There’s a reason the History Channel has produced hundreds of documentaries about Hitler but only a few about Dwight D. Eisenhower. Bad guys (and gals) are eternally fascinating. Behind the Bastards dives in past the Cliffs Notes of the worst humans in history and exposes the bizarre realities of their lives. Listeners will learn about the young adult novels that helped Hitler form his monstrous ideology, the founder of Blackwater’s insane quest to build his own Air Force, the bizarre lives of the sons and daughters of dictators and Saddam Hussein’s side career as a trashy romance novelist.
Tue, 19 Oct 2021 10:00
Robert is again joined by Tom Reimann to discuss Morton Downey Junior.
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Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her social discoveries on chimpanzees. So four whole months, the chimps ran away from me. I mean, they take one look at this peculiar white ape and disappear into the vegetation. Bing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Fallschirmjager. That was German name for paratrooper. I don't know why I started the episode saying that Tom was why you did that. How are how are you doing? Do you know that the German word for paratrooper is false from Jagger? I did not know that. Well, now you do. Thank you. They had a, you know, the, the, the, the Nazis had an aquatic little Jeep that could go in the water that they called Ashman vagan. That's sweet. That's kind of funny. Yeah. What do we call it? That's our swimming wagon. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is GI Joe vehicle. It does the the old women pocket. Tom. Yeah, how are you feeling? 2-2 pieces of ****. End of this. I'm vibing on some clown shoes right now. You are vibrant on some clown shoes. Well, right now, Tom, this exact moment, the 2nd in time that we both inhabit, which may be eternal. If if certain philosophers are right, this very moment could go on forever. Both forwards and backwards in time could be completely encompassing as all moments. Are this moment we're gonna talk about a guy you have heard of. Mr Morton Downey. Joe Joe yarn Umm. Dances all the way down. Just just gets my ears. Yeah. Oh yeah. Fine. That's a name. That's a name. Yeah. Tom. Yeah. What do you know about Morton Downey junior? Oh, man. DJ, as we call him. He's like a pinky ring that fell into a puddle of toxic waste and became a man. He's he's he plays. He plays. The slit he plays, the slimy journalist that Danny Glover punches in the face and Predator 2, and he sure isn't Predator 2. You got damn right playing himself. Yeah, he's absolutely playing himself in Predator 2, which is incredible. Yeah. Easily the second best predator movie. It's it's easily the second predator film. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. You can't take that away from it. Yeah, it is the second one of them. Indisputably the second predator film. Yeah, I know. He's like a. He's he's a he was sort of like the the the Ying to Phil Donahue's Yang at the time, where Phil Donahue was like kind of nice and personable and Morton Downey was a real *** ** * *****. Yeah, when he was a real ***** ** **** yeah. And the fun thing about Morton Downey Junior Tom is that if you start researching Morton Downey junior, the first like Google result that tries to autofill when you start typing his name in is is Morton Downey junior related to Robert Downey Junior? And my answer to that is it does not appear to be so. No, just no. Just just a fun coincidence. Which is weird because he does have a famous dad like Robert Downey junior. Yeah, but just a completely different one. I just. That's that's very funny. Yeah. So let's, let's, let's let's talk about MDJ. So Morton Downey Junior was born on December 9th, 1932 in Los Angeles, CA. His father was obviously a guy named Morton Downey. Yeah, 2/3 of these guys are Californians. Well, that in the 30s, I'm like, **** he's old. Yeah, like a lot of these ancient, dusty old racist mummies. That's because they were established by the time the 80s got going and they could really start ******* some **** up for everybody. And that's true. I keep forgetting the 80s was four decades ago. Yeah. It's been a long time since the 80s, thank God. So his father was obviously Morton Downey, which probably means nothing to everyone listening, but I mean an awful lot to people. In the 1920s and early 30s. Morton Downey's nickname was the Irish Nightingale, and he was one of the most popular singers of his day. He had Morton Downey junior, whose first name was Sean, with his first wife Barbara Bennett. And Barbara was famous because she was the sister of two women who were famous actresses. Morton Downey senior would, ultimately. Of five children, four sons and a daughter, he was not a nice man, or at least people who knew Morton Downey junior say he did not think well of his father. There is in fact significant evidence that he despised the man. He desperately wanted to succeed as a singer, and he tried repeatedly as a young man to follow in his father's footsteps, appearing on early game shows where his performance was reviewed positively by guys like Dean Martin. I thought he had an alright voice, but most experts agree he just didn't have what his father had. There was something lacking in his voice that like he was just never going to have the kind of career. His dad had the Downey family were well to do. He grew up, you know, Rich Ish. They lived in, I mean, if you want to know how well to do they were. They lived in Hyannis port in Cape Cod, MA, and their next door neighbors were the Kennedys. Yeah. Yes. It's like that's how that's how much money they got as kids. Rich ish. Yeah. Yeah. They're hanging. They're hanging with the Kennedys. Morton Downey junior was good friends with Joe Kennedy, while Morton or Morton Downey senior was good friends with Joe Kennedy one and as when Morton Downey junior was a child. He would hang out regularly with the Kennedy Boys, you know, like he knew Robert and JFK when they were younger. Hmm, like they were all buds together. I guess down Emma's a bit younger, but Downey attended New York University and, like the others and like our other subjects, seems to have immediately known he wanted a career in radio. He got a job as the program director and announcer for a radio station in Hartford, CT in the early 1950s. Over the next decade and change, he was hired primarily as a DJ, although he also sang for several pop and country records and wrote a handful of songs. Some modest success like Wally George Morton Downey junior bounced around various markets, Phoenix, Miami, Kansas City, San Diego, and Seattle. Also like Wally, he was a huge ******* and had trouble working with people. He was forced to resign from a Miami network when he gave the home phone number for a competing DJ out on the air and insulted the man's wife. Boy like ducks the guy on fly up on the air. I wanna. I wanna hear how I hear him croon. I had no idea that was his background. Ohh. I mean, we can he cut an album, Tom? Ohh, boy. You know what, Tom? We'll play this right now. Sweet. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, let's let's do this. Now I need you to hear his song about the war on drugs. What's it called? Hey there, Mr dealer. Ohh, man. Mr deela. Pushing song. The minds of the kids of America just to make you rich. This leaves bag of the country. Manage of our life. He's like attacking the microphone, yeah. To his eternal promise man. He looks like a skeleton at a costume contest dressed as Dean Martin. Alright, that's probably enough of hey there, Mr dealer. Dear God it is so this will mean more when you had Dean Martin was too kind to him. He was better when he was younger too. His earlier his earlier **** is I think because he's he's he what he was famous when he recorded he's so he was like doing things. Yeah. But he's still like, yeah, it's yeah yeah. It. I don't think he had a bad voice and the stuff you can hear from younger. There's a good documentary about people talk tours of places but yeah, he is he is going real aggro there. Yeah. And it's because, you know he was already a name at that point and he was he was doing a bit or maybe he just like was out of his mind because that's being famous does to you after a while. I know you. And see the cocaine just like an aura. Yeah, yeah, it followed him around. In 1968, Morton took a break from his work, his career, which was again, he was kind of a mix of a DJ and and a kind of a pinch hitter in the music industry, coming in to do background vocals and stuff to work on that campaign for his good childhood friend Bobby Kennedy. When Kennedy was assassinated, Morton wrote a book of poetry with the title Quiet Thoughts make the loudest noise. The book was a way of processing grief, and you can still find a handful of hard. Never copies on Amazon for like $148, you know, I I am not buying one of them. But I did transcribe one of the poems he wrote specifically about Robert Kennedy's death from the documentary of Vacatur. And I'm going to read that to you now. Row upon row of grief, wracked followers, sunken cheeks replacing their years ago, happy faces saying proudly for their departed friend, their final hope, and wondered why a man must die to be a hero, and whether we honor only those our own selfish hearts destroy. Yeah, I don't think sunken cheeks is what he meant to say, but, Umm. But yeah, it's kind of, you know, it's kind of profound. Alright, alright. More. He's certainly like a man who's thinking about like the nature of. Yeah, yeah, that was it was thoughtful. You wouldn't call him a shallow man based on that. He's a man who's trying to process complicated and sorrowful emotions in a in an artistic way. Clearly a person capable of not just feeling grief, but of expressing it artistically. He continued to sing occasionally and he made his living as yet another disc jockey. Until in 1983, the same year that the Wally George TV show starts, a year before Rush Limbaugh got some talk radio, he gets a job as a talk radio host on WDBO in Orlando, FL. So yeah, and again, they're both kind of riding this wave of right wing populism and the rise of the religious right and Ronald Reagan like they're part of a thing. They're not starting it, but they are also influencing the way this thing grows. So Wally George and Morton Downey junior both rode that right wing. Dave and helped to shape it. Morton Downey Junior was even more incendiary and control uncontrolled than Wally. He lost his first talk show gig after he punched a guest, an abortion rights activist named Bill Baird, who he then called a *** ** * *****. So. How many episodes in was that so? Yeah, Wally George screams at people and stuff and I think shoved some folks a few times. Or Nanny Junior just cold cocked a ************ like months into his first talk show and again, a radio talk show. I wonder if you can hear like the meat sound on the on the microphone. I haven't found this audio, but I bet it's great. Next, according to the New York Times quote, Mr Downey was soon hired by KFBK AM Radio, a news talk station in Sacramento, CA. There, he told a joke in which he used the word ******** several times, angering Tom. Yeah, not that surprising, is it, Tom? So, yeah, he tells a joke in which he uses the word ******** several times, which ****** off Tom Chin, a Chinese American member of Sacramento City Council who was listening in his car and wonder why. I wonder why that bothered him. Why wonder why he got angry at that? Mr Chin called the station, according to the Councilman, and to Paul R Aaron, then the station's program director. Mr Chin was put through to Mr Downey, who let loose a verbal tirade against him. Mr Downey was discharged the next day, so he tells a racist joke on air. It offends the a member of the City Council. Who calls? And then he proceeds to be racist to that guy life on the air and loses his job? Yeah. Yeah, that's usually probably should be what happens? Yeah. Yeah. Now the station had to. Obviously had to shift. Can Morton Downey junior? I liked that he was like, oh, I'm sorry. I'll just be racist to you directly then. Yeah. Do you? Do you what? Would you like me to just be a ***** ** **** to your face? I did not mean to do it to your back on the air. Absolutely not. Ohh, forgive me. Let me be an ******* directly to me. To be an ******* directly to you. I don't mean to be rude. So they had to fire him, but he was also, and you'll you'll hear different things about how popular he was. By some accounts he was, he was very successful by some accounts, just modestly successful. I, I, I can't tell you which, but he did well enough that the station was like, well, this guy's built an audience, they're very dedicated. And so when he leaves, they decide they need to replace him with another right wing firebrand, someone who can stir up the same kind of populist rage but also isn't quite as racist. You know, they picked Tom. I don't know who followed him into the job. He might. You might. Heard of this guy, little fella. He might know his name. Rush Limbaugh. Ohh hmm. Yeah, that's how Rush gets. His first big political gig was Morton Downey being too racist? On the air was too racist. And so Rush Limbaugh came in and said, I can be slightly less racist than that. For a while. For a little while. Eventually. I'll be much more racist than that. Yeah, I could be slightly less racist to people's faces. Yeah, again. For a while. For a for a while. I love the idea. Like, man, that was too racist. Yeah, let's get Russian here. Let's get it. You get that Rush Limbaugh kid in here? Yeah, we did tone things down somewhat. Yeah. Tom, where do you go when you've just gotten fired from your right wing radio job for being too much of a racist? Television? No, I mean, but what city do you go to? Umm, Portland. I don't know. No. Cleveland. Cleveland. Ohh yeah, sure. Yeah yeah. It's the end of the you get. Yeah, you get your *** on down to Cleveland. Hey, our rivers are very rarely on fire, unlike Cleveland. So he gets hired by WERE AM to improve the poor ratings of its talk show department. He was forced out there when he again hurled racial slurs at an elected leader. This one of you, Municipal Court judge. Who could have seen this coming? Who could have guessed? Wally George, the man who punched an abortion rights activist, had lost his first radio show, lost a second for screaming racial slurs at a city Councilor. Would lose his third show for screaming racial slurs at a Municipal Court judge. Whoops. Among us whomst among us has not, on a bad day, hurled racial slurs at a Circuit Court judge, or whoever was those of us who have not gone to jail have done that. Yeah, so while his former employer wrestled with a lawsuit as a result of this, Morton Downey junior moved to Chicago to do it all over again. Hmm. So during both of the strategy, yeah, the strategy. Chicago. Yeah, Chicago forgives all sins. During his first two dalliances with talk Radio, Morton Downey junior had a regular segment on his shows called the Executive Intelligence Report, which is him reading from a magazine published by Lyndon Larouche. We're going to have to do a whole episode on Lyndon Larouche at some point, but for now you'll have to be satisfied with this quick description of Lyndon, courtesy of a New York Times obituary. And again, this is the source of of Morton Downey Junior's executive Intelligence Report, quote Lyndon