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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. Wanna say I don't know less? Listen to stuff you should know more. Join host Josh and Chuck on the podcast packed with fascinating discussions about science, history, pop culture and more episodes. Dive into topics like was the lost, city of Atlantis Real? And how does pizza work? Say goodbye to I don't know. Because after listening to stuff you should know you will listen to stuff you should know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Megan King, and I am back. The Intimate Knowledge Podcast returns each week. We are going to be talking sex, talking life. So put the kids to bed, because this one y'all this one's for adults only. Intimate knowledge returns with more intimacy, more sex, more laughs, and more love. I'm Meghan King, and trust me, you need intimate knowledge as much as I do. Listen to intimate knowledge on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's what's I'm Robert Evans. This has been behind the ******** podcast opened are we are is that it? Was the whole episode with the whole episode. You want to try again? You don't do second takes the amateur operation you run. You might do things like second takes and proper introduction. No, no, no. But here we just go what's a tonally? And then trail off for several seconds of dead air. Yeah, there's no like the pros. Ohh man, that's called cinema veritate. Umm, that's how that works. I know what that term means. What it what is this? Is this a show? What's happening? This is behind the ********. Episode 2 on our episode about the men who built the right wing media landscape and our, our, our consequently ratcheting our world ever closer to calamity. Tom Ryan Robert is your name. It is of all the rymans I know, certainly the Thomas and I absolutely the Ryman east of the Toms that I know. Tom, you are cofounder Co, host of the game fully unemployed Podcast network, which he allegedly Patreon. You write for Collider and you are about to listen to a lot of really, really unpleasant clips of people that are just not very nice. I woke up this morning and I was thinking, man, I hope before the sun sets on this day I get to hear a bunch of ********* have terrible opinions. Tom, I heard your prayers and I am here to answer them. I texted them to you. You do that every with all of my prayers. I just text them to you. Yeah. And it's they're they're usually a lot more ****** than this, but I'll. I'll take it, Tom. It would take years, by some counts, more than a decade before Joe Pyne would have a true successor. He was so far ahead of his time that it was not until the 1980s, he died in 1970 that the media landscape. Is truly ready for someone to pick up the torch. Seems like the wrong word. Like, no, it seems like the right word. Yeah, it is. It seems like the Tiki torch. Yeah. The first man to follow in his wake was Wally George. Have you heard of Wally George? No. And I use. I'm usually pretty up on my wallies, so yeah. No, no, he's not. Of all the wallies, but one of the most consequential of the wallies. So George Walter Perch was born on December 4th. 1931 in Oakland, CA. His father owned a small shipping company. His mother, Eugenia, had been a vaudeville performer and a child actress in Hollywood. She'd starred in Westerns opposite cowboy actors, whose names have apparently been forgotten to time because they were not Val Kilmer in Tombstone. So who gives a ****? Wally spent most of his childhood in San Mateo, but when he was in high school his parents divorced and his mother moved to Hollywood, where he finished his education. Tom, who is The Who is The Who is the sheriff in Deadwood, Timothy Olyphant. Yeah, Timothy Olyphant. That's the other one. That's the other cowboy, Val Kilmer. Timothy Olyphant. That's all you said. Those are the only two companies. Sam Elliott. Sam Elliott. Sam Elliott. Yeah, of course. Sam Elliott. So you're talking about Sam Elliott in in the hunt for Red October because he's honorarily a cowboy even though he never got to live out his Montana dreams, right? Yeah, that's it. So that's Sam Neill. That's Sam Neill. Sam. Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. How did I do that? Those are two very different dudes. Tremely. Now, I'll say this. I'll bet Sam Elliott appreciates ducks, too. Sam here is a duck. That's his best friend. I bet Sam Elliott has has loved a duck or two in his life. Hmm. Cared for a duck. He looked at those eyes. Look like a duck has brought a twinkle once or twice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Then you can't smile the way Sam Elliott smiles. Unless you've been friendly with a duck. Yeah, unless there's a duck in that life. I could tell there's a there's a duck in that man's heart. Was somewhere in there. So while he spends most of his childhood in San Mateo, but when he's in high school, his parents divorce and that's not common in the 40s, right? It's got to be not a great marriage for that to be happening in the 40s. Alternatively, maybe it's two parents who are uncommonly aware of how bad a toxic union can be for a kid. I don't really know what the case was. I'm going to guess it was a really unpleasant situation, judging by the probably I don't becomes. Yeah, I don't think. I don't think no fault divorces exist yet existed yet. No, in California. So you had to like. Sue for like a reason. Yeah. Yeah. You had to fist fight a judge. Yeah. You did get that fight to get a divorce. Yeah. Yeah. So his mother moves to Hollywood, where he finishes his education. He was immediately drawn to the entertainment industry. Obviously, his family's involved in it. At age 14, he gets a gig working as a DJ at an AM radio station in Glendale. Prior to this, Wally had been a stutterer, just like Joe Pyne. I do find that interesting. Both these guys are dudes who stutter when their kids. He credits his first radio gig with curing him. He kind of, like, overcomes his speech impediment on the job, which I did with carpal tunnel syndrome. Now. He subsequently worked at bit gigs at other local radio