The Ricochet Podcast - The One with Harry Shearer

Episode Date: July 29, 2017

This week, we take something of a break from the rough and tumble of the news cycle and spend an hour chatting with our old friend, the great Harry Shearer (hit this link if you are one of the few unfamiliar with his work). We stalk some politics, we talk some media, we talk about Nixon (you must see Harry’s one man show Nixon’s The One immediately), we talk about comedy. Oh, just listen. Source

They say you can't hurry love, but if you don't get to your post office by March 23rd, you'll miss your chance to save €2.50 on a book of 10 heart-shaped love stamps. Now, just €14, down from €16.50. Perfect for all kinds of love messages like, We're getting hitched, you're still my favourite, or If you've a couple of fuckles, buy yours now at your local post office or at Send joy, show love, send love. Unpussed, for your world. Deeds and Thieves apply, see unpussed.com Where are you now? I'm in the home of the homeless, Rob.

Oh. Are we ready? I used to live there. Speed. Three, two, one. We have special news for you. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Are you going to

send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are stupid. I raise a practical question at this point. We're going to do Stonehenge tomorrow. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long Usually Peter Robinson, but he's not here today I'm James Lennox and we'll be talking with Harry Shearer Let's have ourselves a podcast Bye-bye Welcome everybody to the Ricochet Podcast, number 362. How do we get to that high a number?

Well, with great sponsors like Away Travel. Your luggage should not cost more than your plane ticket, right? Well, Away Travel's luggage is designed with the highest quality materials, and it's still under $300. For $20 off a suitcase, visit awaytravel.com slash ricochet and use the promo code ricochet during checkout. And we're brought to you by Casper Mattresses. Try Casper for a hundred nights risk-free in your own home. If you don't love it, they'll pick it up and refund

you every penny. Visit casper.com slash ricochet and use ricochet as your promo code. And we're brought to you by The Great Courses. You can watch The Great Courses Plus anytime from anywhere for free for an entire month. Sign up using our special URL, The Great Courses. You can watch The Great Courses Plus anytime, from anywhere, for free, for an entire month. Sign up using our special URL, thegreatcoursesplus.com slash ricochet

and we're brought to you, as we always like to say, by Ricochet itself and here is the physical embodiment of the Ricochet Project, Rob Long, to tell you why you should crowbar, open your wallet, and throw a few shekels our way. Rob Long.

Just a few. Just a few. Just a few. You're doing very well, James. Thank you. Listen, podcast listeners, this one's for you. We've been asking you to join Ricochet if you enjoy the podcast,

and a lot of you have, but a lot of you have not. And let me tell you something. If everyone who listens to the podcasts joined Ricochet today, we would be solvent. And I do mean, I'm choosing those words.

In the generally accepted accounting principles of solvency, we would be solvent. And I do mean, I'm choosing those words. In the generally accepted accounting principles of solvency, we would be solvent. We are not solvent now. Thank you. Our co-host is snickering. I can hear you snickering. But here's the thing. We have a special tier just for you podcast listeners. Join Rick and Shay for $2.50 a

month. You get to support the site. You get to read the whole site, including the member feed. You can comment on podcast posts. But more importantly keep us going so if you've been saying hey listen i like the podcast i want to support you but i don't want to really be a member and i'll never write a post that's okay this is for you two dollars and fifty cents a month is not too much to ask and i really do have to ask you today to join. As do I. And sometimes you wonder where the money goes.

Well, it goes to getting great guests. And we spent about half of this budget on our guest today, our guest host, Mr. Harry Shearer. Welcome back to the podcast, sir. Thank you so much. I didn't hear any mention of money when I was invited to do this. I'm delighted and surprised. And thank you, Kickstarters everywhere. You always hear about money,

even if no one's saying it. That's exactly right. I do have one question after that seven minutes of commercial palaver. Do they have a suitcase I can fit the mattress in? Yes, but you can't ever open the suitcase. There are stories about the Casper

mattress, which is actually a fantastic product. They warn you. People get the box and they're really excited and as they're going to their apartment in the elevator, they start to open the box. Oh, that's a big mistake. The queen mattress comes in a box about the size of a sugar cube.

They give you instructions like to take pets and small children out of the room because you can always tell when somebody's opening up a Casper because you'll see a dog go through a glass window or something because it expands with such force and velocity. And then, of course, there's the excited sigh as they slumber on the Casper mattress. That's the other way. Now, because it comes that small does that mean the do not remove label is too tiny to read yes actually they use the technology they do to write the bible on a grain of sand and it's it's there um do not remove under penalty of law

one of those things that children are always baffled by. It's like, if I rip this off right now, does Ephraim Zimbalist Jr. come through the front door and take me away? Only if you cross state line. Does anybody know what law? The Federal K-POC Management Act of 52, I think. I think it's

really, if you remove it, you can't resell it. Isn't that the issue who sells the mattress well they later clarified it to say that it cannot be removed by anybody except the consumer because there was 10 years of panic there before you consume the mattress

but there was a law about about what was in the mattress or the cushion itself and I have no idea what regulatory nightmare resulted in that. But, you know, Harry, I know that you may not be, let's put it this way, you're not as conservative as I am. But I would say that you just opened up a conservative can of worms. There are too many laws, don't you think? There are too many regulations.

There are too many laws. The federal government is now telling you what tag you can leave on or off a mattress. Perhaps we need a little pause in our regulatory budget. Rob, I think you're trying to push the reset button to quote Reince Priebus. Wait, to quote Reince Priebus quoting Obama? No, quoting Donald Trump. He said yesterday, this is pushing the reset button.