Larouche. Exotic, apocalyptic leader of a cult like political organization who ran for president 8 times, once for a prison cell. Died on Tuesday. He was 96. Defining what? Mr Yeah, right. That's a ************* sentence. That is an entire sentence. Defining what Mr Larouche stood for was no easy task. He began his political career on the far left and ended it on the far right. He said he admired Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, and loathed Hitler, the composer Richard Wagner and other anti Semites. Though he himself made anti-Semitic statements and boy did he a lot of them. He was a fascist Tom. He was a fascist political cult leader. I like the obituary was like, we don't know what the **** he believed. He believed in Lyndon. Through having a bunch of like, he had a bunch of followers who basically it was a cult, like, they lived for this man and they would go out and proselytize on the street. They would hand out papers at college campuses. Larouche argued that environmentalists were trying to wipe out the human race, which is a claim that Alex Jones now parrots. He believed clean Queen Elizabeth was trying to murder him personally. He argued that Jews had founded the KKK, and he described Indigenous Americans as lower beasts. So this is the source of Morton Downey Junior's Intel. I'm finding a couple of consistent. Threads and his belief structure. Perhaps his obituary could have latched on to it. May I think they may have gotten into that later. That was like the first two paragraphs. I just, I read that obituary and was like, Oh my God, that is a sentence. Yeah, that that first sentence almost knocked me out of my chair. Yeah, what a ******* life. Ran for president 8 times. Once from prison. Like what? It was a tax thing, I think. Again, we'll do. I'll have to read into him and we'll do a whole episode on Lyndon Larouche. He's quite a character. Yeah, but yeah, the head of Morton Downey Junior's Intel program. Now, the fact that Morton Downey junior platform, this guy is very ****** ** and it's. I read that obituary and was like, Oh my God, that is a sentence. Yeah, that that first sentence almost knocked me out of my chair. Yeah. What a ******* life. Ran for president 8 times. Once from prison. Like what? It was a tax thing, I think. Again, we'll do. I'll have to read into him and we'll do a whole episode on Lyndon Larouche. He's quite a character, yeah, but yeah, the head of Morton Downey Junior's Intel program. Now, the fact that Morton Downey junior platform, this guy is very ****** ** and it's arguably more ****** ** because Morton Downey junior did not really like him. As he told the New York Times, I decided I was going to be as friendly towards these people and get as much information out of them as I could, because someday I would expose them, and that's ********. It's true that he did eventually get Lyndon Larouche on his TV show and he tore him apart. Like it was a very aggressive interview with Lyndon, but he also continued to spread Larouche newsletter and other publications after that point, calling the fascist cult leaders intelligence information quote the second or third best in the world based on what Morton Downey junior he Morton Downey junior doesn't know, 9th build cast member of Predator 2. Yeah, mother. I mean, he did make the top 10. Look, look, in fairness, that's more than either of us have ever done in terms of predators. True. But I'm not out here saying this is the second or third most reputable Intelligence Report in the world. No, you're not. No, no. Based on your your experience. Which is you and I both did get to look at the Predator costume. Yes. Oh, wait. No, it was it. I didn't. Well, oh, you weren't there. That wasn't. I didn't go to a DUI, but I saw the video. It was rad. It seems like I just knowing that I was that close to something that had touched Morton Downey junior was was just powerful. Tom was really powerful. You know what else has touched Morton Downey junior in a sexual man? These products and services, probably. They ****** him. They ****** him. Products and services have been inserted into Morton Downey junior. Absolutely. That is, again, the only promise we make about our sponsors. Sophie seems fine with us. So I'm just going to continue. Yeah, that's an ad. That's an ad throw. That's an ad. Throw baby. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. 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I believe it was 18 months after I got on with speaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day job. It was incredible. I always felt like an ambassador. The first speaker. But that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with speaker and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle. The hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. You get paid to talk about the things you love with spreaker from iheart this fall on revisionist history. Is there anything that we haven't talked about or or? Vascular like to add that seems relevant. You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Religious history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. Ohh, we're back. So by 1987, Rush Limbaugh show had exploded in popularity. Wally George was the talk of Orange County. This is kind of the height of the Wally George show, too. And despite Morton's mixed success on Radio, a station in New York Slash New Jersey, I guess it covered both, decided, let's give this guy a TV show. And I think they're looking at Wally George over in OC. They're seeing Rush Limbaugh on the radio and they're like, this guy could be a could be a hit on TV. And in fairness, they're not wrong. He was. Yeah. He was filmed in Secaucus. The Morton Downey Junior show was cut very much in the shape of Wally George's hot seat. In fact, while he even had Morton on his show in the late 1980s and it was immediately hostile and I'm first going to play this clip more deadly junior on the wall he church boy. It's really a Freddy versus Jason moment. Say. Two rats fighting over a dead cat. Ohh boy, and I have to say before, if you're wondering what Morton Downey junior looks like. Well, so if he gets this clip together, remember Iron Giant? Remember the bad guy from Iron Giant? He looks like Christopher sleazy fed. Yeah he looks like. He looks like shooter Mcgavin. He looks like, yeah he does. Who is the same. I was blew me away to learn that shooter Mcgavin and the the Fed from. The iron giant are the same guy. Incredible thing it he looks like he looks like shooter Mcgavin with novelty teeth. He looks like shoot him again and shoot him. Mcgavin did like birthday parties for children. Ohh here it is. You you're coming up with the usual simplistic answers, Wally, that conservatives who don't know what the hell they're talking about spout. I have got an audience out here. You've got an audience of monkeys out here who do everything that you tell them. He's not wrong. I'm warning you the next time you don't warn me, punk. Wally George looks incredible. What a man. He looks like the entertainment director on a cruise ship, but like a bad cruise ship. The cops have come on now and they're pulling Morton Downey junior off the show and tackling sheriff. Stephanie gets tackled by Wallace State Junior Total Roger Stone. Vibes from that guy with like a. Obviously, all of that was set up ahead of time. The plan was always, I suspect from Morton Downey junior to get tackled by sheriff's deputies on the seat of Wally George's odd seat. It seems so extreme. And he's already so famous at that point that they wouldn't. Yeah. They would not dare do that to him unless it was staged. Yeah. I mean, well, yeah. Yeah. It's it's very funny and and honestly I can't tell you it