Behind the Bastards - CZM Rewind: The Ballad of Wally George

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Robert is joined by Tom Reimann to discuss Wally George. 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. This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating Thank you, everybody. 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. It's like the police knew who he was before they got here. From iHeart Podcasts. Medical school dean at USC was leading a secret double life. Is she breathing right now? Yes, she's absolutely breathing.

I'm a doctor, actually. A she breathing right now? Yes, she's absolutely breathing. I'm a doctor actually. A story about money, power and corruption. When people fall in line, they fall in line. Looking back, I realized, oh, everyone do. I'm Paul Pringle, an investigative reporter for the LA Times. Listen to Fallen Angels, a story of California corruption

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi guys, Nancy Grace here, host of podcast Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I've dedicated my life to fighting crime and helping crime victims. For a decade, I prosecuted violent felonies. Every day is a mission every day It's a chance to stop crime and keep one more person safe

Listen to crime stories with Nancy grace on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast What's what's I'm Robert Evans this has been behind the bastards a podcast opened has been are we is that it was the whole episode you want to takes. The amateur operation you run, you might do things like second takes and proper introduction. Oh, no, no, no, no. But here we just go, what's atonally, and then trail off for several seconds of dead air. Yeah, there's no editing in podcasting. Like the pros. Oh, man.

That's called cinema verite, Tom. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's how that works. I know what that term means. What is this, is this a show? What's happening?

This is Behind the Bastards, episode two on our episode about the men who built the right-wing media landscape and are consequently ratcheting our world ever closer to calamity. Tom Ryman is your name. It is. Of all the Rymans I know, certainly the Thomists. Absolutely.

And perhaps the Rymanist of the Toms that I know. Tom, you are co-founder, co-host of the Gamefully Unemployed Podcast Network, which 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 shitheads have terrible opinions Tom I heard your prayers. I Am here to answer them. I texted them to you.

As I do with all of my prayers. I just text them to you. Yeah, and they're usually a lot more erotic than this, but I'll take it. Tom, it would take years, by some counts, more than a decade before Joe Pine 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 was truly ready for someone to pick up the, torch seems like the wrong word, like the wine cross. No, it seems like the right word. Yeah, it is. It seems like the correct word.

But the tiki torch, yeah. The first man to follow in his wake was Wally George. Have you heard of Wally George? No, and I'm usually pretty up on my Wally's. So yeah, no, no, he's not of all the Wally's But one of the most consequential of the Wally's So George Walter Perch was born on December 4th 1931 in Oakland, California December 4th, 1931, in Oakland, California. 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 Western's opposite Cowboy Actors, whose names have apparently been forgotten to time because they were not Val Kilmer and Tombstone, so who gives a shit? 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 was 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 need.

That's it. Those are the only two cowboys. Sam Elliott. Sam Elliott. Sam Elliott. Sam Elliott. Yeah, of course, Sam Elliott. So you're talking about Sam Elliott in the hunt for Red October because Elliott. So you're talking about Sam Elliott in the hunt for Red October, because he's honorarily a cowboy, even though he never got to live out his Montana dreams. Right? That's it.

No, that's Sam Neal. That's Sam Neal, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, how did I do that? Those are two very different dudes. Extremely, no, I'll say this. I'll bet Sam Elliott appreciates ducks too. Sam Neal has a duck that's his best friend. I to Sam. Sure as a duck. That's his best friend I bet Sam Elliott has loved a duck or two in his life. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

Good for a duck. He looked those eyes look like a duck has brought a twinkle to them. It's a twice. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, sure then you can't smile the way Sam Elliott smiles unless you've been friendly with a duck Yeah, there's a duck in that life. I could tell. There's a duck in that man's heart somewhere in there. So Wally 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 gotta be 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 gonna guess it was a really unpleasant situation judging by the man. Probably. While the judge becomes.

I don't think no fault divorces existed yet in California. So you had to sue for a reason. Yeah, you had to fist fight a judge. Yeah, you had to fight to get a to 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 Pine. I do find that interesting. Both these guys had been a stutterer, just like Joe Pine.

