All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 12, 2011 - Jimmy Dore Show
57:06
20110812_The_Jimmy_Dore_Show_August_11_2011
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Jimmy Door, John Chambers, the head of Standard and Ford.
I've been taking a victory lap for the past few days because my company, SP, has done it again.
We've downgraded U.S. debt, and once again, our data is based on shoddy, incompetent, politically motivated accounting.
It just feels good when that happens.
Jimmy, when I was a kid, I had the same dream that most young boys have.
To one day grow up and run a ratings agency.
Well, that dream came true for me, and I'm so happy because inflicting suffering on people.
And as for our downgrading of the American economy, well, not the brag, but now this.
I find them all around.
Although we are so awesome that we are upgrading them to high tens.
We once gave the Lehman Brothers at the Lux AAA rating.
And if that made life difficult for some Americans, well, at least they can still live in homes purchased with a subprime mortgages we also recommended.
And now we're applying that same expertise to other parts of American culture.
For instance, in the field of entertainment, we just upgraded George Lopez's show to a AAA.
You've been expecting to be watching Lopez at midnight on the TBS Superstation for years to come.
And we assured investors that the Green Lantern movie would be the biggest superhero movie hit of all time.
And it certainly is, if you don't count every other superhero movie ever made.
Plus, we also gave a AAA lifespan longevity rating to Amy Winehouse.
Oh, okay.
But does that necessarily mean we should change our rating?
Well, if we're not going to change our downgrade of U.S. debt, even though we had a $2 trillion accounting error, we sure as hell aren't going to admit that we were wrong about Amy Whitehouse.
It's important to the stability of the market that we show some consistency.
That's why we try to be consistently wrong about everything.
Well, Jimmy, I've got to go.
But before I leave, I should probably state that we here at Standard and Ford base our upgrades and downgrades on, well, here's what we'll base it on.
We're Standard and Ford, pictures.
Does that answer your question?
I'm out of here.
Good night.
It's the Jimmy Door Show.
It's the show that makes Anderson Cooper say.
It's hard to talk on your TV algorithm.
So sit back or sit up or keep driving.
Now, here's a guy who sounds a lot like me.
It's Jimmy Dore.
Hi, and welcome to today's show.
Today, it's the 10th anniversary of 8-11.
Jimmy, I think you've got your dates mixed up.
8-11 is really not that consequential.
But it still is the 10th anniversary.
It is true.
That's true.
Everything changed a month after 8-11.
That's right.
Thank you, Frank.
I am joined in studio, as always, from Mystery Science Theater 3000 and from Cinematic Titanic.com.
It's TV's Frank.
Frank Connoff.
Hi, Frank.
Hey, Jimmy.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
You're looking good.
You got a little sun last weekend?
Yes, I did.
All right.
The summer's looking good on you.
Is that an aqua?
What do you got?
A turquoise shirt in?
What is that?
Yeah, yeah.
Please tell the tell the audience and say it slowly so they can get turned on.
What does that look like?
That look on your face.
Is that crippling depression you're wearing?
I think it is.
It looks good.
And it becomes me.
It sure does.
All right.
No, next to him from the mental illness Happy Hour Podcast.
It's Paul Gilmartin.
Hi, Paul.
How are you?
Hi, Jim.
Actually, this week's episode, I interview Frank Conniff.
Oh, really?
It's a doozy.
Quite a coup for him to get me.
I bet it is a doozy.
I'm going to turn to my right on a Thursday and say, hey, what are you doing?
And next to us from Team Yasamura, it's Robert Yasamura.
Hey, Robert, how are you, buddy?
Not much is going on.
You know what's going on?
Is the president of Barack Obama?
It's been leaked his new strategy for winning the election is they're trying to paint Mitt Romney as weird.
And Mitt Romney got so upset.
That's a lot of painting.
He got so upset, he wet his magical underpants.
I can't help it.
Okay.
Michelle Bachman's in the news because it's been released that she applied for many, many federal government grants to help her community.
That's funny.
Michelle Bachman says she hates big government, yet she applied for numerous federal grants.
And her husband, Marcus Bachman, hates gays, yet, well, you know the rest.
Okay.
British Tourism Board not fooling anyone by playing Benny Hill Yaketyak music over the London riot footage.
Sorry, I had to do that right now.
And the esteemed SP rating agency downgraded U.S. Treasury bills to AA Plus.
Investors were so rattled that they immediately started buying treasury bonds.
The chairman of the S ⁇ P said he was confident in a decision to downgrade, and he still couldn't believe he isn't in jail.
After only three years after the banking meltdown, S ⁇ P downgraded Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae last week.
That's right.
In other news, they also downgraded the New Orleans levees and the Japanese nuclear plants.
And also, we're going to have a phone call from Rick Perry coming in.
You know, Rick Perry, many of the highlights of his last prayer, he had a big prayer vigil at the Reliance Stadium.
And, well, church and state were on stage performing lewd acts of intimacy.
Okay, that's coming up.
Plus, we have an interview with an author, Maria Armudian, who wrote Killing the Messenger, all about how media influences society coming up in the second half of the hour.
We got phone calls coming up from Rick Perry, from Herman Kane, and a lot lot more.
That's today on the Jimmy Dorn Show.
Time for another installment of Oh My God.
Okay, a lot to choose from this week in the Oh My God segment.
It was really, it was tough to know what to go with.
Dylan Radigan went a little crazy.
We had some people over at CNN beating up on the poor.
The riots in England, we had the Rick Perry's craziness down in Texas.
So what we're going to go with is we're going to go with the Texas Preacher.
I don't know if you saw this at a NASCAR event, and maybe it was making its way around the internet.
And, well, I'm just going to, here's, this guy's been watching a little too much Talladega Nights.
And here was his prayer he gave before the NASCAR race.
Heavenly Father, we thank you tonight for all your blessings.
You said in all things, give thanks.
So we want to thank you tonight for these mighty machines that you brought before us.
Thank you for the Dodges and the Toyotas.
Thank you for the Fords.
And most of all, we thank you for Raush and Yates partnering to give us the power that we see before us tonight.
Thank you for GM Performance Technology and the R07 engines.
Thank you for Sunoco Racing Fuel and Goodyear tires that bring performance and power to the track.
Lord, I want to thank you for my smoking hot wife tonight, Lisa.
