Behind the Bastards - CZM Rewind: Morton Downey Junior: The Ur-Media Grifter

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

Robert is again joined by Tom Reimann to discuss Morton Downey Junior. https://www.gofundme.com/f/btb-fundraiser-pdx-diaper-bank See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, Robert here. As a lot of you probably know, about two months ago my dad took ill. I spent most of a month in the hospital with him, the ICU. While he got sicker, he passed a couple of weeks ago. So I have lost some work time. Needless to say, we'll be taking another break this week and then we should be back with new episodes for the foreseeable future. I just needed another week to get back ahead, get myself going again. For reruns this week, we're running a trio of great episodes that we did a couple of

years ago with Tom Ryman from Gamefully Unemployed about right-wing talk show guys of the past, the dudes who laid down the groundwork that made Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck possible. So they're great episodes. Check them out. And I also wanted to plug the Portland Diaper Bank. Every year around this time, we do a fundraiser for the Portland Diaper Bank. This is our fifth year in a row. Last year, y'all raised nearly $30,000 to provide diapers to low-income people. And over the course of the last four years, this will be our fifth year, Behind the Bastards listeners have raised more than $100,000. So if you want to help out, just Google GoFundMe BTB fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank.

That's GoFundMe BTB fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank. Thanks everybody. Shop with Rakuten and you'll get it. What's it? It's the best deal. The highest cash back. Thank you, everybody. shopping with Rakuten to save money at over 750 stores. Join for free at rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol. The joy they brought to the nation.

You're free completely. No one is there to destroy you. The danger they endured. Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception. I'm Andrea Gunning, and now we're sharing an all-new story of Betrayal. Justin Rutherford. Doctor, father, family man. It was the perfect cover to hide behind. Detective Weaver said, I'm sure you know why we're here. I was like, what in the world is going on? Listen to betrayal on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Fall Schwermjäger. That was a German name for paratrooper. I don't know why I started the episode saying that. Nobody knows why you did that. How are you doing? Do you know that the German word for paratrooper is I don't know why I started the episode saying that. Tom? Nobody knows why you did that. How are you doing? Do you know that the German word for paratrooper is Fallschirmjäger? I did not know that. Well, now you do.

Thank you. They had a, you know, the Nazis had an aquatic little jeep that could go in the water. They called it Schwimmenwagen. 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. Yeah, it is. Sounds like a G-I-Joe vehicle. It does, the old. Swimming bucket. Tom. Yeah.

How are you feeling? Two pieces of shit into this. I'm vibing on some clown shoes right now. You are vibing on some clown shoes. Well, right now, Tom, this exact moment, the second in time that we both inhabit, which may be eternal, 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. John Yar. Dances all the way down. Just hits my ears. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Like a fine wine. No, that's a name. That's a name. Yeah. Tom, what do you know about Morton Danny Jr.? Oh, man. He's like-

In DJ, as we call him. He's like a pinky ring that fell into a puddle of toxic waste and became a man. He plays the slimy journalist that Danny Glover punches in the face in Predator 2. He sure is in Predator 2, you're goddamn right. He's just playing himself. He's absolutely playing himself in Predator 2, which is incredible. Easily the second best Predator movie. It's easily the second Predator film, yeah. Definitely, you can't take that away from it.

It is the second one of them. Indisputably the second Predator film. Yeah, no, he's like a, he was sort of like 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 son of a bitch. Yeah, Morton Downey was a real piece of shit. And the fun thing about Morton Downey Jr., Tom, is that if you start researching Morton

Downey Jr., the first Google result that tries to autofill when you start typing his name in is, is Morton Downey Jr. related to Robert Downey Jr.? And my answer to that is it does not appear to be so. No, it isn't, no. Just a fun coincidence. Which is weird because he does have a famous dad like Robert Downey Jr. But just a completely different one. I just, that's very funny.

So, let's talk about MDJ. So Morton Downey Jr. was born on December 9th, 1932 in Los Angeles, California. His father was, obviously, a guy named Morton Downey. Yeah, two-thirds of these guys are Californians. Well, that in the 30s, I'm like, fuck, he's old. Like a lot of these fuckers are ancient. Dusty old racist mummies.