stations. He held ambitions to write for television. And in his early 20s, he did write one episode of the TV show Bonanza. OK, alright. Wait. He doesn't always work. Good work, Wally. That's a real TV show. After we listen to, after we listen to this, after we record this, I'm gonna have to go watch that episode. Gonna see if anything pops out to me if there's anything problematic about Wally George's episode of Bonanza. Is there anything problematic about an episode of Bonanza that's the one that's the one bonanza episode that in that in the middle has a 7 minute rant about Martin Luther King Junior? So Wally got his first radio show, the Wally George Show on KTYN FM in Englewood. I was trying to do my radio voice for that one came across. Yeah. Thank you, Tom. I love how not imaginative any of these people are. It's always either just the my name show or the my name report or the my name file. That's the only thing they have. Yeah. I think there's a degree of it that's just like, look, you're going to move her as we we saw with Joe Pine. It's not uncommon. It's just been like a year or less. At most of the places you work, you're moving around all the time. You're trying to build brand recognition. So at least you want people to, like, know your name, you know? Yeah. And to be fair, everybody doesn't. They don't say let's watch tonight. So The Tonight Show, they say, let's watch Carson. Let's watch, let's watch Carson, let's watch Leno. Let's watch. No, there's no one else. Anyone. That's it. It stopped. Yeah, that's it. It's done now. I mean, I have no animosity towards Stephen Colbert, but my God, late night TV is just a horrible idea. We should know that now. We should accept it. It's it's it's it needs to. Craig Ferguson needs to be allowed to take it out behind a barn and shoot it. That that's who should do it, Greg. Crying like the boy in Old Yeller isn't loads his dad shotgun. So you have Johnny Carson's shotgun and never wanted this for you? So he gets his first show in 1969, which is the year before Joe Pine dies. And yeah, he goes through, you know, he does like the all they all do. He runs through like a series of shows on different networks. He produces and Co hosts talk radio programs, one with LA's then Mayor Sam Yorty for like nearly a decade. So he's in like talk radio for a while, but kind of a respectable turn of talk radio. He starts his own radio show, and it does well enough that he's able to uh 1979, he starts his own talk radio show. Again, and this one does well enough that he's able to launch his own TV show off of it called Hot Seat, which first airs in 1983 at an independent radio station in Anaheim, CA. 1983 is a year before Rush Limbaugh started his first political radio show, and a decade before the 1st episode of the Jerry Springer Show in 1991. Hot seat with Wally George would include elements from both of these later shows. From an article in Timeline quote, George had a way of riling even the most collected and intelligent. Tests in his first year, for instance, George invited then ACLU lawyer and later journalist Jeff Cohen to talk about police brutality and surveillance of lawful, politically motivated organizations and 1st Cohen's responses to questions like Why Do You want to handcuff the Police Department from catching criminals? Seem prepared coreographed. But after a few minutes, the interview intensifies. Both raised their voices, the audience clatters and gesticulates. George interjects with an age-old challenge. I have nothing to hide, So what do I care if police watch me? The audience Brays with joy, but for all his cruel. Bravado and personal attacks. George consistently stumbled when the tables were turned. His ideology was full of contradictions. In one episode he spits. I say Martin Luther King does not deserve a national holiday in his name. There are many more Americans who deserve it, a heck of a lot more. So that's the kind of guy he is. We're no longer like the genteel, playing it, being polite kind of guy. He's he's very much a recognizable sort of right wing media figure. So in November, yeah, keep keeping it authentically, *******. Yeah, yeah, keeping it authentically. *******. In November of 1983, Wally earned his first national news story. When he's so irritated, his guest Blase Bonpane, a pacifist in Human Rights Act in that name rules. That is a good name right now. The short version of the story is that Blaze got angry and flipped Walley's desk. He had to be escorted out by security. That's like, this really happened. Like something a person named Blaze would do. It does. It does, because he's a blaze man. He's full of fire. Sounds like an American gladiator. It's gonna flip your desk while he gets. Like a pacifist activist to flip his desk on TV desk. This should never really happened before. This is like a huge deal. Like this is the first Geraldo getting hit with a ******* chair, you know? God, what a great moment that was. I found an interview with Blaze that sheds more light on this incident and what came after. Because this incident really like you could draw a Direct Line from this to Jerry Springer. I'm sorry, what year was this again? This is 198383. Year starts in 91, OK? And this is really like this. This. This chunk I'm going to read is interesting because it gives you, it gives you a sense of the way in which Wally is helping to give birth to. Not just the cultural space that guys like Jerry Springer occupy, but like what reality TV becomes. So this is him, this is blaze. Talking about what happened after he flips that desk and gets escorted off by security quote, he called me. This had to be 1983 and asked if I could come on his program. It was right during Reagan's war in Grenada. In a phone conversation, he seemed just delightful. I was in the background listening to his interviews just before me, a Mexican American attorney, and Wally was just insulting him with racial slurs. And so on. And I was quite irritated just hearing him operate. When it was my turn, I went to the interview and he had a large group of young people in the audience. And just as he was