My two children, Eli and Emma, or as we like to call them, the Lilies.
Lord, I pray you bless the drivers that use them tonight.
May they put on a performance worthy of this great track In Jesus' name, boogity, boogity, boogity.
Amen.
Wow.
Yeah, well, you know, can I just say that you could go to a tranny wedding at a bathhouse and you wouldn't come that close to tackiness?
Okay, that was, you know.
I enjoy the unapologeticness of it, if that's a word.
Yes, that is a word I think.
Unapologeticness.
I think that's a word.
If it's not an automatic.
I'm still love the Bush administration.
Yeah.
The lack of apology.
You know, in Middle America, even your spiritual leaders, even in your spiritual leaders, they go for morons who'd be more fun to have a beer with.
You know, I can understand when they do that with like a president.
Hey, we picked George Bush because he's the guy I'd rather have a beer with.
But this guy, this is the guy you're going to go to when you're having trouble in your marriage.
You know what I mean?
This is the guy you go to for wisdom and guidance and solace when life's universal tragedies come to find you.
This is the guy you're going to go.
What is the guy's name?
You know what?
I didn't, I don't know.
Did we get this guy's name, Robert?
No.
I had it.
I didn't write it down.
Let's remember that the dedication on this show is first to the comedy, second to the facts and information.
I feel after hearing that, I feel a deep spiritual need to see a Fast and the Furious movie.
Oh, I was so furious at that movie when I saw it.
They were going so fast.
It sounds like it had the intended effect then.
And can you imagine going to this guy with the, yeah, you know, I just got cancer.
I'm facing death.
I don't know what to do.
Hey, let's go see the guy who thinks God makes engines.
Let's go talk to.
Let's go talk to that guy.
See what, hey, my kid was just born with special needs.
I don't know how to handle it.
Hey, I know.
Let's go to the guy who blesses motorsports events.
Yeah.
You know, on a good day, I might let that guy be my kid's gym teacher.
Well, it says in the Bible, blessed are the men who point out that they have smoking hot wives.
And by, and by, you know what?
And I didn't want to do it.
You know, it's like when Sarah Palin brings her kids on stage and stuff, you know, you're kind of making, you're kind of opening us up now.
We have to take a shot at that.
Well, he did.
He did say my smoking hot wife.
And, well, even though I didn't have time to find out his name, I did have time to find a picture of his wife.
Not smoking hot.
Well, it's yes, if you're a foaming at the mouth, Chubby Chaser, she's smoking hot.
Yeah.
Hey, and God bless you if you are, by the way.
It takes a village.
Okay?
It takes a village.
The sad thing is, I don't think she's one of those women who's naturally large, but I think she got that way from swallowing a lot of her feelings in the marriage.
They can be highly caloric.
I think a smaller woman wouldn't marry this guy for fear of herself being eaten by him.
I don't know if you saw him.
Is he a big fella?
He's a big.
He's a giant.
Oh, he's a giant guy.
Oh, wow.
It sounds like she's not so much smoking as a forest fire.
I mean, if you saw a picture of this guy, he's about two all-you-can-eat buffets away from needing a hover-round.
I have to say, I got to love the fact that this guy called his wife smoking hot.
I think that's cool.
I think he did that.
It's awesome that he did that in a public forum.
A lot of guys get deep into marriage and they.
It bothered me he didn't stay on subject.
Yeah.
That's what bothered me.
If you really think your overweight and kind of moon-faced wife is really hot, God bless you.
But stay on subject.
Let's talk about the engines some more.
I just expect something a little more refined from a NASCAR rally.
I'm sorry.
Did we ever find out what the Boogada Boogada is?
No, no.
I'm sure it's racist.
I'm positive.
But I think it's nice that our spiritual leaders are now doing product placements in their invocations.
Isn't that nice?
Sunochal fuel and Goodyear tires.
Really?
That's some kind of targeted marketing backed up by the power of Jesus, ladies and gentlemen.
Well, in the Bible, they mention that he turns water into Boone's Farm wine.
Right.
So they've had product placement for a long time.
Well, and the next time you're taking communion, it's going to be, let's give it up for Sutterholm Wines and the Dabisco and their family of fine-baked products.
Amen.
There you go.
Okay, so that, so we could have gotten a lot more.
There was a lot more, oh my gods.
Rick Perry did do a prayer service.
And you know what?
Let me guess.
Was there any homophobia there?
Oh, you know what?
Let me, I'm not sure.
I can't imagine there would be in a Texas prayer service, Jenny, a Republican Texas prayer service.
I don't think any of it was overt.
There wasn't a lot of homophobia at the prayer service because they don't allow that at federal events.
Wow.
Baggity bang.
Well, there was this.
There was, I don't know if there was homophobia.
There was this guy was there.
Let's see if this guy was there.
Harlot Babylon is preparing the nations to receive the Antichrist.
The harm in Babylon will be a religion of affirmation, toleration, no absolutes, a counterfeit justice movement.
Okay, so it's going to be the new harlot movement.
It's going to be affirmation, toleration.
And so who is the person to lead that movement?
Are you ready?
This is who the Antichrist is, according to Mike Bickel, International House of Prayer, IHAP.
Okay, ready?
Here we go.
I believe that one of the main pastors as a forerunner to the Harlot movement, it's not the Harlem movement yet.
It's Oprah.
She is winsome.
She is kind.
She is reasonable.
She is utterly deceived.
Utterly.
It's deceived.
A classy woman, a cool woman, a charming woman, but has a spirit of deception.
And she is one of the clear pastors, forerunners to the Harlot movement.
Okay, it's Oprah.
That's the name of her production company, isn't it?
The Harlot Movement.
Harlot Productions.
I think so.
If only she could have the spirit of love that you have flowing through you.
Well, that's his point, is that whole spirit of love is what we have to be afraid of.
Yeah.
The openness and the tolerance.
Yeah.
That's what's leading us to the anti-someone doesn't hate somebody.
Be suspicious of them.
Hate those people the most.
The unhaters, they're the people you should really be afraid of.
It seems weird that, you know, of all the talk show hosts, he'd come out against her and not like Nancy Grace.
If he was saying Nancy Grace, everyone would be like, absolutely, bad.
By the way, when do we get to solve her murder?
Yeah, it's not Maury Povich.
It's not, you know, it's Oprah Winfrey, someone who's actually trying to do something positive.