may not have been pre planned as much as both men just naturally knew going in. This is how this is going to end. Like, I'm I'm Morton Downey junior in the Wally. Word show. Of course I'm going to get tackled off stage during like a nearly physical fight between the two of us. This is just how this has to happen. I am naturally enough of a right wing, ******** firebrand. That Jack that's just in my blood. Well, the thing that the moment we were on a camera together, this was what had to happen, right? So whoever wins, we lose. Yeah, the real Freddy, Jason situation, the thing that stuck out to me was when there's a scene, when not a scene. I'm ******* talking about this like it's a movie because it's so staged. There's a part in the clip where Wally George stands up. After a Morton, Downey says don't don't warn me. He stands up like he's gonna fight, but he buttons his he buttons his coat. He buttons his ******* coat. That's a thing you do when you know you're going to be on camera. Do you do the opposite when you know you're about to start throwing hands is you wanna unbutton that coat? So it's like, yeah, you wanna unbutton. You might even want to take the if you're really gonna throw hands, you take that shirt off and you fold it on the table where you say, alright, here's how things are gonna go, you know? So the fact that he's stepping buttoned his jacket, it's like, yeah. Yeah. No, you know, you're not gonna course. Of course, yeah, that it would have been very fun, but I don't think either of well, actually, no. Morton Downey Junior definitely threw a punch. He punched that guy who came on his radio shows to everything, you know, all the all the with a terrible ***** ** **** he is and all the the funny things we're gonna do to make fun of him. On this episode, Morton Downey doesn't look like he hasn't been in a fight. No, no. Morton Downey junior. Morton Downey junior wouldn't have survived to this age if he hadn't learned a couple of things about fighting. Because that's a man who ****** people off. Yeah. Yeah. Wally George is a man who was very careful to never **** anyone off. Until he felt like he wouldn't get the **** beaten out of him. Yeah, like he was an adult and polite society. That was a kid who hid. Yeah, he's a that's a that's a dude could bully into giving you an extra ride on the tea cups. Yeah, at the carnival, like now, Morton Downey junior was different from Wally George. And in fact, while he started off as way more out of control again, he got fired from his first job for assaulting a guest. He toned it down for his actual TV show, not much, but in a in an intelligent way he was actually, in a lot of ways he was kind of a mix between Wally George and and Joe Pyne because like Wally George, he would be like a lunatic a bunch of the time and like very loud, get into fights on stage and whatnot, a showman. But like Joe Pyne, he could actually sit down and have conversations with people even once he disagreed with without just screaming at them. And there were actual debates on his show. So he was not the same as Wally, and I think that's why he was. He made more of an impact because Wally George, it was never anything but just like pure ID. And there was a little bit of of thinking on the Morton Downey junior show, not. I'm not saying that to praise it, just to like, characterize what he was doing was a bit different than Wally George. He opened his first episode with the words Certain Things really burned my buns. And that more or less summed up the focus. Morton was irritated by a lot of things, feminism, environmentalism, social justice, and he wanted to make his. Audience angry, too. Like Wally, he was happy. The platform people with differing beliefs so long as they would get into arguments with him that made good television. His show was an immediate success and its wide audience meant that some of his guests became stars in their own right. One of his early interviews was a little known congressman you might have heard of. Tom named Ron Paul, now Morton Downey junior. Not a friendly introduction of Ron Paul here. He he he he brings this the congressman up on stage by saying we're going to talk to a man who could be snorting cocaine in the Oval Office. Because again, Ron Paul, the thing that like one of the things that made him prominent early on is he's for the the decriminalization or legalization of all drugs. And the Morton Downey junior is, as a Republican in this period of time, an arch drug warrior. So here's here's Ron Paul on the Morton Downey junior show. Do you believe that the government should stay out of our personal business altogether? Alright, that's good guys. Also happens to be my personal business. If I want to kill my 4 year old kid, right? No, no, no, no. Wait a minute. Wait. You're giving you're giving libertarian a distorted explanation, Sir. You people gave it to yourselves and your platform. No, let me explain that. The answer is that we allowed to do what we want. We even permit people smoke cigarettes. Happened. That happens to be the most deadly drug in the United States. Killed 320,000 people. Appreciate, maybe we ought to make a bandit. I wish you'd ban it if you would, Sir. I put it out in your eye right now. While out on the street, take $5 a package. So you see what I number one, Ron Paul really comes across as a reasonable man in that interview. He sure does. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But you see that, you see what I'm talking about. He's kind of a mix of Wally George and Joe Pine because he's way more aggressive and rude than Joe Pyne. But he's also, he's not just shouting over him. Ron Paul gets he and he'll he'll, he'll quiet his audience down and whatnot like, he's, he's he's he's found this middle level between the two men. That's certainly not like, I mean, he's a bully, he's * **** but. He's not what Wally George was. It's not quite that same level of like. It's not as much of a lynch mob, the audience. Yeah, still a lot of audience participation, but yeah. Less violently fascist. Yeah. But still the bad faith arguments still, of course, in the same way that Joe Pyne was bad faith, though. Exactly. You know, they all have this in common. They, yeah, they all have this in common. And I just think it's interesting how Morton, I think is very consciously mixing Joe Pine with Wally George in order to kind of like, Wally went way too far. Joe Pyne is not far enough for today's TV. Nobody would listen to Joe Pyne today. Yeah. He's too calm, you know, he's he's like he wants to maintain. He wants the same kind of controversy and and intense emotions of of Wally George, but he wants to maintain firm control of the show. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's exactly. That's exactly it. And this is probably why his show. And also, you know, the fact that when he has people on people he disagrees with, he does allow them more of a chance to make their point. Ron Paul gets to say a lot in this interview, and this is, I don't want to say this is like the reason he became prominent, but this is a decent part of it. This is a significant reason. For his like, why he started to become well known. And it's in part because he does get, he looks good up there. He makes a lot of sense. And I think a lot of people like listening to Ron Paul on the Morton Downey junior show would be like, well, this is actually a reasonable man, I suspect, especially considering the kind of like angry young men who would watch the Morton Downey junior show. I'm sure a lot of them got into Ron Paul watching this in a way that like with Wally George that I'm sure never happened because he never let people say that much. And yeah, it, I mean it. It's hard to watch. Ron Paul interview and disliked the man where Joe Pyne was always chivalrous to his female guests though even though he disagreed with Morton felt no need to hold his punches. At one point he had on a vegan which is again that was like the first thing we saw Joe Pyne doing is like talking to a vegan so we can make fun of him which is a big a long reoccurring thing and like right wing politics. And yeah, she made the point this vegan that that that Morton's talking to. You made the point that vegan diets were healthier, to which Wally responded. I eat raw hamburger, I eat raw fish. I smoke 4 packs of cigarettes a day. I have about four drinks a day. I'm 55 years old and I look as good as you do, which is going to be funny later. Although you do have to be fair, like he looks a lot younger than Joe Pyne does. When Joe Pyne was like 40, yeah, Joe Pine looked like a pyramid, like a pyramid made man. Yeah, he says he's smoking 4 packs of cigarettes. The Joe Pyne is smoking. Forbes setbacks to cigarettes an hour like he sees he's doing **** on his commute. Yeah. So one of his most popular sparring partners was feminist lawyer Gloria Allred, who again gained a lot of her popularity because of the Morton Downey junior show. This is a big vector for a lot of people who are who are still prominent today. Again, not the only reason, but like this is a big show. This is a significant cultural moment and she has a big role in it. She's a regular guest and she and Downey would like spar a lot constantly. You might have expected her to hate him, like given her politics and his politics, they certainly fought like he and us on the air. But as the documentary of Vacatur makes clear, the two got along. This was a game, and they were both happy to play it in order to make themselves famous. And I'm going to have Sophie play this clip. This is from the documentary of Vacatur, which I really do recommend. Anyone who had breasts was a feminist. Yeah, almost no feminists who have ever burned a bra. So let me get that straight. Almost no feminist whoever had anything that they needed to wear a bra for. Between us there was a certain amount of sexual tension. Likewise on your jock strap, but in any case. How does she know she has a tape measure on her tongue? Like, Jesus. Yeah, I know, right? That's just that's just gross all around. Yeah. I feel like I need a shower. But also you you see the difference again when Wally, Wally George never had it, like, wasn't yelling at people he was, like, friendly with. Like, clearly he wanted that. With some of them. Like, he was willing to, like, talk with Blaze and be like, hey, we could have a good thing going. He was able to find people who were media trained, who were talented in their own right, who could go on and have show arguments with him to keep the crowd braying. But there was nothing he didn't. He didn't. Again, he didn't believe in ****. But while Wally George, like, couldn't, I guess, I don't think Wally would Morton Jenny Junior was willing to do was have someone get in hits on him verbally, like he wanted that kind of sparring, you know, because that's good TV. I think Wally George was just too brittle a man to accept that. Yeah. Yeah. More than any general, I think never would have taken anything really personally because he he's a showman and he gets that like, well, I'm having Gloria on like neither of us believe in anything. We just are using this as a a vehicle for our own personal fame. Yeah. And we can say, like have whatever fights we want to have. And yeah, they would have made a good couple because they're both the same person more or less, yeah. So, eight months into its run, the Morton Downey junior show was a wildfire hit. The New York Times sent in a reporter to watch the show as it was taped, and his recollection does a good job of setting up the mood. Quote Sean Morton Downey junior Sean to his friends Mort, Mort, Mort to the adoring T Shirted fans crowding the New Jersey television studio audience smoked and paced and spewed venom. You're not licking the butts of the boots of the bureaucracy that doesn't give a damn about the American people, he commanded. Bureaucratic ***** he shouted as the congregation. An unruly, as unruly as any splatter film crowd at the nearby Lowe's Metal Plaza 8 jumped up and loudly voiced its approval. So, yeah, that's the it's it's combative. But as you saw from that Gloria Allred quote, don't cheer it like somebody getting in a hit on Morton too. There's it's not the same like getting closer to his Springer here. Yeah, we're getting closer to Springer here. That's right. That's more about the spectacle. They just want to see. They just wanna see **** fly. Yeah. Mort was separated from later imitators, people like Jerry Springer and from people like Wally George, who was a little earlier. By his willingness to physically confront his guests, he came very close to getting into fights on several occasions. And his studio? Yeah, his studio was the 1st in television to put the audience through a metal detector. And and I'm sure there was a mix of that's practical cause yeah, somebody might get ******* stabbed. But also that's like, that's another thing we can brag about this. Like this TV's so hot we got to have a metal detector for the audience. Audience. That's how intense this show is. Yeah, it's yeah, it's a gimmick. As with Wally George, his life audience particularly skewed towards young and disaffected men. A lot of the same kind of guys who would have been in the alt right and would have been like edgy kids online today. The documentary of Vodka tour includes interviews with some of these audience members, including Joshua Rothman. He was now a history professor who was part of Walley's regular audience when he was like ******* like, it looks like he's like 16 in this. I'm sure it was a little older, but here's here's Joshua explaining the appeal of showing up to a taping of Mort show. If you guys and that other the gremlin over there like your pants, this is him as a kid and shove it where it belongs. Wait, just was also sort of perfect for 17 year olds because it had no nuance at all. Everything was black or white and 17 year olds. God, everything is either totally one thing or totally the other. There is no middle. We are America. We're number one. You know what I think? I think Donald Trump should take his board game and just go to hell. Yeah, that's all that's what you got, man. Yeah. Look like he was going to say something colorful. 16 year olds, you know, so that that says a lot of it right there. Yeah, both. Like, we didn't have YouTube if you were a kid and you want to like, you feel like you have something to say you could get on TV if as long as you're willing to, like, shout something stupid. Morton Downey Junior will put your *** on television. Yeah, as long as you're going to get possibly beaten up by him on the air. Yeah, yeah, it's it. Yeah, I know. I get it. Get it? I get it. It's yeah. He's given them not only in he's giving them an outlet. Umm, yeah. And it seems like they like we were talking about with the crowd of walleye show. It's it's more that it's it's not necessarily the political views. It's they're latching on to this sort of maximum anger. Anything goes kind of environment. It's this space where they can let out like for every 17 year old as angry as **** about a bunch of different things and. You could get on Morton Downey junior show and you could either express real anger with something or, what's probably more common, you could express the anger inside you and just throw it at anything. Like, it doesn't matter, he just wants you to be loud and yelling and he'll be happy with you. And and there's no you can be edgy if you want to just say