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April 27, 2012 - Jimmy Dore Show
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With the passing of Dick Clark last week, the final obstacle to total media domination fell away for Ryan Seacrest.
I, for one, am relieved, as Dick was obviously holding Ryan back by insisting every New Year's Eve on being the one to count backwards from 30.
A lot of people might ask, what does Ryan Seacrest have that other entertainers don't?
Well, no one knows.
And to those who ask, why does Ryan Seacrest make $45 million a year a year while so many other actors, just as androgynous, can't book anything?
The answer is: show business is a pyramid.
By that, I mean your dreams of success are buried underneath it.
But let's be fair.
Ryan Seacrest's ascendants comes at a time when TV's most popular personalities can neither sing nor act nor be funny.
And Ryan does none of those things as well as anyone working today.
Plus, Ryan produces that reality show about the Kardashians, so he obviously isn't worried about pissing us off.
The great thing about reality shows is they don't require any actors or writers, thus making sure we'll never run out of waiters or substitute teachers.
Reality shows also take the financial pressure off TV networks who have billions of dollars most of the time, but are always broke during union negotiations.
Plus, they're still waiting to find out if this internet thing is going to catch on.
Is it fair that Ryan Seacrest has hundreds of jobs while hundreds of other people have zero jobs?
I'm sorry, that's class warfare.
But keep in mind, even wealthy celebrities are not that much happier than the rest of us.
If they were, they wouldn't have to do so many drugs.
Let's just be glad we're not Brian Dunkelman.
Thank you.
It's the Jimmy Door Show.
The show for the kind of people that are It's the show that makes Anderson Cooper save.
It's unpopular today.
And now, here's the guy who sounds a lot like me.
It's Jimmy Domo!
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to this week's Jimmy Door show.
I'm joined in studio to my right, former writer for the Daily Show, hilarious comedian.
It's Steve Rosenfield.
Hey, Steve, how are you?
Good, Jimmy.
How are you today?
Well, I'm good.
I'm sorry to hear that your car didn't start.
You got a dead battery today?
Probably, yeah.
I have a crappy car, too.
Let's hope that's not that.
Let's hope that's not a metaphor for today's show, right?
Let's make sure your battery's charged.
Thank you today.
Okay, next to you from the Mystery Science Theater 3000 and cinematictitanic.com.
It's Frank Conniff.
Hey, Frank, how you doing?
Hello there.
Good time.
Frank fresh off a hot show cartoon dump last night.
Yeah.
Steve Allen.
Steve Allen, and then I was at Princeton University doing Chris Christie jokes.
They love Chris Christie jokes in New Jersey.
That's all I'm going to say.
They love them.
And I love New Jersey now.
I can't wait to get back there.
Next to him, a hilarious writer from Team Yasamura.
It's Robert Yasamura.
How are you, buddy?
What's not to like?
What is not to like?
Okay, coming up today's show, a couple of headlines.
You know, George Zimmerman made bail, and he once again walks the streets.
And I don't know about you guys, but I'm breathing easier every time I pass an unarmed teenager.
And let's just remember: a lot of humans are ass of humans.
So let's stop saying Mitt Romney doesn't seem human.
Okay, what's coming up on today's show?
Pat Robertson makes an appearance in the Oh My God segment.
We're going to check out Ann Romney and her advice for homeowners who are underwater in Florida.
What do you think it is?
And also, we're going to look at, we're going to finally get to that clip.
But, you know, it talks, Paul Ryan, the golden boy of the Republican Party right now, talks Talks about, what's that?
Analyze the booker.
Yes.
Talks about the real ideology of the Republican Party.
Plus, we're going to look at criticisms of the Jimmy Dore show.
We're going to read some viewer hate mail.
That'll be most of the second half of the show.
That's coming up today on the Jimmy Dore Show.
Jimmy Dore Show.
Time for another installment of Oh My God.
Okay, so we've all know Pat Robertson.
He's a big gay supporter.
He's all about tolerance and looking.
Okay.
So Pat Robertson was asked this question.
So after years, I mean, every time you listen, every time I see a clip of Pat Robertson, nine times out of ten, it's him saying that homosexuals are from demon and that you're going to hell and homosexuals trying to tear down the family and our country and our institutions.
And also they cause hurricanes.
They cause hurricanes.
Sure, sure.
They're responsible for 9-11.
There's nothing that they're multitaskers, is what he said.
Well, they get a lot done.
So he's, you know, he's a professional gay demonizer, and then somebody calls in and asks him this question.
This is Douglas, who says, what would you say to a school that has gay and LGBT students being bullied by the Christian kids?
What he would really say is more power to you, I think, but he would probably take a moment and think, oh, I wonder why Christian kids would be bullying gays.
Well, I think that's terrible.
And Christians shouldn't do that.
I don't know what you're, you mean, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, blah, blah, blah.
You know, the Christians shouldn't do that.
They ought to act in love.
You may disagree.
You may think that these practices are an abomination.
You can think all sorts of things, but.
Yeah, you can demonize them.
Go ahead and hate them.
Just don't bully them.
Yeah, I hate you.
And you need to reach out to these kids in love.
Absolutely.
Bullying is wrong, period.
Amen.
So what did you say?
School shouldn't permit that either.
Okay, well, I can't believe those kids are bothering those gay kids based on doctrine that he reinforces on a daily basis.
Yeah, you might think that they are evil or an abomination and that they're destroying the family and a threat to everything good, sacred, and holy.
But hey, that's no reason not to be polite.
He should still be polite to them.
Also, you know, Satan will take care of them eventually.
They're going to get a good beating in the afterlife, so don't worry about it now.