Well, she is black, and she had Barack Obama on her show in a nice way, so you got to get rid of her.
She's been off the air for three months.
In the Bible, it said the Antichrist will come, and the best friend of the Antichrist will be named Gail.
She may be off the air, Robert, but her poisonous air of inclusion still lingers.
I can't wait until December when I get the Antichrist favorite things.
Okay.
No, that guy would not.
That guy wouldn't Mike Bickle would not turn down being on Elpra Winfrey's show.
I guarantee you.
Okay.
This has been, oh my God.
Oh, my God.
I have to say, a little of the edge of the surprise is taken off when you hear the southern voice in it talking to a congregation.
It's like there's going to be no surprise of, oh my God, they said that.
It'd be an, oh, my God, if you said, let's try to love gay people.
They're just like us.
That would have Been an oh my god.
Let's support the own network.
It's her cable endeavor.
She's struggling with it.
We need to get behind it.
I'm with you guys on all that stuff, by the way.
So they appointed the committee.
We have the super committee.
So now we have a bunch of Republicans on the super.
So let's just tell people what the super committee is, right?
And by the way, if you've missed any part of today's show already, and like you like to hear the SP guy call in again, or you'd like to hear my own, oh my God, segment again and all the hilarious things you guys said about it, you can always get a podcast of this show for free.
What?
That's right.
At iTunes, the Jimmy Door show, D-O-R-E-L.
Podcasts are the work of the Antichrist.
Yes, they are.
Or you can go to JimmyDoorComedy.com.
How's Jimmy Doer spelled?
D-O-R-E.
What happens if you don't spell it that way?
You get the passenger side door for a GMC Jimmy comes up and you don't want that.
And I have to say, some episodes of your show, equally as entertaining as a GMC Jimmy Door.
Bank?
A kid.
A kid.
You know what?
That joke was pretty unfunny.
But if you're going to insult me, make it good.
Okay.
Put a little twist at the end.
So, hey, your show, no good.
That's just basically that was that joke.
Yeah, well, your show go dug the bank.
So you can always get a podcast of the show.
You can hear gems like that, ladies and gentlemen, for Paul Kilmartner.
Okay, so there's so much to go into.
I just wanted to say very quickly.
So they appointed the people who are going to be on the supercommittee, and they're charged with cutting $1.5 trillion from the budget by November.
Sounds like they're moving real fast to make nothing happen.
Yeah.
So they appointed people who are not going to raise revenues for sure.
And they appointed some Democrats who might raise some revenues, but will eventually cave to the Republicans who won't.
So basically, you have six people who are openly hostile to the poor and the middle class, and six people who pretend that they're not openly hostile to the budget.
But who are indifferent, who are indifferent to the poor and the middle class.
By the way, didn't they already, I mean, wasn't that the Bowles committee?
Yeah.
Ernst and Bowles.
And they came in and they said, here are the cuts, and here are the revenues.
Here are the revenues.
And here's what you need to do.
And it was highly partisan, and they immediately went, yeah, no.
Right.
They got really got rid of it.
No, we can't do that because that's sensible.
Right.
It actually isn't sensible.
It's more sensible than what they're going to do, which is why they're not going to do it.
The Bowles Committee were people who aren't running for anything in the next.
Right.
That was Alan Simpson and Ernst Bowles.
So let me just say that what's going to happen in this committee is they've taken, so you just had Congress vote to completely screw up our economy, screw over middle-class people, and screw over the poor.
And they were successful.
So don't say the Congress never accomplishes anything.
That's right.
Very successful, right?
So we just had, so we had, so we're going to take 12 people from the 435 people who just screwed us, and they're going to come up with some recommendations after meeting in secret.
What could go wrong?
It's like a reality competition where everyone else was eliminated and there's just these six people left.
That'd be so great if you saw Nancy Pelosi giving roses to the Congresswoman.
Congress people.
Okay, no, I want to just let you know, how did we get here?
How did this happen?
I came on Ventura.
Oh, you mean that?
No, that's what I meant.
And I took the 134 all the way into Kahuanga and I take a left.
So how did we get here?
So Dylan Radigan, he kind of, so we try to use humor here to talk about the things that's happening in the world.
Despite that last joke.
Despite that last joke.
We try to use that.
One year in, now you tell me.
Because it's a little too literally, you know, during the George Bush years, I had to stop watching the news for big parts of the time.
And then when Barack Obama was going to look like he was going to win, I got excited.
I couldn't wait to watch the news.
I couldn't wait to read the newspaper.
I couldn't wait to find out.
And now it's getting back to that way.
Like, I try to tune out the news almost because it's too painful.
Barack Obama is such a horrible, horrible president, and he's letting our country be ruined.
And so Dylan Radigan has a show on the MSNBC.
And he kind of expressed how we all feel.
This is how we feel underneath our comedy all the time.
He kind of expressed it.
People are saying it's a Howard Beale moment, but he explained why we're doing all this.
What is exactly wrong with our economy?
He said it at full volume on his show.
And this was, let's play it and we'll listen to it right now.
That we have to deal with the extraction that is in foot.
It is the reason the financial markets are behaving the way they're behaving.
That is a mathematical fact.
This is not some opinion.
This is a mathematical fact.
Tens of trillions of dollars are being extracted from the United States of America.
Democrats aren't doing it.
Republicans are not doing it.
An entire integrated system, financial system, trading system, taxing system that was created by both parties over a period of two decades is at work on our entire country right now.
And we're sitting here arguing about whether we should do the $4 trillion plan that kicks the can down the road for the president for 2017 or burn the place to the ground, both of which are reckless, irresponsible, and stupid.
And the fact of the matter is, until we actually, and I don't, and I'm sorry to lose my temper again, but I'll tell you what, I've been coming on TV for three years doing this.
And the fact of the matter is that there's a refusal on both the Democratic and the Republican side of the aisle to acknowledge the mathematical problem, which is that the United States of America is being extracted.
It's being extracted through banking.
It's being extracted through trade, and it's being extracted through taxation.
And there's not a single politician that has stepped forward, Susan, to deal with it.
That was genius.
So we're going to do it.
The weird thing is, is that was on the Carson Daly show.
So that was Dylan Radigan breaking it down and letting us know what's wrong with America.
So there's Wall Street right now.
So we have the economic bank.
By the way, can I just interrupt for a second?