I do find that interesting. Both these guys are dudes who stutter when they're 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. Okay, all right. Way to go, Wally George. Good work, Wally. Yeah, that's a real TV show. After we listen to this, after we record this, I'm gonna have to go watch that episode

and 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? It's the one Bonanza episode that in the middle has a seven minute rant about Martin Luther King Jr. Ha ha ha ha ha. So Wally got his first radio show,

the Wally George Show on KTYNFM in Inglewood. I was trying to do my radio voice for that one. That 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 gonna move, as we saw with Joe Pine, it's not uncommon to just spend 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 Leno. Yeah, let's watch Carson, let's watch Leno. Yeah, let's watch Carson, let's watch Leno, let's watch, no, there's no one else anyone wants. That's it, it's stopped. Yeah, that's it, it's done now. Yeah, 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 needs to, Craig Ferguson needs to be allowed to take it out behind a barn and accept it. It needs to go. Craig Ferguson needs to be allowed to take it out behind a barn and shoot it. That's who should do it, Craig. Crying like the boy in Old Yeller as he loads his dead shotgun.

Sorry I have to do this to you. Johnny Carson's shotgun. I never wanted this one. 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, 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 in 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, California No 1983 is a year before Rush Limbaugh started his first political radio show And a decade before the first 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 guests 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. At first, Cohen's responses to questions like, why do you want to handcuff the police department from catching criminals? Seem prepared. Choreographed. But after a few minutes, the interview intensifies. Both raise 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 braze 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. Yeah Keeping it authentically asshole. Yeah keeping it authentically asshole Keeping it authentically asshole. Yeah, keeping it authentically asshole. In November of 1983, Wally earned his first national news story when he so irritated his guest, Blaise Bonpain, a pacifist and a human rights activist. I mean, that name rules. That is a good name, right?

Now the short version of the story is that Blaise got angry and flipped Wally's desk. He had to be escorted out by security. That sounds like something a person named Blaze would do. It does, it does, cause he's a Blaze man, he's full of fire! Sounds like an American gladiator! It's gonna flip your desk! Wally gets a pacifist activist to flip his desk on TV.

To flip his desk, what a shit. This had never really happened before, this is like a huge deal, like this is the first Geraldo getting hit with a fucking 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 1983. 83, okay. Springer starts in 91. Okay.

And this is really like, this chunk I'm gonna read is interesting because 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 how surprised I was. And within moments we saw it on ABC, CBS, NBC. It was all over the country.

I think that particular episode has been played a thousand 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, Wally doesn't believe in shit. No, yeah. Wally is just like, yeah, I'll bring this guy. I want him to throw shit. 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? Cause 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. No, if anything at all.

Believe in whatever gets them the money, gets the attention. I think Joe Pine might've believed in things. He certainly fought for something at one point I did Wally clearly doesn't like he's just happy to like yeah like he called the next day like it was a pro wrestling match yeah exactly like yeah we can do this all over and this is the country what the fuck are you talking about Joe Pine is like not a good person not a nice person.

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 of his generation. We're pretty fucking racist. But I don't think, I wouldn't qualify him as a bastard based on like the things he intentionally did.

Once we're at Wally George, we're in like the like full intentionally did. Once we're at Wally George, we're in the full bastard territory. Sweet. Because Joe Pine is a guy who's willing to do things and judge up controversy, but also can listen to people and has something he believes in and is trying to get across.

With Wally George, it is pure, I'm into this right-wing shit just for the, because it gets the rage views. It gets people angry, it gets people riled up. I don't care who I have on, I want folks to fight. I just wanna like tickle people's amygdala and make them angry, you know? Does he start selling brain pills, Robert?