Oh, they're definitely going to hell.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
By the way, am I the only one who thinks that the 700 Club has this weird coffee clotch vibe to it now where they're just kind of like they're talking like they're at the barber shop or I honestly could have if if you had shown me the clip and they were just under hair dryers I would have been not surprised at all they're out of ideas yeah it's over should send him a trophy yeah Pat Robertson definitely deserves a trophy he certainly what would our oh my god segment be without him here is uh rick scarborough this guy uh Rick Scarborough.
He's from Scarborough County, which is not his.
He headlined Awakenings 2012.
Pastors, Churches, and Political Activity Re-energizing the pulpit.
And he headlined this panel where he went on a tirade about all of our culture's social ills.
You want to hear Sullivan?
There you go.
We've gone from Andy Griffith to Mark Simpson in my lifetime.
We've gone from leave it to beaver to leave us and behind it.
So he just said we've gone from Andy Griffith to Homer Simpson in my life.
As if that's a bad thing.
We got funnier.
Right.
Although the Andy Griffith show is a great show.
It was a great show, but certainly not as funny as funny as The Simpsons.
Yeah, but both are great shows.
Both are great shows.
Do you think this guy understands that two different people made those shows?
Well, I think that is what he's saying.
And then he says that we've gone from Leave It to Beaver to Beavis and Butthead, but he doesn't say butthead.
Did you hear what he said?
He said, okay, let's see if you can hear it.
Ready?
Let me see.
From leave it to Beaver to Leavis and behindhead.
Beavis and behindhead.
Behindhead.
Behindhead.
He wouldn't say but.
He wouldn't say but.
Behindhead.
Wow.
Because WoW is right.
Behindhead.
What's it like being an outside observer in the 21st century?
He traveled here from the 50s to see what we've been doing.
It sounds like something like, you know, Barney would say on the Andy Griffith show.
He actually does.
Okay.
There's more.
From my three sons to two and a half million.
Well, he's right.
I agree.
Yeah.
Three and a half.
He's right on the money with that one.
He's got a point.
Yeah.
From the Brady bunch to the Big Bang Theory.
Okay, right there, too.
He's not far off.
That's CBS.
Yeah, I've never seen the Big Bang thing.
You know why he's got a beat up on CBS?
I've seen promos for it.
It's fine.
It is what it is.
I've heard people tell me it's a funny show, but I've never seen it.
I don't understand what his objection is to it.
It's very middle of the road.
I can't get through the program.
Also, could I point out we've gone from Jesus to him?
Very nice, Frank.
The Brady Bunch was a show that did not show a toilet.
They had scenes in the bathroom where you never saw the toilet.
There were scenes between Ann B. Davis and the Sam the Butcher.
Her giving him a b.
Can you say blood?
I don't know.
I don't think it's ever been said on the air.
I think you can.
I don't.
I'd like to see that in court.
Here is more.
We've gone from the Partridge family to desperate housewives.
From Happy Face to Jerry Springer.
He's really got a problem with that.
Yeah, now he's veering off now because he's a little bit of a sitcom.
And then it's a.
He should have a quasi-community.
He should be Merv Griffin to Jerry Springer.
Yes.
That's more.
That's consistent.
Stay in the same wheel.
Which I agree with.
I way prefer Merv Griffin over Jerry Springer.
Oh, me too.
Ooh.
Ooh, we'll be right back.
And look at the comedians.
Look at the comedy.
There used to be comedians like Bob Hope, who epitomized class, loved his country.
And now we've got Larry the Cable.
Bob Hope, who, by the way, slept with every woman he ever met.
Slept with every woman he ever met.
Bob Hope's famous advice to a young comedian who was a bellhop at a hotel he was staying at in San Francisco.
His advice was there's two kinds of comedians.
There's a kind who work on their act and there's a kind who try to sleep with their waitresses.
Who kind who work on their act get to sleep with all the waitresses.
That was his, I never heard that before.
That's awesome.
That's still true.
Still true.
Guy who makes a fortune being gross and crass and Christian's laughing haul of what used to maze us now simply amuses us.
We've gone from commentaries from such cultural icons as Eric Severide to Bill Nair, Rachel Maddow.
Bill Mayer, he doesn't even know how to pronounce the guy he hates.
No, he knows how to say he said it in a way that made it sound Jewier.
Eric Severai was really hilarious.
I gotta admit, you gotta give him that.
Okay, there's a little war.
And look at our movies.
We've gone from True Grit to Brokeback Mountain.
No, Brokeback Mountain came out before the remake of True Griffin.
I don't think he means the remake.
No, he doesn't mean the remake.
I'm sure he means the original.
From musicals like the sound of music to Oklahoma.
From showgirls.
See, that's like completely.
That's weird.
Oklahoma and Sound of Music are both Rogers and Hammerstein musicals, both from the same age.
Oklahoma is older than music.
Yeah, I think he mixed up.
I think he's gone off the track.
Although I agree, allowing people to see people from Oklahoma is terrible.
You should not.
I agree.
I agree with you.
Hang on, let's see if there's more.
I think there's more.
Showgirls to slasher porn.
Hold it.
Wait, Showgirls was the good one.
Small slasher.
From musicals like the sound of music to Oklahoma.
From Showgirls to Slasher Porn.
Wait, Showgirls.
He's lost his thread completely.
I think what he just did there was he went from Oklahoma.
He was combining a whole lot of people.
He went to say Oklahoma to slasher porn.
He went to say Sound of Music in Oklahoma to stuff like Slasher Porn and Showgirls.
But what he doesn't understand is if Oscar Hammerstein, Rogers, and Hammerstein could have, they would have written Showgirls if they could have gotten away.
They would have written Slasher Porn.
But it wouldn't have made them any money at the time.
No.
Really?
You think they would have?
Sure.
Okay, me too.
Our schools were once the envy of the world.
Now we have dropout rates exceeding 50% in some of our major cities.
Graduating seniors who can't even read the diploma they receive.
Prayer and Bible study are out.
