'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for Friday, August 19th, 2011
video 'podcast'
screencaps
ShowPlug1: The Golden Ticket? After new polling, town hall outbursts, can Dems run on unabashed promise to raise taxes on rich + corps?
ShowPlug2: BOA honcho to Rick Perry "Hi, Bank Of America. We'll help you out." With Robert @RBReich and @Craig_Crawford
ShowPlug3: The SEC destroying evidence of Wall Street wrongdoing? Contributor Matt @mTaibbi of Rolling Stone here with his exclusive
ShowPlug4: 5 Million Pieces of Bullet-proof body-armor for troops may not BE bullet-proof? Guest: an outraged Rep. @LouiseSlaughter
ShowPlug5: Worsts: Crazy Congressman West insults Rep. Waters, then sends his own brother to her in hopes she'll get him a job.
ShowPlugLast: Still not as bad as the Worst Sitter In The World (video). Plus: it's Thurber Friday. See you at 8E.
Segments:
watch whole playlist
#5 'Win With Taxes?', Robert Reich
YouTube, Current.com (excerpt)
#5 'Win With Taxes?', Craig Crawford
YouTube
#4 'S.E.C. No Evil', Matt Taibbi
YouTube, Current.com (excerpt)
Time Marches On!
YouTube
#3 'Armor Dangerous', Rep. Louise Slaughter
YouTube
#2 Worst Persons: Glenn Beck, Rep. Allen West, Keyona Davis (worst babysitter in the world)
Current.com, YouTube
#1 Fridays with Thurber: A Box To Hide In
YouTube
#2 Worst Persons:
Tonight's nominees for Worst Persons In The World.
The bronze to Lonesome Rhodes Beck. The trolley has left the track and the needle is out of the groove.
I know, what's new?
As he deteriorates into a kind of blond Benny Hinn or a thinner John Hagee, Pastor Beck has decided that the Muslims are trying to establish a world-wide caliphate...with the help of the American Left, specifically all those Communists he still sees under his bed.
Along with all the brownies and elves.
"Somebody was trying to tell me that the left and radical islam would never, would never ever and I blew a gasket I said you know what? Fine, be be-headed! Be be-headed! It's your choice."
Bee-bee headed?
You're being a little rough on yourself, aren't you?
I never thought I'd say this: Whatever happened to Glenn Beck?
The runner-up: Congressman Allen West, C, Florida.
The "C" is for Crazy.
The Congressman called his House colleague, Maxine Waters, one of the "over-seers" of a "21st Century plantation" on which liberals kept African-Americans, and by which they kept them down. He said he would become Harriet Tubman and set them free.
Then a funny thing happened at the jobs fair held by the Congressional Black Caucus.
Congressman West's unemployed brother showed up.
Looking for a job.
Arlan West went right up to Congresswoman Waters and said his brother Allen had told him to go see her in hopes she'd help him get a job.
Arlan West then gave an interview in which he called the C-B-C jobs fair quote, "a prime example" of elected officials actually trying to serve their constituents, and called his brother's "plantation" remarks "unproductive."
But our winner: Keyona Davis of Daytona Beach, Florida.
She's officially under arrest on a charge of child neglect.
Unofficially the charge could have been: "Worst Baby-Sitter Ever."
In the dash-cam video released by Daytona police.
That's a pick-up truck.
That's Ms. Davis sitting on the back, and on the edge.
That's a child's car-seat she's holding onto...
And that's the eight-month old she was baby-sitting in the car seat.
They weren't driving just on the side roads, either.
They were on at least one four-line highway.
The car seat was not held down by anything but Ms. Davis, who says she thought that was fine since she did have a firm grip on it.
Apparently that's the only thing she did have a firm grip on.
She explained to the court that she's been baby-sitting for eight years and "it's not like they give you a handbook or anything on what's neglect and not neglect."
Actually they do. But it comes with the brain they give you when you stand in the brain line.
Baby-sitter Keyona Davis of Daytona Beach, Florida: the Worst Person In The World.