Because they were established by the time the 80s got going and they could really start fucking some shit up for everybody That's true. I keep thinking 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 it meant 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 Jr. 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 Sr. would ultimately have five children, four sons and a daughter. He was not a nice man or at least people who knew Morton Downey Jr. 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 Hyannisport in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and their next door neighbors were the Kennedys. Yeah. Yes, it's like, that's how much money they got as kids. Rich-ish? Yeah.

Yeah, they're hanging with the Kennedys. Morton Downey Jr. was good friends with Joe Kennedy, while Morton, or Morton Downey Sr. was good friends with Joe Kennedy. And when Morton Downey Jr. was a child, he would hang out regularly with the Kennedy boys, you know, like he knew Robert and JFK when they were younger. They were all buds together, I guess. Downey, I mean, he's a bit younger, but Downey attended New York University 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, Connecticut 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 that saw modest success. Like Wally George, Morton Downey Jr. bounced around various markets. Phoenix, Miami, Kansas City, San Diego, and Seattle. Also like Wally, he was a huge asshole

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. Oh boy. Like doxed the guy live on the air. I wanna hear him croon.

I had no idea that was his background. Oh, I mean we can't. He cut an album, Tom. Oh 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. Oh, man. Hey there, Mr. Dealer. The drug pushing son of a b******. Messing up the minds of the kids of America just to make you that b****** rich. You're the sleazebag of the country, the garbage of our lives. He's like attacking the microphone. Yeah He looks like a skeleton at a costume contest dressed as Dean Martin

All right, that's probably enough of hey there, Mr. Dealer Dear God, it is enough This will mean more when you had Dean Martin was too kind to him. He was better when he was younger too. That dude cannot sing. Yeah. His earlier shit is, I think, cause he was famous when he recorded this.

Right, he's doing his Martin Downey thing. But he's still like, yeah, it's, yeah. Yeah, I don't think he had a bad voice in the stuff you can hear from Younger. There's a good documentary about him called The Rock-A-Tour that plays it. He's attacking the song. Yeah, he is going real aggro there.

And it's because he was already a name at that point. I think he was doing a bit, or maybe he just like was out of his mind, because that's what being famous does to you after a while. I don't know. Oh, you can see the cocaine just like in 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 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 hardcover copies on Amazon for like $148. I am not buying them, but I did transcribe one of the poems he wrote specifically about Robert Kennedy's death from the documentary, Evocatour, 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, sang 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, um, it's kind of, you know, it's kind of profound. All right. All right. He's certainly like a man who's thinking about like the nature of, yeah, that was, it was thoughtful. You wouldn't call them a shallow man based on that.

Um, 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, Florida. 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 Jr. both rode that

right-wing wave and helped to shape it. Morton Downey Jr. was even more incendiary and 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 son of a bitch. 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 cocks a motherfucker,

like months into his first talk show. And again, a radio talk show. I wonder if you can hear the meat sound 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, California. There he told a joke in which he used the word Chinaman

several times, angering Tom. Yeah, not that surprising, is it, Tom? So yeah, he tells a joke in which he uses the word Chinaman several times, which pisses off Tom Chin, a Chinese American member of Sacramento City Council, who was listening in his car. I wonder why. I wonder why that bothered him. I 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 to 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. It's usually probably should be what happens. Yeah. Yeah. Now the station had to obviously had to shit can more than I'm sorry. I'll just be racist to you directly then yeah Do you would you like me to just be a piece of shit to your face? I did not mean to do it to your back on the air. Absolutely not. Oh, forgive me

I mean, let me be an asshole directly to me. It's be an asshole directly to you. I don't mean to be rude So an asshole directly to you. I don't mean to be rude. So they had to fire him, but he was also, and you'll hear different things about how popular he was. By some accounts, he was very successful. By some accounts, just modestly successful. 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 who they picked, Tom? I don't. You wanna know who followed him into the job? You might've heard of this guy, little fella. You might know his name. Rush Limbaugh. Oh.

Mm. 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. I can be- For a while,

for a little while. Eventually I'll be much more racist than that. I can be slightly less racist to people's faces. Yeah, again, for a while. For a while. Yeah, for could be slightly less racist to people's faces. Yeah again for a while For a while Like man that was too racist. Let's get Russian here. Let's get that rush Limbaugh kid in here Yeah, we need to tone things down somewhat. 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?