getting started, I turned towards the audience and I said I hope you won't go and die as the enemy in a place like Grenada where you're not wanted. He got a little upset when I made that comment. He came over and assaulted me and battered me. He attacked me from behind. It was a little difficult for a long standing boxer to not respond, but I thought that would be a terrible thing to do. So I looked at his desk and I saw there was no one near it and no one that would be harmed. So I just flipped the desk over and walked out. I came home and I told my wife and children. Surprised? I was. And within moments we saw it on ABC, CBS, NBC. It was all over the country. I think that particular episode had just been played 1000 times across the country. I still see it. It's amazing how it made an impact on TV. There was no staging. However, after the security men ushered me to my car, I went home and the following morning Wally called me and said Blaze. We have a terrific thing going here. We can do this all over the country. I said, Wally, you're a charlatan and there will be no further interviews. Thank you. You see, like while he doesn't believe in. Get no. Yeah. While Wally is just like, yeah, I'll bring this guy like, I want him to throw ****. I wanna like, this is great TV. So that's more of the thing that I was talking about last episode, where it's like, is he genuinely getting pulled in this direction or is he getting pulled in this direction because, like, this is make, this makes good TV. And yeah, that's like the guiding light of a lot of these chuds is that they don't actually believe in a lot of things, if anything at all. Believe in whatever gets them. The money gets the attention. I think Joe Pyne might have believed in things. He certainly fought for something at one point. I Wally clearly doesn't like. He's just happy to like, yeah, like, come the next day, like it was a pro wrestling match. Yeah, exactly. Like, yeah, we could do this all over and this is turning the country. So what the **** are you talking about? Joe Pyne is like, not a good person. Not a nice person. No. Pretty racist and bigoted, I'm sure, in a lot of ways, although I doubt excessively for his time, which is not saying anything good about him. It's talking about, like, the white dudes in the 1960s. His generation were pretty ******* racist. But I don't think I wouldn't qualify him as a ******* based on like the things he intentionally did. Once we're at Wally George we're we're in like the like full ******* territory like wheat. Cause Joe Pyne is a guy who's like willing to do things and like drudge up judge up controversy but also can listen to people and and like has something he believes in and is trying to get across with Wally George it is peer I'm into this right wing **** just for the because it's what it gets the rage views it gets people angry, gets people riled up. I don't care who I have on I want folks to fight. I just wanna like tickle peoples amygdala and make them angry, you know? Does he start selling brain pills, Robert? No. No he does not to mine. Well I don't know maybe I I I can't comprehensively say he never sold brain pills. I I'm I cannot make that claim to a point of certainty. Tom. I was going to get so excited that showed up later that that like Alex Jones and like a lot of the folks who came after Wally George built an audience that was cult like in its devotion by 1984. An audience of mostly college aged men were waiting up to six months for their chance to sit in his 80 person studio audience. People would like sign up for this **** way ahead of time. They'd shout Wally Wally and wear shirts with American flags on them, roaring until he forced them to stop, where Joe Pyne could be mocking and even cruel as long as he maintained an air of genteel politeness. Wally George was free to scream, shout and even strike people, he told 1 interviewer in 1984. They say that I'm a lunatic, that I'm a maniac, but why do you have to smile at your guests? Be nice and let them say what they want to say in this Wally completed the transition from Joe Pyne, a right wing firebrand whose work was still firmly rooted in the outward civility of the 1950s, to modern right wing media. While he would not sit and listen to, for example, a trans woman explaining her life, he had no interest in letting guests say their piece. The central conceit of his show was that left-leaning guests would be allowed to show up and try to make an argument while Wally and his audience harassed and assaulted them. I want to play this segment from his show where he is a popular radio. DJ on the DJ brings you 2 albums to hand out to the audience. It was 1984. Yeah, and he chastised. Yeah, and he chastises Wally for having previously claimed the band were devil worshippers, which is an argument Wally George made a number of times. Here's Walley's reply. You said you two are bunch of devil worship. They are. They're terrible that Christians. Three of the four men, they're Christian. You're saying I'm wrong. You're wrong. Wally has never Oh my God, that's what he looks like. I mean, I don't want any proof because he looks like Rick Flair with the Prince Valiant haircut we're getting, we're getting beyond the existing you down right now is your station is one of the same time it looks like Colonel Sanders, PC guru, cracking down on what they call like his spiritual Radio Shock radio. And I say it's about time I say the FCC should crack down. There's a lot of nonsense. A lot of really filth and sexual innuendo that little kids are listening to. And I say it's about time that the FCC cracked down on these filthy radio stations. Alright, alright, that's enough of this clip. So First off, he looks incredible. He looks incredible. He looks. The amazing thing about Wally Carnival magician you you watch. He looks like a guy that ties balloon animals. He looks amazing. You watched 30 seconds of Wally George and every fake media figure from a Paul Verhoeven movie in the 1990s suddenly make because they're all him. They're all Wally George. Like every media figure that, like, got mocked in one of those, like, surreal 90s movies is ******* Wally George. He looks like Julian Sands as a TV preacher. He looks like if Julian Assange was a warlock. Yes, yes, if a vampire bites. Julian Assange's neck he would turn into into. Credible? He's in. For those of you who aren't going to look at the picture, yes, like shoulder length white hair that can't be real, cannot be real. It's I. It's either a wig or like so flat ironed that it just lays there like he's got a white suit. He looks like Mr. White from the venture brothers, but not an albino, right? It's just an amazing, amazing commitment to a very specific aesthetic. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, this is my thing, and I'm just going to blunt force it on people's 1980s. A third of my body weight is cocaine. It's he's. Yeah, he does. He looks like somebody like he looks like the shredder dumped mutagen on a pile of cocaine. Yeah. And like, that's the creature was a man. That's Wally church mutated. So, yeah, here's him talking. To Larry Rice, a same sex marriage advocate and an AIDS awareness activist. Oh boy. Hurray. Gay pride parade. I say it is, it is very offensive. It is very offensive for gays to be running around, groping each other in the park. What do you think about that? I don't think, I don't think it's, I don't think it's very fair for you to make fun of people whose, whose lifestyle is is not the way you want it to be. And I think it's all really. I think it's kind of sad, you know, because like, they don't hurt you what they do. And you know, I'm saying ******* down the fence that you stupid network, it's offensive. You're. Well, it's not fair. I'll tell you what, because people like you. You're the people that caused the problem. People, people who are gay. People who are gay, they do have. They are gay. They do have. You're very rough. They have it very rough in this world. OK, because of people like you. And I think, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. This is very upsetting. I think that because you still make it so hard for them to live that they have a lot of like mental disorders and things. Alright, that's probably about enough of that. He's it's man, if you guys listening can stomach looking up this clip. It's it's a nightmare. It keeps. Yeah. It's horrible. His audience and they're just like. Huge, great. Clearly nothing but high school bullies like screaming like guys. He's it's horrible. He's just trying to get his point out and he's saying like this, these completely rational things. Oh my God. But it's also one of there's a couple things that are interesting comparing bioperine #1. You can think back to Joe Pine, who again, I'm certain held very regressive views on, on gay people, but asking with genuine interest. Oh, so someone who is a who is a transvestite isn't necessarily a homosexual. Oh, that's interesting to me. As opposed to Wally George, who just starts screaming at how offensive like the thought of a gay person. Existing. It's like his with his flaxen shoulder length hair and long sleeve turtleneck with a blazer on. And he's screaming about how gay pride parade is offensive. I'm like, yes, Roger stone vibes. Yeah. He definitely has some he does. He sure Roger Stone watched this show that Roger Stone would wear, right? Like he says, look like a disguise. Looks like Roger Stone in a bond villain wig. Yeah. And the other thing that's different is that, you know, Jill Pine could be we played him being very rude to some people. But also, they were all people who could go toe to toe with him rhetorically, like Krasner, you know, obviously he didn't respect cresser Cressner's, media trained. Krasner was ready for what he got. You know, he gave as good as he got this poor man, Larry Rice, nothing against him because he's saying very reasonable things. He's clearly not media trained, not really. He's not, he's not and he's so he's nothing against him. The clip is so upsetting because you can see very upsetting. It's part of why it's part of like the bad faith of like debate me because the tactic is just to. Keep shouting at you these things to keep you off topic, and it's like not only is this guy battling this overbearing ******* of a host, but the entire audience is jeering at him the whole time. So, like, I can't imagine being in that, like, even if you are a media trained, like, even if you are media trained, being in that situation, it's like, Jesus, like, I can't, I can't find footing to even make my argument. No one can do well in that kind of an environment. But no. And it's again, it's one of those things. I do think that like Joe Pyne was someone who did want to debate people and would debate people and would go out of his way to get people who he who who could present themselves well on television, even if what they were saying was like, and I I'm not going to say that maybe this was comprehensively. With everything he did but all of Wally George is like this. It is nothing but but this. It is just hate. I wanna point out that his little turtleneck matched the wallpaper of his set. It did. It sure did. And he's he's got, he's got a little behind him is a framed photo of a of a of a space shuttle taking off. It just says USA at the bottom. Yeah, sure. So his set is like a little boy's room. And it's I I keep bringing up Joe Pyne. It like positively not to say nice things about Joe Pyne and please don't take this as like me trying to defend his legacy, but to point like how badly things have degenerated like 1617 years dark. The differences. Yeah. I'm sitting here trying to think of like, man, what happened and, you know, a lot of things happened. Reagan for one. Yes. Yeah. Between 1970 and 19, the religious right became a political bloc, which it wasn't when I'm when Joe Pyne was on the air, the religious right was not a political bloc. That didn't happen till 79. So yeah. It's just it's a very bleak but very clear. He's all slide downhill. He's proto 700 club too. Just the way he looks. The way he looks. I don't know if he was Proto. When did the 700 club stop? No, that's true. Solid radio. We're gonna Google this song. Yeah, 1966. So he **** right off the 70 of the 700 club. I gotta give you that. Alright. OK. Yeah. But Tom, you know what did come before the 700 club and we'll be there long after. I don't know. I don't know. I are. Are you gonna tell me the products and services Tom that support this podcast? Yep. Wow. Solid, solid throw to ad man. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. 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Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, we're back and we're, we're, we're not better than ever. We just are continually sliding downhill. No, we're not even, we're not even Better Than Ezra at this point. No, we're not now, Tom. Yeah. So let's talk some more about that horrific interview with Larry Rice that really upset me. Yeah, it's really upsetting. It's family. And again, it's the kind of thing, like you just didn't feel that way listening to the Joe Pyne. Even when he was being a ********. Yeah, it's not that kind of. Well, it's it's the, it's it's frighteningly close to a lynch mob. Yeah. Yeah. I think if he'd ordered them, they would have. Yeah. It's it's really alarming. It's it's a it's very upsetting clip to watch. It's really ****** **. Yeah, it's fun and it gets a lot worse. And he's dressed like ******* clown, too. Like, doesn't like this guy Joker on vacation. Yeah. ******* Wally George, that's a clown name. That's a clown shoe name. Wally ************. So he goes on in that interview to say, here in the United States, we don't want perverts marrying each other. And then when they start discussing AIDS prevention, he tells Larry, I don't want these gay AIDS carriers to spread their disease to all of us heterosexuals. People like you were spitting at me. I could catch aids from you. Just a mountain of **** dressed in a terrible suit. Now, when it comes to evaluating the appeal and the impact of Wally. George, I think this passage from that timeline article does about the best job possible. Quote Hot seat commodified old white man anger and gave it room to fester. Georges Fury was the entire point. It gave audiences permission to act out their basest impulses during the conservative Reagan era. The allure of the show was merely having an outlet for anger. It was a contractual yelling match with the viewers invited. Yep, that makes sense. Yeah, feel like that. That all ties together seems relevant. Gosh, somebody, somebody else really rose to prominence in the 80s. Gosh, who was that major? There's Don Imus and Howard Stern. Magnus is a big major media figure. Ohh, I'm being facetious. Ohh. Rush Limbaugh. Yeah, Limbaugh. Trump. Yeah, Trump. Yeah. This, this is this is this is the era. They're all, they're all all of them ********* came from all those people. Real pieces of ****. Now, during his rise to prominence, as we stated, there were a number of dudes inhabiting a similar field. Rush Limbaugh gets on the radio a year later, Don Imus and Howard Stern, who are less offensive figures, not much less in the case of Don Imus or starting around this. But the fact that Wally George worked most prominent, worked most prominently on TV, giving his viewers and live audiences an outlet to vent their rage and frustration on human beings made them made him unique in his 19. Again, it's it's like half a lynch mob, and that's half of the appeal. Yeah, Wally George does. Yeah, it's clear. 1999 autobiography. He coined the phrase combat TV to describe the thing that he invented. And now that's like all news programs. It's just bleak. One of Walley's most popular guests was a special ***** ** **** named Tom Metzger, the head of a Nazi organization called White Aryan Resistance. I suppose you could critique him as as as again, like Joe Pine platforming in Otzi, and he is kind of doing that. But Wally, I don't know. Wally can't be, certainly can't be accused of equivocating on Nazism because I'm going to play you a clip of that next all across this great country now in our 11th year, and we have the future great Tom Metzger. Man villain. To say before we went to our our break, some of you don't know what Tom Metzger's been involved in. I'm going to go back to that case up in Oregon where some of Tom Metzger's followers went up to Oregon and they beat a black man to death with thought to applaud that you idiot. They beat this black man to death with baseball bats, followers of Tom Metzger. He's just there with us. He's sits there with that smug little grin on his face because he doesn't get his hands bloody. He he sends out wait. He sends out his henchman and his followers to do his dirty work for him. All right, all right, all right. So it's very, it's very, very telling that he had to tell somebody in the audience. You stop clapping. That's exactly right. That's what I was going to point out because he is certainly not in like, to the extent that he platforms Metzger. He's mostly screaming at him. Yeah. But you can see again where things have gone that, like, yes, stop his audience from clapping at the murder horse. You're encouraging. Yeah. Is bringing these people in Wally's, like, it's fascinating, but it's also, yeah. There's something so bleak about that, too, because there are a lot of mostly horrible things you can say about Wally. And I'm sure Tom went on his show because he saw it as a platform. But Wally never for a second pretended that this guy needed to be heard out. He just had him on to scream at him. Which again. As bad as Wally Georges makes him better than a lot of right wing media today. Like even it's even gone hill or downhill since Wally George is the point I'm making. Not trying to like praise Wally George, but it's like the bar has lowered even more than this cesspool. Yeah, and I don't know, maybe like if ******* Richard Spencer, he would have heard out. I don't know. I don't. He didn't often hear people out, so I don't know that he would have invited anyone on that he couldn't have just screamed at. But but yeah, it's it's a little bleak. That said. He was very happy to capitalize off the outrage that bringing a guy like Metzger on generated, and I sure don't want