Yeah, but that's what people say now, right? I mean, isn't what people say that that is the, that is in fact the perfect analogy. I mean, when Obama came into power, he said they're going to push the reset button on his, on our relationships with Cuba, I'm sorry, Russia. And they actually had a

big reset button prop. They did. Now, is that thing? Anybody know where that is? Because a museum of dumb props would be... Right. He took it with him. Yeah.

But isn't that the weird way we've imported computer talk? The reset button is the thing you do that erases everything you just did. Yes. Because you're in such a horrible, horrible mess. Yes. You can't get out of it. And it's the same thing as when you finally, like whenever you finally talk to a genius at the genius bar at the Apple store, they'd say, well, have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?

Exactly. But I think even worse as an appropriation of tech talk has been Hollywood's wholesale adoption of reboot. Anything that is stolen or rerun is now cast in the dignified garment of a reboot. Yeah, we're doing Superman for the 48th time. It's a reboot. If you are familiar with modern tech though there's no big red button usually you can push usually try to find well i mean if they said we're going to reboot the trump administration you would have seen a photograph of the new chief of staff with a with a straightened paper clip putting it in a hole in the back of donald trump's head to push

the little thing which is how most things are restarted now. But the reboot is one thing. Now everything, Harry, has to have a shared cinematic universe, doesn't it? Yes. Well, there's the marvel. I know that there is, with the apparent failure of string theory there became not dominant but prevalent in the world of physics, this theory of multiverses and

shortly afterwards we've had the Marvel universe versus the Universal universe versus the Disney and I think the battle of the Hollywood universes is straight ahead Universal has a dark universe. It's the darkest universe.

Oh, tell me about it, baby. I happen to have recently been in the offices of the dark universe of Universal a lot. And this is before the opening of... What was the movie that just came out? Mummy.

You okay? Yeah, sorry. Not really. No, kind of died. Mummy. Whatever Mummy. Mummy. You okay? They planted. Yeah, sorry. Not really. Not really. No, I heard you say Mummy. Mummy. Mummy. They sit in a room and they come up with these fantasies. It's very, it is a lot like American politics these days. And they sit without any connection to

reality and they sit, they plot out, I think Universal's plotted out like 12 or 15 movies that they're going to make. They're going to reboot their monster universe. Wait, you're saying that Hollywood fantasy films are totally removed from reality? Yeah. No, I'm talking about the suits. This is a news program.

The suits behind it. I understand. I understand. So I walked into the office of Dark Universe and it's you know, they have all the scary monster stuff and it looks like a haunted house or mad afterthoughts, you know, haunted house. And then the guy said, hey, watch

this. This is how serious we are about creating the whole Dark Universe. And he flips the switch and suddenly the lights kind of flicker and there's the soundtrack of the Haunted Mansion. You ever remember that record? The dark universe and um and he flips the switch and suddenly the lights kind of flicker and there's uh uh the soundtrack of a haunted mansion you ever remember that record the rain and uh and and then some uh some bat wings and some shrieks and uh and then the lights flicker and then that's it

and i thought well okay you gotta this is this is the the limit of your imagination for the dark universe you spend about a billion dollars on it. You're in big trouble. But here's the thing. You can get pretty much the same effect just by living where I do and getting your electricity from Southern California Edison. The lights flicker regularly. That's true. There's only so many iterations they can have of these.

By the time they get 20 movies out, they're going to be doing a dark and gritty version. I'm sorry, a dark and gritty reboot of Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein. But you mentioned the Haunted Mansion. Harry, the voice of the Haunted Mansion, for years and years of course, is? Oh God, I don't know. Not Paul Freese. No, Paul Freese. I did know. One of those voices that you grow up with as a kid and you never quite place who it is. It's like when I was a kid, Paul Freese was the voice in every science fiction movie.

And William Conrad, his work with Jay Ward Productions, was somebody else before he was ever Matt Dillon or Cannon or the rest of them. And you're in that position that you have voiced some of the most famous and indelible characters in the medium that people grow up with and some point some kid's going to put that together with spinal tap and it's it's going to be a revel there's going to be a harry shearer shared cinematic universe as well yeah right yeah i've been waiting for that i've been waiting for that kid to arrive for about 40 years. Yeah. Don't hold your breath, though. I know. But apropos, we should take that opportunity to say a RIP to the great June Foray, who was one of the really dominant figures in voice acting for decades. June Foray started with Stan Freeberg's stuff and then became a voice of so many

comic characters through the years. Amazing, amazing person. And, of course, could walk the streets unrecognized because she just was a voice actor. You never saw her face. But she was really amazing. She played... Who did she play?

Oh, Witch Hazel. She played... Who did she play? Oh, Witch Hazel. She played Tweety's, well, owner, mom. She was in Jetsons. I mean, go to IMDB and you get carpal tunnel syndrome scrolling through her bio. Yeah, yeah. It's just astonishing. Yeah, she was amazing. I think I was at...

I was waiting for a meeting years ago in Studio City. There's a coffee shop chain, I guess there are only two of them, in L.A. called DuPars. It was a pie shop slash coffee shop. Right. There's one in the Farmer's Market and there's one in Studio City, still in Studio City, right across from the old Radford studio, which is now CBS. And I was sitting there waiting for a meeting. And behind me, I heard three guys having breakfast, talking. And all three voices were incredibly familiar. And I couldn't place them.

And it turned out that one of them, two of them were cartoon voices. And I forget who they were. And one guy was, did the, it was not Ernie Anderson, but it was the guy who replaced him. Danny Dark. And you could hear them, I could hear them behind me. It was more disorienting seeing them in person. Oh, of course. Hearing their voices. It was great.