No, no he does not. Not to my, well, I don't know, maybe. I can't comprehensively say he never sold brain pills. I cannot make that claim to a point of certainty, Tom. I was gonna get so excited but showed up later. 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-age 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 shit way ahead of time. They'd shout, WALL-E, WALL-E, and wear shirts with American flags on them, roaring until he forced them to stop. Where Joe Pine could be mocking and even cruel as long as he maintained an air of genteel politeness, WALL-E George was free to scream, shout, and even strike people.

He told one 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 and be nice and let them say what they want to say? In this, Wally completed the transition from Joe Pine, a right-wing firebrand whose work was still firmly rooted in the outward civility of the 1950s, to modern right-wing media. Wally 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 insulted them. I want to play this segment from his show where he is a popular radio DJ on. The DJ brings U2 albums to hand out to the audience. It was 1984. And he chastises Wally for having previously claimed the band were devil worshipers, which is an argument Wally George made a number of times. Here's Wally's reply. You said U2 were a bunch of devil worshipers.

They are, they're terrible. They're Christians, three of the four, they're Christians. You're saying I'm wrong? You're wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Wally is never wrong. Oh my God, that's what he looks like. Three of the four men, they're Christians. You're saying I'm wrong? You're wrong! Yeah! Wally is never wrong! Oh my god, that's what he looks like?

Don't try to prove it to me now, I don't want any proof. He looks like Ric Flair with a Prince Valiant haircut. We're getting beyond the issue. Oh, he looks incredible. The reason I have you down here now is you're standing in one of the stages. It does, he looks like Colonel Sanders' guru. Now the NCC is cracking down on what they call once radio. Like his spiritual advisor. It does. It looks like Kurtis Sanders guru. Now the FCC is cracking down on what they call like his spiritual advisor. 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 crackdown on these filthy radio stations All right, all right, that's enough of this clip so first off he looks incredible looks incredible The amazing thing about Wally George carnival magician you you watch he looks like a guy that ties balloon animals You watch 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 fucking Wally George. He looks like Julian Sands as a TV preacher

If Julian Sange was a warlock If a vampire bits Julian Assange's neck he would turn If a vampire bits Julian Assange's neck, he would turn into Wally George. This is what he would turn into. Yeah, it's incredible. He's in, for those of you who aren't gonna look at the picture, he has like shoulder length white hair that can't be real, cannot be real.

It's either a wig or like so flat ironed that it just lays there. Like on his- And he's got a white suit. He looks like Mr. White from the Venture Brothers, but not at Albino. Right. Incredible. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh. He's just an amazing, amazing commitment to a very specific aesthetic. Yeah, yeah. He's like, this is my thing, and I'm just gonna blunt force it on people. I am the 1980s.

A third of my body weight is cocaine. It'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 that came. If cocaine was a man, that's Wally George.

Yeah, if it mutated. So Tom. Yeah. Here's him talking to Larry Rice, a same-sex marriage advocate and an AIDS awareness activist. Oh boy. Hooray. A gay pride parade.

I say 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 it's very fair for you to make fun of people whose lifestyle is not the way you want it to be. And I think it's kind of sad, you know, because like they don't hurt you, what they do, and you know, I'm walking down the fence of you stupid That way it's offensive I'll tell you what because people like you you're the people that cause the problem People who are gay people who are gay, people who are gay, they do have a very rough, they have

a very rough in this world, okay, 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 people make it so hard for them to live that they have a lot of like mental disorders and things All right, 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 like huge grins It's clearly nothing but high school bullies, like screaming like, mm-hmm. It's horrible.

He's just trying to get his point out and he's saying like these completely rational things. Oh my God. But it's also, there's a couple things that are interesting comparing him to Joe Pine. Number one, you can think back to Joe Pine, who again, I'm certain held very regressive views on gay people, but asking with genuine interest,

oh, so someone 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 the thought of a gay person existing is. Yeah, with his flaxen shoulder-length hair and long-sleeve turtleneck with a blazer on, he's screaming about how gay pride parade is offensive. It kind of has Roger Stone vibes to it.