Mmm... Portland? I don't know. No, Cleveland. Cleveland, oh yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the Portland of the East. Yeah, you get your ass on down to Cleveland. Hey, our rivers are very rarely on fire.

Um, unlike Cleveland. So he gets hired by WEREAM 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, a municipal court judge. Who could have seen this coming?

Who could have guessed Wally George, the man who punched an abortion rights activist and lost his first radio show, lost his second for screaming racial slurs at a city counselor, would, lost his second for screaming racial slurs at a city counselor, would lose his third show for screaming racial slurs at a municipal court judge. Hoomst among us. Hoomst among us.

Has not on a bad day hurled racial slurs at a circuit court judge or whoever it was. Those of us who have not gone to jail have done that. So while his former employer wrestled with a lawsuit as a result of this, Morton Downey Jr. moved to Chicago to do it all over again. So during both of these- The OJ strategy. Yeah, the OJ strategy.

He fly to Chicago. Yeah, Chicago forgives all sins. During his first two dalliances with talk radio, Morton Downey Jr. 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 Morton Townie Jr.'s executive intelligence report. Quote, Lyndon LaRouche, the quixotic, apocalyptic leader of a cult-like political organization who ran for president eight times once for a prison cell, died on Tuesday. He was 96. Defining what Mr. LaRouche- Holy shit. Yeah, right? That's a motherfucking sentence.

That is an entire sentence. Defining what Mr. LaRouche- Holy shit! Yeah, right? That's a motherfucking 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 liked the idea of Bitshirae was like, we don't know what the fuck he believed. He believed in Lyndon LaRouche 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 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 Jr's intel. I'm finding a couple of consistent threads in his belief structure. Mm-hmm.

That perhaps his obituary could have latched onto. 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, my God, that is a sentence. Yeah, that first sentence almost knocked me out of my chair. Yeah, what a fucking life. Oh God, ran for president eight times,

once from prison, I was like, what? It was a tax thing, I think. Again, I'll have to read into him and we'll do a whole episode on Lyndon LaRouche. He's quite a character. But yeah, the head of Morton Downey Jr.'s Intel program. Now the fact that Morton Downey Jr. platform this guy is very fucked up, and it's arguably more fucked up

because Morton Downey Jr. 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. Now that's bullshit. 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's newsletter and other publications after that point, calling the fascist cult leader's intelligence information, quote, the second or third best in the world. Based on what, Morton Downey Jr.? He and Morton Downey Jr. doesn He Martin Downey jr. Doesn't know Nice build cast member of Predator 2 Yeah, mother I mean he did make the top ten

Look in fairness, that's more than either of us have ever done in terms of 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. Based on your experience, which is you and I both did get to look at the Predator costume. Yes, oh wait, no. Yes, we did. I didn't, well, I saw the video.

Oh, you weren't there that day? I wasn't, I didn't go to ADI, but I saw the video. It was rad. It seems like it would be. Just knowing that I was that close to something that had touched Morton Downey Jr. was just powerful, Tom. Really powerful.

You know what else has touched Morton Downey Jr.? In a sexual manner. These products and services, probably. They fucked him. They fucked him hard. These products and services have been inserted into Morton Downey Jr. Absolutely. That is, again, the only promise we make about our sponsors. Sophie seems fine with this, So I'm just gonna continue Yeah, that's an ad. That's an ad throw. That's an ad throw, baby

When the Taliban banned music in Afghanistan millions were plunged into silence Radios were smashed cassettes burned. You could be beaten or jailed or killed for breaking the rules and yet Afghans did it anyway. This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol. The danger they endured. They said my head should be cut off. The joy they brought to the nation. You're free completely. No one is there to destroy you. I'm John Legend. Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A new season of Bridgerton is here.

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It was the perfect cover for Justin Rutherford to hide behind. They led me into the house and I mean, it was like a movie. He was sitting at our kitchen table. The cops were guarding him. Stacey learned how far her husband would go to save himself. I slept with a loaded gun next to my bed. He did not just say I wish he was dead.