Metal detectors and drug-stiffing dogs are in.
The tens of people are not.
The theory of evolution is taught as fact.
It is fact.
They teach facts as facts.
God has taught us theory.
God has taught us theory.
Sex education has become nothing more than the facilitation of fornication, complete with home study with the teachers, in many cases.
In many, many cases.
By which he means two or three.
Two or three, yes.
That he heard about, that he hasn't even fact-checked.
What he's talking about is that media has more and more and more accurately reflected culture.
The reality.
Yes.
Which it should.
Yeah, I'm with you.
And I would say that sex education leads to fornication when it's done right.
We hope.
And by the way, statistically, that is completely not true.
Statistically, if you have good, solid sex education in a school, the pregnancy rates will go down.
Right, right.
But what they don't like is the having sex rates go up.
And that's what they really object to.
They don't want anybody having fun.
But they don't go up.
Everybody has sex.
It's a biological drive.
People will kill to have sex.
It is a biological urge.
You're not going to change the rate of people having sex.
are just going to tell them, hey, what if you wear a condom?
They had to be ashamed of it.
They had to do it in dark secret places.
They couldn't let anyone.
If people knew about it, they'd lose their job or even get arrested.
And that's the beautiful world that they want to return to.
Yes, that was when everything was great.
Yeah, everything was great.
We went from when people, anyone who never do the other way.
They'd ever go, hey, we went to where you used to hide your retarded relative in the basement to now where we embrace them.
Or back when we never talked about the rape or someone was getting molested.
How we used to hide that stuff, and now we all can talk about it in the open.
And we've confronted that stuff.
Remember how we used to have black people on this back of the bus and now we have, they never do it that way.
Right, right.
They only go the other way.
They always are trying to think of when was it the better time?
Oh, it was always some, there was never a better time.
There's never a better time.
Okay.
The greatest generational allowed a lot of bad stuff to happen.
Yeah, the greatest generation, not so great on the racist.
Yeah.
Didn't really handle that so well.
This has been, oh my God.
Oh my God.
The Jimmy Door show is available as a podcast for free on iTunes.
Or for other ways to subscribe, go to jimmydoorcomedy.com.
And while you're there, you can listen to past episodes and you can comment on them too.
Remember, Jimmy spells his last name, D-O-R-E, jimmydorecomedy.com.
Thank you.
Okay, you know, I wanted to, that was a great promo.
I wanted to, Ann Romney, we talked about her last week, right?
And I don't know if you know, Ann Romney has been at the center of some of the most intense phony outrage since I got to go back to when a bunch of divorced congressmen and serial adulterers stood up for the sanctity of marriage.
And I got to be honest, I thought Ann Romney was just a legend that Hillary Rosen and Mitt Romney kept referencing as a metaphor, like Bigfoot or Jesus or something like that.
But it turns out Ann Romney is a real person.
And here is America's richest mommy telling us just how she hurts for those losing their homes in Florida.
Florida is really hurting.
It has been a heartbreaking trip for us to be here.
I got to tell you, I love this state.
My parents, you know, lived here for a long time.
It breaks my heart to see how many people are underwater in their homes and are out of work.
Yes, Mitt and I really wish with all our hearts that those people had more money.
We really do.
Why aren't they rich?
It truly breaks my heart that people are hurting.
But if you elect Mitt Romney president, I promise you we will get over it.
And that's really what she's saying because they don't have a plan.
Here's Mitt Romney's plan.
As to what to do for the housing industry specifically.
No, she just got done saying it breaks her heart to those people who are underwater on their mortgages.
Here's what Mitt Romney says to do for those people specifically.
What to do for the housing industry specifically?
And are there things that you can do to encourage housing?
One is don't try and stop the foreclosure process.
Let it run its course and hit the bottom.
Allow investors to buy a home.
Yeah, so what he's saying is what you do is you don't do anything.
Right.
Which is easy.
The people who are underwater and getting kicked out of their houses, you let it happen.
That's our plan.
That's our plan.
Well, don't you want to avoid that?
That guy is the next Herbert Hoover.
Yeah, Mitt and I feel really bad about people who are underwater with their mortgages the same way you feel bad for a homeless guy on the street, but you're not going to give him money.
He's homeless.
He's homeless.
One quick solution to this unemployment crisis might be to marry somebody who's worth $250 million.
That always works.
Also, Ann Romney feels in Florida the best way to help people are underwater is have flipper rescue them.
And to all those who are waiting for the president of the United States to address these housing problems, on day one, my husband is going to defund Planned Parenthood.
It's a long time coming.
This is just, I mean, this is more, I mean, last week with Paul Gilmartin and the I Like Ann Romney thing.
And I just wanted to go back because there's going to be some hate mail about that coming up that segment.
Yay!
It's just like when, you know, struggles are struggles, he was saying.
And it's just like, it caught me so off guard, I wasn't able to really, all I could do was actually debunk what he was getting wrong, which was that Ann Romney wasn't speaking to the point Hillary Rosen was making.
She was changing the subject, and Paul was okay with that.
And he was like, that's okay if she changes the subject and talks about her breast cancer.
And even if she has breast cancer and multiple sclerosis, if you're super rich and you have those things, your burden is not as bad.
Struggles aren't struggling.
That's what I said.
If you're sick with cancer and you can't see a doctor, it is way worse than being sick with cancer and you can see it.
Because if you're poor and you get those diseases, it's practically a death sentence because you can't afford to get the proper care.
Whereas people like Ann Romney and Dick Cheney, who should have been dead 10 years ago, morally, he can be kept alive like Frankenstein forever, you know, because he has access to the best, to incredible, miraculous things that can be done with medicine now that they can keep him alive with a new heart, you know.
But if you're poor, forget it.
You're just going to die.
That's it.
That's Romney's plan.
It is.