He definitely has some Stone vibes. I'm sure Roger Stone watched this show. He looks like a disguise that Roger Stone would wear. He does look like a disguise that Roger Stone would wear. He looks like Roger Stone in a Bond villain wig. Yeah. And the other thing that's different is that, you know, Joe Pine, could it 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, obviously he didn't respect Krasner. Krasner's media trained. Krasner was ready for what he got. 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. There's nothing against him. Yeah. The clip is so upsetting because you can see. It's's like, 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 dipshit 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 media trained, like even if you are media trained, being in that situation is like, Jesus,

like I can't find footing to even make my argument. No one can do well in that kind of an environment. But it's again, it's one of those things, I do think that like Joe Pine was someone who did want to debate people and would debate people and would go out of his way to get people who could present themselves well on television, even if what they were saying was like,

and I'm not gonna say that maybe this was comprehensively true of everything he did, but all of Wally George is like this. It is nothing 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, Tom.

He's got a little, behind him is a framed photo of a space shuttle taking off. It just says USA at the bottom. Yeah, it sure does. So his set is like a little boy's room. It is. And it's, I keep bringing up Joe Pine, like, positively, not to say nice things about Joe Pine,

and please don't take this as like me trying to defend his legacy, but to point like how badly things have degenerated, like 16, 17 years. How stark 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, yeah. Yes, yeah, between 1970 and 1984.

The religious right became a political block, which it wasn't, when Joe Pine was on the air, the religious right was not a political block. That didn't happen until 79. So yeah, it's just, it's a very bleak, but very clear slide downhill. He's proto 700 club too, just the way he looks. The way he looks.

Well, I don't know if he was proto. When did the 700 club stop? Oh, no, that's true. Solid radio, we're gonna Google this. He may not be proto of that. 1966, so he's not proto the 700 club. I gotta give you that. All right, okay.

Yeah. But Tom, you know what did come before the 700 club, and will be there long after? Um, I don't know. I don't know, are you gonna tell me? The products and services, Tom, that support this podcast. Yep.

Wow. Solid, solid throw to add, man. 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. 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. I started talking about this incident. Drugs and officials cover up.

You couldn't believe it. From iHeart Podcasts. It's like the police knew who he was before they got here. A story about money, power and corruption. The medical school dean at USC was leading a secret double life. He's breathing right now? Yes, he's absolutely breathing. I'm a doctor actually. There's no way that that guy's a doctor. I'm Paul Pringle and I'm an investigative reporter for the LA Times. This is the story of an investigation

that starts in a hotel room in Pasadena, California, and reaches all the way to the top of two of the most powerful institutions in the city of Los Angeles. When people fall in line, they fall in line. Looking back, I realized, oh, everyone knew. This is Fallen Angels, a story of California corruption. We're always going to have predators.

It's the good people who stand by and do nothing that allow them to flourish. Listen to Fallen Angels, a story of California corruption on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Are you ready to fight back against crime? Hi guys, Nancy Grace here, host of podcast Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I've dedicated my life to fighting crime and helping crime victims. For a decade, I prosecuted violent felonies, personally investigating, prosecuting, and covering literally thousands of cases.

It's so easy to think, it will never happen to me or my family, but that is simply not true. Every day on Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, we shine a light on unsolved homicides, heat up cold cases, and help find missing people, especially children. We speak with family members, investigators, CSI, reporters, and experts in every field. Every day is a mission.

Every day is a chance to stop crime and keep one more person safe. Listen to Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast 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 Now Tom, yeah, so let's talk some more about that horrific interview with Larry Rice. They really upset me It's really upsetting. That's hard to watch. It's very, and again, it's the kind of thing, like you just didn't feel that way

listening to the Joe Pine clips, even when he was being a shithead. Yeah. It's not that kind of a bully. Well, it's frighteningly close to a lynch mob. Yeah, yeah. I think if he'd ordered them, they would've. Yeah, it's really alarming.

It's a very upsetting clip to watch. It's really fucked up. Yeah, it's fucked. And it gets a lot worse. And he's dressed like a fucking clown too. It's like, this guy. Like the Joker on vacation. Yeah.