something ****** ** on TV, he can. He'll let you do that. It's like **** posting too. Like all of this, like 4 Chan stuff. You can see those impulses he's giving people an outlet for them. Yeah, and they showed the clip from their homemade. Video that they that they made like a sketch that they did these kids who. Yeah. Pretending to be Morton Downey junior. So it's clear that it's it's his like bombastic, this character that he is, that they're latching on to less than his views. It's more just the way he speaks and the way he behaves and the way he sort of, you know, it's like when people would chant when people would chant. Jerry. Jerry. Yeah, exactly. People would get into fights. It's nothing to do with Springer himself. Yeah. And it's it's nothing to do. These kids don't care about. I'm sure didn't. I mean I'm sure at the time they agreed with whatever political ****. Was saying, but they didn't think about policy. They were ******* 17 year olds. Like, they were just they identified with the the way that he expressed emotion and the way that he let them do it. And it is there. It identified with an angry white man being an angry white man on television and being colorful about it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Morton absolutely played the role of a religious extremist. Again, I don't think he believed in anything, certainly not God, but he knew that fights over religion could make good television. And I'm going to play an excerpt here from an episode titled. God versus atheism and we don't think that children should be forced to pray when they don't want to. Any child is free to pray anytime that he wants. In the public schools. Today we just gonna say we're going to give you a minute to pray anytime you want. No, they the government doesn't tell children when to pray, what to pray, how to pray, or even if they doesn't breaths like you and Madeline Murray O'Hare got in there and made sure we can't even say in the Pledge of Allegiance the word God. Anymore in a public school? Because of you guys? Yeah. It's the same **** you see nowadays. It's a stupid, useless argument we're still making. Yeah, Yep, yeah, exactly. Later on in that same interview, Downey tells his atheist guest, this is a nation of freedom. Are you a religion? Then you have no ******* freedom. Just like like 9 year old documents, you know? Yeah, I don't even know what the **** that's supposed to mean. Now, while the Morton Downey junior show had lots of yelling and fighting, some of its most sinister impacts came from the segments that were calm, thoughtful debates. In my research, I came across a roundtable discussion from 1988 about black crime featuring Reverend Al Sharpton, who's another person who really the more Downey junior show massively increased his his platform, his profile. Like he owes a lot of his fame to the Morton Downey junior show. It like it. It made him. It helped make him into like a a regular fixture on TV. While the authority or while the audience does hoot and holler some, the discussion is very simple. And it's kind of chilling because one of Morton's guests here goes on an extended tirade about black on white crime statistics, which is like a major argument point for ******* Neo Nazis today. So here that is in the United States. 1986. More murders were committed by blacks, 12% of the population, than were committed by whites, 85% of the population. These are the numbers right here, right out of the Justice Department figures, and you can check them later if anyone has any doubts on that when you check the murder figures in interracial crime. Now, interracial means that you have a perpetrator of one race and the victim of another race when you check those figures. Yeah, you find and they'll just get to the conclusion of it. You find that a black in 1984. Track she's Jesus was over 15 times more likely to murder a wife than a white was the murder of white. That's enough of this. So obviously this guy's statistics are very flawed. And one of Horton's other guests, Dr Gloria Toote, does point this out pretty much immediately. And we're going to play that clip now, too. Here's her like slapping back on this. Number one, your credit is erroneous. Crime is being reduced in America not simply by blacks, but by Americans in general. We have less crime in 1987. Then we had ten years ago, #2 with the Justice Department and state and local government officials and crime have admitted that the reporting statistics are an era as it relates to the crime reported by minorities and crimes reported about white #3. Also, it has now been acknowledged by those officials that in many instances the white criminal is not. Is not convicted or even arrested, whereas your minority is. And I could go on and on and on, but the fact that he is given are just not accurate and we do ourselves a disservice when we don't look at what the problem is. So obviously that's a more productive debate than was ever had on the Wally George Show. It it, it seems more like the kind of stuff you might have heard on Joe Pyne. And in fairness he is bringing on people to contradict and argue with this guy talking about black on white crime. So you could call this. On one level, a more responsible and productive debate than a lot of what you see on right wing TV today. But I can't help but see in this echoes of the kind of fascist platforming that would become much more common in later years without the measured pushback that Morton show at least gave it. The specter of black on white crime and high crime rates among black people are two of the most virulent and productive talking points of the fascist right. I could go on a rant about Dylan Roof here, who was, he claims, inspired to go on his massacre by reading about black on white? Time. But this this discussion has very deep roots, and I'm kind of torn between seeing Morton here as someone who handed it better than some people in the right, because he did have two very well prepared black guests to counter this line of argument. Or whether I'm just more unsettled by the fact that he put this ******* argument on television at all. Like, I don't know, kind of where to land on that, but it it leaves me feeling unsettled. Yeah. No, I don't trust anything that any of these people do. So it's I he just did it for, right? He knew this was a hot button issue for a lot of people, and he had. A full panel so that he could. Maximize the outrage and the controversy and just, you know, you, you you don't get one person on there to talk about their views because that's not going to start a fight. You have to get somebody else on there to contradict what they're saying or counter what they're saying. Yeah. Yeah, that's I think I think what's going on here. But you know who won't platform people spreading Nazi talking points about race related crimes? Tom hope, hopefully the fine people bringing us these products and services. Yeah, they absolutely do. Not unless. In which case, who boy, here's adds. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. 