In so-called real life. In IRL, as the kids say. But, you know, hey, nerds, can we not talk about nerdy things for a second and talk about politics? Or is that you guys still want to nerd out on... No, I just wanted to observe that all of Rob's great stories start with,

I was waiting for a meeting. Yeah, that's true. And I want to tie it all... It's never after a meeting, yeah. true. And I want to tie it all back. It's never after a meeting, yeah. No. I just want to tie it up by noting that I read on io9 or one of those ex-Gawker pages the other day that there's now going to be a movie that opens up the John Wick cinematic universe. So the complexities and details of that particular world will soon be unfurled.

John Wick? That's the great Keanu Reeves movie, one and two, where he essentially spends 90 minutes shooting people in the head over and over. Different people, of course. Politics. Yeah, politics. Politics. So here we are. I was curious, since you inhabit probably a different political, I don't want to say tribe or species.

I'm a no tribe, Ben. He's a tribe of one. But you probably know more people on the left maybe than, you know, I'm in Minnesota, which is very much old style liberal, but still I don't have a lot of conversations about these things because it's wise. Do the people that you know, the liberal side of the equation, what do they think of, let's say, the Democratic IT email Pakistani crook guy thing going on? Is that on their radar? I haven't heard anybody talk about that story.

I mean, you know, the fact of the matter is I think that we are stuck in this bog where both sides seem to be devoted to relitigating last year's election. I'm on pins and needles waiting for Hillary's book where she is going to tell the true story of as the title says what happened name of her name which i memoir what happened what happened what happened somebody struck by a car when they wake up from a coma that's the first thing yeah what happened oh right yeah you know and and obviously trump is still uh fascinated in retelling the details of the election,

most recently in front of a Boy Scout jamboree. Because I think the Scouts need to know what happened last year. But no, I haven't heard anybody talking about that on either side. Now, I have to say, I only talk to friends. I don't spend too much time listening to political opinion of one side or another. I race to turn off both of them because I just

can't stand being yelled at anymore. I'm married. I don't need that. Wow. I get plenty of that at home. You went to the married guy material. I can see that at home. But seriously, I'm aware of that story, and I've not heard anybody else talk about it. You and I, I've known you a very long time, and we have joked around about politics a lot.

But you're always much, I mean, I tend to read the newspaper sometime, the morning newspaper in the evening, so I'm a little bit behind. Because you are a news, you know, you watch, you read the news, you stay up. Are you exhausted? No, I'm kind of thrilled. Okay, that's what I wanted to know. Yeah, no, I mean, I think the exhaustion comes from the hysteria. I think the, you know, and I do think it's under the spell of the Clintonistas who are still in control of many of the power centers of the Democratic Party. Although we saw Chuck and Nancy try to wriggle out from under it this week with their better deal unveil, which was highly convincing.

Chuck Schumer saying we're going to tackle monopolies had me standing and waving. But I think it's the hysteria that's tiring. I think that's what, you know, and the fact, Rob, that unlike you and me and everybody else who's in this show, we kind of enjoy the daily political drama or comedy. I think a lot of people think of politics as something they need to pay attention to, if at all, once every four years or once every two years. And the idea that if you turn on CNN, just to take an example, you're not going to hear about any other news. I mean, you know, they might as well not have a bureau except one in Washington right now. So, you know, whatever you want from the news, all you're going to get right now is

the daily tug and pull of Washington. And, you know, the... While I find it amusing and useful in my work to have as much about how Reince Priebus

was forced out or wasn't forced out as humanly possible. I think most people find it tiresome. But aren't you, I mean, I should say I am, and maybe you are. I write a column every two weeks for National Review. It's a humor column. And I find it... That's how it's advertised. That's how it's advertised, yeah.

That's what it's supposed to be. it's advertised yeah that's how that's what it's supposed to be it's what my checks say that's what they signed up um yeah right um i find it really difficult these days like what do you what's i mean it's hard to it's hard to improve on ryan's previous being fired and left on the tarmac in the rain well the rain was a nice touch right but that's a that's a blog post you do and is already over and done and tired by the next day. With National Review, you've got a week ahead of time. It's going to be on the newsstands for two weeks, so you've got to go big and broad. Listen, you're absolutely right.

Some of us spend entirely too much time paying attention to Washington, D.C. I went to Washington last month with family, and I didn't look at Twitter, and I didn't look at the internet very much, and I paid no attention to politics while I was in Washington, D.C., and I had the greatest possible time. And I also enjoyed myself because I brought along... Hard to pack, of course. Really hard to pack for that kind of trip. Why would that be, Rob?

Well, you don't know, like, it's the weather, it's raining, and then you're like, what do you bring? Like, what do you put in your, I don't know, carry-on? It's confusing. Rob, is this from your humor column? No, it's from my segue-interrupting column. He thinks it's funny. That's just it.

That's amusing. Yes. No, I was, of course, going to talk about away travel. I was attempting to seamlessly move into an ad. Oh, look at that. What Rob did was he was that kind of guy who goes down the aisle and sticks his butt in your face while he's trying to put the thing in the overhead compartment. One of those travelers.

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Visit awaytravel.com slash ricochet and use the promo code ricochet during checkout. One more time, that's awaytravel.com slash ricochet and use the promo code ricochet for 20 off any suitcase and we thank away travel for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast and now we turn it back to rob who no doubt has been thinking of great things to say while i've been doing the ad that he ruined the beginning of rob you're welcome um hey uh you and i harry also and james are longtime media watchers were you surprised that uh uh Maddow has been surging in the ratings and Fox News has been faltering? Me personally, no. I think that Rachel, I mean, I find her personally less than watchable.