But Mitt Romney understands what it's like when you get kicked out of your house.
I mean, he's had to move out of many houses because it was the wrong color.
He knows that.
Well, in order for him to go to one of his other houses, he has to leave the other house.
He can relate to the housing crisis because one time he was unable to use his garage while he was having the elevator installed.
Exactly.
He knows that kind of law.
Super that feeling.
Yeah.
And oh, and by the way, all these people who are underwater in Florida, they'll vote Republican again.
Yes.
Florida's going to go Republican.
Nevada, Nevada, which, I mean, there's more people underwater than that.
Florida went to the water that went Democrat last time.
I mean, they say I saw something on TV that said there are all kinds of, there are lots of scenarios for Obama to win the election in terms of electoral votes and how things can pass.
But there's no plausible scenario for Romney to win the election without winning Florida.
He has to win Florida to win the election, according to what these people are saying.
That's why they're probably suppressing the vote down there as we speak.
Yeah, exactly.
Oh, they are a place with voter with voter registration laws that are completely discriminatory.
They're telling black people who want to vote to stand your ground and don't hang on a second.
I don't, you know, you brought up, you know, Rick Scott, governor of Florida, they elected him, even though you said it went Democrat and for Barack Obama.
Florida's still a pretty Republican state.
People are voting against their own.
I might point out it went Democrat for Al Gore, too.
And for Al Gore, nice point out.
So right now we're in the middle.
Florida's in the middle of Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
Okay.
You're not making that up.
No, I'm not.
Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
And to commemorate it, Rick Scott, Florida governor, shocked the Florida Council when he vetoed $1.5 million in funding for 30 rape crisis centers in the middle of Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
Well, let's be fair.
They've only allotted one month a year to be aware of sexual assault.
It seems consistent.
According to the directors of the rape crisis centers, they said that they've given Governor Rick Scott the information about the number of survivors who have, and they've given the information.
So Rick Scott says that they don't need this funding, that it's already duplicated, but it's not, of course.
And in fact, they gave him the information that showed that the rape crisis centers have waiting lists.
Survivors are having to wait weeks, sometimes six weeks, in some programs, three months to even be seen.
Well, they'll still have PTSD.
So there'll still be people being raped in Florida, but they just won't be able to be getting taken care of.
He wants to open up the much cheaper to maintain Were You Really Raped Center?
Wow.
What were you wearing?
You know, that's not me saying that's their attitude.
That's the attitude of a lot of Republicans.
Is, you know, this is a waste of money because a lot of times it's not really rape.
Was it an honest rape?
Yeah, that's a Ron Paul expression.
Yes.
And there was another legislature who just said something even worse than that, you know, about that if you're married, you know, were you really it's it's so you know I just want to say that these people were elected freely.
Rick Scott was a criminal.
People knew he was a criminal when he ran for governor in Florida.
And I'm just going to say the news media probably didn't do a great job.
No.
Probably didn't do a great job out in Florida.
What did he do?
He was a criminal.
He was the head of health hospitals, right?
Some healthcare.
And they committed fraud against the government.
And they were one of the biggest settlements ever, right?
They had to pay, but nobody costs one of those things.
Nobody goes to jail, right?
Just like when they have the fraud with the banking, right?
So the entire mortgage cratering was based on fraud, right?
Fraudulent robo signings that were being committed.
They were breaking the laws on purpose, and they all knew it, but nobody goes to jail.
They just pay a fine.
Same thing with Rick Scott.
Well, by the way, that's part of a rich tradition because Jeb Bush was knee-deep in the SNL crisis in the 80s.
And they got bailed out.
And you know what?
As reprehensible a human being as John Edwards is, it's really weird that he's the only politician that's on trial right now after all the stuff that people have done for the past 10 years.
Rick Scott co-founded Columbia Hospital Corporation that merged with Hospital Corporations of America in 1989 to form Columbia/slash HCA and eventually became the largest private for-profit healthcare company in the United States.
He resigned as the chief executive officer in 1997 amid a controversy over the company's business and Medicare billing practices.
The company ultimately admitted to 14 felonies and agreed to pay the federal government over $600 million.
Scott was not implicated, and he later became a venture capitalist.
So wait, this is a guy who had made his fortune legally and illegally off of Medicare and is rallying to have it rolled back.
Yes.
Okay, just so we're clear.
Just so we're clear.
And we are at the Moon Tower Comedy Festival in Austin this week.
And, you know, Governor Rick Perry called in last week to congratulate us and to welcome us to Austin.
And I thought I'd play it again.
So here's Rick Perry from last week.
Hey, little brothers, Governor Rick Perry of Texas coming at you.
Look out.
A little bird told me that you are headed down here to Austin to be a part of the Moon Tower Comedy Festival this April 25th through 28th.
Man, I haven't heard news that exciting since Taco Cabana started serving breakfast all day.
Just giving you some, you know, some local reference jokes for your comedy shtick.
We're going to have so much fun, you and me.
Margarita's girlfriend.
This will be great, man.
I'm going to give you the red carpet treatment when you get down here.
I'll show you where Texas keeps its secret nukes.
I'll let you throw the switch on an execution.
I'll let you cut the rivet at a groundbreaking ceremony for a new Waterburger.
We could even make a visit to the best little whorehouse in Texas, the governor's mansion.
Seriously, though, whatever you desire.
So you're going to be doing ridiculous here live, huh?
Or as it will be called in Texas, ridiculous, right, and ridiculous.
Can't wait, Coach East.
Seeing you up there on stage playing clips and making jokes out of sight, man.
Get a panel of other funny dudes and dudettes up there.
Hey, maybe you can get Austin's own Mike McRae.
Then he can do one of his impressions of some retired character actor that no one gives.
Wow, that does sound like John Vernon.
Governor of Texas and Austin resident.
I have been getting into the comedy myself.