to be praising him for yelling at Tom Metzger. He's doing it to make money. I want to quote from an article on Wally by OC Weekly the Orange County, which is, for those of you who do not know the like the the Republican one of the biggest Republican stronghold in California. Pretty much what made those hot seat appearances by Metzger in the 1980s and 90s so relevant was just how clearly the lions between good and evil were drawn. George wore the white hat, literally, and Metzger. Was the bad guy if there was no Gray to be found, and the audience reaction corroborated those roles. George's last interview with Metzger was around 1992 against the backdrop of that year's LA riots, and George absolutely laid into Metzger. George repeatedly scolded Metzger for being unamerican and referred to war as a bunch of dumb Nazis. George kicked Metzger off his stage after an unprecedented but understandable 4 minutes. It was a proud moment for Orange County conservatism as embodied by George. It stood up to the emblematic scourge of white supremacy, and obviously I don't. Particularly agree with that take but it's interesting that like this modern OC Conservative writer is looking back at Wally George and be like remember when we yelled at Nazis I supposed to marching with them in the streets? Like, I'm not trying to say that this guy is right because this is shouldn't be a proud moment for conservatism because also he he brought him on his ******* show several. It's interesting to me that this this guy looking at like because he's I'm sure he's referring to like these mobs you've had like attacking vaccine sites and ******* we spa and whatnot in LA. Some of which include ******* Nazis. And he's like, oh, remember when we used to at least yell at Nazis? Yeah, it's it's bleak. While he filmed his show in Orange County, and he was a local institution and incredibly influential to the combative form of conservatism that exists in that enclave to this day. But as the author of that article points out, modern OC Conservatives, though very much the descendants of Wally George, often lack his very minimal ethical convictions, quote prescient of what occurred in Charlottesville and Trump's reaction to it. The 1992 interview with Metzger captured a moment in time when conservative Republicans rallied openly against white supremacy in the Nazis. Watching that episode, it is equal parts antiquated and Orwellian, with George orchestrating an audience full of young, mostly white conservative Orange County men and fomenting and rallying viciously against Metzger and what he stood for. To riff on Trump's own axiom, George made it clear that there were not very fine people on both sides. In a fitting into the segment, George stood up behind his desk and let his audience in a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance with particular. Local emphasis on the last line with liberty and justice for all. He then expanded on that theme to his audience as he looked deplorably at Metzger, reminding him the phrase meant to encompass all races, all religions and all creeds. And yeah, it's a it's bleak. Mean? I feel like George Walley's Ohh walley's the kind of dude that would have this guy on to scream at him. Not because he really personally finds his politics all that distasteful. I don't think he cares about any. I don't think. No, I I'm sure he finds the because I don't think he cares about politics much. No, it was just one. I don't know, it was just a thing creating a situation where he could be the good guy. Yeah, and generate, you know, ratings for his TV show. I don't know. I, I I refuse to applaud him for any part. And I'm not quoting this to applaud him. I'm quoting because it's interesting to see someone writing from that perspective of each county conserved going. No. Yeah. Remember when we when we didn't like Nazis? Remember when we remember when we had at least that line that we wouldn't cross? Like, and when you're looking back at Wally George. Yeah. Remember those high standards? We believed in things. And there's this guy that, like, calls a dude who flipped his desk over the next day we should turn the country with this. We should do with the country. Believe in anything he believes in. TV doesn't. Believe in a *** **** thing. Now it is unclear to me whether or not Wally George, living in the modern era, would have fully embraced, embraced the white nationalist, authoritarian politics that have since devoured the GOP. I suspect so in a way that I don't know if Joe Pyne would have is as racist as I'm sure Joe Pyne was. Joe Pyne, at least was in World War Two. Like, I think he might not, right? He might brush up against that little bit. I think if he saw a dude with a swastika flag in a March, he'd be like, well, **** those guys. Whatever's happening over there, whatever is happening over there, I don't like that flag. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, it's. I I don't know. I can't say what Wally would have done clearly, but if we were to judge purely off his TV appearances, maybe know if we were to judge what we know about him morally, probably, yes. He's he seems cut from the same grifter cloth. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Wally is, it's worth noting, one of the very first conservative political voices, to use a phrase that has since become infamous. We must make America great again. Wally said this regularly on his show throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Alongside Rush Limbaugh, he also popularized phrases like liberal lunatics calling his detractors strippers, mud wrestlers, and ****** of all sizes and shapes. By the 1990s, hot seat was no longer close to unique. Jerry Springer and Rush Limbaugh had both entered TV by then. Russia's foray didn't last long, but in 1996, Fox News started up and provided a much more respectable venue for far right hate speech. Meanwhile, Jerry Springer delivered a gleefully apolitical approach to combat television that more people found appealing than Walley's right wing rants. The fact that Springer himself was a much more pleasant person than Walter