Is there anybody else doing what he is doing in Brian Williams and Diane Sawyer?
And to a lesser extent, Steve Pelley and Anderson Cooper.
No, nobody's doing that.
They only let him say that because he's on at 1 o'clock in the afternoon and no one's watching.
And that, you know, this is like a little off topic, but that brings me to it should be a whole topic of discussion is that comedians have to stop including Brian Williams in sketches on their shows and portraying him as this fun guy who's really with eggs.
He's really cool.
Stop doing that.
Jimmy Fallon and Jon Stewart and all stop.
Stop.
I disagree with you.
Stop embracing him as a love guy that we all love.
Oh, here's our news.
Here's everybody's favorite news guy.
Stopping the ball.
Here's a guy who is undermining America every night.
I disagree.
I think you should make Brian Williams in every sketch, but he's the butt of the joke in every sketch.
But he wouldn't come on.
He wouldn't come up.
Then he wouldn't come on.
Right.
What Frank is saying is if you're going to have him come on, Jimmy Fallon when I'd even watched it, it was just from a few days ago where he came on and he sang a song with him and it's like stop it.
Hey, why don't you write a bit, Jimmy Fallon, is what you're saying, Frank.
Why doesn't the Jimmy Palin, the very capable team of writers over there?
They are very capable.
I'm telling you, they're all very funny guys, very capable.
Why don't they write a sketch taking down Brian Williams instead of propping him up and making him more lovely?
Because they're not Struggling middle-class people who are feeling the pain of Brian Williams dropping the ball.
Right.
That's my opinion.
And I think it's a very calculated thing on Brian Williams' part.
Oh, very calculated.
I just like this great fun guy.
But then a while ago, you played that clip of him on Letterman when Letterman wanted to talk to him about substantial things.
He wanted to.
Can we do a sketch?
Yeah.
Can we goof around more?
Yeah, I think that guy is Chauncey Gardner.
I honestly, I think he's a savant.
He's an idiot.
What's he a genius at?
He's a genius at comedy.
He's really good at the comedy.
If you see those sketches, he's really, he's almost better than Jimmy Fallon on some of those sketches.
I mean, he's Chauncey Gardner.
He hit the zeitgeist just right.
He's bringing nothing to the table.
Right.
He just happens to be the right guy.
The breakup brought nothing to the table.
He still completely brings nothing to the table.
Let's go.
So, so here, here, actually, Dylan Radigan kind of tells us what we need to do.
So there's a woman on his panel, a Democrat, by the way, on his panel saying, what do you want the president to do?
What do you want him to do?
What's he supposed to do?
So Dylan Radigan says, this is what you're supposed to do.
Ready?
Here we go.
United States of America and say, people of the United States of America, your Congress is bought.
Your Congress is incapable of making legislation on healthcare, banking, trade, or taxes, because if they do it, they will lose their political funding and they won't do it.
But I'm the president of the United States and I won't have a country that is run by a bot Congress.
So I'm not going to work with a bot Congress and try to be Mr. Big Guy.
I'm working with the Bot Congress.
I'm going to abandon the bot Congress like Teddy Roosevelt did.
And I'm going to go to the people of the United States and I'm going to say, you've got to bought Congress.
And until we get rid of the bot Congress, which is Jimmy Williams' constant point, which is get the money out of politics, and until a president says that's the problem and says he's going to fix it, there is no policy that I can possibly see, no matter how brilliant your idea may be, or your idea, or my idea, or her idea, or your idea at home, is that idea will not happen as long as there is the capacity to basically fire a politician who disagrees with me by taking funding away from him.
Is that a fair?
How bad does it have to get?
How much money has to be extracted?
How many things have to be?
I'm going to turn the brass tax.
Okay, physically, what do you do?
You go and give a skill.
Yeah, right now.
Right now.
And then what happens tomorrow?
Tomorrow.
So did you hear this woman?
She's like, so what did you do physically?
You just said what you do.
So now he's going to tell her again.
He's going to get the power.
He's going to tell her.
So I come out and I say, how?
I create an infrastructure bank with 2% blending immediately.
Once I explain to people the problem, once I explain to you, you have cancer?
Once you understand how screwed up your trade tax and banking policies are, believe me, you will have no issue when I incorporate an infrastructure bank that I fund with repatriated offshore money that I bring in and then use to create 2% direct lending to every business in America.
Because when you realize that the banking system is fully corrupt and defrauding us, and I come out and say that, which is what I want my president to do, then at that exact moment, I say, you know what?
We got a screwed up situation here, people.
You all know it.
And now what?
I'm going to admit it.
And as a result, not only have I admitted it, but we're going to begin the process of solving it like grown-ups.
They did it in World War II.
They did it after the Civil War.
They did it in Latin America with the Brady bonds.
We are not seeing it happen now.
The panel stays.
So there you go.
I don't even know what he meant.
You start a new bank with blending.
So what he's saying is you take money and you give it to businesses at 2%.
The government starts loaning money because the banks are, because the banking system is fraudulent.
It sounds like he's saying, you take the money that these weasels are hiding offshore and you use it to lend to the business.
I mean, this is so beyond my understanding.
You know what?
We'll come back after the break, Frank.
But right now, I want to let people know this Saturday we're having our favorite show.
It's the Poppin' Politics Comedy Show.
Woo!
This Saturday, August 13th, 8 p.m. at the Nerd Melt Theater at 7522 Sunset Boulevard.
You can get a link.
You can go to kpfk.org.
There's a link on the front page.
Or you can go to jimmydoorcomedy.com and there's a link right there on the right-hand side.
Hey, now it's our good friend Jim Hightower.
In last year's congressional elections, the loudest war cry of the Republican Tea Party contingent was, remember the earmarks.
But look, who's that scuttling down the dark corridors of the Capitol, stuffing their pockets with hundreds of millions of dollars in new federal earmarks for their districts?
Why, it's those same anti-spending Tea Party screechers.
They're playing the same old congressional pork barrel game, but giving it new spiffed up names.
For example, a $300 million project to dredge a South Carolina harbor for corporate shippers is not an earmark, says Tea Party earmarker Representative Jim Scott.
Instead, it's a, quote, merit-based project.
Also, check out New Jersey's Tea Party Republican John Runyon.
He defeated a Democrat last year who had earmarked $20 million for replacing sand on the state's constantly eroding beaches.