In fact, I will be performing as well with my improv troupe, Suddenly Susan Sontag.
Just me and some Republican state senators, you know, having fun.
We take a suggestion from the audience, and then we pop painkillers and talk about Jesus.
But, you know, we've got wigs and fake Hillbilly teeth and stuff.
To be honest with you, Jim Dam, I've had a lot of time on my hands since I dropped out of the presidential race.
Being governor isn't really that demanding.
Texas pretty much runs itself.
Just a giant Swisswash of institutionalized violence and obesity that all just sort of works itself out.
Mainly what I've been doing is getting together with buddies in my private screening room, cracking open some lone stars and watching old tapes of me from the debates and the campaign trail.
Man, I am dumb.
I mean, mice and men dumb.
Did you ever see that movie, Mice and Men, or of Mice and Man or something?
You know, just, you know what I'm talking about.
But I like the, there's a bunch of versions.
I like the one with Gary Sinise and John Malkovich.
That one's my favorite.
Because, you know, Gary Sinise is cool because she is in CSI New York and that's badass.
And I've always liked John Malkovich because in real life, he's a very effeminate.
Ephesi gentleman.
But he knows how to play a tough guy in a movie.
And I respect that a lot.
If you know what I'm saying.
All right.
Well, hey, buddy.
I can't wait to have you down here in Austin.
We're going to get some barbecued textbooks and flapjacks.
Whatever we do down here.
I don't even know, man.
I'm drunk.
I'll see you all, guys, at the Moon Tower Comedy Festival here in Austin, Texas.
See you here, Jimmy.
And this is the Jimmy Dore Show on Pacifica.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Bye.
you you Okay, we're back at the Jimmy Door show.
I'm joined in studio from former writer for the Daily Show, hilarious comedian Steve Rosenfield from Mystery Science Theater 3000 and CinematicTitanics.com.
It's Frank Conniff, an hilarious comedian and writer from Team Yasamura.
It's Robert Yasamura.
What's coming up on the second half of today's show?
We're going to talk about some viewer mail, right?
So we have never done this segment before, so we're going to start doing it, I think, because we get a lot of mail over here.
A lot of people email us and leave mean comments on my Facebook page or mean comments on my website.
Most of them are positive, but every once in a while.
So here's one we got from two weeks ago when we had Ann Romney call in.
I don't know if you remember Ann Romney called in.
And so I got this message.
Why in the world does Jimmy Dore feel it necessary and proper to go out of his way to insult members of the LDS faith?
I guess that stands for the Latter-day Saints.
I thought, obviously and correctly, that your station stood for religious tolerance.
I've rarely heard anything as vile as Mr. Doar today during his afternoon show on 90.7 when he gratuitously went out of his way to trash the LDS church and its members.
It was put on as a parody, but was just vile, vicious, anti-Mormon bigotry.
First of all, if you say something, if you understand that something is a parody, then you would, okay.
Would you have thought it as funny if he insulted, say, Muslims or Jews?
I could say unequivocally, yes.
Yes, I would have found it just as funny.
Religious bigotry has no place at your station.
Let me just say the LDS church, as an organization, sponsored and put forward Proposition 8 in our state.
And the Romneys personally funneled $10,000 into it.
So you know what?
It is their faith that's the problem.
I have no problem with attacking it.
I have no problem.
And I have no problem being accused of bigotry for making fun of a religion that didn't say black people got into heaven until 1978.
Yes.
Frank, I'm right there with you on that too.
And so as a comedian, a religion like that, which I would describe as, I'm going to make fun of it.
That's not parody.
You're just saying.
Yeah.
And by the way, I know Mormons, perfectly pleasant people.
I really don't have problems with their home life and what they do.
When it gets into the public forum, it's field day.
We get to all points.
If they get to, you know, support Prop 8 and all that stuff, then we get to fire back at them.
Again, people who are religious, who get upset when you make fun of their religion, are only revealing that they're afraid that their religion is BS.
That's all that is.
Because if you knew you were right, I'm going to hell.
Right.
We're going to get our heads.
You're going to heaven and I'm going to hell.
But you don't, you secretly don't think that, which is why you get upset when someone makes fun of your bogus religion.
And I think all religions are bogus.
And I don't, I think that you can still say that in America.
I think we still have free speech.
You can't run for president and say it.
No, you can't run for president, but you can still be a comedian.
I can't be a governor at a moment.
Yeah, or any office.
I think your religion is not my business until you make it my business.
Right.
Well, it's my business as a comedian.
I mean, I grew up religious, like as a Catholic.
So I get to make fun of Catholics forever.
Yeah.
Right.
And because I was brought up at 12 years of Catholic school, and people are like, why aren't you Catholic?
Because I got a good look at it.
I got a really good look at it.
And all religions are pretty much that way.
They do some good things, but they're mostly evil.
And there's a second paragraph to this letter.
Ready?
I am not a member of the LDS faith or the church.
This person isn't even a freaking Mormon.
But I would be ashamed to countenance this type of garbage on the public airwaves.
She's offended on behalf of the LDS because the same way the LDS church baptizes Jews.
Yes.
It's the same kind of thing.
Same kind of thing.
It's good that she's got that reciprocity.
That's another thing.
They baptized Ann Frank.
Are we supposed to just accept that because that's their religion?
That's their religion.
So you can't criticize that?
You can never make fun of it.
Well, now.
And now Ann Frank is somewhere in a polygamous relationship.
It is obvious that your station has political views quite different than the candidate Mitt Romney.
But must you stoop to insulting the man's religion?
Yes.
Yes.
The answer is yes.
And to imply that his wife has incestuous fantasies, yes, it's funny.
Just utter plain old-fashioned garbage.
Man, I got to listen to this cat podcast.
That sounded great.
Yeah, that was from a guy named Charles.
