE where Nate Silver predicts Kamala Harris will win the popular vote, win the Electoral College - and still lose the election. Where the polls in Michigan have her behind by half a point OR ahead by eight. 

You are HERE where a putatively STRAIGHT man Trump spends an awful lot of time talking about other men’s penises and using expletives to demean women, and where Trump drags in a really damaged former SportsCenter co-anchor of mine named Sage Steele and makes her the emcee of one of his staged events and the crowd BOOS HER and he MISPRONOUNCES her name.

Journalism. Use it or lose it. On January 20th. Mr. Sulzberger, you and your Times executives and editors will have helped end democracy in America or damn near done so. Those of us who survive will remember.

B-Block (20:26) SPECIAL COMMENT: So why are we in this horrific place? How are we one week and one day to the election and how is it possible that the polls show anything other than a double-digit lead for the party of the non-racist, able-to-read, non-conspiracy theory candidate? The answer is two words: Mike Tyson. It was trainer Cus D’Amato and his associate Kevin Rooney who perfected managing Tyson’s medication in such a way that they could keep him stable nearly all the time, and then gradually lower his dose in the weeks and days before a fight so that all his maniacal energy would appear IN the ring. 

And then in 1988, two men stepped in to try to take over Mike Tyson’s contract and Mike Tyson’s life: Don King and Donald Trump. King said Tyson should be making millions more than he did under Rooney and manager Bill Cayton, and Trump showed Tyson the world of jet-setters. When Tyson complained that the drugs he needed to keep life manageable made him sleepy and uncomfortable and unhappy, Trump told Tyson: Why are you TAKING them? You are the youngest heavyweight champion in history, you can do what you WANT, you tell THEM what drugs you’ll take. They don’t know you and who knows if the drugs really do you any good? You’re not the troubled kid any more, you’re an adult man, a champion, a God. Dump these idiots making money off you and come with me and Don King and we won’t make you take those drugs!

Today? America is the Mike Tyson of 1988.

C-Block (28:00) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK

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