So, shortly after taking office, what was Runyon's top budget priority?
Getting federal tax dollars to replace sand on beaches in his district.
Not an earmark, mind you, but a, quote, vital storm control project.
And Steve Palazzo of Mississippi rode the Tea Party wave into Congress by pledging to ban earmarks in order to, quote, help restore the people's faith in their government.
Now inhaling the fumes of power, however, Steve has earmarked about $180 million to the already bloated Pentagon budget for three projects in his district.
Ironically, these same earmarks had been sought by the Democrat Palazzo defeated.
But this time, they're not to be called earmarks.
Huh?
This Tea Partyer's Orwellian PR man explained that while Palazzo had indeed transferred the money to the three projects, technically, he had not directed how the Pentagon should spend it.
So see, he's clean.
This is Jim Hightower saying, there's a word for these guys.
Cynical, disgusting, hypocritical liars.
Okay, four words.
This is the Jimmy Door show on Pacific.
Hello, podcast listeners, our favorite listeners.
This is the part of the show when I come to you and let you know that our show is made possible by the generous donations of our listeners and some not-so-generous donations.
We like those too.
You want to help support the show and make sure this show, along with all the hilarious people and impressions, come to you every week?
You need to do something.
You need to stop by JimmyDoorComedy.com, click on donate, and become a great person.
And then we're going to send you nice thank-you gifts.
At $20 donation, you get a CD.
At the $55 yearly donation, you get the award-winning DVD of Citizen Jimmy.
That's the hour-long Comedy Central special.
And if you become a recurring donor, we're going to make extra content available to everyone on a weekly basis.
But you know you're doing the right thing when you swing by JimmyDoorComedy.com.
You click on donate, and you make this show possible.
And if you can't make a financial donation during these times, swing by iTunes and leave a nice review.
I know it sounds crazy, but it really does make a difference.
All right.
Thanks for listening, and I'll see everybody Saturday, August 13th for Poppin' Politics at the Meltdown Comics, 7522 Sunset Boulevard.
Everybody's going to be there.
And there's a link at jimmydoorcomedy.com.
Okay, now back to the show.
Hi, welcome back to the Jimmy Door Show.
I hope you're enjoying today's show.
I'm joined in studio by Frank Conner from Mystery Science Theater 3000 from the Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast.
It's Paul Gilmartin and from Team Yasamura.
It's Robert Yasamura.
I sat down earlier today with a young lady who hosts a show here at KPFK, Maria Armudian.
And she was a fantastic writer, a fantastic host of a show.
She's done a lot of things.
She's worked in government.
She just wrote a book called Kill the Messenger: The Media's Role in the Fate of the World, which is a great read.
I sat down with her.
Here's our conversation.
Okay, we're here with Maria Armudian.
I think I said that correctly, correct?
You said that correctly, correct?
Armudian.
She's written a great book called Kill the Messenger, which is right up my alley because I once did a pilot called The Shoot the Messenger.
You did not.
Yes, I did, right?
It was all about making skewering the news media.
Well, this is about how the news media.
Well, the subtitle is The Media's Role in the Fate of the World.
Now, but that's a that's an first of all, a lot of people love this book already, right?
Ed Begley Jr.
John Wiener, who I'm a big fan of, right?
Editor for the nation has a show here at KPFK.
He loves them, he loves the book.
Robert M. McChesney loves the book.
A lot of big shots love this book, right?
And so tell me, what is Kill the Messenger, the media's role in the fate of the world.
Maria, what does that mean?
Well, essentially, I wanted to take a look at what role media played in political outcomes all over the world.
And I was really arguing with a group of scholars who said that media don't have an effect.
And this was during my PhD program.
And so I started looking into it and researching it.
And I saw that, in fact, media played a key role in some of the worst atrocities in the world, but also a lot of really positive things.
Well, when you say media played a role in the worst atrocities, you mean like the George Bush election or what?
No, you're thinking of something actually even worse than that.
It's hard to think of anything much worse than that, isn't it?
Well, you know, it's actually the Bush election probably was sending us down a very bad path in the long-term course of the planet.
So I don't know that I could really say that's much worse.
But no, I mean, more directly tied to things like you and I were talking just a bit ago about the Rwandan genocide.
And that's the one that I think is the most obvious case.
And that's why I started that is the first case study.
Because before the mass media, which was a private radio station, very hip radio station, everybody listened to it, very cool songs, very funny jokes.
And then they started putting all these hate messages on against one particular ethnic group, blaming them for all the problems in Rwanda and warning the other ethnic group that if they didn't get rid of them, that Rwanda was imperiled.
And so they had to destroy them.
And in 100 days, they killed 800,000 of this one ethnic group, which were called the Tutsis.
And the reason it is such an interesting case study is because before the RTLM started blaring these messages, you know, there's always conflict between people.
But people were intermarried and people were working together and they went to school together and to church together and they really were still a community.
And then these media messages come in.
Of course, the government is organizing at the same time.
And it really only took 100 days to kill that many people.
So the Tutsis didn't have any position of, even though they were integrated in the society, they didn't have any positions of power in government.
Well, they had before.
They had very powerful positions in government.
But at this particular juncture, the extreme Hutus, we called them, because they were more extremist, were controlling government.
But more importantly, in this case, they were also controlling the media.
Okay.
And, you know, I didn't know much about it until I read some in your book.
And it's a great read.
It's not very funny, though, is it?
It's, oh, it's, you know, so it's, there's a lot about the Bosnia and the Rwandan genocide.
So it's a hoot.
And, you know, it's a day at the beach, 4th of July.
It's a good time.
You know, if you're looking to lose weight, you could lose about five or ten pounds of water.
Yeah, by the crying weight, sure.
And so now, talk more about, that seemed to come out of nowhere.
What was the impetus?
I mean, what kind of started that genocide?
And what made it all of a sudden out of nowhere?
I mean, you said they were living together for years.
Well, there's so many factors that go into socioeconomic situations that it's hard to really pinpoint it to just one thing.
And that's one of the things that I talk about in the book is how, you know, media was kind of the final, I shouldn't say the final straw, but the thing that convinced people that they had to do this killing.
But there's a long history in Rwanda of separating these two groups that maybe aren't even really different people.
So they look the same, they talk the same, the same religion, but they have a colonial history.
The European colonists separated them out and said, oh, you're a Hutu and you're a Tootsie.