I won't give his last name, but that's Charles.
Charles knows who he is.
He's looking out for the Mormons.
He signed his name Charles Nelson.
Really?
Okay, so there was that.
And, you know, I'm not even going to go back over.
You know, we did the Joe from China and the all that with Frank's joke about trying to ruin the show.
But here's a comment that was left on the Jimmy Dore fan page from someone named Beth Miranda McKee, who apparently has listened to the show for a long time, listens to my other show, Comedy and Everything Else.
So she left this message on my fan page: You really lost me with the 20 minutes on Ann Romney and working.
I will never be a Republican or a Romney fan, but mother's choices are always hot-button issues.
So I guess she's implying I should stay away from hot-button issues on my show that deals with hot-button issues.
That deals with a major thing that was in the news that week.
Right, the major thing that was in the news that week.
You're not supposed to deal with it because, you know, there's hot-button issues in it, I guess, for Beth.
And she says, and let's leave it to the mothering magazines to debate them, please.
Mothering magazines?
Yeah, so you can only, I guess, you're only there's only certain people who can talk about certain things.
Mothering magazine.
They never stop doing it, so we've got it covered already.
That's what she says about mothering magazines.
They never stopped doing it, so we've got it covered already.
It may be a while before I can listen again since it really left a bad taste in my mouth.
I'm going to miss her.
Now, most people, most people who host a show and they got a letter like that, they would say, Hey, I'm sorry that you didn't blah, blah, blah.
And but I hope you come back to the show.
But that's not me.
That's not what makes me want to be a comedian.
I don't want to, I want to actually expose people for their moronic behavior.
That's what makes that's what fuels me.
So when someone says something stupid like that or insulting for no reason, or even if there's a reason, you felt you wanted to take some time out to swing by my page and say something negative about my show publicly.
I think I can come back at you any way I feel like, which is exactly what I do.
And so what I wrote her a private email and I said, Beth, I'm not a doctor, just a guy who puts his heart and soul into providing free content for strangers.
And I'm pretty sure that bad taste in your mouth is because your ass is backed up.
And by the looks of your post, it has not only reached your mouth, but your brain as well.
Or maybe it's because you were born with a silver spoon up your ass.
You know, you're not supposed to eat with that, right?
Again, I'm not a doctor, but is that a possibility?
And I know you said that I lost you for 20 minutes, but I hope it is a lot longer than that.
Wow, Jimmy.
Wow.
So that's the way I. So if you're going to write something negative about my show, I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to insult you and then make fun of you.
Jimmy, but your comments to her should only be said in Shove It Up Your Ass magazine.
That's all they're talking about at Shove It Up Your Ass magazine.
They're the experts.
They've got it covered.
The thing that bothers me about that email is that she didn't really say what bothered her.
She just kind of said, like, that we were.
Ann Romney is a mom, and it's a hot button issue.
She didn't say like what we said.
And also, you know, there was a very spirited debate with Paul Gilmartin coming out very strongly in Ann Romney's defense against Jimmy and I, who were critical of her.
So it was, you know, if you liked Ann Romney, you had your champion and a very articulate and intelligent one in Paul Gilmartin.
Yeah.
So I wrote her that in a private Facebook message, and she Facebooked me back and said, she clarified.
She said, well, while I'm sure it's important, it went on way too long for my taste.
And I'm like, yeah, well, keep it to yourself, Beth.
Wait till next week.
If you're going to complain about comedy bits going on too long, write SNL.
They get paid to do long comedy sketches.
And by the way, we don't tailor the show per individual.
She said, maybe you're right that the news should have not taken her comments out of context.
Maybe I'm right.
Maybe.
Okay, so you're right about that, that the news took her comments out of context and you were rightly outraged.
That's really what she's saying.
She goes, but the comment probably pushed a lot of buttons with women.
So you're not supposed to push, why?
Because women aren't good with technical things, so don't push buttons around them.
So, hey, I like when we're reviewing hate mail while soliciting more.
And it's like, her point is: don't say stuff that will upset women.
That's the main thrust of what she's saying.
And it's like, can't women, I believe women can handle stuff like that.
Many issues involve women, even ones that aren't in mothering magazines.
She says, if it wasn't a big issue, the mothering magazines wouldn't bring it up monthly, along with bottle and breastfeeding, et cetera.
I don't understand what she's so.
I guess if they're covering it in another magazine, I'm not supposed to cover it on our show.
Also, does she realize that the real coverage of the real action is on the mommy blogs, which I guess she doesn't read.
Public Citizen is a consumer rights advocacy group that was founded by Ralph Nader in 1971.
Public Citizen slogan is: Corporations have their lobbyists in Washington, D.C., and the people need advocates too.
And why do I bring this up?
Well, because we have a guest on the show who sits on the board of Public Citizen, and he's also an accomplished comedian, writer, producer, director.
He does it all.
His name is Steve Skrovan, and he began his career as a stand-up comic.
He hosted a short-lived talk show on MTV called Mouth to Mouth, which sounds filthy, but it wasn't.
And in 1989, he became the original host of Totally Hidden Video, which aired on Fox from 1989 to 1992.
He was also the host for the first two seasons of the game show, That's My Dog.
That's right.
But guess what?
Steve Stroll Rand also co-wrote the 1993 Seinfeld episode, The Movie, and he was then a writer for the CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, which ran from 1996 to 2005.
But he doesn't stop there.
Steve Skrollgrand also produced a 2005 TV special, Earth to America, which covered environmental issues.
He wrote, produced, and directed the movie An Unreasonable Man.
That was the 2006 documentary about Ralph Nader.
He then worked as a producer on the 2006 to 2010 show, Till Death, which starred former Raymond cast member Brad Garrett.
And he is putting together a benefit show for Public Citizen this Sunday at the Writers Guild Theater.
And who's going to be on that show?