He actually gave details and explained different scenarios on how to kill him. He, to me, is scarier than Jeffrey Dahmer. kill him. He to me is scarier than Jeffrey Dahmer. Listen to Betrayal on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, we're back. So by 1987, Rush Limbaugh's 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 blow up on the radio and they're like, this guy could be a hit on TV. And in fairness, they're looking at Wally George over in OC. They're seeing Rush Limbaugh blow up on the radio and they're like, this guy could be a hit on TV. And in fairness, they're not wrong. He was. Yeah, he was. Filmed in Secaucus, the Morton Downey Jr. show

was cut very much in the shape of Wally George's hot seat. In fact, Wally even had Morton on his show in the late 1980s and it was immediately hostile. And I'm first gonna play this clip of Morton Downey Jr. on the Wally George show. It's really a Freddy versus Jason moment. I was gonna say two rats fighting over a dead cat. Oh boy.

And I have to say before, if you're wondering what Morton Downey Jr. looks like, well, so if he gets this clip together, remember Iron Giant? Remember the bad guy from Iron Giant? He looks like Christopher McDonald. The sleazy fed? Yeah, he looks like Shooter McGavin. He looks like Shooter McGavin, yeah, he does.

Who is the same, it blew me away to learn that Shooter McGavin and the fed from the Iron Giant are the same guy, incredible thing. He looks like Shooter McGavin with novelty teeth. He does, he does. He looks like Shooter McGavin if Shooter McGavin did like birthday parties for children. Oh, here it is. You've got, you've, you're coming up with the usual simplistic answers Wally, that conservatives who don't know what the hell they're talking about You've got an audience of monkeys out here who do everything that you tell him to do He's not wrong. I'm warning you the next time you don't warn me punk

Wally George looks incredible. Look at him. Look at him. It's amazing. What a man. He looks like the entertainment director at a cruise ship, but like a bad cruise ship. The cops have come on now

and they're pulling Morton Downey Jr. off the show and tackling. Three sheriffs, Decker. He's tackled Morton Downey Jr. off the stage. I still get total Roger Stone vibes from that guy with like a... Yeah. And obviously all of that was set up ahead of time. The plan was always, I suspect, for Morton Downey Jr. to get tackled by Sheriff's deputies

on the seat of Wally George's hot seat. It seems so extreme and he's already so famous at that point that they wouldn't, they would not dare do that to him unless it was staged. Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, it's very funny. 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 Morton Dandy Jr. in the Wally George 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 shithead firebrand that Jack that's just in my blood Well, the thing that moment we were on a camera together. This was what had to happen Whoever wins we lose. Yeah, the real Freddy Jason situation. I think it stuck out to me was when there's a scene Well, not a scene. I'm fucking 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 Morton Downey says, don't warn me. He stands up like he's gonna fight, but he buttons his coat. He buttons his fucking coat. That's a thing you do when you know you're gonna be on camera. You do the opposite when you know you're about to start throwing hands

is you wanna unbutton that coat. So it's like, all right, man. Yeah, you wanna unbutton, you might even wanna take the, if you're gonna be on camera, you do the opposite when you know you're about to start throwing hands is you wanna unbutton that coat. So it's like, all right man. Yeah, you wanna unbutton, you might even wanna take the, if you're really gonna throw hands, you take that shirt off and you fold it on the table where you say, all right, here's how things are gonna go. So the fact that he's stepping buttoned his jacket, it's like, all right man.

You know you're not gonna get into a fight. Of course, yeah. It would have been very fun, but I don't think either of, well actually no, Morton Downey Jr. definitely threw a punch. He punched that guy who came on his radio show. To every, you know, all the, all the terrible piece of shit he is and all 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 Jr. Morton Downey Jr. wouldn't have survived to this age if he hadn't learned a couple of things about fighting because that's a man who pisses people off. Yeah. Yeah.