And so there's like that history, first of all.
And, you know, if you look at all these situations, like Bosnia is another example, you can look in history and see there are times when these ethnic groups have fought.
But there are also all these times when these ethnic groups have lived together and been very happy together.
And so how is it that you tear them apart?
You convince one side that the other side is evil.
Correct.
And you convince them that this other side has to be annihilated for the greater good.
And in Rwanda, one of the greater goods was they called for a majoritarian democracy.
They said, look, these Tutsus are the Tutsis are the minority and they shouldn't have power.
For democracy, we have to get rid of them.
For self-defense, we have to get rid of them.
And where are all these so-called good goals?
And if you look at the messages across all of the genocidal examples in this book, the media messages were almost identical in the Holocaust, in the Bosnian War, and in Rwanda.
And there were these kind of components that had, you know, the blame, the kind of degradation and dehumanization.
They had this greater good framework, selective use of history, where you only point to the bad things they've done in history.
It sounds like you've been watching a lot of Fox News.
That's what it sounds like, right?
So, you know, you delegitimize that.
You know, where's his birth certificate?
It sounds a lot like that.
Like, this guy's evil.
He's got a secret agenda.
He hangs out with terrorists.
He's against our own country.
We have to kill him.
You know, it's funny you'd mention that.
I opened the book with this example of this guy in 2008, Jim David Atkinson, who opened fire in the Knoxville, Tennessee church.
It was a Universalist Unitarian Church.
And he had been listening to all of these very right-wing talk show hosts, Michael Savage, some people that were on Fox.
And he had become convinced that liberals were destroying America and he had to take matters into his own hands.
And he said, he wrote this out.
He wrote his manifesto out.
And he said, you know, what I wanted to do was kill every liberal member of Congress and every liberal member of the media, but I can't get to them, so I'm going to kill their followers.
So he goes into this church and in the middle of a play, these kids are putting on Annie Jr.
And he pulls out his shotgun and he opens fire.
And he kills a bunch of people in the church.
They end up tackling him and he says he believed what he was doing.
It was the right thing for the country.
Wow.
So he was truly convinced by those very messages that you're talking about, even on our airwaves.
Now, obviously, not everybody's going to be convinced by them here.
And thank God we have diversity of opinion still in the United States.
But yeah, those are pretty.
In America, you're allowed to, you can give the corporate point of view or the other corporate point of view, right?
I think that's about right.
Sure.
So you get both sides.
You get both sides of the crisis.
I turn on Fox News to get Rupert Murdoch's corporate view of the world.
And then I turn on MSNBC to get Comcast and the defense contractor's corporate view of the world.
Right, exactly.
So, I mean, that idea that you have choice.
Thank goodness we have diversity.
Yes.
Then I go to CNN because People Magazine is a little too challenging for me.
Yes.
That's why I go on CNN.
Okay.
So now the book, does it, now I haven't read the book because I don't read books.
I read book reviews.
You sound just as smart as parties, and that's all I care about.
Right, right.
So where do we end up?
So we start off, we're talking about the Rwanda genocide, the role the media played in that, and then we go on to Bosnia.
Bosnia and the Holocaust to show again how media were very key in convincing a lot of populations to engage in activities or to at least accept them, even when people didn't actually engage in killing people or they sort of acquiesced to it and it was just the way it was.
It kind of changed the whole cultural idea of what was acceptable and what wasn't acceptable.
So when you say Bosnian Holocaust, I thought that was Hitler in 1940.
Bosnia and the Holocaust.
I have a chapter on the Holocaust.
Oh, okay.
And that was Hitler.
Wait a minute.
Yeah, I'm not that dumb.
Yeah.
I pay attention.
I watch the History Channel.
I do that.
Yeah, well, that's good.
And what would they do without Hitler, the History Champ?
Right.
That's what I do.
I wouldn't have this example.
So I didn't know.
So there was a big role of the media played in the now.
We all know it got so bad that Bill Clinton actually sent in some cruise missiles and stuff like that.
And so what was the role of the media in Bosnia?
It was almost just like in Rwanda, except for there were many more radio and TV stations that were taken over.
So, you know, so there were all the wars in succession in Yugoslavia that, okay, a little background, back up.
So Yugoslavia under Tito was again kind of incorporated where the Croats and the Bosnians and the Serbs kind of lived together.
There were still divisions and some people still didn't like each other that much.
I think I have one example in there where ethnicity really mattered during sporting games.
Oh, right.
And the losing team had to buy the other side, beer.
But then...
I would think so.
Yeah, we lose, I buy you a beer.
Okay.
But then suddenly, I shouldn't say suddenly, it was sort of, it was far less sudden than in Rwanda.
But in this particular case, the Serb forces started taking over the media and targeting what they called Bosniaks, which were Muslim Bosnians and Croats, and casting them in the same kind of a framework that I was talking about that we saw in Rwanda.
And so we ended up again with massive deaths, torture, a lot of torture, concentration camps.
Well, torture, it's a good Christian thing to do.
Well, apparently that's what.
I mean, the fear against torture, what are you hiding?
That's my question.
You've got something to hide.
We need to torture you to find out what it is.
Exactly.
And it's not torture.
It's enhanced interrogation.
It's enhanced interrogation.
It's just little mood music, some track lighting.
It's very nice.
Yeah, and they give you a little water.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, I give you plenty.
I mean, in case you're thirsty.
Or in one case in Chicago, I heard it was 7-up.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Oh, I didn't know about that.
Really?
Somebody waterboarded somebody with 7-up?
It was awful, yeah.
The guy confessed in the end to murdering somebody he didn't murder.
It spent 23 years in prison.
Really?
African-American.
You know a lot of things, Maria.
This is unbelievable.
So I'm here with Maria Armudian, right?
I'm very proud of myself that I can pronounce her last name correctly.
And she's written a great book called Kill the Messenger, The Media's Role in the Fate of the World as a forward in here by Tom Hayden.
Tom Hayden.
Who's a great guy?
We all know Tom Hayden.
I got to hear him speak recently.
He's a powerful speaker.
He's a great thinker and a great writer.
Yeah, everything, all-around great guy.
You know, I don't know why the country is still screwed up if he's around.
Yeah, you would think.
You'd think he'd be able to fix it.
A lot of great people love your book, and there's going to be a party for your book tonight, Colin.