To put it mildly. But she, by the way, I think just to take a sidetrack, is a great example of what happens to people in television. I remember when she first came on the air, and I thought she was an intelligent woman of a liberal persuasion and fairly decent as a television presence. And clearly over the years, the little voices in your ear from the booth have been saying, go big, be dramatic, let's see more of that sense, that wonderful sense of humor of yours.

And, you know, what I used to say, and I think it's still true, is if you're trying to do characterizations of people on television, just wait a few years because they become caricatures of themselves through that process. And then you just have to be an accurate mimic. You don't even have to do the exaggeration. They've already done it themselves. They've done it for you. Yeah.

But now straight from the point of your question. Which is probably a sign of your age. The fact that I remember you had a question is a good sign. I think it's of a piece with the circulation surges of the New York Times and the Atlantic. I think it does nothing more than reify the oldest slogan in journalism, fear sells papers. Right, right. Can I try out two theories on you? I mean, they're not competing theories, but one theory is that we are still, have not

quite adjusted sort of as a culture or as media watchers or whatever to the idea that the numbers now are so small to be a success. Even an old-time broadcast television, where I still work, the number, when they call, the network calls to congratulate you on your terrific ratings, and you're looking at the ratings thinking, my God, I would have been dragged out.

I would have been dragged out of the center of the town and shot in the back of the head for these numbers six years ago, eight years ago. A little ton years ago. I remember one year I had a show on was getting a 14 share. And CBS canceled it.

And they said, listen, we wish we could. It was really kind of close. But we can't, we really can't renew a show when your average is 14. We really are trying to look at, you know, we need 16s. Now, 14 shares, one of the biggest hits in television, I'd be huge. I would be big bank theory or something giant. So my idea is like you could actually, all you're really trying to do is to gather up the 2 million, you know, there are 2 million people who believe whatever nonsense it is that you're selling in America at any given time.

Your job is to find those 2 million people. If they tune in, you're a hit. It's not like you're a hit as compared to anything else. You found those 2 million people. Yes. Look, I think the numbers are always goofy in the world of television. We have for now 15 years been reading and hearing so much about cable news personalities and who's a hit and who isn't that you would think these were the most watched people on American television. was getting half or less of the audience of the failing, as not only Donald Trump has called them, evening news broadcasts, of the third place evening news broadcast, the CBS evening news.

Cable news is a tiny universe in a country of 320 million people. And if cable news networks, my theory is, if cable news networks were not all headquartered in the same city with other news organizations, if cable news networks were headquartered in Chicago, we'd be reading almost nothing about their stars and their personalities and who's ahead and who's not. But it's all New York talking about New York. So if I was to give you the total control of a cable news network, doesn't matter which one, would you move it out of New York? Yeah. Where? Anywhere. Anywhere.

Me personally, I'd move it to New Orleans. You hate it. Yeah. No, I'm serious. The reason for them being in New York was that in the old days, there was a centralization of the communications apparatus that gave you access to news from abroad. I mean, it was much easier to aggregate information when you were near the hub of AT&T and all of the other communications infrastructure. That's gone. The communications infrastructure has been distributed, as we know, worldwide. You can gather as much news.

Ted Turner proved this 20 years, 25, 30 years ago before even the Internet, that you could gather as much news in Atlanta as speedily as you can in New York. And cheaper. And cheaper. Much cheaper. Well, now Atlanta, I mean, my God. But, yeah, I mean, Paul Harvey used to sit in Chicago. He gathered as much news in Chicago,

not that he had that much of it. But, you know, and he would say, you know, I can do this from here. You don't have to be in New York. So the New Yorkification of our media news diet is not a healthy thing. So at one point – go ahead. I was just going to note that at one point – You got to sell something? No. Sometimes I come on to do other things.

Oh, okay. Sell things. God, it's just like everybody else. But while you're selling something, yeah, I was going to note that there was a,

you know, the shift between in movies when they moved out of New York where they began to California where they could have

the light all the time because they were shooting outdoors. And I'm trying to think if that changed what movies were like

and what movies did in the beginning. I mean, the Edisons would go and shoot 23rd Street. They'd go and shoot lower New Yorkork and we had all these movies this documentary

evidence and then they go to california and there's nothing there but streets and palm trees and the rest of it and up develops this fantasy world in california so if you took the news out of washington dc and new york and placed it in fargo north dakota you yes you'd be able to gather all the news like turner showed us you could do. But there would also be, I think, a psychological shift from moving all of those people out of the condensed madhouse of New York and putting them in some place like Fargo where time and life expands and you're no longer so worried. You can sleep at night. So speaking of sleep, you have a – oh, no Oh, no. I thought that was going to be your intro

to the mattress commercial. Well, I just threw that in to bait you both. Go on. I see. It was really a commercial for Fargo. I understand. I think there's, obviously, Washington. You have to have a presence in Washington because that's where a lot of the news is made as opposed to New York. But even there, I mean, I don't think it's widely appreciated how many of the news reporters or news commentators or news anchors in Washington are entwined romantically and emotionally with the news makers. You know, the most dramatic example, of course, is Andrea Mitchell and the former head of the Federal Reserve. Greenspan.

Greenspan. But, I mean, this is towards the establishment, towards the power centers, whoever's got control of the levers at any particular point in time. And I think that has something to do with what I describe as the hysteria over Trump, because he has such disdain and disregard for that whole world, as he's just proven. And yet, and yet he's so like, like, you know, Scaramucci, Scaramucci, I can't, it's a comedy name. It is. Like, these, like, and, and, and Trump, these are New Yorkers.

So what they do is they complain and complain and complain. The failing New York Times, the fake news New York Times. The first place that Donald Trump wants to sit down and have a one-on-one is with the New York Times. He needs the New York Times approval. He's just being a New Yorker. Scaramucci, you know, he's this outsider, this pugilist. Who does he call to leak to? The editor of the New Yorker.