Wally George is a man who was very careful to never piss anyone off until he felt like he wouldn't get the shit beaten out of him. Yeah. Like he was an adult and polite society. That was a kid who hid. Yeah, he's like, yeah, look, that's a dude you can bully into giving you an extra ride

on the teacups at the carnival. Now, Morton Downey Jr. was different from Wally George. In fact, well, 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 an intelligent way. He was actually, in a lot of ways, he was kind of a mix between Wally George and Joe Pine. Because like Wally George, he would be like a lunatic a bunch of the time and like very

loud getting to fights on stage and whatnot as showman. But like Joe Pine, 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 thinking on the Morton Downey Jr. show. Not, I'm not saying that to praise it just to like characterize what he was doing. It was a bit different than Wally George. He opened his first episode with the words, certain things really burn 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 to 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've heard of Tom, named Ron Paul. Now, Morton Downey Jr. Not a friendly introduction of Ron Paul here. He brings 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, one of the things that made him prominent early on is he's for the decriminalization or legalization of all drugs. And Morton Downey Jr. is, as a Republican in this period of time, an arch drug warrior. So here's Ron Paul on the Morton Downey Jr. show. In other words, you believe that the government should stay out of our personal business altogether.

Yeah, this is correct. Not in fact, isn't it? All right, that's good, guys. But, is that more? It also happens to be my personal business if I want to kill my four-year-old kid, right? No, no. No? No, no, wait a minute.

Wait, you're giving libertarian a distorted explanation. No, sir. You people gave it to yourselves on your platform. No, let me explain that. The answer is that we are allowed to do what we want. We even permit people from smoking cigarettes. That happens to be the most deadly drug in the United States. That kills 320,000 people.

I appreciate it. And maybe we ought to make it illegal. I wish you'd ban it. I wish you'd ban it. If you would, sir, I'd put it out in your eye right now. You can buy it out on the street and pay $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 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 Pine, but he's also, he's not just shouting over him. Ron Paul gets, and he'll quiet his audience down and whatnot. Like, he's found this middle level between the two men that's certainly not like, I mean, he's a bully, he's a dick, 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 Pine was bad faith arguments, you know? Yeah, exactly. They all have this in common. 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 Pine is not far enough for today's TV. Nobody would listen to Joe Pine today. He's too calm, you know? far. Joe Pine is not far enough for today's TV. Nobody would listen to Joe Pine today. He's too calm, you know? He's like, he wants to maintain, he wants the same kind of controversy and intense emotions 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 the fact that when he has people on him, 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 wanna say this is like the reason he became prominent, but this is a decent part of it.

This is a significant reason for his, 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 Jr. 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 Jr. 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, I mean it's hard to watch the Ron Paul interview and dislike the man Where Joe Pine was always chivalrous to his female guests though, even those 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 Pine doing is like talking to a vegan so he can make fun of them, which is a big, a long reoccurring thing in like right wing politics. And yeah, she made the point, this vegan that Morton's talking to, made the point that vegan diets were healthier, to which Wally responded, I eat raw hamburger, I eat raw fish,

I smoke four 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 gonna be funny later Although you have to be fair like he looks a lot younger than Joe Pine does when Joe Pine was like 40 Yeah, Joe Pine looked like a pyramid like a pyramid made man He says he's smoking four packs of cigarettes a day. Joe Pine is smoking four packs of cigarettes an hour. Like he's burning a shit on his commute. Yeah.

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 Jr. Show. This is a big vector for a lot of people 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've expected her to hate him, like given her politics and his politics. They certainly fought like hyenas on the air, but as the documentary of Vauquatour 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 gonna have Sophie play this clip this from the documentary of Vauquetteur which I really do recommend But anyone who had breasts was a feminist There are almost no feminists who have ever burned a bra so let me get that straight There's almost no feminists who ever 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.

Oh! How does she know? She has a tape measure on her tongue. Oh! Jesus. Yeah, I know, right? That's just gross all around. I feel like I need a shower.

But also you see the difference again, when Wally George never had, it wasn't yelling at people he was friendly with. Clearly he wanted that with some of them. He was willing to 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, again, he didn't believe in shit. But while Wally George couldn't, I guess I don't think Wally, what Morton Daniel Jr. was willing to do was have someone get in hits on him verbally.

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. Morton Daniel Jr., I think, never would have taken anything really personally

because 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 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 Jr. 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 Jr. 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 boots of the the boots of the bureaucracy that doesn't give a damn about the American people, he commanded. Bureaucratic bitch, he shouted as the congregation, an unru- as unruly as any

splatterfilm crowd at the nearby Lowe's Metal Plaza 8, jumped up and loudly voiced its approval. So yeah, it's combative, but as you saw from that Gloria Aldridge quote, they'll cheer it like somebody getting in a hit on Morton too. It's not the same like unhinged. We're getting closer to Jerry Springer here. We're getting closer to Springer here.