Tonight, it's 7.30 at the Steve Allen Theater, which is on Hollywood Boulevard.
I should know the address by heart.
It's something like 4773, but I'm not 100% sure.
The Steve Allen Theater, which is right where Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards kind of come together right over there, right by Vermont.
It's right near Vermont, right?
It's actually at the LA Press Club, and they're hosting it.
Oh, really?
You're hosting it because I'm talking about how important the role of really ethical journalism is because, and really quick on this side, the rest of the book shows examples of how ethical, responsible journalism helped turn situations around for the positive, protect human rights, further democracy, and wars.
So you're saying that there's really a redemptive thing at the end of your book, right?
Not the end.
It's like five or six or seven chapters are about these journalists who risked their lives, and some of them got also tortured and killed.
But the role of journalism in transforming situations from South Africa to Northern Ireland and Burundi and Senegal, Mexico, Taiwan, where they played this role where they were helping their audiences really understand the political situation in a way that they could participate and eventually either oust dictators or bring about new forms of government.
So what would so like the Arab Spring, right?
Now, how would you, can you just give us a quick thumbnail on how the media played a role in that?
Yeah, well, there are, you know, there are two pieces to this.
One is, of course, the piece that most people talk about because it's the new piece, which is new media with Facebook and Twitter, and how ordinary people are able to communicate now in reframing situations and spread concepts that they would like others to know about.
And so the ideas of democracy getting spread out to more and more people in regions where they didn't really have democracy.
The other component is that traditional media, like the cable news services and such, were aggregating all this and then broadcasting it out more.
So it not only was getting spread again in that region, especially through Al Jazeera, but also into the Western world so that they could put pressure on governments if they could.
And that's been kind of a marriage that we saw.
So for example, I have a chapter on South Africa's transformation where, you know, South African, the Afrikaans community, especially, their media was predominantly, and not 100%, never as 100%, really believed in having a white country.
And they really believed that the blacks should not be part of it.
And people bought this at one time.
Yeah, well, it sounds like America for a few hundred years.
For a few hundred years.
But it was like this diligent work of journalists, writers, thinkers who started a long time ago along with the ANC and other civil rights groups and churches.
And then it spread internationally until the international community came in and put pressure on the South African government.
And now you have a democracy in South Africa that includes all races.
I thought it was because Morgan Freeman started to play Kingdom.
I think that helped a lot, actually.
Wasn't it rugby?
I thought that's what did it.
Boy, yeah.
I thought it was Morgan Freeman and rugby, but you say it was.
Okay, if you say so.
I'm here with Maria Armudian, and she's written a great book called The Kill the Messenger: The Media's Role in the Fate of the World.
Where can they pick it up?
Amazon, right, of course.
Yeah, definitely.
All the online bookstores already have it.
Okay.
And they are going to be in bookstores anytime.
I mean, they've been shipped.
I think they're just getting there.
It's not technically out until another week or so.
And tonight, KPFK is going to benefit from any.
If anybody wants books, they can pick them up tonight.
At the Steve Allen Theater.
Do you know where that is?
I can tell you.
And it's a fundraiser for KPFK.
It's at 4773 Hollywood Boulevard.
I said it right, didn't I?
I got it right.
I memorized it.
So go there.
I don't forget everything.
No, you don't.
I said I did.
It's been a delight to talk to you.
Thank you, Jimmy.
It's good to do this with you.
I'm so glad we finally did something together.
Yes, me too.
Other than cross paths as we trade studios.
Yes, let's do more things in the future.
And I wish I could be there tonight.
I have a previous engagement, but don't forget, go see meet Maria Armudian.
God, I'm so glad I can say your name correctly.
Maria Armudian tonight at the Steve Allen Theater, 730-4773 Hollywood Boulevard.
It's a great theater.
It's a great book.
It's been great having you.
Thanks for coming in and enlightening my listeners.
An actual, really smart person on the show.
Just stop here.
Thanks, Maria.
Thank you.
Okay, thanks to Maria for sitting down with us.
That was great.
And right now, I got a phone call just the other day.
You know, we talked earlier in the show about Rick Perry had another prayer meeting.
And, well, I don't know.
He left a message on my home machine.
Let's see what he had to say.
Ready?
Hey, Jimmy, Rick Perry here.
How are you doing, little brother?
I'm doing great myself.
Me and about 30,000 of my closest friends just had a hell of a time this weekend in Houston for the response.
My great big old prayer rally at Reliance Stadium.
We put everything in Jesus's hands, Jimmy.
Everything is going to be just fine now.
We shall simply await his works.
You know, I was criticized once for saying that the BP oil spill was, quote, an act of God.
That made people really, really mad.
But you got to understand, everything is the work of God.
Except the Texas Miracle.
I did that.
The Holy Spirit did not incentivize that job creation.
Hell no, that was Rick Perry.
P-E-R-R-Y.
Now, I admit, one of the things I did not put in God's hands was when I am going to announce my candidacy for president.
I think I'll keep the wheel on that one.
Thank you very much.
And America can expect a great big slice of that awesome cake this Saturday.
I can't wait, Jimmy.
I'm going to come into this race with guns a blazing.
Did you expect a different metaphor?
Watch it.
First things first, got to deal with the wet noodles already in the Republican race.
Shouldn't be hard.
Tim Paul Enty.
The only thing he likes more than avoiding confrontation is playing with his my little ponies.
Won't last long.
Michelle Bachman, she's crazy like a fox who's married to a gay fox.
That doesn't look good, brother.
I would say that her husband is an albatross around her neck, but that would imply that he's touching her.
Herman Kane, he's black.
I mean, come on, man.
This is the Republicans.
Mitt Romney?
Well, here's the great part.
Obama's going after him already, doing all the heavy lifting for me.
The White House leaked that their strategy against him is to talk about how he's weird.
That received some criticism, but hell man, it's true.
He is weird.
I mean, come on, man.
This is one of the weirdest dudes I've ever seen in my life.
Remember that movie, Alien?
That part where the Ian Holm robot dude malfunctions and blows apart and all that crap comes out of his mouth.
Remember that look he gets right in his eye before it happens?
That's the expression Mitt Romney has on his face all the time.
Oh my God, I'm a robot and people are about to find out.
I'm going to kick him right in his church of Latter-day Paint so hard, he won't know what hit him.