Yeah. I mean, is that just like that once you've been infected with this sort of, once you're a New Yorker, you're always a New Yorker, even if you're an anti-New Yorker? Absolutely. But I think it's, you know, in terms of, I don't know if Scaramucci did that well, but I've watched as many people have had to Trump for way too long. And this game is 30, 40 years old, you know, and he has always had the complicity of the New York media and and then could turn around and sprinkle them with disdain.

And they'd still follow that. You're calling it, yes. Yeah, and then they'd trot after him like the dog that's just been chastised but wants another piece of crap that he will dole out when he wants to be on the front page again. And I think part of his immense frustration, which is what I sense almost every day that's coming out of that place, and I still think he's probably, I think the odds are better than even that he'll bail by the end of the year because he's just too frustrated in living in a world where there are competing power centers, which is a world he's never lived in before.

But I think part of the frustration is the media used to always play this game with me. What happened? Now they've turned on me. They used to just be grateful that you know i'd call up and pretend to be my own pr man and that's right and give them scoops like best sex in the world says marla and bust me on it and now they're busting me on it what happened i thought we had a deal this is baron baron here what i enjoyed about the uh scarabooch coming out uh you you had two reactions one group of people immediately started thinking about a lyric in a queen song yes and then there's a tiny sliver of people who were saying oh scarabooch who was born with the gift

of laughter in the sense that the world was mad because they're thinking of the uh the description of the scarabooch character who was a movie but also a novel, by who? Anybody out there? Rafael Sabatini. So Rafael Sabatini gets this little tiny spike in Google searches. And all of a sudden, people are wondering what this book was.

Well, if you would like to know things like that, because it's always fun to learn new things, that's what The Great Courses Plus is for. I'm doing an ad now, guys. Wow. I was going to say that. How could you possibly know? It's an obscure piece of literature.

It's literally impossible. Once you reach a certain age, James, learning stops and everybody knows it. Is that what you're saying? Do you actually consider that to be a segue interruptus, Rob? I have myself on mute by mistake. I was actually interrupting you for the past

30 seconds. That was lame. And you're usually much better at it. And even better than Rob when it comes to interrupting what I'm trying to do are the people who work for Great Courses Plus, trusted, engaging experts about topics that interest you, history, politics, photography, cooking. And now you can watch the Great Courses Plus on any device from anywhere. You can stream the video lectures to your smartphone, your tablet, your laptop, your TV, or just download them offline. Watch them on the plane, or the train, or the car. James, James. Yes?

My toaster is a device, right? Your toaster is indeed a device, but it is not an internet-enabled smart device. Well, you didn't say that. Okay. Harry, are you thinking of buying one of those new Samsung refrigerators with a screen right in the door? No, I'm in favor of dumb appliances.

Okay, but if you are, then a year from now, I'll tell you that you're going to be able to stream it. I could watch the great courses in my fridge. I have no doubt you'll be able to stream it to your Alexa, to your fridge, to your toaster. You will be able probably to get it into your holographic retinal projectors within a couple of years or so. Any platform, that's what they want because they want you to learn. For example, there's one of the courses called How Conversations Work, Six Lessons for Better Communication. And you know that in today's heated political climate, shall we say,

it's kind of useful to revisit things like how and when to be direct and indirect. And this is one of the courses about those. And Kurzon discusses how interpreting the meanings behind the words that people say is really the key to making conversations work well. And like I say, you know, we're a ways out from Christmas and Thanksgiving, but there's a fighting chance you might have a relative sitting at the table who wants to engage. Well, this is a great lecture for learning how to make those conversations work. Here's a special offer.

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I get the impression that these are what you might call Theodore Talks. Yes, indeed. Precisely. They are. They are. Ted Talks are the short ones. Theodore Talks are the ones that are a little bit. Wow.

I took me a while. And then there's an Alvin Talk, which is the same thing, only it's sped up. The chipmunk style, yeah. Right. By an Armenian promoter. Did that take you a while too, Rob, to get the Alvin? I'm not even there yet. You're on mute.

Well, the Simon talks are good for development as well. So where were we? We were taught one of the things that we were discussing and on the great courses. If you go and look history, there's probably going to be something about Nixon in there. And we know that Harry is a Nixonologist, both in his vocal stylings and his study. You said when you said the other day or just the other minute ago that you think he's going to bail by the end of the year did you did you mean donald trump yeah yeah i think uh the frustration uh that he feels in being uh constantly mousetrapped and and a checkmated

by all these power centers he's never even had a board of directors to answer to before right and uh so he's felt uh plenipotentiary in his own world and i i think he always just assumed that the presidency was just that writ larger and he's learning or not learning uh or experiencing at least every day that that it's not. It's anything but. It's hemmed in both constitutionally and by the growth of power centers, both in the bureaucracy and in, you know, he thought Republicans, I say something and they get in line. And, you know, we've seen in the legislative history of the repeal and replace plan that uh that's anything

but true uh you know he he i think will find a way to say you know i did my best but uh the swamp cannot be drained or the swamp wins or something like that but i think i think four years of this would would drive him absolutely well i i shouldn't say, I'm not going to say anything about his mental state, but I think he'll find it unbearable. I'm envisioning the Nixonian moment where he walks up the steps to Air Force One for the last time and then turns around with a big smile. Instead of the Vs, it's two middle fingers. Exactly right. That's the image I just got as you were setting that up. And I think what a great picture that is for history, isn't it?

Is there anything Nixonian about this guy? He doesn't seem like it. Oh, my God. I think at his base, as I read his psychology, he has so much in common with Nixon. And I think it's the answer to why lower middle class people could identify with a self-described billionaire. Nixon – I'll expand on this for one moment, Rob, if I may. That's what I'd like you to. Okay.