Ray Romano will be on that show.
Mark Marin, Dana Gould, Rick Overton, David Feldman, yours truly.
And we had a longer conversation with Steve on my other show, Comedy and Everything Else, where he talked about writing for Seinfeld and talking with Jerry and working with Larry David and Ray Romano.
But right now, he's going to tell us all about Public Citizen and what he sees as some of our problems facing us and what we can do about him.
Here it is.
Multi-talented comedian extraordinaire Steve Scrovan from Public Citizen.
Especially in this time that I was making the movie, you had John Kerry and George Bush, or you had Al Gore and George Bush.
And they basically cut from the same cloth.
I mean, in the case of John Kerry, they're both Yale guys, both skull and bones guys, both kids from people who worked in the government, they're brothers.
So the Democrats and the Republicans, for the most part, are like brothers vying for the same throne.
It's like the lion in winter.
That's why when people say, oh, you know, there's so much partisan, there's so much, you know, we're so polarized.
In some ways, we're not polarized enough because they're so close.
People don't vote.
People, 50% people vote.
Why?
Because they think, how is it going to change my life?
It isn't.
So they're so close.
It's this, you know, you've got this ruling elite, this ruling party, and they pick, you know, this guy over this guy.
And can I just say, and that was where Barack Obama really failed, was because he had a unique opportunity, a historical opportunity to show people how government can make a difference in your life right now, which FDR did.
So when FDR became president, he said, you want a job, you'll have a job.
Put everybody to work who wants a job, right?
So he did that.
Then they went and they built parks and they did all that stuff.
And then he said, if you have a mortgage that's underwater, I'm going to buy it back from you and we're going to sell it back to you at 30 years, 5%.
They stabilize the housing market overnight.
Barack Obama didn't do that.
Yeah.
Well, he then regulated the banks.
And then he was able to make credit available to people for investments.
Barack Obama hasn't done that either.
They've bailed out the banks and the banks takes their money and they invest it overseas.
They don't invest it in America.
Right.
So that's that whole thing about, oh, the corporations are sitting at $2 trillion, but they're not hiring people because they don't have confidence.
So it's not about that.
It's about people in America don't have money to buy goods and services and they're burling everything overseas because it's cheaper.
Yeah.
That's why.
So Obama is.
He could have made a difference.
He could, if he would have done those things, if he would have got allowed everybody to buy into Medicare or even gotten a public option, he could have really changed.
So those little things that he did change people's life.
Like now you can stay on your parents of the health insurance until you're 25.
So those things are starting to creep into the culture now where they understand, oh, this does change money.
Barack Obama did have an effect on my life in a positive way, right?
And I don't think, you know, maybe gays feel that way now.
Yeah.
But, you know, I'm certainly relieved he signed the Lily Ledbetter bill, you know, that women can have equal pay.
Can you believe that?
Like it's 2009.
It's 2012.
But when he signed it, it was in 2009.
That bill that you go, oh my God, really?
This wasn't just a part of it.
This isn't the part of the economic deal that I have as a woman, that I have equal access to equal pay.
Are you kidding me?
So he's done some things, but certainly not in the degree that he actually could have.
I think we all in agreement that I think Barack Obama is governing like a really nice Republican.
He's an Eisenhower Republican, basically.
And I think he's had to spend a lot of his energy just proving that he belongs in the club.
Whereas Roosevelt didn't.
He wasn't because he was wealthy.
He was well, you know, he knew all those aspects.
I invite their hate.
Yes.
Obama had to spend a lot of time proving he was even a citizen.
Yes.
So that's curveball.
Yeah.
So he wasn't in the club.
So I think that probably hampered him, you think?
I probably hampered him.
Do you think that's why he felt a need to surround himself with the Summers and Wagner because he wanted to prove I'm in the club?
Yes, or prove, yeah, or get into the club.
I agree with you.
So that he could.
I agree with you.
You know, I tell people, they go, well, why would he pick those guys?
Why is he like that?
Why doesn't he fight more?
Why doesn't he fight more?
People always say, why doesn't he fight more?
And I'm like, you don't get to be the editor, first black editor of the Harvard Law Review by being someone who stirred up.
Yeah.
You get there by making white people comfortable with you.
Yes.
And only somebody with his background from Kenya, not African-American background.
I always think of this movie from the 40s with Humphrey Bogart.
It was called The Sahara is about a tank group in the desert.
And it's the typical Army platoon.
It's the guy from Texas, the guy from Brooklyn.
And they have a black guy, but he's East Indian.
He's wearing a fez.
That's the only way they can get a black guy in is he's got to be from somewhere else.
And Obama had to be the guy with the fez from somewhere else.
He couldn't be out of the civil rights tradition.
Right.
You know, because that's, you know, maybe the next time it could happen that it could be that way.
But this is, we're going to try you out.
We're going to try out a guy whose father was from Kenya, but it was really raised by his white mother and grandparents.
And so this all comes back to your point that the people who call us naive are actually the ones who are naive and we're being realists.
That's the, yeah, that's really kind of what I learned from that experience.
One of the things, many things I've learned from that experience.
And then I've gotten to know, well, you know, you've known it intuitively.
And so I've gotten to know all of these people that Ralph Johnny Apple seeded, and that's how I got involved with Public Citizen.
Okay, so Public Citizen is this big organization that Ralph Nader started.
Yeah, 40 years ago.
40 years ago.
So it operates at lobbies for Congress, for laws to be passed.
And what else does it do?
Well, there's six different departments.
Oh, what's the most important one?
Well, in some ways, the litigation group is because they have argued 60 cases in front of the Supreme Court.
No other public interest group has comes even close to that.
What would be the big successes that we would know?
Well, the big successes are airbags in cars.
Oh, okay.
The reason we know about red dye number two, toxic shock syndrome.