That's right. It's more about the spectacle. They just wanna see shit 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. His studio was the first in television to put the audience through a metal detector.

Oh man. And I'm sure there was a mix of that's practical cuz yeah somebody might get fucking stabbed But also that's like that's another thing we can brag about that's juice. This TV is so hot We gotta have a metal detector for the audience. That's how intense the show is Yeah, it's a gimmick as with Wally George his live 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 Aucatour includes interviews with some of these audience members including Joshua Rothman, who is now a history professor

who was part of Wally's regular audience when he was like fucking like he looks like he's like 16 and I'm sure he was a little older, but here's here's Joshua explaining the appeal of showing up to a taping of Mort's show. Joshua explaining the appeal of showing up to a taping of Mort's show. If you guys and that other gremlin over there like Japan's... This is him as a kid. ...and shove it where it belongs. It's also sort of perfect for 17 year olds because it had no nuance at all. Everything was black or white and 17 year olds... We'll get the problem, Cukors! 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 you got, man? Yeah. It looked like he was going to say something colorful. There's 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're 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, Jr Will put your ass on television. Yeah as long as you're willing to get possibly beaten up by him on the air. Yeah Yeah, it's yeah. I know I get I get it. I get it. It's, he's given them not only an, he's given them an outlet. Yeah. And it seems like they, like we were talking about with the crowd of Wally's show, it's more that 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 every 17 year old is angry as shit about a bunch of different things

Yeah And you could get on Morton Downey Jr's 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. It doesn't matter. He just wants you to be loud and yelling and he'll be happy with you. You can be edgy. If you want to just say something fucked up on TV, he'll let you do that. It's like shitposting too.

All of this 4chan stuff, you can see those impulses. He's giving people an outlet for them. Yeah. They show the clip from their homemade video that they made, like a sketch that they did at home, pretending to be Morton Downey Jr. So it's clear that it's his bombastic, this character that he is that they're latching onto. Less than his views, it's more just the way he speaks

and the way he behaves and the way he sort of, it's like when people would chant, when 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 shit he was saying, but they didn't think about Paul They were fucking 17 year olds like they were just identified with the, the way that he expressed emotion and the way that he let them do it. And as they're identified with an angry white man, being an angry white man on television and being colorful about it.

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 vs. 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 at any time that he wants at the public schools today. And do they say, we're going to give you a minute to pray any time you want? No, the government doesn't tell children when to pray, what to pray, how to pray, or even if they should pray.

It doesn't sit in breaths like you and Madame Muriel 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, and it's the same shit you see nowadays. That's a stupid, useless argument we're still making. Yeah, 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 fucking freedom. Just like, like nine-year-old arguments, you know? Yeah, I don't even know what the fuck that's supposed to mean. Now, while the Mourn Downey Jr. 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 Morton Downey Jr. Show massively increased his platform, his profile. Like he owes a lot of his fame to the Morton Downey Jr. Show massively increased his platform, his profile, like he owes a lot of his fame to the Morton Downey Jr. Show. It helped make him into like a regular fixture on TV. 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 fucking neo-Nazis today, so here that is. In the United States, in 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 a victim of another race. When you check those figures, you find, and I'll just get to the conclusion of it,

you find that a black in 1984, a black crack, Jesus, Jesus. Was over 15 times more likely to murder a white than a white was to murder a black. All right, that's enough of this. So obviously this guy's statistics are very flawed. And one of Morton's other guests, Dr. Gloria Toot,

does point this out pretty much immediately. And we're gonna 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 than we had 10 years ago. Number two, the Justice Department

and state and local government officials in crime have admitted that the reporting statistics are an error as it relates to the crime reported by minorities and crimes reported about whites. Number three, 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. Now I could go on and on and on, but the facts 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 seems more like the kind of stuff you might have heard on Joe Pine. 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 Dylann Roof here, he claims inspired to go on his massacre by reading about black on white crime. But 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 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 fucking argument on television at all. I don't know where to land on that, but it leaves me feeling unsettled. Yeah. No, I don't trust anything that any of these people do. He just did it for radio. 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. 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 what's going on here, but you know who won't platform people Spreading Nazi talking points about race related crimes Tom Hopefully the fine people Bringing us these products and services. Yeah, they absolutely do not