Fucking Wally George. That's a clown name. That's a clown shoe name. Wally, motherfucker. 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 shit 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. George's 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, period. It was a contractual yelling match with the viewers invited. Yep, that makes sense. Yeah, it all ties together. Seems relevant.

Gosh, somebody else really rose to prominence in the 80s. Gosh, who was that? I mean, there's Don Imus and Howard Stern. Imus is a big one. Major media figure. Oh, I'm being facetious. Oh, Rush Limbaugh, yeah. Limbaugh, Trump.

Yeah, Trump. Yeah, this is the era they're all coming in age. This is where all of them dickheads came from. All those real pieces of shit. 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, are starting around this period. But the fact that Wally George worked most prominently on TV, giving his viewers and live audiences an outlet to vent their rage and frustration on human beings made him unique. In his 19, again, it's like half a lynch mob, and that's half of the appeal for Wally George does.

In his 1999 autobiography, he coined the phrase combat TV to describe the thing that he invented. And now that's like all news programs. Um, yeah, it's just bleak. One of Wally's most popular guests was a special piece of shit named Tom Metzger, the head of a Nazi organization called White Aryan Resistance. I suppose you could critique him as again, like Joe Pine, platforming a Nazi and he is kind of doing that,

but Wally, I don't know, Wally certainly can't be accused of equivocating on Nazism, because I'm gonna play you a clip of that next. All across this great country now in our 11th year, and we have the putrid idiot Tom Metzger on the show. Now he's dressed like a Batman villain. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Now as I was about to say before we went to our break, some of you don't know what Tom Metzger

has been involved in. I'm gonna 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 don't you applaud that you idiot. They beat this black man to death with baseball bats followers of Tom Metzger. You see he sits there with that smug little grin on his face

cause he doesn't get his hands bloody He sends out wait. He sends out his henchmen 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 stop clapping That's exactly right he had to tell somebody in the audience to stop clapping. That's exactly right, John. That's what I was gonna point out. Cause he is certainly not,

and like to the extent that he platforms Metzger, he's mostly screaming at him. But you can see again, where things have gone that like he has to stop his audience from clapping at the murder of Lulu Getta-Saraw. The kind of horseshit that you're encouraging is bringing these people in, Wally. It's fascinating.

But it's also, 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 George is, makes him better than a lot of right-wing media today. Like, it's even gone downhill since Wally George is the point I'm making. Not trying to like praise Wally George, but it's like, he wouldn't have like- The bar has lowered even more than this cesspool. Yeah, and I don't know,

maybe like if fucking Richard Spencer, he would have heard out, I don't know. 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 yeah, it's a little bleak. That said, he was very happy to capitalize off the outrage that bringing a guy like Metzger on generated.

I certainly 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 Wall-E by OC Weekly, Orange County, which is, for those of you who do not know, like 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 lines between good and evil were drawn. George wore the white hat, literally, and Metzger was the bad guy. 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 un-American and referred to war as a bunch of dumb Nazis. George kicked Metzger off his stage after an unprecedented but understandable four 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 as opposed to marching with them in the streets? Like I'm not trying to say that this guy's right because this shouldn't be a proud moment for conservatism. He's also, he brought him on his fucking show. Several times.

But it's interesting to me that this guy looking at like, because I'm sure he's referring to like these mobs you've had like attacking vaccine sites and fucking WeSpa and whatnot in LA, some of which include fucking Nazis. And he's like, oh, remember when we used to at least yell at Nazis? Yeah.

It's bleak. Wally 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 and 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 end to the segment, George stood up behind his desk and led his audience in a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, with particular vocal emphasis on the last line, with liberty and justice for all. He then expanded on that theme to his audience as he looked deploringly at Metzger, reminding him the phrase meant to encompass all races, all religions, and all creeds." And yeah, it's bleak. I mean, I feel like George Walley's, ol' 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. No, because I don't think he cares about any, I don't think he...