These are some of the historical things.
A lot of Freedom of Information Act work that's made that more accessible.
23 dangerous drugs off the market because there's a health research group, which was started by Sid Wolf and Ralph.
They were founders.
The auto group is, we no longer have that, but Joan Claybrook spearheaded that.
She was also one of the founders.
So basically, it's just a bunch of smart people sitting around trying to solve problems that they see in society that are caused by corporations.
Yeah, it's through safety, health, justice, meaning access to justice, the courts for people.
So in a way, they're a watchdog for citizens that otherwise our government is failing at.
Yes.
This is why I called this benefit.
I'm doing Stand Up for Main Street because it's in opposition to Wall Street and K Street.
And we represent people in the halls of power.
We take no corporate funding.
And, you know, this is why I have to do these benefits so real people can support it.
And they do all this amazing kind of wonky, procedural, bureaucratic, inside-the-belt way inside baseball stuff that you and I would not be able to grasp.
They know where those levers of power are and work on a lot of different fronts and using a lot of different strategies to get the right policies.
Most recently, you know, they signed that bill for insider trading.
Congressman can no longer do insider trading.
Well, Rob Weissman, the president of Public Citizen, you can see him in the picture behind Obama as he's signing That law.
So, you know, these are the kind of things that Public Citizen gets involved with, and it carries on that tradition that Ralph started.
Ralph actually hasn't had anything to do with the last 32 years.
He got away from it.
That's kind of his MO.
He starts a group and then gets away from it, lets it run on its own so it doesn't depend just solely on him.
Exactly.
Makes so much sense.
For his popularity as it goes up and down.
Right.
Wow, smart.
They really took, although they did really, Public Citizen really did take a hit in 2000, 2004 when he ran for president because people still associated him with the organization, even though he hadn't been there for 20 years.
And that, you know, if you see the movie, you see that conflict that the people close to him have because he had taken a different strategy by then.
He had kind of, there's kind of a wandering the desert Reagan years aspect of his career where he saw that the public interest movement was just kind of sticking their finger in the dike and there wasn't everything was being rolled back and that was the only thing they were able to do.
And he decided, actually, he didn't really decide.
He was kind of drawn into it, kicking and screaming.
You mean running for president?
Running for president, yeah.
You know, the Green Party people in 96 wanted him to run.
He said, I don't want to run.
I will help you try to build your party and get 5% of the vote so you can get matching funds for the next election.
But I don't want to actually campaign and run.
So he did that in 96, and there was a good response.
And so in 2000, they approached him again.
So let's do it for real.
And that's when he really jumped in because he thought.
How did he change hearts?
Well, because he saw that a lot of the stuff that had worked for him in the 70s and somewhat in the 80s was no longer working because the corporate takeover of government was happening at such a rapid pace and the deregulation was happening.
I'm sure once he saw Glass-Steagall and the Telecommunications Act in 96, I'm sure he was like, wow, it's really going downhill quickly.
Yeah.
I mean, he was because, I mean, within 10 years, they repealed Glass-Steagall.
Within 10 years, we have the biggest economic cratering of our economy in history.
Well, anytime there's that kind of deregulation, in the Reagan years, they did all the deregulation.
The savings on the money.
Same thing happened.
But people went to jail back then, which is different now.
People don't go to jail anymore for anything.
You can torture people.
You can have war crimes.
You can commit malfeasance on a financial level that is unheard of.
And not only will you not go to jail, you won't even be investigated, but you're going to be bonused.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, and the banks now are even bigger.
And even worse off.
So what that means is there's going to be another crash because those guys are still doing the same thing with the derivatives.
They're still traded in an opaque market.
And the housing, you know, every time the housing market starts to show a little health, those banks release all those toxic assets again.
They say, and it's all screwed.
I mean, now their big plan is to let people rent the houses they're kicking them out of.
Oh, that's a great thing.
What a great program for this country.
Yeah, it's terrible.
And that's the kind of thing that Public Citizen is, you know, they're at the forefront of the Consumer Protection Bureau.
And where do they get most of their money, Public Citizen?
From people like you and me.
Really, they can't take corporate money.
They can take money from individuals, and artists are a source of funding because they understand the issues and are sympathetic to them.
So I decided to do this stand-up for Main Street thing last June because I knew how to do a comedy show.
I called up comedians, called up you, got to know you.
You graciously co-hosted with me, and we had a great time with all those comics.
And we kind of slowly trying to expand the footprint out here so that awareness is built up and we can continue doing the work.
And so you're doing the show in a week?
We're doing the show a week from today.
We're doing on April 29th.
This is Sunday.
Sunday, 6:30 at the WGA Theater on Doheny near Doheny and Wilshire.
Easy parking, a lot of parking garages around there.
And we've got Rick Overton, Dana Gould, and Ray.
Ray Romano will be there.
Mark Maron, Wendy Liebman, Eric Revere, Morgan Murphy, and our friend David Feldman is going to co-host this time.
And if it went as well as it did last year, I mean, you were there.
It was a great show.
It was great.
But Paula Poundstone and Don Myrera and House Sparks.
Bill Burr was hilarious.
Sure.
It really was.
It's a great show.
Sure, sure.
If you missed any part of today's show, you can always get a podcast of the show for free at iTunes or by website, jimmydoorcomedy.com.
Okay, our thanks to Steve Scrovan for sitting in and letting us know all about Public Citizen.
And if you're in the Austin, Texas area, I'm there this weekend, April 28th and 29th, doing left, right, and ridiculous.
Go to my website, JimmyDoorComedy.com for a link for that show, Austin, Texas.
Okay, today's show was written by Frank Conniff, Mike McRae, Steve Rosenfield, Robert Yasamura, and Steph Samurano.
The voice of Rick Perry performed by Mike McRae from MikeMcRae.com.
Okay, that's our show.
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