I'll expand like the mattress. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. All right. Nixon grew up in, you know, the wilds of ex-urban Southern California, goes to this small private college, seethes with resentment at how the Ivy League guys get, you know, not only this better education maybe, but certainly all these connections and all these advantages, rises through that world, becomes a partner in the New York law firm after he becomes vice president and then fails to become California governor,

gets to be president, and as you listen to him on the tapes, twice, and as you listen to him on the tapes, well, one and a half times, as you listen to him on the tapes, still is sitting in the Oval Office, seething with resentment at the Ivy Leaguers, in front of Kissinger, who is one himself, almost as if he were Jeff Sessions, saying, never, never anymore of these Ivy Leaguers. They're out, they're out, they're out.

That resentment never... I found that very hurtful, by the way. It's hate speech for me. Yeah, that burning resentment, I would argue, was probably the jet fuel for his ambition. Similarly, Donald Trump

grows up in Queens. His father builds these little, you know, kind of, let's not insult them, but they're lower middle class apartments. And he dreams of being on the other side of the river, and he's going to go across the East River and build big golden penises and get the respect of being a Manhattanite,

part of the Manhattan elite, and the Manhattan elite has always turned its back on him. I thought the most telling moment in last year's campaign was the Al Smith dinner in early October where he shows up in white tie and Hillary shows up in a gown and they both are supposed to do comedy material. And a friend of yours and mine writes some of Trump's material.

And the crowd of elite New York, Manhattan, sorry, Manhattan- Manhattan moneyed people boo him, which to me was the message. You're still you may think you're big stuff, but you're still a pitcher from Queens. And I think that is a Nixonian kind of resentment that burns within him, and I think that resentment of his inability to penetrate the elite is what made him a relatable figure for people who felt shut out by the system. You think that part of his persona is that he's an outsider? Yeah, yeah, that he's done everything he's supposed to do, and he still can't get into the club, you know? They view him as crass and nicotourny. Yeah!

As a gaudy, short-fingered vulgarian, as Spy Magazine woundingly called him over and over in the 80s. Harry, I have to compliment you on your wisdom wisdom because it coincides with something that i thought so naturally that's usually that's your spot but i thought the same thing is that when it comes down to it it's the approval of the new york times editorial board in the washington post that means the most because that's finally those guys saying this donald trump guy is smart capable he's a he's a he's a but he'll never get it. They will never, ever give it to him. And well, they know that's what he craves. And I think their crusade now is to rub it in his face every day that he's not going to get that.

Hmm. You know, I've never thought of it like that. I will now endeavor to see it that way or just to test it out. Just every time you read one of these damning indictments of him in that media, just substitute the words Pisher from Queens. As an example. Well, we should explain that. Could you, I'm not sure how many Yiddish speakers we have listening to this podcast. Oh, come on. Pisher means little tyke, right? Little something. Well, literally it means little urinator. But yeah.

Urinator. Yeah. Pisher is a little kid who can't keep his urine in. And it's just an insult of such towering disdain. Yeah. You're a little pisher, you know. And I think that's what elite Manhattan message they've always sent to Donald Trump. He was a brash, a reviste of, you know, you see no sign of real class. He thinks class is just to paint everything gold.

I mean, it was just nouveau riche squared, nouveau riche on steroids. And Pisher from Queens is rolling around in his head, I think, echoing in that skull. So then help me out. And yet, even with Nixon, I guess you have explained it, because Nixon didn't fire the Ivy Leaguers, he hired them. He hired Nixon. Nixon didn't care, did not care what the New York Times said about him. He obsessed over and over and over again.

Who was it that Nixon had, when Nixon came out of self-imposed exile and moved back to the East Coast, he had a plan to resurrect his reputation, which really meant finally get the respect he felt he deserved. And I think he actually had a name for it. I think he called it Operation Wizard. I don't know about that. I think he actually had a name for it i think he called it operation wizard i don't know about that i think he did i think it's called operation wizard which was the the idea that now that i'm back and he's sort of in um suburban new jersey and i'm going and i have a place in the city i'm going to start becoming a statesman and i'm writing and i'm and i'm writing these unreadable books about – yeah. Absolutely. I mean, he thought – when I was of the Nixon tapes, just for people who didn't see it, done as if there were not only microphones in the Oval Office, but also cameras.

And it's riveting. It's like you're watching. It's riveting. And it's so straight down the middle. There's no spin on it. Like you really that was took a lot of effort to deliver that. It's riveting and it's the it's so straight down the middle there's no spin on it like you really that was took a lot of effort to to deliver that it's riveting it's like it's it's a riveting and hilarious and it's 100 true oh thank you oh it's great so we'll link to that because people see

that it's great um but now i forgot what i was going to say i know you you know why because you were stunned by the fact that i interrupted you to give you a compliment. Yeah, I was. What happened to Rob Long, James? It's right. Go on. No, Rob, say what you want to say. I was going to talk about mattresses to give Harry a chance to collect.

No, no, I got my thought, and then I'll let you talk about mattresses. Nixon was convinced that he was smarter than henry kissinger uh what i was going to say is as i was doing that uh series i was fascinated by the relationship between nixon and kissinger and in the context of what the game trump is playing with sessions right now the only difference is trump Trump's playing this scene in public. Nixon played it in private, and we had to wait 20 or 30 years for the tapes to be made in public.

But it was exactly the same kind of, I've hired you so I can humiliate you. I've hired you so I can prove that even you have to admit that I'm smarter than you. And I think what he did when he moved back to New York was then start to play that game on a larger stage. But speaking of mattresses. I heard that, yes. I'm just sort of collecting myself because that was segue-wise. You may need to lie down. Like a Le Mans driver who's hitting the open stretch and throws it in reverse.

I mean, there are parts coming out of the hood the tires are all coming off the exhaust that was that was quite a segue the oil is changing itself what a country that's another one of our sponsors but we mentioned before about casper and we've been talking about the fact that it comes packed in that tiny little box and you wonder how do they do that that That's for them to know. It's probably a trade secret, but there are many secrets, many things that they developed about Casper in their labs that make it the best thing you're ever going to sleep on, period. Now, you know if you shop for a mattress in your adult life that the mattress industry makes you go to these showrooms and bounce around on a little bed and pretend that you know what it's like,ups, the inflated prices, the cost of the showrooms, and the rest of it. Casper gets rid of all that, eliminates that dreaded, hated middleman,

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visiting casper.com slash ricochet and using the coupon code what now right ricochet that's casper.com slash ricochet and our thanks to casper for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast but nixon was yes harry i'm i'm getting a a sense that you're you're anti-showroom yeah oh yeah yeah no i i'm i'm favor, actually, of literally eliminating the middlemen. I think it's time to round them up, Kulaks that they are and either send them to work camps or something like that. But they'd be working as middlemen in the work camp. Well, that is true. That is. But many of many of our sponsors are fine sponsors. Harry represent a kind of a new economy, Internet enabled economy, which allows you to cut out the middle guy,

Harry Shave, great courses, you don't have to go to college, you can listen to great courses, Casper Mattress, that kind of thing. I guess I'm just old-fashioned enough to think about the poor old middlemen and what they're going to do.

Well, you're a bleeding heart, that's why you care about... Well, then write a play, Death of a Middleman. Oh, that's my other. Attention must be paid as well as a 15% markup. That's my other theory. Trump is Willie Loman, but they rewrote the ending.

Wow, that's pretty good. This is for sort of segueing, or I'm segueing anyway, because I had two theories I wanted to try out on you, and I only found out one, so this is my second one. Yeah. As a cable news watcher, a cable news business, you know, aficionado, I should say. Aficionado, yeah. Here's my argument for why Fox News ratings are getting slippery and declining in many, many day parts, and MSNBC may be increasing.

And that is not that people are no longer conservative, or that people no longer believe in the things that I believe in, certainly, but that Fox News as a brand got too close to the candidate, and too close to a specific personality. You don't think they were close to George W. Bush? Not as close as they were to Trump. It wasn't quite as, it isn't quite as a bold relief, no. I think maybe they were as close,

but it wasn't as contentious because there wasn't such intra-party malaise about having to support Bush as there was about Trump. There were no never Bushers in the – Right. I think they were pro-war. I think the Bush plus war was sort of what guided editorial decisions at Fox News, and that people did want to tune in to see because they cared a lot about the progress or the

lack of progress in the war and the cost of the war. And there was a certain amount of cheerleading for the war that Fox News did, which I think people liked because they wanted it to and there was a certain amount of sort of cheerleading for the war that Fox News did, which I think people liked because they wanted it to succeed. Whereas in this case, I think

you're attaching, they're attaching themselves to a, you know, it doesn't really matter who it is, but a really specific political candidate who is kind of polarizing, but it's also, at best, it's only going to be there eight years. There's going to be ups and downs, and you know, an eight-year business plan is's not a business plan that is is smart for a television network

or any kind of consumer product could fox sorry could fox possibly be down because there's a there's a core group of trump supporters who really don't care about the tiktok and the day-to-day they just support the guy period and they're content to just turn the switch on and the day-to-day. They just support the guy, period. And they're content to just turn the switch on and the Trump switch and then walk away knowing that in the end the right things will happen and there'll be bad stuff and they don't care about it. Which was exactly, I think,

what the Obama voters did during the Obama administration and why MSNBC was getting such poor ratings then is like, no, we just trust him. Don't don't don't even wake us up. We're fine. I want to present an alternative to Rob's theory, though, since it's now been a year since Roger Ailes left Fox. Maybe it's just there aren't enough short skirts and blondes. Oh, I know you mean that to be mean. No, I mean it to be truthful.

Yeah. But do you believe, I mean, you know, you watch networks for a long time. I knew Roger. I talked to him a lot. And I thought he was really brilliant. But it never occurred to me that he was this sole mastermind, that without him there would be trouble. I mean, maybe I just don't give those people enough credit, but it's never occurred to me that the minute he walks out that door, you've lost your rudder.

Yeah. Do you think that's what happened? Well, I don't know. I think, let's say, I do believe that it's arguable that Rupert, who replaced Roger at Fox News, has more of an instinctive feel for newspapering than he may for broadcasting or news broadcasting. I always felt watching Fox News as a person not only who has political views

but also grew up in broadcasting that one of the things that distinguished Fox News when it started and became a sort of trademark of the brand was his mastery of the attention-getting and attention-keeping techniques that had been first pioneered in radio news. And I thought he just adapted them really skillfully. Very technical stuff, like it was very highly compressed. The music was always highly dramatic, much more so CNN. We now take it for granted that there's going to be a noise between every event on cable. Yeah, he pioneered that. He pioneered that.

You never had that before him. Basically, he's giving you the fourth NBCbc chime every 15 minutes though yeah not every 15 minutes it's like when you're making hit records you want an event to happen like every five seconds so people don't tune away it's a little drum hit or a little noise or a little you know whatever whatever kind of noise you can think of that's original and interesting or or that's worked before um and i think he peppered the network with that at a time when cnn was still very staid and very uh kind of not too concerned about keeping your attention and it you know and the graphics with with a lot of visual video feedback uh when that wasn being used, technical stuff that he knew.