George may have had something to do with this in 1995, Georgia's. Wife left him in the least surprising turn of all time. She took their seven-year old daughter with her. Thank God Jesus Christ yeah. We do not know how many times Wally was married. At least four. Some sources say as many as six times. I like that. It's like a ******* legend. Like we don't know. It's like we don't really know how many times this course that ******* cryptkeeper looking dude we don't know. Don't know how many wives he's got locked in a closet like blue Beard wives survived right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, Wally had several kids, but he was not really a father to any of them. Like, he would have kids, but he was no one's father. I think that's fair to say, man, judging by his his said, I thought he would have delighted in having little kids, having a little kid around you guys in a rocket ships. And blue turtlenecks. His most prominent child, Tom, was the actress Rebecca de Mornay. No ****. Yeah, that's his daughter, while he church's daughter. Tell us about Rebecca de Mornay. Oh, they have kind of the same hair, like you can see it. Man, that's that's ****** **. I mean, I mean, she's in hand that rocks the cradle. She's in the that the Sweet 3 Musketeers, you know, the Disney one with with Oliver Platt and Charlie Sheen and Keith Sutherland. She's in that TV version of the Shining. She is in that TV version of The Shining. Tom, that's a man that just shattered my entire universe. You didn't expect that, did not expect that, didn't expect to learn that today, did you? Was she the. No, that that's too late. I was gonna say, was she the one that the that the wife took? But no, she was our perspective was already in movies at that point. Yeah, I think she was. You know, he was just having kids and abandoning them left and right. You know who else has kids and abandons them? The person the sponsors are responsible for these delightful products and services. Not a single one of them. Not a single one of them raise their own kids. Well, that's gonna help us get sponsors, Robert. Thank you, Sophie. Thank you. You're great, Sophie. Look, I think some people. You know, like to like, raise their kids in a loving environment. And some people like the song a boy named Sue and think that that's a good way to raise a kid. And both options are equally respectable. And what does that have to do with their sponsors? Well, if you can abandon your kids, as long as you name them Sue, it's fine. As the song shows, they'll turn out OK. We'll also learn how to fight. We'll also accept ramblin man, ramblin man, share absolutely great, great child rearing advice and rambling man. Alright, well that's going to lead us to ads. 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. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family and at Mint. Family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. 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And get the feel of nature so that you come to be fascinated, then you come to want to understand it, and then you come to love it, and at that point you want to protect it. And then we'll come to the sort of healthy world that I envision as a good future for us. And the rest of life on this planet. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back, and we're all just silently appreciating the song a boy named Sue, which again, contains all of the parenting lessons anyone listening to this will ever need to know. Certainly anyone we're talking about will need certainly ever, ever observed. So, Rebecca de Mornay, am I saying her name? Right? As far as I know. Alright. Yeah. Yeah. You know, she is, obviously. Yeah. What's she in? What? What's what's her big ****. I just rattled. Are you serious? I just rattled them all, Tom. OK, well, my brain doesn't work, Tom. And the rocks. The cradle is probably your biggest right hand. That rocks the cradle. I'm sorry. I'm on. I'm on drugs. It's more that I've. I'm most mostly sober now. It's more that I was on drugs for 13 straight years. My memory doesn't do so great. Yeah, I remember that. You knew me during. Yeah, I remember that. I was like, smoke a day. Yeah. You were there for some of that that night. I I gave everybody way too much light. You put Dave in the hospital hallucinating. Yeah. I mean, in fairness, Dave, Dave decided the hospital was the right place to be at. That's true. That's true. Yeah. Have been able to watch back to the future since we were coming up during that, when we realized we had grossly misjudged the amount of profit we had taken. ****** ** the dosage. Bail? Holot? Yeah, it was something like 6060 doses or so. So his most prominent child was the actress Rebecca De Mornay, who ******* hated Wally George. He that's that's like publicly attacked him. And while he blasted her in interviews as bitter, twisted, and out to ruin me, I found an old LA Times article that provides more context to Wally during the downswing of his career. You know she's my daughter, don't you ask George. He can't help basking in the reflected glory of her. Liberty status, even while conceding that she grew up in England without knowing him and wants nothing to do with him now would really bothers bothers me more than anything is that she's given interviews saying I never tried to contact her until after she became a star. It's not true. I embarrass her. She hangs out with left wing actors like Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson and Harry Dean Stanton. They don't like me because I have bad mouthed Hollywood. They've convinced her I'm bad for her career. I just love that that, that trifecta. It's like Robert Deniro, Jack Nicholson. Stand. Famed leftists all. Man. It's very funny, in fact. Yeah. Sorry, just laughing at that. Yeah, it's it's very funny. And it's one of those things, like, probably nothing would have maybe saved his career more than if he'd actually, like, made-up with his daughter and, like, done a big TV special about it. But she never gave in to that ****. Like, that's clearly what he wanted was some kind of, like, big public, you