So I get the nomination and I'll name Michelle Bachman as VP to balance out a ticket.
You know, southern white male conservative Christian and northern white female conservative Christian.
Ooh, double rainbow.
What does it mean?
And to be honest, I wouldn't mind getting all up in that Michelle Bachman.
She is a looker.
And something tells me she's not getting it done right at home.
I'll cure those migraines with my that's not sexist.
It's Texas.
Look out.
Anyway, like I said, it's all in God's hands.
But expect an announcement Saturday.
And you better support me, Jimmy Dore, or I'll have you executed.
This kid.
I'm just kidding.
Not really.
Give me a call.
Okay, Rick Perry calling in, letting us know.
And I want to remind people that this Saturday, August 13th, that's this Saturday, the Poppin' Politics Show featuring everybody from the Jimmy Doer show and even a surprise celebrity guest or two.
That's this Saturday at the Meltdown Comics at 7522, August 13th, 8 p.m., Sunset Boulevard, 7522 Sunset Boulevard, inside world famous Meltdown Comics.
It's the Poppin' Politics Comedy Show.
There's a link right on the front page at kpfk.org.
You can go to my website, jimmydoorcomedy.com.
There's a link on the right-hand side there.
I want to remind you, you can get a free podcast of this.
That's right, for free at iTunes.
Don't forget that.
You go there, you get a free podcast of the Jimmy Door show if you want to hear that Rick Perry again.
Let's talk about, we only have a few minutes left in the show, fellas.
It goes by quickly.
It does.
So last week we talked about Bill O'Reilly talking about the poor.
Well, right now, it happened again.
I was watching CNN.
And, you know, CNN continues to set new standards for investigative journalism.
And unfortunately, the standard is a complete absence of investigative journalism.
That's their standard.
And they let us know that they are truly a news outlet of the people.
And by that, I mean the lazy and the gullible.
Their slogan is CNN, the news outlet.
Not as bad as Fox, but still pretty awful.
That should be.
Is that their new slogan?
It should be their slogan.
Well, they officially ran out of questions this week, Frank.
And so they're taking questions from any source that they can easily Google.
Like a six-year-old report from the Heritage Foundation.
In a related story, CNN is moving all of its programming to public access and hiring Alan Goldstein.
Okay, this week, here's a CNN reporter.
She decides to parrot the inaccurate Republican talking points to a couple of respected black liberals.
She's talking to Cornell West and Tavis Smiley.
And this will, let's listen to the first question she asks them, ready?
Every morning on American Morning.
And this is the question we asked our viewers this morning.
Do the poor share responsibility for our economic woes?
And I got to tell you.
Do the poor share responsibility for our economic woes?
Now, let's, we just heard Dylan Radigan talk about what's wrong.
And I think it's mostly the poor people who set up that banking system, don't you think?
They're screwing the rest of us.
The poor people are extracting wealth and sending it offshore.
We all know that, right?
The poor people are firing teachers.
The overwhelming majority of the U.S. budget every year is welfare, Jimmy.
Yes, definitely.
You know, that's the question she asks her viewers.
Not the question of, hey, are you guys upset that we completely missed the banking meltdown, the complete fraud that was the Iraq war?
And both parties are beholden to corporations and lie and say that they're going to fight for your interests, but really they're just about getting re-elected.
Or would you rather demonize the poor as an easy scapegoat?
Let us know here at CNN.
So that was the question.
That's the question.
That's the question.
Okay, so here's what Cornell West.
The question is, is why does she have a job?
Yes, that was her question.
Okay, so now we'll go to the next question she had for them.
And by the way, it's good that she's holding their feet to the these are the guys who you want to hold their feet to the fire.
The two guys who are on a bus tour to try to bring focus to the needs of the poor in the middle of a depression.
Those are the people she's going to go after.
Yeah, you let the weapons of mass destruction thing go unchallenged.
Yellow cake from Niger going the vilification of teacher, but you're going to go hard on these two guys.
Yeah, and next CNN's going to be taking on the doctors fighting cholera in Haiti.
We're really going to get them to answer a few tough questions.
Oh, we're really low on time, ladies and gentlemen.
So let's get to our next clip very quickly.
Here's what she says, Mike.
Cornell, let me put it this way: Cornell, the Heritage Foundation.
This is a conservative organization.
They did this study.
They say the poor in America today are unlike the poor in America years ago.
In fact, most of the poor in America live in a decent house.
They have TVs.
They have microwave ovens.
They even have a refrigerator.
So what are they complaining about?
What are the poor complaining about?
As you said, Frank, they have the ability to warm up a hot pocket.
Now, you can't consider yourself poor then, can you?
No, no, absolutely not.
What are the poor complaining about?
So I don't know.
And the homeless, by the way, they've got new bridges.
They're using a new corrugated system for the boxes now.
What are they complaining about?
They have walls that they can urinate on.
They've got it made.
Yes, so there's more to this clip.
You know what?
We just ran out of time today.
And so did you guys prepare?
By the way, did you guys prepare your rants for the end of the show?
Like I asked?
No?
Oh, did I forget to ask you guys?
Okay.
So there's a lot more we didn't get to.
Oh my gosh, there's always, there's never enough time.
This is an hour show, but it's always packed.
That's the beauty of modern day America is you never run out of stuff to be despondent about.
Okay, that's why you should watch Despondency Now every night on PBS.
Okay, I want to thank everybody who makes this show possible today.
I want to thank today's show was written by Frank Conniff, Robert Yasamura, Steph Zamorano, and Mike McRae.
And I want to thank my, and it was produced by Ali Lexa.
So I want to thank my guests in studio today, Frank Conniff, Paul Gilmartin, Robert Yasamura, for getting it done.
I'll see everybody this Saturday, August 13th for the Poppin' Politics Show at Meltdown Comics, 7522 Sunset Boulevard.
Go to kpfk.org.
There's a link right on the front page.
And you know what else?
I'm not supposed to say this, but tonight we're telling jokes over at Flappers in Burbank.
That's right, tonight over there.
So if you're on Flappers in Burbank, you want to come and see some stand-up comedy, you come in there, you splash your medical marijuana card, or you say Jimmy Doher comedy, and you get in two for one.
That's a nice cup of bathtub gin.
That's right.
That's right.
Okay, so two big shows this week happening.
All right, so thanks for listening.
▲
Export Selection