And I don't know if there's somebody there who is on the cutting edge of that, now that everybody else has adopted those early Fox News techniques, whether there's somebody there who's at the cutting edge of what should be done now, or whether they're just kind of repeating what Roger did over and over again. I think they also benefited, though, from a news climate in which there were things happening all the time that affected everybody outside of politics. After 9-11, there was 9-11, and then there was the anthrax poisoning,

and then there was all the other things, and then there was war. So when you saw breaking news news chances are it was something that you ought to pay attention to now when you see breaking news it is reinz priebus uh leaving the white house crisis mode and right prebys humiliated and rain that's right so everything people should care about that it was for god's sake listen we have to uh get out of here and let you go uh and uh what are you going to be doing now harry what's uh what's next up for you that people should watch for um i'm sitting down to do my radio show for this week which is on uh public radio stations all over the country um but there's a recording project that i'm finishing up and i

really can't talk about it yet but i'm sure ricochet listeners will will be interested when it uh eventuates and all i can say now is it will be loud oh so you've got finally the long awaited duet album with mark stein yeah all right yeah but uh noisy. Are you still, for people who don't know, I've often been treated to little morsels of tape you pull down off of your dish, usually broadcast right before they go live, right after they go live. Great scenes of Dan Rather arguing for 30 minutes about whether the collar of his trench coat should be up or down. Great stuff. Do you still find it, or are they ahead of you now?

Or is it basically in a YouTube culture, everything is just kind of casual anyway, so nobody cares? I recently was the recipient of audio of a phone call by Anthony Scaramucci with somebody at the other end who's only identified as Sam where he says I'm going to fire them all. I'm going to fire all the leakers. Now that

was two days before he said the same thing publicly so it was that I had a two day advantage on it. Right, right. Two-day scoop, but you just slept. All right. But there's so much cable news.

Are you finding that there's like the same stuff there was before where you were really getting a glimpse into show business behind the curtain? It's not as plentiful as it used to be, but when it happens, it's still pretty amazing. Great, great. It's not as plentiful as it used to be, but when it happens, it's still pretty amazing. Great. Great. And I should say that you got, and I hope I'll be able to participate, I will be in production, the Christmas show is going to continue this Christmas. Christmas Without Tears, L.A., Chicago, New Orleans. Let's hear it.

Beautiful. And that will be in December, right? In December. In December. You said it like Orson Wells on the Frozen Peace commercial. If you could tell me. If you could tell me. I'm going to say in July, I will, yes.

I will banonize you. That's right. Also, OJ is free. How do you feel about that? Before we let you go. I'm one of the few people who watched both the criminal trial and the civil trial. I covered the civil trial. And I came away from the experience concluding that both juries were correct. The prosecution did not prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, and he did it.

And the police had, in effect, framed a guilty man. I'm delighted that nine years of imprisonment in Nevada has not deprived O.J. of the ability to chuckle inappropriately almost as much as Nixon used to. Well, we'll get another book from him,

What Didn't Happen. It'll be a companion episode to Hillary's tome. Listen here, it's been a delight. I could do another three hours or so, but you've got a life and I've got a gazebo to put up. And Lord knows what Rob is doing. Is that a euphemism? No, in my case, it's actually a biannual necessity. And the last gazebo was so flimsy that when the gale force winds came it

was thrown 20 feet into the garden and twisted beyond repair the wreck of the edmund fitzgerald quote the favorite song of paul ryan so i now have a quarter ton of wood sitting outside that i'm going to hammer together with my friend and construct an actual gazebo um and it's going to be miserable but rob on the other hand is constructing a virtual gazebo all the every day so inside my head, yes. And that is a euphemism. This is all brought to you by the great courses Away Travel and Casper Mattresses, eliminating middlemen since 1990-whatever,

and you can support them and support us, and it's mutual and symbiotic, and we thank you for that. Visit the Ricochet store, why don't you? You can have Ricochet-branded swag, and you can swan about town, and people will ask you about the R and you can say go to Ricochet and sign up for that. What, Rob? What do they want to sign up for? The podcast

listeners tier. Just go there. $2.50 a month. It's cheap. You join the podcast. We really need your help. We really, really need your help. Cheap, as it said in the front cover of Mad Magazine every single issue. Thanks, Harry. Thanks, Rob. Thanks for listening, everybody, and we'll see you in the comments at

Ricochet 3.0. Thank you, Harry. Thanks, guys. See you soon. The window's dirty The match is six This ain't a place to be a man I ain't got no future I ain't got no past And I don't think I ever can.

The floor is filthy, the walls are thin, the wind is howling in my face. The rats are beating, I'm losing ground, can't see the jaw, I'm in a race. Yeah. and ground Can't see the jaw of the human race Yeah Living in a hellhole Don't wanna stay in this hellhole Don't wanna

die in this hellhole Girls get me out of this hellhole I rolled a jet stream I hit the top I hear it's taking lots of tails The sun is dropping

Ooh, the food's too hot The kitchen stage Thank you. I'm going back to where I started. I'm flashing back into my past. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. Now, why not? It's better in a hellhole. Know where you stand in a hellhole. Folks land my hand in a hellhole. Girl, get me back to my hellhole. Ricochet. Join the conversation. Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast number 362.

We're brought to you by the fine people at Away Travel. Your luggage should not cost more than your plane ticket, right? Well, Away Travel's luggage is designed with the highest quality materials, and it's still under $300 under... Oh, God, I'm sorry. Start this again. I'm really, really dragging this one. This is great gag real stuff. Yeah. Shut up, Rob. Three, three,

three, two, one.