know, for show, right? I he obviously didn't give a **** about her. He abandoned. No, I'm sure, but I'm sure once she was. Very famous. He wanted her on his TV show. Yeah, absolutely yeah, yeah, yeah. By the mid 1990s, George's audience was too small for the Nielsen company to rate, which means it reached less than 24,000 households in the Los Angeles area. As a result, in order to chase notoriety and attention, he was forced to find weirder and weirder guests for hot seat. One frequent attendee was odorous urungus, the lead singer for Gwar's. Oderus loved Tom turns his head. Odorous loved Wally telling one. Interviewer honestly, of all the talk shows we've been on, everything from Springer to Joan Rivers to Jimmy Fallon, it was our favorite one, that cheesy little public access show. With that weirdo Wally George, he kicked *** on all of those other multimillion dollar ******* Hollywood TV creation constructed human being. Yuck. Those people really made me sick. Yeah, ******* guard. I mean, I get why a man who dresses up as a monster for a living would enjoy being on Wally Georgia show. Yeah. I mean, that was their whole thing. They just wanted to offend people and shock. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I get why Wally George and him hit it off. Dexter Holland, lead singer of the Ox Offspring, was also a guest on the Wally George Show and described it as Punk, which I do think gets it something important. For many of his young fans especially. The appeal wasn't that Wally was right wing, it was the rock, as they weren't and wasn't. They didn't hate right wingers. They weren't left wing. They just didn't care about politics. They liked that he was raucous, violent and unhinged, and they liked that as members of his live audience. They could be raucous, violent and unhinged. They could scream and shout at people and threaten them, and sometimes they would get into ******* fights on the show. And there's more than a little Wally George in the alt rights DNA. Like, I don't care as much about the politics that I'm claiming as I do about getting to offend you. You know, that's Wally George, and that's a big part of modern conservatism. Now, other regular guests who sparred with Wally expressed a belief that he was not really conservative. He was a show man first and foremost, and would happily platform anyone fringe enough to be entertaining. Still, there was more than a hint of lynch mob to Walley's audience, Nicholas Shrek, lead singer of the of radio werewolf, recalled. It was like Wally was a microcosm of Hollywood taking over politics. In a way it could seem harmless or like it was just a joke. But when we were actually in the studio, and while he was presenting me as a scapegoat for all societal ills, the audience was whipped into a genuine frenzy. They did not take it as a joke, and it felt very dangerous to be there. It's easy to think he was a humorous phenomenon, but it was part of the whole. It was a very violent craziness to the 80s. I don't think Americans can remember exactly how it was. I went to a Ronald Reagan rally in 1984 and I sensed that same inherent violence, you know, the novel Lord of the flies. It reminded me of that. Yep. There's a lot in there. Feels a little relevant, doesn't it? Yeah. Nicholas, Shrek. On to something there. Yeah, that's that's yeah. Like I said, that's one of the main things about watching that clip that was so unpleasant and upsetting. Is is is how close it is to a lynch mob. It's just like he's a big goofball. We had a lot of fun talking about how ridiculous he looks. But like, yeah, that is a frightening. There's no justification. Yeah, that is. That is nothing funny about. No, absolutely not. No, that I have. I have. I have gone toe to toe with more or less that audience in the street with a bunch of weapons on their side. It's the same ******* people. It's the same motivation. It's it's ohh, man, it's so, it's so parallel to like Trump because like Trump himself, the man is a big stupid idiot. That's ridiculous looking. And you can just look at it. Could have just as easily been a Democrat if that had been the easy way to get what he wanted. Yeah, yeah. Just look at that big stupid *******. But then you look at the crowds that follow and be like, oh, there's nothing funny about that. Like, it's this is not at all humorous. No, it's just scary. Walley's health started to fall apart in the early 1990s by 19. I know, Tom, this is really gonna break your heart. Ohh, brace yourself here. No, don't tell me I can't take it. By 1993, he had to quit recording new episodes of his show. But since hot seat had been daily for like a decade, the show stayed in reruns for another decade. And while he would regularly. Record new introductions and conclusions to various best of episodes. He died in 2003 of pneumonia, so we have a lot to thank cigarettes and pneumonia for. But none of them work fast enough. Yep, Satan called home another Angel, another one of his glorious angels. Speaking of Satan's Angels, Tom, any plugable to plug? That's the end. That's the end of Part 2. We gotta we gotta we gotta we got we got one more. We got one more in the Chamber. Ohk. OK. All ran a little longer, so ****. Alright, well, yeah. I run a podcast network with my buddy David Bell. We we worked at crack together room. If you wanna head over patreon.com/game plan employed. You can support our network. We do a bunch of free podcasts. We also do a bunch of exclusive podcasts just for patrons like folders. Maniac Tom and Jeff watch Batman and Star Trek next Futurama. So check that out if you would, please. Yeah. Souls do it. Yeah, you do not do it. I'm sorry, I love you all. Anyway, the episode is over. 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 SPREAK. Theyare.com want to say I don't know less? Listen to stuff you should know more. Join host Josh and Chuck on the podcast packed with fascinating discussions about science, history, pop culture, and more episodes. Dive into topics like was the lost city of Atlantis Real? And how does pizza work? 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