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At Mint Mobilcom, behind my name is Erica Kelly and I am the host and creator of Southern Freight true crime. There are so many people that just have no idea about some injustices in the world and if you can give a voice to them, you can create change. To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months after I got on with Spreaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day job. It was incredible. Always felt like an ambassador. First speaker, but that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with spreaker, and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle. The hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. You get paid to talk about the things you love with spreaker from iheart this fall on revisionist history. Is there anything that we haven't talked about or or? Could have asked you like to add that seems relevant. You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Religious history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. All right, we're back. Ohh yeah. So Reverend Al Sharpton was another media figure who got a massive early boost to his career thanks to the Morton Downey junior show. I would maybe not early, but he got a this really increased a lot of his visibility. He and Morton were regular sparring partners, and they also were clearly friends. Al made for great television. At one point he called another guest a punk F Word in a moment of rage. In fact, it was owl's friendship. Morton Downey junior that would prove to be the downfall of the Morton Downey junior show from the Chicago Tribune quote it all came to a head when the show began focusing on the case of Tawana Brawley, a 15 year old African American girl who claimed to have been raped by 6 white men, including a police officer, and had KKK and other vile words scrawled on her body. Show after show was devoted to this case, many featuring the Brawley, advisor and then relatively unknown Al Sharpton. Downey beat that story to death and his ratings began to plummet, especially after Brawley's. Accusations were deemed false by a grand jury, so his does seem to be a case where Brawley was lying. I think it's because she'd, like, stayed out late and like had to come up with an excuse and it just was like a kid doing a dumb thing and then it blew up and became national news. It's the it's a very sad story. I think she's still like for the rest of her life will owe money to one of the people she accused who sued her. It's like pretty ****** ** tale. And Morton Downey junior jumped on it and took it as a crusade, not because he cared about this woman and thought that it was true, but because, you know, it was TV. Then he's more Danny Junior, so he's in this year of the day. It's exact same mentality behind the debate we just listened to. Yep, Yep, exactly. Now the Tawana Brawley case led to one of the most infamous moments of 1980s television when Mort had Al Sharpton on with a black white right wing activist named Roy Innis. The stated goal of the episode was to determine who was the leader of Black America. Both in it's so boy Tom. It's a little more complex than is it Sharpton or Innis, but that's kind of like the inference that like yeah, both innocent Sharpton receive a chorus of boos when they're introduced because that's the kind of show this is. Oh boy. Mort starts the interview by bringing up comments Sharpton made criticizing Ennis. Sharpton goes on a rant calling in as a sellout and then this happens and it's in as speaking at the start of this. Go ahead. I'm one of the few non bigoted black leaders run I would say. It says no. Let's deal with the facts. Let's go to the record. Tonight we want to deal with the records and the facts. Please do it on this program. Your program. You heard me. You have me in tape. Defending this man recently, even after the shenanigans with him and the other salata. Crap this brother, you have your chance. ****. This year was pushed down sharply. Yeah, he just he just shoved his *** down onto the stage and a bunch of dudes rush up to start shoving **** balls. Yeah, yeah, it gives him right off the stage. He pushed him right off the damn stage. Yeah. ****. Yeah. And it went ******* viral. This moment was huge. Every TV show, like every news show had the clips of this on for ******* weeks. Like, in a way that, like, no genocide. Today goes as viral as this clip of Al Sharpton. Getting shoved off a stage went, which is not a great. Great because I know, I bet, I know, yeah, because yeah, yeah, yeah, I bet. Yeah. But we all do. But it's socialism, yeah. After the Tawana Brawley case fell apart, nothing could abate the downward slide of Morton's ratings. The next year, in 1989, he made a desperate stab at regaining his relevance. He filed a police report claiming 3 skinheads had jumped him, beaten him up, and drawn a swastika on his forehead in an airplane bat in an airport bathroom. The police almost immediately came forward and said that the facts of the case as he had reported it to them, or is he is he reported it to the media, did not align with like what he had said. Basically, they said like, he's ******* lying. We have no evidence that any of this is true. We can't substantiate any of his claims, and it came out later, one of his friends testified. Like he faked it. He, like, drew a swastika. Like the photos that he gave the cops are different from like the photos that he put up on TV of like the swastika on his forehead. Like he just like faked getting jumped by skinheads to try to drum up like a media controversy. He's just a desperate scum bot bag. He made several comeback scumbag. Yeah, and Android created only to be a scumbag, just a **** Droid full of. Just spew and poop. So he made a few different comeback attempts and he tried to make a living doing talk radio and he maintained actually surprisingly robust career in movies. You've already mentioned he's nice builds and predator too. He was in revenge of the Nerds 3, sure, which is really quite a film. He was in the silencer, he was in tales of the crypt, to name but a few episodes. Although Wally George really should have been the one in tales from the honestly. Yeah. Yeah. In 1996, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Which was embarrassing. Yeah. How dare you. Really? We have we we have to thank comrade cigarettes for getting 2/3 of these guys out of the planet. Critical support to chain smoking. This was embarrassing to Wally. Live by the sword. Robert, you die by the sword. And he had he made a big deal about being a smoker on the air, kind of like the way kind of Bill Hicks did if you listen to somebody like those routines. Yeah. He's he's taking on a cigarette and like every clip we've we've. Yeah. Yeah. And he would talk about like, these aren't bad for me. I look better than you. You know we read that clip a little bit earlier, were you? And he doesn't 4 packs like he definitely doesn't. ************ looks like he's doesn't look good. And he's Cliff. He doesn't look good. He's all teeth. Yeah, he had. He had. He had made so much hay out of like being a smoker. He had autographed cigarette seed, promised never to quit, but then he gets lung cancer and so he immediately becomes an anti smoking activist begging people to stop, he told one interviewer. I used a cigarette as a combat weapon and I never gave much thought to the chance that the cigarette would most likely kill me. Just very funny or yeah. Morton died in 2001, but his influence lives on when his show was cancelled in 1989. A TV. Interview with the Chicago Tribune wrote that the cancellation quote removes from our lives one of the most abrasive people ever to appear on television. But do not think that this represents a move towards a calmer climb. Downey wedded people's appetites for confrontational TV. There will be someone to take his place. That's a that's prescient. There'll be a few someones. Yeah, in an opinion column for CNN's Michael Smerconish makes this point quote when Fox News launched in 1966, it adopted the talk radio. Playbook and NBC briefly gained viewers by giving Keith Olbermann a Downey like platform for his diatribes against President George W Bush. The model for each was a toned down version of that which Downey had established entertainment masked his news, constant conflict, good guys versus bad guys, and preordained outcomes. But Downey's