No. I'm sure he finds the po... because I don't think he cares about politics much. No, it was just of 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 refuse to applaud him for any part of this. No, no, no.

I'm not quoting this to applaud him. I'm quoting this because it's interesting to see someone writing from that perspective of a Natche County conservative going, remember when we didn't like Nazis? Remember when we had at least that line that we wouldn't cross? At least that one.

And when you're looking back at Wally George, and like, ah, remember those high moral standards? When we believed in things, and there's this guy that like calls a dude who flipped his desk over the next day, be like, we should tour the country with this. Yeah, we should tour the country. Believe in anything? He believes in TV. No, he doesn't believe in a goddamn thing. Now, it is unclear to me whether or not Wally George, living in the modern era, would have fully 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 Pine would've as racist as I'm sure Joe Pine was. Well, Joe Pine at least was in World War II. Like I think he might- Yeah, he did fight Nazis. Right, he might brush up against that a little bit. I think if he saw a against that a little bit.

I think if he saw a dude with a swastika flag in a march, he'd be like, well, fuck those guys. Whatever's happening over there. Whatever's happening over there, I don't like that flag. Yeah. So yeah, I don't know. I can't say what Wally would have done clearly, but if we're to judge purely off his TV appearances,

maybe no. If we were to judge what we know about him morally, probably yes. 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 bimbos 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. Rush'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 Wally's right-wing rants. The fact that Springer himself was a much more pleasant person than Wally George may have had something to do with this. In 1995, George's wife left him in the least surprising turn of all time. Aw, want, want.

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. Oh, sweet, I like that it's like a fucking legend, like we don't know. It is, it is like we don't really know how many times this guy got married. Of course that fucking Crip Keeper looking dude Sweet I like that. It's like a fucking legend like we don't know it's like we don't really know

Of course that fucking creep keeper looking dude. We don't know don't know how many wives He's got locked in a closet like bluebeard. Wives survived. Right exactly 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 said I thought he would have delighted, but he was no one's father. I think it's fair to say. Man, judging by his set, I thought he would have delighted in having little kids. Yeah, having a little kid around. You guys into rocket ships? And blue turtlenecks?

His most prominent child, Tom, was the actress Rebecca DeMornay. No shit. That's his daughter. Yeah, that's his daughter. Holy george's daughter. Tell us about Rebecca DeMornay. Yeah, that's his daughter. Well, he George's daughter. Tell us about Rebecca DeMornay. Oh, they have kind of the same hair. Like you can see it.

Man, that's, that's fucked up. I mean, I mean, she's in hand that rocks a cradle. She's in the, that the sweet three musketeers, you know, the Disney one with, with Oliver Platt and Charlie Sheen and Kip, it's Sutherland. She's in that TV version of the shining. She is in that TV version of the yeah, I'm Tom. That's a man That just shattered my entire universe No, that's too late I was gonna say was she the one that the wife took? But no, she was already,

Rebecca Dornet was already in movies at that point. Yeah, I think she was. Yeah, no, he was just having kids and abandoning them left and right, Tom. You know who else has kids and abandons them? The sponsors responsible for these delightful products and services. Absolutely. Not a single one of them,

not a single one of them raise their own kids. Well, that's gonna help us get sponsors sponsors Robert. Thank you, Sophie. Thank you 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 our 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 okay. We'll also accept...

As they'll learn how to fight. We'll also accept Ramblin' Man. Ramblin' Man, sure. Absolutely. Great, great child-rearing advice in Ramblin' Man. Yeah. All right. Well, that's gonna lead us to ads. 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.

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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 DeMornay, am I saying her name right? As far as I know.

All right, yeah, you know, she is obviously. What's she in? What's her big shit? I just rattled, are you serious? I just rattled them all off. Oh wait, Tom. Okay, well my brain doesn't work, Tom. Hand that rocks the cradle is probably your biggest thing.