#1 Fridays with Thurber: A Box To Hide In: transcript cribbed from last time
There really isn't a quintessential James Thurber story. "Walter Mitty" remains his best known, but its mix of despair and liberating fantasy bears very little resemblance to, say, his best collection: the exaggerated and wonderful tales of his youth that comprise "My Life and Hard Times". But if anything comes close to putting all the components together - the joy, the despair, the terror, the hilarity, and the imagination of life, at least of Thurber's life - it is a story he wrote for the New Yorker magazine's issue of January 24th 1931, collected in "The Middle Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze" four years later.
I am as usual reading from the Library of America edition "Thurber, Writings and Drawings", edited by Garrison Keillor and back in print because when we began these readings last year you guys started buying copies of Thurber, bless you. I've read it before, I'll read it again:
"A Box to Hide In" by James Thurber.
I waited till the large woman with the awful hat took up her sack of groceries and went out, peering at the tomatoes and lettuce on her way. The clerk asked me what mine was.
Have you got a box, I asked? A large box? I want a box to hide in.
You want a box, He asked? I want a box to hide in, I said.
What do you mean, he said. You mean a big box? I said, I meant a big box, big enough to hold me.
Oh, I haven't got any boxes, he said. Only cartons that cans come in. I tried several other groceries, and none of them had a box big enough for me to hide in.
There was nothing for it but to face life out. I didn't feel strong and I had this overpowering desire to hide in a box for a long time. What do you mean, you want to hide in this box, one grocer asked me. It's a form of escape, I told him. Hiding in a box, it circumscribes your worries and the range of your anguish. You don't see people, either.
How in the hell do you eat when you're in this box, asked the grocer. How in the hell do you get anything to eat. I said I'd never been in a box and didn't know, but that would take care of itself.
Well, he said finally, I haven't got any boxes, only some past board cartons that cans come in.
It was the same every place. I gave up when it got dark and the groceries closed and hid in my room again, turned out the light and lay on the bed, and feel better when it gets dark.
I could have hid in a closet, I suppose, but people are always opening doors. Somebody would find you in a closet. They would be startled. And you'd have to tell them why you're in the closet. Nobody pays attention to a big box lying on the floor. You could stay in it for days and nobody would think to look in it, not even the cleaning woman.
My cleaning woman came the next morning and woke me up. I was still feeling bad. I asked her if she knew where I could get a large box. How big a box you want, she asked. I want a box big enough for me to get inside of, I said. She looked at me with big, dim eyes. There's something wrong with her glands.
She's awful. But she has a big heart, which makes it worse. She's unbearable. Her husband is sick, and her children are sick, and she is sick, too. I got to thinking about how pleasant it would be if I were in a box now and didn't have to see her. I'd be in a box right there in the room, and she wouldn't know.
I wondered if you have a desire to bark or laugh when someone who doesn't know walks by the box you're in. Maybe she would have a spell with her heart if I did that and would die right there. The officers and the elevator man and Mr. Grammage would find us.
Funny, dog gone thing happened at the building last night, the doorman would say to his wife. I let in this woman to clean up 10-F and she never came out, see? She never there more than an hour. But she never came out, see? So when it get time for me to get off duty, I says to Crimmack in the elevator, I says what the hell you suppose happened to the woman that cleans 10-F? He says he didn't know. He says he never seen her after he took her up.
So I spoke to Mr. Grammage about it. Sorry to bother you, Mr. Grammage, I says, but there's something funny about that woman that cleans 10-F. So I told him - he said we better have a look. And we all three goes up, knocks on the door, rings the bell, see, and nobody answers.
So he said we'd have to walk in. So Crimmack opened the door and we walked in. And there was this woman, cleans the apartment, dead as a herring on the floor, and the gentleman that lives there was in a box.
The cleaning woman kept looking at me. It was hard for me to realize she wasn't dead. It's a form of escape, I murmured. What say, she asked dully? You don't know of any large packing boxes, do you, I asked? No, I don't, she said.
I haven't found one yet. But I still have this overpowering urge to hide in a box. Maybe it will go away. Maybe I'll be all right. Maybe it will get worse. It's hard to say.