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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 Al's friendship with Morton Downey Jr. that would prove to be the downfall of the Morton Downey Jr. 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 six 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 this does seem to be a case where Brawley was lying, I think it's because she'd stayed out late and 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 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 fucked up tale and Morton Downey Jr. 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 and he's Morton Downey Jr. It's a hot button issue of the day. It's the 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 right wing activist named Roy Innis. The stated goal of the episode was to determine who was the leader of black America. Both Innis, oh 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 Innis and Sharpton receive a chorus of boos

when they're introduced because that's the kind of show this is. Mort starts the interview by bringing up comments Sharpton made criticizing Innis. Sharpton goes on a rant calling Innis a sellout. then this happens and it's Ennis speaking at the start of this Go ahead. I'm one of the few None bigoted Black leaders run I will say let me state now. 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 and Tate defending this man. Recently, even after the shenanigans with him and the other soldiers. That's a lot of crap. Brother, you have your chance. Brother, brother, brother, I don't know. I got him. Oh, I don't know. I got him. Oh shit. Yeah. now! Hell no! I got it now! Oh, no!

I got it now! Oh, shit. Yeah. He just pushed down sharp to the stage. Yeah, he just shoved his ass down onto the stage, and a bunch of dudes rush up to start shoving. Holy shit balls. Yeah.

He pushed him right off the stage. That was... He pushed him right off the damn stage. That was some right-in shit. Yeah. And it went fucking viral. This moment was huge. Every TV show, like every news show

had clips of this on for fucking 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. It's not great. Didn't love it. Because I know why, I bet I know why. Yeah, because, yeah, yeah, yeah, I Cause I know why, I bet I know why

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I bet you see that We all do That it's racism 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 three skinheads had jumped him, beaten him up And drawn a swastika on his forehead and 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 Did or as he's he is he reported to the media did not align with like what he had said Basically, they said like he's fucking lying. We have no evidence that any of this is true With that 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 scumbot bag. He made several comeback. Scumbot works. Scumbot, yeah.

He's an android created only to be a scumbag. Just a shit droid full of just spewing 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 knife-ill from Predator 2 he was in Revenge of the Nerds 3 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 Crypt yeah in 1996 he was diagnosed with lung cancer,

which was embarrassing. Yeah, how dare you? Really, we have to thank Comrade Cigarettes for getting two thirds of these guys out of the planet. Critical support to chain smoking. This was embarrassing to Wally. You live by the sword, Robert. You die by the sword.

And 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 some of those routines. Yeah. He's taking a drag on a cigarette in every clip we've listened to. Yeah, and he would talk about, these aren't bad for me, I look better than you.

We read that clip a little bit earlier where he's talking about- And he doesn't. He has a four-pack. Like, he definitely doesn't. Motherfucker looks like Skeletor in these clips. He doesn't look good. He's all teeth. Yeah, he had made so much hay out of like being a smoker.

He had autographed cigarettes he'd 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,

which is very funny. Mm, Mort. Yeah. Morton died in 2001, but his influence lives on. When his show was canceled in 1989, a TV reviewer 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 whetted people's appetites for confrontational TV. There will be someone to take his place. That's prescient. There'll be a few someones. Yeah. In an opinion column for CNN, Michael Smirkonish 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 period in which the media has moved to the extremes, in part because of the power that Downey's successors exert over primary voters. In this column, Smirkonish 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 cable 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 compromise as treason, and glorify Congress's rhetorical bomb throwers, such as

Senator Ted Cruz. Yeah, it's pretty good. There's some quotes in this that are talking about polarization in Washington that notes that as late as the 1970s, the 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 seeded 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 percent. 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 spring, liberals and conservatives exceed moderates and independents in their levels of political interest, which translates into voter participation." So it's got, most people have been turned off by this hyper-partisanization, but those

who stay in the game just get angrier and angrier at each other, and it just makes for an angrier country. And Morne Downey Jr. was certainly the most successful person on TV doing it before our modern media era. Because Molly George was kind of a marginal figure. He was influential in OC and influential to other media figures. But Morton Downey Jr. had a national show, right? Like 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. Yeah, exactly. A lot of people knew Morton Downey Jr. 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 Pine and Wally George.