Right, hand that rocks the cradle. I'm sorry. I'm on drugs. And it's more that I'm 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 my most hot smoke of days. Yeah, you knew me during yeah, I remember that

That night I gave everybody way too much that 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 place That's true. Yeah, I Haven't 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 By a whole lot Something like 60 60 doses or so So his most prominent child was the actress Rebecca de Mornay who fucking hated Wally George. That's good to know.

She publicly attacked him and Wally 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? asks George He can't help basking in the reflected glory of her celebrity status, even while conceding that she grew up in England without knowing him and wants nothing to do with him now. What really bothers me more than anything is that she's given an interview 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 bad-mouthed Hollywood. They've convinced her I'm bad for her career. I just love that trifecta.

It's like Robert De Niro. Jack Nicholson, Harry Dean Stanton. Famed leftists all. Oh, man. It's very funny. In fact, yeah. Sorry, just laughing at that. Yeah, it's very funny. And fact, yeah. Sorry, just laughing at that. Yeah, 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 made up with his daughter and done a big TV special about it. But she never gave into that shit. That's clearly what he wanted, was some kind of big public for show. He obviously didn't give a shit about her.

He abandoned her to her baby. But I'm sure once she was very famous, he wanted her on his for show. I obviously didn't give a shit about her. He abandoned her. 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 Odorus Urungus, the lead singer for Guar.

Odorus loved, yeah, Tom turns his head, Odorus 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 ass on all of those other multi-million dollar fucking Hollywood TV creation

Constructed human being yuck those people really made me sick. Yeah fucking gore I mean I get why a man who dresses up as a monster for a living would enjoy being on Wally George's show Yeah, I mean that was their whole thing. They just wanted to offend people and shock. Yeah. I mean, that was their whole thing. They just wanted to offend people and shock people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get why Wally George and him hit it off. Dexter Holland, lead singer of The Ox, Opspring, 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, because they weren't, and it wasn't that they didn't hate right wingers. They weren't left wing. They just didn't care about politics. They liked thatally was right-wing, it was the rock, because they weren't, and it wasn't that 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 even get into fucking fights on the show. And there's more than a little Wally George in the alt-right's 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 showman first and foremost, and would happily platform anyone fringe enough to be entertaining. Still, there was more than a hint of lynch mob to Wally's audience. Nicholas Schreck, lead singer 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 Wally 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 that 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 onto something there. Yeah. Like I said, that's one of the main things about watching that clip that was so unpleasant and upsetting is how close it is to a lynch mob. It's just like, he's a big goofball. Like we had a lot of fun talking about how ridiculous he looks.

But like that is a frightening situation. 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 fucking people. It's very same motivation. It's it's oh, man, it 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 him and be like- Yeah, that 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 asshole but then you look at the crowds that follow him

and be like, oh, there's nothing funny about that. Like it's- This is not at all humorous. No. It's just scary. Wally's health started to fall apart in the early 1990s No, by 19. I know Tom. This is really gonna break your heart Mmm, 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 Wally 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. Yeah. Speaking of Satan's angels, Tom,

any pluggables to plug? That's the end? That's the end of part two. We got a, we got a, we got a, we got one more. We got one more in the chamber. Oh, okay. It all ran a little longer. Oh, shit.

All right. Well, yeah, I run a podcast network with my buddy David Bell. We worked at Crack Together. If you want to head over to patreon.com slash gameplay unemployed, you can support our network. We do a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolZoneMedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio 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. Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It's like the police knew who he was before they got here. From iHeart Podcasts. Medical school dean at USC was leading a secret double life. Is he breathing right now?

Yes, he's absolutely breathing. I'm a doctor actually. A story about money, power and corruption. When people fall in line, they fall in line. Looking back, I realized, oh, everyone do. I'm Paul Pringle, an investigative reporter for the LA Times. Listen to Fallen Angels, a story of California corruption on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi guys, Nancy Grace here, host of podcast Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I've dedicated my life to fighting crime and helping crime victims. For a decade, I prosecuted violent felonies. Every day is a mission. Every day is a chance to stop crime and keep one more person safe. Listen to Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.