influence extended beyond media outlets and should be appreciated as more than just another contributing factor to the decline of America's cultural health. The media paradigm he fathered has taken a toll on the way in. Which we are governed there has been a noticeable uptick in incivility and polarization among our leaders in the exact same. In which the media has moved to the extremes, in part because of the power that Downey's successors exert over primary voters now. In this column, Smerconish cites Brian Rosenwald, a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania who did his doctoral dissertation on talk radio. Rosenwald writes Downey's heirs have fostered polarization through their influence in primary elections. Republican members of Congress must fear infuriating talk radio and. Visible news hosts because media personalities can use their platforms to offset several major advantages, including significantly greater fundraising and name recognition held by incumbents in primary elections. Hosts demand purity from elected officials, label compromises treason, and glorify Congress Congress's rhetorical bomb throwers such as Senator Ted Cruz. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty good. There's some quotes in this that are talking about, like polarization in Washington that notes that like as late as the 1970s. Typical member of one party voted with his colleagues, his party members just over 60% of the time, and that those numbers have raised every decade. In 2010, Democrats voted together 91% of the time, Republicans 89% of the time. Unfortunately, those able to reverse those trends have ceded the debate to the loudest voices. A Gallup survey released in January found that more Republicans regard themselves as independent, 43 as more Americans regard themselves as independent, 43 than Democrat 30 or Republican, 26%. But any ground gained by the nonpartisan ranks continues to be offset by higher political interest resting at the political extremes. It's all about passion. As documented by Pew Research Center this past this past spring, Liberals and conservatives exceed moderates and independents in their levels of political interest, which translates into voter participation. So it's it's got most people have been turned off by this this hyperpartisan ization, but those who stay in the game just get angrier and angrier at each other, and it it just makes for an angrier country. And. Morton Downey Junior was certainly the most successful person on TV, doing it before our modern media era. Cause Molly George was kind of a marginal figure. He was. He was influential in OC and influential to other media figures. But Morton Downey junior had a national show right like his. He was everywhere. I knew who he was and I was a little kid. I didn't even really know why. I knew who he was exactly what people knew. Morton Downey junior. He was kind of this perfect synthesis and that's what it took to really get like this kind of specific, kind of right wing media off. The ground was a synthesis of Joe Pyne and Wally. George. Morton Downey Junior was the first guy to do that, and you know he eventually he flew too close to the Sun and drew a swastika on his own forehead. But, you know, like the tail of it, it's just this in the tail of Italy. It did happen in an airport, but Tom said that's true. Yeah. Ohh, what a dope. What a dope. Yeah, three people I didn't I don't like very much. Well, if it's any consolation, they're all super dead. They are very dead. 2/3 of them because they smoked too much. Ah, bam. But no, it's a it's a good thing they didn't do, like, irreparable damage to the country. No, thankfully, we're sailing right along. Yeah. Good. That's a good, good thing. Like the beginning. Like the seeds they planted haven't grown at a terrifying ******* forests of racism. Oh yeah, no, that never happened. Speaking of which, I'm going to open my news app for the first time since 1991, see what's been happening. Oh dear. Tom, I have some bad news about the Twin Towers. You may want to sit down for this one. *** **** it. Did they smoke too many cigarettes too? In a way, Tom, in a way. Ohh, Tom, that that brings us to the end of our long journey. Ah, thanks. Thanks. Thanks for sitting through this with me and a lot of clips. I now know I have a fuller picture of Morton Downey junior in my mind. Glad that was for that's the only goal I've ever had for this show. Which is why this is our final episode. Hmm. Alright, Tom, what do you got? I'm just, I'm just. You're just exhausted now. Yeah, I'm just sad. Now I'm exhausted and sad. I I'm going to get, I'm going to get a flaxen Wally George wig. I'm gonna get a Wally George wig. I need to. I need to do something to recharge. After this, maybe I'll watch hot Rod again. Or. Or watch Predator 2. Watch Predator 2. You're right with Gary Busey. Thank God. Yeah. By the way, Glover punches Martin Downey right in the face. The best thing about Gary Busey's role in that is that Wally George could absolutely have played Gary Busey's character in that movie. You see, he's playing well, George in that movie. And ******* Morton Downey Junior's in it, too. My God, what a film. I'm going to get this predator because he's on air. I kind of wanna rewatch revenge of the Nerds 3 and see what the **** Morton Downey junior is doing in that ****. I wouldn't. And I didn't really enjoy watching it the first time. At least Predator 2 has been think they were on the beach. If I'm remembering right, it was on. It was in like, the Bahamas or something. I think it's nerds imperative. Nerds in paradise. That's right. I think that's one of the samples at least. Jesus Christ, Revenge of the nerds. That whole movie is a *******. It's it's the Morton Downey of a film series. You could do it. You could do an episode on just the Revenge of the Nerds. Jesus Christ. All right. Well, you got to plug anything, Tom. Oh, sure. I have a podcast network game plan employee that I do with my partner, my podcasting partner, David Bell. Also from cracked. He is from probably from cracked. Yeah, we all used to work there. We did. Tom, you can check it out. Game not game. Play.com patreon.com/gameplay unemployed where you can check out our Patreon. We got all kinds of cool stuff on there like exclusive podcasts and other things that we do with our patrons. It's it's a lot of fun each. Check it out. Also right to get Collider and I write for some more news with your friends Cody and Katie. Robert. Yeah, yeah. I mean friends, enemies. Frenemies. Yeah, frenemies. You it it it. Eternal. Eternal opponents. And also right for 100 hot dog at all kinds of thing. You find me just Google me. Google Tom Ryman, find him at his home, you know, please do. Yeah. No docs. Me? Yeah. Attack him in an airport bathroom and draw swastika on his forehead to improve his career in for unclear reasons. I really do wonder, like, what was the what was the game plan there, Morton? Like, how is this going to help? Ohh, he was gonna he was gonna make that in, like, 3 months of show. Yeah, man. Hunting down the Nazis who beat him up. Yeah, he had a whole plan. He made it. He had a whole pitch deck, man. God, I wish we'd all just agreed to, like, see what he was going to do first before we called him on it. Like, first new idea. What? I kind of see where he's going with this. It's like I say, obviously this is all ******** but let's see how long he rides this. Very funny. All right, well, that's the episode. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break her handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's SPREA. Ker.com wanna say I don't know less listen to stuff you should know more. 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