Morton Downey Jr. 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 tale of Icarus. It's just as in the tale of Icarus. It did happen in an airport, Tom. Drew a swastika on his head, that's true, yeah.

Oh, 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. Two thirds of them because they smoked too much. Ah, bam, but it's a good thing they didn't do like irreparable damage to the country. No, thankfully we're sailing right along.

It's a good thing like the beginning, like the seeds they planted haven't grown at a terrifying fucking forests of racism. Oh yeah, no no that never happened. Speaking of which, I'm gonna 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.

God damn it, did they smoke too many cigarettes too? In a way, Tom. Fuck. In a way. Tom, Fuck. In a way. Tom, 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 Jr. in my mind than I did before. I'm glad, that's the only goal I've ever had for this show, which is why this is our final episode. All right, Tom, What do you got? I'm just, I'm just, you're just exhausted. I'm just sad now. I'm just sad now.

I'm exhausted. I'm sad. I'm going to get a, I'm going to get a flaxen Wally George wig. I am going to 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, uh, uh. Watch Predator 2. Watch Predator 2! Watch Predator 2, you're right! With Gary Busey, thank God!

Yeah, Danny Glover punches Morton 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. Gary Busey is playing Wally George in that movie and fucking Morton Downey Jr. is in it too. My God, what a film. Oh. Yeah. I'm gonna get this Predator,

cause he's on America. I kinda wanna rewatch Revenge of the Nerds 3 and see what the fuck Morton Downey Jr. was doing in that shit. I wouldn't. Yeah, yeah. I didn't, I didn't really enjoy watching it the first time. At least Predator 2 has the benefit of being Predator 2.

I think they were on a beach. If I'm remembering right, it was in like the Bahamas or something. I think it's Nerds in Paradise. 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 bastard.

It's the Morton Downey of a film series. You could do an episode on just the Re of the nerds. Jesus Christ. All right Well, you got a plug anything Tom? Oh, sure I have a podcast network Gameplay Unemployed that I do with my podcasting partner David Bell also from Cracked He is from Cracked. Yeah, we all used to work there. We did Tom. You can check it out Gameplay Unemployed, not GameplayUnemployed.com, Patreon.com slash Gameplay Unemployed where you can check it out a gamefully and I'm not gamefully.com Patrion.com slash 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. You should check it out

I also do right again Collider and I write for some more news with your friends Cody and Katie Robert. Yeah Yeah, I mean friends enemies frenemies. Yeah frenemies Yeah, I mean friends, enemies, frenemies, yeah. Frenemies, eternal opponents. And I also write for 100hotdog. At all kinds of things, you can find me, just Google me. I'm out there. Just Google Tom Ryman, find him at his home, you know? Please do, yeah, no, dox me on here.

Attack him in an airport bathroom and draw swastika on his forehead to improve his career for unclear reason. I really do wonder, like, what was the game plan there, Morton, like, how is this going to help? Ah, he was gonna make that in like three months of shows, man. Yeah, hunting down the Nazis who beat him up. Yeah, he had a whole plan.

He had a whole pitch deck made. 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, I do want to kind of see where he's going with this. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol. The joy they brought to the nation. You're free completely. No one is there to destroy you. The danger they endured. They said my head should be cut off.

I'm John Legend. The danger they endured. They said my head should be cut off. I'm John Legend. Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception. I'm Andrea Gunning, and now we're sharing an all new story of betrayal. Justin Rutherford. Doctor, father, family man. It was the perfect cover to hide behind. Detective Weaver said, I'm sure you know why we're here.

I was like, what in the world is going on? Listen to betrayal on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A new season of Bridgerton is here. And with it, a new season of Bridgerton the Official Podcast. I'm your host, Gaby Collins. And this season, we are bringing fans even deeper into the ton. Watch season three of the Shondaland series on Netflix.

Then fall in love all over again by listening to Bridgerton the Official Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday.