Latest / The Mark Belling Podcast / Mark Belling Podcast #156: Dolly Parton was not only one of the greatest American talents ever, but she personified the condescension elites have for the rest of us in America. The Brewers manager demands more accountability than does the head of the Milwaukee Election Commission. And, yet another Trump endorsee wins as Lindsay Graham's sister prevails over a more conservative opponent in South Carolina.
Transcript
- 0:07Speaker 1: The Mark Belling Podcast is presented by Uline. For quality
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- 0:29Speaker 2: I want to start with one of those perfect stories.
- 0:33Speaker 2: I explain this all the time one more time. What's
- 0:36Speaker 2: the perfect story? The perfect story is a story that
- 0:40Speaker 2: in and of itself is really interesting. But what makes
- 0:43Speaker 2: it perfect is it raises much larger points about all
- 0:48Speaker 2: sorts of other things. The perfect story comes from, of
- 0:53Speaker 2: all places, last night's Brewers game. which was a loss.
- 0:59Speaker 2: We'll share it in a moment. Have you ever been
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- 1:05Speaker 2: Uline provides only one type of service, the best. From
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- 1:14Speaker 2: in stock ready to ship the same day. When your
- 1:17Speaker 2: business needs quality shipping supplies, reliable warehouse equipment, or office
- 1:22Speaker 2: furniture fast, contact Uline and get the best service. Because
- 1:27Speaker 2: Uline believes service is essential, not an option. All right,
- 1:32Speaker 2: here's the story. Brewers lost last night in 10 innings
- 1:37Speaker 2: to the Mets, 3-2. Is this another sign of the
- 1:42Speaker 2: long-expected Brewer slump that I keep saying is going to
- 1:45Speaker 2: happen that hasn't happened? I don't know. The Mets are
- 1:48Speaker 2: a team that they should have beaten. It was, however,
- 1:50Speaker 2: a game that's just typical of the Brewers' season. Again,
- 1:53Speaker 2: brilliant pitching. If there's a weakness on the team, it's
- 1:58Speaker 2: they don't score zillions of runs. They're not bad. They're
- 2:02Speaker 2: like fourth or fifth in the league in runs scored.
- 2:05Speaker 2: But they're not at the top. Their pitching has given up,
- 2:09Speaker 2: I think, the second or third fewest runs in all
- 2:11Speaker 2: of Major League Baseball. The run scoring is above average,
- 2:16Speaker 2: but not great. And it was the problem with last
- 2:19Speaker 2: night's game. Now, none of this gets to the story.
- 2:22Speaker 2: Just giving you a little bit of background. Because the
- 2:26Speaker 2: game was going late and it was a tight game,
- 2:29Speaker 2: the manager started doing pinch hitting left-handers to right-handers, depending
- 2:32Speaker 2: on what the other team was doing. But he was
- 2:34Speaker 2: a man down toward the end of the game. And
- 2:36Speaker 2: that's because he pulled one of his starters out of
- 2:41Speaker 2: the game in the middle of the game. And he
- 2:43Speaker 2: pulled him out of the game for slacking. Pat Murphy,
- 2:47Speaker 2: the Brewers manager, is old school on top of old school.
- 2:54Speaker 2: I haven't seen him pull this much with veteran players,
- 2:57Speaker 2: but he does it a fair number of times with
- 2:58Speaker 2: younger players. The Brewers rookie shortstop, Cooper Pratt, who's already
- 3:04Speaker 2: a fan favorite, loafed twice during the game. Shouldn't say
- 3:11Speaker 2: loafed twice. He loafed once. Earlier in the game, he
- 3:15Speaker 2: failed to get a bunt down. Happens a lot. The Brewers, however,
- 3:19Speaker 2: are a team that just insanely stresses fundamentals. When you're
- 3:22Speaker 2: supposed to bunt, you get the bunt done. He didn't. Then,
- 3:25Speaker 2: in his at-bat in the fifth inning, he had a
- 3:29Speaker 2: ball to the outfield that he did not hustle out
- 3:31Speaker 2: toward first base. As a result, it probably cost him
- 3:36Speaker 2: a double. I think he felt that the ball would
- 3:39Speaker 2: have gotten to quicker by the outfielder out there. So
- 3:42Speaker 2: he was just jogging toward first. Had he been running
- 3:44Speaker 2: full out toward first, he clearly would have been able
- 3:47Speaker 2: to turn it into a double. Pat Murphy, the Brewers manager,
- 3:51Speaker 2: was so incensed by Cooper Pratt slacking, he yanked him
- 3:56Speaker 2: right there on the spot. He didn't wait until the
- 3:58Speaker 2: inning was over. He sent in a pinch runner. Now,
- 4:02Speaker 2: Pratt's a pretty fast guy. David Hamilton, who plays the
- 4:05Speaker 2: same position as an infielder, is faster. And at the time,
- 4:09Speaker 2: people may have thought, well, gee, this is pretty aggressive.
- 4:11Speaker 2: He's putting in a pinch runner here in the fifth
- 4:14Speaker 2: inning of a game and taking out a great fielder
- 4:16Speaker 2: and so on. As it turns out, it didn't have
- 4:19Speaker 2: anything to do with strategy. He wanted Cooper Pratt out
- 4:23Speaker 2: of the game. And he was clearly sending him a message. Look,
- 4:29Speaker 2: you're a rookie. You're in the big leagues. You're playing
- 4:32Speaker 2: for the Brewers. You better hustle. And if you don't hustle,
- 4:35Speaker 2: I'm going to kind of humiliate you, yank you out
- 4:37Speaker 2: of the game. And everybody knew, you know, Cooper Pratt's
- 4:40Speaker 2: not slow. It's not like he's Gary Sanchez, who might
- 4:44Speaker 2: be the slowest Major League Baseball player I've ever seen.
- 4:48Speaker 2: That takes in a lot of, who would the slowest
- 4:49Speaker 2: guy I've ever seen be? It might actually, it might
- 4:56Speaker 2: actually be. Does anybody come to your mind, Jason, like
- 4:59Speaker 2: the slowest player ever? I mean, Sanchez is really slow. Anyway.
- 5:10Speaker 2: The manager did it because Pratt is a young player
- 5:15Speaker 2: and he wanted to send him a message. I just
- 5:17Speaker 2: don't think this would have happened to Christian Jelic. But also,
- 5:22Speaker 2: guys like Jelic and kind of the kinds of players
- 5:24Speaker 2: that the Brewers have tried to get throughout their history
- 5:29Speaker 2: don't loaf on the way to first base. So he
- 5:33Speaker 2: sent him a message, and after the game, according to
- 5:35Speaker 2: the report on JS Online, Pratt really took it to heart.
- 5:38Speaker 2: It said he was standing in front of his locker crying.
- 5:42Speaker 2: I'll quote from the story by Curt Hogg, JS Online.
- 5:45Speaker 2: Cooper Pratt stood in his locker inside the visiting clubhouse
- 5:48Speaker 2: at Citi Field and he wore it. Hours after being
- 5:51Speaker 2: removed from the game on the fifth inning of the
- 5:53Speaker 2: Milwaukee Brewers' eventual 3-2 extra inning loss to the New
- 5:55Speaker 2: York Mets on August 25th, that's last night, Pratt, in
- 5:59Speaker 2: likely the most trying moment of his baseball career to date,
- 6:02Speaker 2: fell on the sword. Wearing the emotions on his face
- 6:05Speaker 2: as he briefly wiped away tears during a three-minute interview
- 6:08Speaker 2: with reporters, Pratt took full responsibility for not hustling out
- 6:12Speaker 2: a potential double on the heels of not being able
- 6:15Speaker 2: to get a bunt down at his prior at-bat. Quote,
- 6:18Speaker 2: I've got to be better, said the Brewers' 22-year-old rookie shortstop.
- 6:22Speaker 2: It's stuff that can't happen. It's not winning baseball. I
- 6:26Speaker 2: didn't help the team win. And it won't happen again,
- 6:29Speaker 2: that's for sure. From not getting the bunt down to
- 6:32Speaker 2: not running hard to first and turning it into a double,
- 6:34Speaker 2: it won't happen again, I can promise you that. It's
- 6:37Speaker 2: not winning baseball. The story points out that he's done
- 6:44Speaker 2: this a few times in the past. April of last year, 25,
- 6:51Speaker 2: he pulled out both Sal Frelick and Caleb Durbin for
- 6:55Speaker 2: missing cutoff men Pulled him on the middle of the inning.
- 6:59Speaker 2: He pulled Tobias Myers out of a game after a
- 7:01Speaker 2: couple of innings. He's done that with a couple of
- 7:03Speaker 2: other pitchers as well, pulling him seemingly prematurely. It's what
- 7:09Speaker 2: Murphy does. And as I say, he generally does it
- 7:11Speaker 2: with younger players. And he's sending a message of, this
- 7:15Speaker 2: is accountability. And in the case of Pratt, it clearly worked.
- 7:20Speaker 2: The guy is very apologetic. He knew that he screwed up.
- 7:23Speaker 2: And the message is drilled into him. You don't loaf
- 7:29Speaker 2: in Major League Baseball. As I said, that's an interesting story.
- 7:35Speaker 2: But it raises larger points. And the larger point here
- 7:39Speaker 2: is accountability. And what's accountability? Accountability means if you screw
- 7:45Speaker 2: up or do something wrong or you don't deliver, you're
- 7:48Speaker 2: in trouble, you face consequences. And I don't care what
- 7:52Speaker 2: it is in life. When there's no accountability, the end
- 7:55Speaker 2: result is going to be crap. I've worked my career
- 7:59Speaker 2: in radio. There's no business more accountable than that. Public
- 8:02Speaker 2: radio is not the same thing. You get fired in
- 8:05Speaker 2: radio right and left. You don't get good ratings. You
- 8:09Speaker 2: don't do this. They change the format. You have to
- 8:12Speaker 2: constantly deliver. Now I'm doing a podcast. The revenue that
- 8:16Speaker 2: I make is entirely dependent on how many listeners we
- 8:18Speaker 2: are able to drive to the podcast. Accountability. I can't
- 8:25Speaker 2: afford to fail. And That, in my insane obsession with excellence,
- 8:34Speaker 2: drives me to try to be the best that I
- 8:36Speaker 2: can constantly. Public radio, WUW in Milwaukee, I don't even
- 8:44Speaker 2: know if they fire people because I never listen to
- 8:46Speaker 2: that station, but everybody knows that it's kind of a
- 8:49Speaker 2: slacker place to work. You can hear it in their voice.
- 8:52Speaker 2: I mean, they all have that public radio voice where
- 8:54Speaker 2: they deliberately seem to speak slower and without any kind
- 8:57Speaker 2: of rate of emphasis. I swear public radio, it's going
- 9:01Speaker 2: to come out that they actually invented AI 40 years
- 9:04Speaker 2: ago and everybody on there was actually AI and that's
- 9:06Speaker 2: why they all have that AI voice. Could that be?
- 9:15Speaker 2: I'm going to move to another story that relates. We
- 9:18Speaker 2: had that incident that occurred in Milwaukee a couple of
- 9:21Speaker 2: weeks ago. where a 99-year-old woman was brutally attacked in
- 9:24Speaker 2: her home on the south side. She must have pressed, like,
- 9:29Speaker 2: one of those medic alert alarms because the dispatcher for
- 9:33Speaker 2: the company contacted the 911, called 911 in Milwaukee, and
- 9:38Speaker 2: the 911 operator, which is a division that is separate
- 9:41Speaker 2: from the police and fire department, misclassified the call and
- 9:45Speaker 2: didn't put the proper priority on it, even though there
- 9:48Speaker 2: was pretty strong indication that the person from the monitoring
- 9:52Speaker 2: company explained what was going on. Several hours later, after
- 9:56Speaker 2: the woman had the hell beaten out of her, she
- 9:59Speaker 2: struggled at the phone and called 911 again. This time
- 10:01Speaker 2: it was placed on a higher priority and they raced
- 10:03Speaker 2: over there. The 911 operator, and again, this was the
- 10:11Speaker 2: first call came in in the overnight hours, the graveyard shift.
- 10:15Speaker 2: And I don't know anything about the Milwaukee Emergency Services operation,
- 10:19Speaker 2: but my guess is that the newest people worked the
- 10:21Speaker 2: graveyard shift. That person has been fired. You screwed up.
- 10:32Speaker 2: And by the way, those calls, anybody who works 911,
- 10:37Speaker 2: It's a really tough job. You often get people that
- 10:40Speaker 2: are calling in for nothing. Then when you have an
- 10:42Speaker 2: actual emergency, people are all scattered and rambling and screaming
- 10:45Speaker 2: and they're not getting the facts out. And the 911
- 10:48Speaker 2: person has to first of all get the location from
- 10:50Speaker 2: them and try to understand what's going on while at
- 10:52Speaker 2: the same time, you know, juggling the need to start dispatching,
- 10:56Speaker 2: figuring out how serious the situation is, coding. Very difficult job.
- 11:02Speaker 2: And it's only ever noticed when you screw up as
- 11:04Speaker 2: this screw up occurred. The dispatcher was fired. I think
- 11:14Speaker 2: that's probably proper. But then this. Obviously, there's been a
- 11:21Speaker 2: lot of attention to the latest dysfunction and foul up
- 11:25Speaker 2: at Milwaukee Central Count. Central Count is where the Milwaukee
- 11:30Speaker 2: Election Commission processes all of the mail-in early voting and
- 11:34Speaker 2: absentee ballots. They are not processed at the individual polling place.
- 11:39Speaker 2: I talked about this, I think, on Monday's podcast, and
- 11:42Speaker 2: I said a number of cities have central count. It's
- 11:44Speaker 2: now up to 40. So pretty much any city of
- 11:47Speaker 2: size in the state of Wisconsin uses central count. The
- 11:50Speaker 2: really smaller communities simply take the ballots to the individual
- 11:53Speaker 2: polling place that the voter would live in and runs
- 11:56Speaker 2: them through the vote tabulators or voting machines there. In Milwaukee,
- 11:59Speaker 2: they run it through central count. And there have been
- 12:01Speaker 2: problems at central count forever. Central County, Milwaukee always comes
- 12:07Speaker 2: in late at night, often tipping the results in close elections,
- 12:11Speaker 2: creating tremendous suspicion on the part of conservatives. But in
- 12:15Speaker 2: addition to that, there's been problems in each of the
- 12:18Speaker 2: last three major elections. The one in the August primary
- 12:24Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago involving the Democrats. The results
- 12:30Speaker 2: from The nine voting machines that they were using to
- 12:34Speaker 2: run through all the early ballots and absentee ballots, they
- 12:39Speaker 2: took the results and transferred them to memory sticks. Five
- 12:46Speaker 2: of the nine memory sticks, and then they take them
- 12:48Speaker 2: over to the Milwaukee County Clerk, which is what processes
- 12:51Speaker 2: all of the results from throughout the county. When they
- 12:54Speaker 2: got to the county clerk's office, they found out that
- 12:56Speaker 2: five of the nine memory sticks did not have results
- 12:58Speaker 2: on them, but they had the ballot log, the audit
- 13:01Speaker 2: log for that machine. The audit log simply is the
- 13:05Speaker 2: number of eligible voters who can come in, and it
- 13:07Speaker 2: just reprinted that. In other words, the wrong thing was downloaded.
- 13:12Speaker 2: On five of the nine. Paulina Gutierrez, the city election
- 13:20Speaker 2: commission director, appeared on Channel 12, yeah, I think up
- 13:23Speaker 2: front is on Channel 12, and discussed the situation and said,
- 13:28Speaker 2: the buck stops with me, but she wouldn't discuss who
- 13:30Speaker 2: it was that did this or whether or not anything
- 13:32Speaker 2: was done. JS Online reported that the Milwaukee City Personnel
- 13:36Speaker 2: Office indicated that there was no record of any discipline
- 13:39Speaker 2: being taken against anyone at the election commission, meaning whoever
- 13:43Speaker 2: screwed this up. Not only didn't get fired, but apparently
- 13:48Speaker 2: wasn't even disciplined, not even like sent home for two weeks.
- 13:53Speaker 2: Is it any surprise that the agency that didn't hold
- 13:58Speaker 2: its screw-ups accountable is the agency that keeps screwing up? Now,
- 14:04Speaker 2: I said earlier that, and my newspaper column is out
- 14:07Speaker 2: on this, in fact, today. I'm not somebody who's accusing
- 14:12Speaker 2: the Election Commission in Milwaukee of fraud. Puts me in
- 14:15Speaker 2: the minority of Wisconsin Republicans and conservatives who just think
- 14:18Speaker 2: that they're waiting until 3 o'clock in the morning figuring
- 14:22Speaker 2: out how many votes they need and manufacturing enough votes
- 14:24Speaker 2: and feeding fake ballots into the machines. That's what they think.
- 14:27Speaker 2: And I don't blame them for thinking that, but I'm
- 14:29Speaker 2: not at that point in which I believe that's what's
- 14:31Speaker 2: going on. I do, however, think that there is incredible incompetence.
- 14:37Speaker 2: And when you see incredible incompetence over and over and
- 14:40Speaker 2: over again, it means that either They're hiring stupid people.
- 14:44Speaker 2: They're not training people well. Or the employees are not
- 14:50Speaker 2: acting as though they have somebody breathing down their neck
- 14:53Speaker 2: ready to can their ass if they screw up. What
- 14:57Speaker 2: they had to do in Milwaukee is they had to
- 14:58Speaker 2: go back to Central Count with the five memory sticks
- 15:04Speaker 2: that had the wrong data on them and transfer it
- 15:06Speaker 2: over again. It delayed the results by three hours. And
- 15:09Speaker 2: given the fact that the race between Hong and Crowley
- 15:15Speaker 2: was tight. You had to wait until 2 o'clock, 2.30
- 15:17Speaker 2: in the morning before the final tally came in, which
- 15:19Speaker 2: showed Crowley winning the election narrowly. There have been numerous
- 15:23Speaker 2: people who are wrongly reporting that Crowley got a late
- 15:28Speaker 2: surge in those ballots. He did not. They were almost
- 15:30Speaker 2: dead even. Anyway, my point is this. Three separate entities,
- 15:37Speaker 2: baseball team Brewers, The Milwaukee Emergency Dispatch Center, which is
- 15:45Speaker 2: part of city government, it's got a brother-sister relationship with
- 15:50Speaker 2: the city police department and fire department, but it's a
- 15:52Speaker 2: separate entity. Those two demand accountability. Milwaukee Election Commission, no accountability.
- 16:06Speaker 2: Of the three, the Brewers... the Milwaukee Dispatch, and the
- 16:11Speaker 2: Election Commission, which has the longest track record of screwing
- 16:15Speaker 2: things up. The Election Commission. We're going to talk for
- 16:28Speaker 2: a moment about media bias. Media bias covers a lot
- 16:33Speaker 2: of things, but one of them is Kind of the
- 16:37Speaker 2: spin or the take that they have on things. Here's
- 16:41Speaker 2: the current spin that they like to give. Donald Trump,
- 16:44Speaker 2: for better or for worse, I personally don't know that
- 16:48Speaker 2: he needs to be doing this in so many races,
- 16:50Speaker 2: but he sticks his beak into Republican primaries all over
- 16:53Speaker 2: the country. Not all of them, but quite a few
- 16:54Speaker 2: of them. And he issues an endorsement. I mean, in
- 16:59Speaker 2: a lot of them. The Northern Wisconsin congressional race, House
- 17:05Speaker 2: of Representatives race. He's done it in governor's races, Senate races,
- 17:09Speaker 2: and so on. He did it all over the place
- 17:14Speaker 2: in Florida. He endorsed a candidate for governor, a candidate
- 17:18Speaker 2: for the Senate. In the case of the Senate race,
- 17:24Speaker 2: there was no real challenger. In the case of the
- 17:26Speaker 2: governor's race, there were challengers. Byron Donalds, the congressman from
- 17:30Speaker 2: the Naples area, won the nomination. He had Trump's endorsement.
- 17:34Speaker 2: But the House Speaker in Florida, a couple of other
- 17:36Speaker 2: candidates all ran. He also intervened in a number of
- 17:39Speaker 2: United States House of Representatives Republican primaries. A couple of
- 17:44Speaker 2: those candidates lost, even though the vast majority of them won.
- 17:47Speaker 2: As I said, in Wisconsin, in the congressional race in
- 17:49Speaker 2: northern Wisconsin, the candidate that Trump endorsed, Michael Alfonso, he won.
- 17:56Speaker 2: The media's take is every time one of the Trump-endorsed
- 17:58Speaker 2: candidates doesn't win, oh, is Trump's grip on Republican voters slipping?
- 18:02Speaker 2: The story is exactly the opposite. The actual story is
- 18:07Speaker 2: the unbelievable sway that a Trump endorsement has with Republican voters.
- 18:12Speaker 2: They almost all win. I'll be blunt about this. The
- 18:19Speaker 2: two candidates in South Carolina, it's a runoff election there.
- 18:22Speaker 2: They have the process of If none of the candidates
- 18:25Speaker 2: in the primary get over 50% of the votes, the
- 18:27Speaker 2: top two vote-getters move to the runoff and vote then.
- 18:30Speaker 2: So they have to vote three times in South Carolina.
- 18:34Speaker 2: The regular primary, then the runoff primary, and the general
- 18:36Speaker 2: election in November. Darlene Graham, whose sole qualification is she's
- 18:42Speaker 2: Lindsey Graham's sister, the senator who died, and it's his
- 18:45Speaker 2: seat being filled, and was running against Ralph Norman, longtime
- 18:48Speaker 2: member of Congress, Norman is one of the most conservative
- 18:51Speaker 2: members of the House of Representatives. He's a member of
- 18:53Speaker 2: the Freedom Caucus. They held a debate a few days
- 18:58Speaker 2: before the election. I mean, the comparison was stark. Darlene
- 19:02Speaker 2: Graham was in over her head. Ralph Norman was on
- 19:06Speaker 2: top of everything. In addition to that, South Carolina is
- 19:08Speaker 2: a very conservative state. And Norman was, I think, the
- 19:11Speaker 2: more conservative candidate was more qualified. Darlene Graham beat him.
- 19:23Speaker 2: I'm sorry. There is no way she wins without Trump's endorsement.
- 19:36Speaker 2: Trump endorsed her, I think, because he believed that she'd
- 19:41Speaker 2: be a loyal supporter of his in the United States Senate.
- 19:43Speaker 2: And I think she believed that because Lindsey Graham was
- 19:47Speaker 2: as loyal to Trump as almost anyone. Graham is clearly
- 19:51Speaker 2: more moderate. He's from the moderate wing of the Republican Party.
- 19:53Speaker 2: He's also the foreign policy intervention wing of the Republican Party,
- 19:57Speaker 2: neither of which Trump is a member of. But unlike
- 19:59Speaker 2: a lot of these other more squishy Republicans who look for,
- 20:03Speaker 2: you know, Murkowski of Alaska and a few of the others,
- 20:07Speaker 2: Cornyn of Texas who got voted out, who were looking
- 20:11Speaker 2: for reasons to buck Trump, Graham always was there. And
- 20:18Speaker 2: Trump appreciated that. And Trump certainly relied on Graham's input
- 20:27Speaker 2: on a lot of issues. Some people believe that he
- 20:29Speaker 2: shouldn't have. But Trump valued the loyalty. And I think
- 20:32Speaker 2: that he felt that the way Lindsey, you know, served
- 20:36Speaker 2: as a senator is the way that Darlene would. And
- 20:38Speaker 2: that's why he endorsed her. Normally, when you have a
- 20:44Speaker 2: borderline rhino, which is what the Grahams are, and a
- 20:48Speaker 2: core conservative like Ralph Norman, the core conservative is going
- 20:51Speaker 2: to win. But he didn't win. Now, this is a very–
- 20:59Speaker 2: South Carolina is close to the most Republican state in
- 21:02Speaker 2: the union. Even if it's a Democratic year, as many expect,
- 21:07Speaker 2: Darlene Graham is going to win the general election. She
- 21:12Speaker 2: flubbed it up pretty badly during the debate when she
- 21:16Speaker 2: acknowledged that she didn't have a handle on a lot
- 21:18Speaker 2: of foreign policy issues. Of course she doesn't. She's never
- 21:21Speaker 2: been anything. She's just the sister of a senator. She
- 21:26Speaker 2: tried to use that to her advantage by pointing out,
- 21:29Speaker 2: I've been in this for 20 days, you've been in
- 21:30Speaker 2: it for 20 years, that was her line, that she
- 21:32Speaker 2: used against Ralph Norman. The point of this is To
- 21:42Speaker 2: say that Trump's sway is not overwhelmingly strong with Republican
- 21:46Speaker 2: voters in the United States is to just lie. Because
- 21:49Speaker 2: as I said, I think without the endorsement of Trump,
- 21:53Speaker 2: Ralph Norman would have won this election two to one.
- 21:55Speaker 2: That's what I think. And for that matter, if Trump
- 22:00Speaker 2: had endorsed Ralph Norman, which, and I'll tell you in
- 22:02Speaker 2: a moment why I don't think that he did. As
- 22:04Speaker 2: I said, Norman's a member of the Freedom Caucus. The
- 22:06Speaker 2: Republican Party has three wings. The mainstream, which is rather conservative,
- 22:13Speaker 2: I'd say the Speaker, Mike Johnson, would represent that. I
- 22:17Speaker 2: would say that every one of the Republicans in our
- 22:20Speaker 2: congressional delegation would be in this mainstream. Grothman, Brian Stile,
- 22:25Speaker 2: Tom Tiffany, who's leaving Congress. All of them. Ben Orton,
- 22:35Speaker 2: Tony Weed, the five members of the U.S.
- 22:37Speaker 1: House.
- 22:37Speaker 2: In the state of Wisconsin, they would all be in
- 22:39Speaker 2: that mainstream group that Mike Johnson is, and that's the largest.
- 22:42Speaker 2: But then there are these moderate Republicans who are squishy
- 22:49Speaker 2: on a lot of things, and then there's the Freedom
- 22:51Speaker 2: Caucus that just demands absolute my way or the highway
- 22:54Speaker 2: on everything. The Freedom Caucus is like 10, 15 members.
- 22:57Speaker 2: The moderate, we might have only 10 or 15, but
- 22:59Speaker 2: it's been very hard to get things passed through the
- 23:02Speaker 2: House because... If they accommodate the moderates over here, the
- 23:06Speaker 2: Freedom Caucus bolts. And if you accommodate the Freedom Caucus,
- 23:08Speaker 2: the moderates bolt. It's not as bad as the problem
- 23:13Speaker 2: in the Senate, but I think Trump was looking for
- 23:15Speaker 2: the candidate that's going to be most loyal and vote
- 23:19Speaker 2: with the party the most number of times. And I
- 23:21Speaker 2: think that that's what drove that. But without a doubt,
- 23:23Speaker 2: his endorsement was powerful, which brings me to the next story.
- 23:28Speaker 2: And there's, again, no way to explain this other than Trump.
- 23:35Speaker 2: They held the IndyCar race on the streets of Washington, D.C. Sunday,
- 23:40Speaker 2: the Freedom 250. We talked about this on Monday's program.
- 23:43Speaker 2: The TV ratings are in. This race can't be separated
- 23:50Speaker 2: from Trump because Trump said he wanted this race. And
- 23:53Speaker 2: Trump made it happen that you get the approvals of D.C.,
- 23:56Speaker 2: clear the streets for the couple of days of running
- 23:58Speaker 2: the event, and so on. And Trump put his name
- 24:06Speaker 2: behind it, he attended the race, all of that. He
- 24:11Speaker 2: wanted a showcase on the 250th anniversary of our country.
- 24:15Speaker 2: What an incredible job he's done cleaning up the rat
- 24:17Speaker 2: hole that was D.C. The TV ratings are in. The
- 24:26Speaker 2: rating for Sunday's race was the highest for any IndyCar race,
- 24:31Speaker 2: not counting the Indy 500, since 2008. The Indy 500
- 24:38Speaker 2: is the big IndyCar race, and it's the one, you know,
- 24:41Speaker 2: like in horse racing, some people watch the Kentucky Derby
- 24:43Speaker 2: and nothing else. Indy 500 is the same thing with
- 24:46Speaker 2: regard to IndyCar. But they have all sorts of other races,
- 24:49Speaker 2: and in fact, they have two races this weekend in Milwaukee.
- 24:52Speaker 2: Saturday and Sunday, Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Mile are hosting
- 24:55Speaker 2: two IndyCar races, one Saturday, one Sunday. This event in Washington, D.C.,
- 25:01Speaker 2: which was thought to be a one-off, but now was
- 25:02Speaker 2: so successful they might do it again. Let me quote
- 25:06Speaker 2: from the report here. and The Athletic, which is also
- 25:12Speaker 2: there for The New York Times. Fox Sports on Tuesday
- 25:15Speaker 2: reported a monster viewership number for Sunday's Freedom 250 Grand Prix,
- 25:19Speaker 2: with an average of 3.28 million viewers, making it the
- 25:23Speaker 2: highest number for an IndyCar race other than the Indy
- 25:26Speaker 2: 500 since the series was formed. Now, IndyCars had different names,
- 25:30Speaker 2: but this particular series was created in 2008, and since
- 25:34Speaker 2: that creation, it's the highest ratings for any race they've
- 25:37Speaker 2: ever held other than the Indy 500. The viewership nearly
- 25:45Speaker 2: quadrupled the average for IndyCar's other races from last year.
- 25:50Speaker 2: So in other words, if you take all of the
- 25:52Speaker 2: races from last year other than the Indy 500, four
- 25:55Speaker 2: times more viewers watched the race on Sunday. What explains
- 26:02Speaker 2: that other than Trump? I know a guy. I don't
- 26:08Speaker 2: think he knows anything about IndyCar racing other than he's
- 26:10Speaker 2: a sports fan. I don't think he knows anything about it.
- 26:12Speaker 2: I don't think he can name a driver. He watched
- 26:14Speaker 2: the race. Texted me, are you watching this? I watched
- 26:18Speaker 2: the race. I'll admit, you know, and I try to
- 26:21Speaker 2: watch a lot. I watched most of the, where did
- 26:28Speaker 2: the Formula One? I think, was it in Hungary? Early
- 26:32Speaker 2: Sunday morning. Then I watched the Freedom 250. I watched
- 26:35Speaker 2: a little bit of the NASCAR race. So I try
- 26:38Speaker 2: to watch these races, you know, amongst all the other
- 26:41Speaker 2: sports that I'm watching over the course of the weekend.
- 26:42Speaker 2: But there was no way I was going to miss
- 26:43Speaker 2: this because, first of all, I wanted to see how
- 26:46Speaker 2: it looked. And by the way, it looked spectacular. I mean,
- 26:48Speaker 2: they're running a race around the Capitol, for crying out loud.
- 26:51Speaker 2: The visuals were fantastic. The streets were wide enough that
- 26:54Speaker 2: it was excellent driving. The drivers are used to this
- 26:57Speaker 2: kind of road course racing because IndyCar has some road
- 27:00Speaker 2: courses and some ovals. It just was a spectacular success.
- 27:03Speaker 2: And the viewers who were watching it, rallied behind it.
- 27:07Speaker 2: But how many of those people tuned into the first
- 27:09Speaker 2: place because of Trump? I suspect most. What else would
- 27:13Speaker 2: explain doing four times better? This isn't just all the
- 27:17Speaker 2: fans of IndyCar racing tuning in because we see what
- 27:19Speaker 2: the baseline for that is, four times less than this.
- 27:26Speaker 2: Do you think if Biden had come up with this
- 27:27Speaker 2: idea and they would have held the same race two
- 27:30Speaker 2: years ago with Biden as president, there's just no way
- 27:32Speaker 2: it would have drawn that attention. Without regard to where
- 27:35Speaker 2: Trump's popularity ratings stand, he remains the ultimate American influencer.
- 27:44Speaker 2: Continuing on media bias. This is a story that when
- 27:49Speaker 2: you consider the context, it will make sense to you. Unfortunately,
- 27:53Speaker 2: almost no one does. I've explained 85 trillion times. that
- 27:59Speaker 2: the determinant of news media bias is what is and
- 28:02Speaker 2: what is not news. What is played up, what is de-emphasized,
- 28:06Speaker 2: or not covered at all. Unfortunately, almost nobody, I've tried
- 28:10Speaker 2: to teach people over the years, why is this in there?
- 28:12Speaker 2: Why is this in there? Why is this in there?
- 28:14Speaker 2: But most people don't. They see a story in the news,
- 28:16Speaker 2: or they watch something on TV, and they simply react
- 28:18Speaker 2: to it, and they don't ask that why question. I'm
- 28:23Speaker 2: holding the print edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which
- 28:26Speaker 2: today actually matches their website. When I last checked, and
- 28:31Speaker 2: we're taping this program around, it's right now 20 to
- 28:34Speaker 2: 12 on Wednesday. It was also the lead story on
- 28:39Speaker 2: their website, but it also is the top of page
- 28:41Speaker 2: one in the print edition of the paper. It's an
- 28:44Speaker 2: attack shot, a Republican candidate for Governor Tom Tiffany. Tiffany
- 28:48Speaker 2: business paid no state tax. Records show years of little
- 28:52Speaker 2: to no net liabilities. Now, Tiffany owned a number of
- 28:56Speaker 2: tourism-type businesses in northern Wisconsin. You pay state income tax
- 29:06Speaker 2: depending on your income. And the point of the story
- 29:10Speaker 2: is that Tiffany is touting his business experience as a
- 29:13Speaker 2: reason to leave the state, but his businesses weren't very successful.
- 29:18Speaker 2: If they were, he would have had to pay taxes. Now,
- 29:23Speaker 2: in and of itself, The story is accurate. People don't
- 29:31Speaker 2: know this, but how much you pay in state income
- 29:33Speaker 2: tax is a public record in Wisconsin. I think most
- 29:36Speaker 2: people don't know that your tax returns aren't public. but
- 29:40Speaker 2: the bottom line, what you pay or what you were
- 29:42Speaker 2: refunded back, that is reported. What your tax is, is reported.
- 29:49Speaker 2: I don't even know if the refund is, but your tax,
- 29:51Speaker 2: you know, your refund is simply you get more, you
- 29:54Speaker 2: had more deducted than you owe in tax. So it's
- 29:58Speaker 2: a public record. They looked it up. And it's certainly
- 30:02Speaker 2: fair to say that Tiffany's Northern Wisconsin resort-type businesses, he's
- 30:06Speaker 2: running a water tour company and a couple of other
- 30:08Speaker 2: companies and so on, he had several businesses up there
- 30:11Speaker 2: in Northern Wisconsin, which, by the way, is a really
- 30:13Speaker 2: tough racket. The Northern Wisconsin Indian Tribe casinos that have
- 30:19Speaker 2: built hotels have provided tremendous competition in addition to that.
- 30:25Speaker 2: Lots of people own their second homes up there and
- 30:27Speaker 2: they don't need to use resorts. And Tiffany & Zinney,
- 30:30Speaker 2: which has tried to be one of the companies that
- 30:31Speaker 2: services the fact that a lot of people love to
- 30:33Speaker 2: go to northern Wisconsin. But it is a tough business.
- 30:41Speaker 2: And he's been able to make a living at it.
- 30:44Speaker 2: But not a great one. So they're suggesting that he's
- 30:51Speaker 2: crappy a bit. I guess the point of the story
- 30:54Speaker 2: is Tiffany's saying he's such this great businessman, that's the
- 30:56Speaker 2: way he should elect and govern, but he wasn't making
- 30:58Speaker 2: that much money at it. As I say, if you
- 31:02Speaker 2: just start and end there, I'm not denying that there
- 31:06Speaker 2: may be some newsworthiness to it. However, this is where
- 31:11Speaker 2: the context comes in. Do any of you recall seeing
- 31:17Speaker 2: the story On how much in taxes Francesca Hong paid
- 31:23Speaker 2: for her stupid ramen shop. I always want to call
- 31:26Speaker 2: it ramen. Don't you think it should be ramen? First
- 31:30Speaker 2: of all, if you look at it, R-A-M-E-N is correct.
- 31:34Speaker 2: Is ramen a Japanese word? I don't even know. I also,
- 31:42Speaker 2: as I don't want to repeat myself on that. Well,
- 31:44Speaker 2: I'm going to repeat myself. I just can't fathom if
- 31:47Speaker 2: I was going out to dinner, I would go anywhere
- 31:49Speaker 2: where they served only ramen. Why is it trendy? It
- 31:55Speaker 2: was 99 cents in the grocery store. This is like
- 31:58Speaker 2: when I was starving in radio. I usually did cup
- 32:02Speaker 2: of soup. Other people would do the ramen. The ramen
- 32:04Speaker 2: was probably more filling. I just, it was all processed.
- 32:09Speaker 2: It came in this little plastic thing where it's dried out.
- 32:11Speaker 2: You put it in boiling water and suddenly, my guess
- 32:13Speaker 2: is that what Francesca Hong was doing higher end than that,
- 32:16Speaker 2: but probably not. Can you imagine how crappy it would
- 32:19Speaker 2: have tasted? Nonetheless, my point is the business failed. She
- 32:23Speaker 2: closed it. It went under. Where was the story on
- 32:27Speaker 2: how much she paid on that? She was the front-running
- 32:29Speaker 2: Democratic candidate for governor for months. Tiffany's been in business
- 32:34Speaker 2: for decades up there and has managed to survive and
- 32:38Speaker 2: scrape by without obviously making a fortune. How many of
- 32:42Speaker 2: the people who run these types of business in northern
- 32:44Speaker 2: Wisconsin are making a fortune? You've got supper clubs up
- 32:46Speaker 2: there in northern Wisconsin. They used to be gold mines
- 32:48Speaker 2: because they were cash businesses. Everybody pays with cards now.
- 32:51Speaker 2: It's a really tough racket and some have closed. Drunk
- 32:55Speaker 2: driving has really harmed that business because in restaurants like that,
- 32:59Speaker 2: you make the money at the bar. And now that
- 33:02Speaker 2: you don't have people drinking seven martinis there because somebody's
- 33:04Speaker 2: got to drive home, it's a tough racket. You know,
- 33:07Speaker 2: if one of those candidates run for governor, they'll go, oh, look,
- 33:09Speaker 2: they didn't have to pay much in taxes. No kidding.
- 33:13Speaker 2: But when you have a Democrat who flopped on her
- 33:15Speaker 2: ass and therefore had to run for the legislature, which
- 33:20Speaker 2: she did, and then drew per diem, even though she
- 33:24Speaker 2: lives like two blocks from the, very close to the Capitol.
- 33:29Speaker 2: These stories are only ever done against Republicans. There are some,
- 33:35Speaker 2: not many, Democrats who are in business. Then you have
- 33:40Speaker 2: some of the others who get really, really rich in business.
- 33:45Speaker 2: And here's my second point of this. Let's imagine it
- 33:48Speaker 2: was the opposite. Let's imagine Tiffany was making $ 5 million
- 33:52Speaker 2: a year up there. They would then go after, here's
- 33:55Speaker 2: another rich guy trying to buy his way into the governorship.
- 34:00Speaker 2: When Ron Johnson ran for the Senate, it was the opposite.
- 34:02Speaker 2: Ron's company purchased a company, PACAR, P-A, it was a
- 34:08Speaker 2: great name for a Wisconsin company. It's not spelled like Packers,
- 34:10Speaker 2: agreement Packers, P-A-C-C-A-R. It made a ton of money and
- 34:14Speaker 2: they went after him on that, the amount of money
- 34:16Speaker 2: that Johnson was making on that business. The other point
- 34:22Speaker 2: on this is you almost never have a Democrat who
- 34:25Speaker 2: comes to the business world who is their candidate. Democrats,
- 34:28Speaker 2: when they run for office, almost always were in either
- 34:31Speaker 2: a nonprofit or a lower office. Look at Crowley. What's
- 34:37Speaker 2: his tremendous business career? You could look at all of
- 34:41Speaker 2: Crowley's failed businesses, but he's been feeding at the trough.
- 34:46Speaker 2: Here's a guy who, when he was county executive of
- 34:48Speaker 2: Milwaukee County... went to college at UW-Milwaukee and had the
- 34:52Speaker 2: taxpayers pay his tuition, attending classes when he's supposed to
- 34:56Speaker 2: be running the county and then sticking the taxpayers with
- 34:58Speaker 2: the bill. So this is selectivity. And as I say,
- 35:07Speaker 2: the perfect counter to this is the stories on what
- 35:12Speaker 2: a complete failure Hong was. And by the way, Tiffany's
- 35:16Speaker 2: run these businesses, scraping by on a tough racket basically
- 35:19Speaker 2: all his adult life. Hong Pride, the Raymond shop flopped,
- 35:25Speaker 2: decided I'm going to get myself out as many doles
- 35:27Speaker 2: as possible and ran for the legislature and call herself
- 35:30Speaker 2: a Marxist. Now, this story being out there on page one,
- 35:36Speaker 2: I guarantee you the reason that they put it on
- 35:38Speaker 2: page one like this is when they run the attack ad.
- 35:43Speaker 2: When Crowley's attack ads up, you'll see this headline. It's
- 35:50Speaker 2: not so much as a cheap shot as it is
- 35:53Speaker 2: a shot taken outside of context. I'll use the WNBA
- 35:59Speaker 2: as an example. I could use the Bucs as an example.
- 36:02Speaker 2: As somebody who held Bucs season tickets, I certainly didn't
- 36:05Speaker 2: go to all the games, but a lot of them.
- 36:07Speaker 2: Giannis Antetokounmpo, he got no star treatment from the refs.
- 36:12Speaker 2: Giannis was fouled, I would say, 80% of the time
- 36:14Speaker 2: that he went to the basket, and not many of
- 36:16Speaker 2: those fouls were called. He was treated in a different
- 36:21Speaker 2: context because hammering Giannis as he went to the basket
- 36:24Speaker 2: was the only way of stopping him. If Steph Curry
- 36:27Speaker 2: had been treated the same way every time a foul
- 36:30Speaker 2: would have been called. Now let's go to the WNBA.
- 36:35Speaker 2: Kaitlyn Clark's being brutalized. Fouls are not being called when
- 36:39Speaker 2: she's being hit when they are being called when the
- 36:42Speaker 2: foul is on a different player. That's the same thing
- 36:46Speaker 2: that occurs with the media in determining that we're going
- 36:50Speaker 2: to go after. It doesn't matter if Tiffany was successful
- 36:52Speaker 2: or unsuccessful. Either way, they would have gone after him
- 36:58Speaker 2: and claimed that it was a mess. One other point
- 37:01Speaker 2: that I want to make with regard to owning your
- 37:02Speaker 2: own business. In some cases, the amount of taxes that
- 37:05Speaker 2: the business pays can be misleading because the owner will
- 37:09Speaker 2: often take a draw or a salary. Let's imagine Jason
- 37:14Speaker 2: and I start a business. I used to do this
- 37:16Speaker 2: with Paul. If you and I started a business, what
- 37:17Speaker 2: would it be? Sports gambling. That's a dumb example. I
- 37:25Speaker 2: don't know what business I would start. I mean, what?
- 37:29Speaker 2: Dog walking business. I don't want to be doing that.
- 37:33Speaker 2: First of all, the dog might not like me, and secondly,
- 37:35Speaker 2: it requires me to walk. All right, we start a business.
- 37:39Speaker 2: Let's imagine we take in $ 225, 000 a year after our expenses,
- 37:45Speaker 2: and we decide to pay ourselves $ 90, 000 each as a salary.
- 37:48Speaker 2: I'm the president. You're, of course, the vice president. Well,
- 37:52Speaker 2: it would show that we made a profit of only $ 45, 000.
- 37:56Speaker 2: In many cases, because of the way business taxes are treated,
- 37:59Speaker 2: sometimes it's more advantageous to take the money as personal
- 38:03Speaker 2: income by giving yourself a salary. In other instances, it
- 38:07Speaker 2: is more advantageous to put the money into the business profit,
- 38:10Speaker 2: but it can make what the business is paying in
- 38:12Speaker 2: taxes be somewhat misleading. You can have a business that's
- 38:16Speaker 2: barely making any money, but you personally, as the owner
- 38:19Speaker 2: of the business, if you give yourself a giant salary,
- 38:22Speaker 2: You're still making the money. Update on the story. The
- 38:42Speaker 2: story about the majority of the coaching staff at West
- 38:45Speaker 2: Dallas Hale High School quitting shortly before the season started
- 38:50Speaker 2: amid an investigation. I commented on the story, I think
- 38:53Speaker 2: it was last week, on one of the podcasts, and
- 38:58Speaker 2: I expressed the frustration over this because we don't know
- 39:01Speaker 2: what it is that they're being investigated for. And in
- 39:06Speaker 2: this day and age, when it involves teachers, sometimes people
- 39:08Speaker 2: think the worst. Were they messing around with minors, child pornography?
- 39:13Speaker 2: It can be anything. It appears as though they resigned
- 39:19Speaker 2: after at least some of them were told that they
- 39:21Speaker 2: might be fired. But we don't know that. And then
- 39:24Speaker 2: nobody was talking. The school district didn't talk. And none
- 39:26Speaker 2: of the coaches are talking. And I think I said
- 39:32Speaker 2: at the time, nobody's leaked anything to me on this,
- 39:34Speaker 2: which usually I get leaked stuff like that. My whole career,
- 39:39Speaker 2: the kind of oddball story like this, this is the
- 39:41Speaker 2: one where somebody would tell me, and no one had. Anyway,
- 39:45Speaker 2: there has been information now reported that Pretty good job
- 39:48Speaker 2: of reporting by Carly Murata of Channel 4. You know,
- 39:54Speaker 2: I've also commented this from time to time. There's a
- 39:56Speaker 2: time in which I knew the names of every, I
- 39:58Speaker 2: didn't know them all personally, but I knew the names
- 40:00Speaker 2: of everybody who worked at the three, initially three, and
- 40:03Speaker 2: then eventually four local TV news departments. I don't hardly
- 40:07Speaker 2: know any of them anymore. They're all retired, and everybody
- 40:10Speaker 2: else that's on the air, they're all just so, I
- 40:13Speaker 2: swear they're all the same person. They are AIs. I
- 40:20Speaker 2: was just talking over the weekend to somebody who's been
- 40:22Speaker 2: involved in local TV for decades. I won't go beyond that.
- 40:25Speaker 2: And he told me about one of the consulting firms,
- 40:27Speaker 2: and I actually know that one. I've heard the reputation
- 40:31Speaker 2: in that firm forever and ever and ever that they
- 40:33Speaker 2: take a cookie-cutter approach in every news department. News departments
- 40:35Speaker 2: that they consult in the United States, they all have
- 40:37Speaker 2: newscasts that are exactly the same. And if you drive
- 40:39Speaker 2: around the country and turn the TV on to do
- 40:41Speaker 2: the news, I mean, the news is almost always the same.
- 40:44Speaker 2: And the anchors are usually never people from around here.
- 40:47Speaker 2: And you can tell that they never really know what
- 40:49Speaker 2: it is that they're talking about because they don't have
- 40:51Speaker 2: any history or they have any context. And they don't
- 40:53Speaker 2: last long enough because the pay is so crappy. I mean,
- 40:56Speaker 2: who do I know? I know Nick Borg. Nick Bohr
- 40:59Speaker 2: is still a champ. That's actually an odd one because
- 41:01Speaker 2: nobody lasts as long as he has without getting promoted.
- 41:04Speaker 2: He's never been promoted. He's always been like the lead
- 41:06Speaker 2: street reporter. He was the number two reporter when Colleen
- 41:09Speaker 2: Henry was there and she finally left. And then it
- 41:13Speaker 2: was Nick Bohr. Nick Bohr went from skinny to fat
- 41:16Speaker 2: over the 30 years that he was on TV. Yeah,
- 41:18Speaker 2: that's what he did. I know him. He actually, I think,
- 41:21Speaker 2: worked at WISN Radio way back in the 90s before
- 41:24Speaker 2: he went into TV. Hardly any others. I mean, all
- 41:30Speaker 2: the others have retired. Jason's newer to Milwaukee. Can you
- 41:34Speaker 2: name anybody in any of the TV stations? Some guy
- 41:40Speaker 2: from Channel 12. What's his name? Matt Smith. It sounds
- 41:44Speaker 2: like a fake name. Anyway, Carly Murata is, she's obviously
- 41:56Speaker 2: one of the Murata family in Milwaukee, Mark Murata. tragically
- 42:01Speaker 2: passed away. Heart blew out on him after a workout.
- 42:06Speaker 2: His wife, Kim, worked for whatever Miller Coors is called
- 42:09Speaker 2: these days. And Carly's sister was a big-time college basketball player.
- 42:16Speaker 2: The brother, Cam, sat on the bench at Marquette. He's
- 42:19Speaker 2: now involved in running a clinic and so on. The Moratas,
- 42:21Speaker 2: they're fairly well-known. Carly Morata worked in Madison for a
- 42:25Speaker 2: few years, and now she's been hired as the sports
- 42:27Speaker 2: director at Channel 4. She seems to me to be
- 42:30Speaker 2: very talented. And in terms of all these people that
- 42:33Speaker 2: are just nameless and faceless, she just sort of breaks
- 42:35Speaker 2: through to me and you notice her. She broke this story.
- 42:39Speaker 2: She broke it. I think it came and it fell
- 42:41Speaker 2: in her lap because it looks like, based on her reporting,
- 42:43Speaker 2: that one of the coaches involved contacted her. She said
- 42:47Speaker 2: in her report, I'm not going to name him. When
- 42:55Speaker 2: do you go with an unnamed source? I'm not sure
- 42:57Speaker 2: I would have agreed to do that in this instance
- 42:59Speaker 2: because if he's going to put his side of the
- 43:04Speaker 2: story out there, I kind of think that he should
- 43:06Speaker 2: put his name behind it, but maybe I wouldn't have
- 43:08Speaker 2: done it. That's a very close call. But that coach
- 43:11Speaker 2: stated that all of this was about a group chat,
- 43:17Speaker 2: a group text rather. You know what a group text is?
- 43:20Speaker 2: It's when instead of a group text are so annoying. Because,
- 43:24Speaker 2: you know, you get seven people involved in the group thing,
- 43:26Speaker 2: and any time one person would chime in and then
- 43:28Speaker 2: somebody else responds, your phone keeps dinging and digging and dinging.
- 43:31Speaker 2: It's why my phone is almost always on silent. Well,
- 43:34Speaker 2: they're in this, and they, like, text about various things.
- 43:38Speaker 2: And apparently one of the things that they were texting about,
- 43:40Speaker 2: according to this coach who spoke to Channel 4 anonymously, or,
- 43:45Speaker 2: you know, not anonymously to them, but they're not reporting
- 43:48Speaker 2: his name, is they apparently were making fun of the
- 43:52Speaker 2: athletic director. And in particular, they made fun of him
- 43:57Speaker 2: by comparing him to Grimace, which is one of those
- 44:00Speaker 2: McDonald's characters. You have kids. They're not old enough. You
- 44:04Speaker 2: know what Grimace is? It's like Grimace is purple and
- 44:08Speaker 2: is shaped like the average Wisconsin fat person. In other words,
- 44:10Speaker 2: you just keep getting wider as you go down. Well,
- 44:14Speaker 2: I actually looked at the athletic director's LinkedIn page, and
- 44:17Speaker 2: I could probably see that. You only see his face,
- 44:19Speaker 2: but he looks like the kind of guy that would
- 44:22Speaker 2: kind of shape out like a triangle going down there. Well,
- 44:24Speaker 2: they called him Grimace, and they're making fun of him.
- 44:28Speaker 2: And according to this coach, his report about Channel 4,
- 44:31Speaker 2: that was basically it. Well, if that's all it is,
- 44:39Speaker 2: Somebody needs to say that because people are wondering whether
- 44:42Speaker 2: or not, and well, again, these coaches have not been
- 44:44Speaker 2: named in the media. Everybody at West Dallas Hale, these
- 44:47Speaker 2: were their coaches. They know, some are teachers, they know
- 44:50Speaker 2: who they are. Now, again, this is this coach's version.
- 44:55Speaker 2: All it was is a group text. And yeah, we
- 44:58Speaker 2: made fun of the athletic director. It may be more
- 45:02Speaker 2: than that because we only have his version and the
- 45:04Speaker 2: school district because, you know, they've got, obviously, confidentiality problems
- 45:08Speaker 2: with regard to personnel. They're not supposed to be able
- 45:11Speaker 2: to tell you what it is that they're investigating. It
- 45:13Speaker 2: doesn't look like there's anything criminal associated with it, so
- 45:16Speaker 2: we don't know that that's all that this is, but
- 45:18Speaker 2: maybe it is. So let's analyze it and assume that
- 45:20Speaker 2: this is what it is. There are two ways to
- 45:25Speaker 2: look at this. Is this a school district that is overreacting? Well,
- 45:29Speaker 2: it sure seems like it, but It also seems to
- 45:33Speaker 2: me that it's insubordination. I think if a college football
- 45:42Speaker 2: coach is making fun of his athletic director, there's a
- 45:46Speaker 2: good chance that athletic director is going to get rid
- 45:48Speaker 2: of him. If I find out that Jason's making fun
- 45:55Speaker 2: of me right and left and I find out about it,
- 45:56Speaker 2: I'm not, I don't know that I want him to
- 45:58Speaker 2: keep doing the show. In addition to that, these idiots
- 46:04Speaker 2: did it in a group text. That is, by the way,
- 46:07Speaker 2: a public record. They're government employees. They work for a
- 46:10Speaker 2: school district. And your text, if they deal with things
- 46:14Speaker 2: relating to school district business and the athletic, if they're
- 46:17Speaker 2: coaches and he's the athletic director, it clearly is. In
- 46:21Speaker 2: addition to that, if they were using, by the way,
- 46:23Speaker 2: A school district's cell phones, they're now doing it in
- 46:26Speaker 2: a way that they can be monitored. Probably what happened
- 46:28Speaker 2: is this group text involved a whole lot of people,
- 46:31Speaker 2: or group chat or whatever you want to call it,
- 46:33Speaker 2: involved a whole lot of people, and somebody showed it
- 46:35Speaker 2: to others in the administration, and somebody screenshotted it and
- 46:39Speaker 2: ratted them out. It's one thing if you want to
- 46:44Speaker 2: gossip among yourselves, but people who do this stuff in text,
- 46:48Speaker 2: or for that matter, emails or Facebook postings, They're pretty
- 46:53Speaker 2: damn stupid, but I admit a lot of people do it.
- 47:00Speaker 2: If I know somebody in government, and I don't have
- 47:02Speaker 2: a personal relationship with hardly anybody in government, a few people,
- 47:07Speaker 2: we don't text about anything. We do it via speaking.
- 47:12Speaker 2: You're creating a public record otherwise. In terms of our
- 47:16Speaker 2: own company here, I have numerous email addresses, but one
- 47:19Speaker 2: of them deals with iHeartMedia. My company has a right
- 47:21Speaker 2: to read anything I'm putting on my email. Well, I
- 47:23Speaker 2: know that. So my company business and a couple of
- 47:28Speaker 2: other things I do on that one, the other ones
- 47:30Speaker 2: are in the other thing. So does this sound like
- 47:34Speaker 2: it was an athletic director who got his nose out
- 47:39Speaker 2: of joint? Yes, it does. On the other hand, we
- 47:43Speaker 2: don't know the full extent of what this is. It
- 47:45Speaker 2: does seem to me, however, that if the athletic director
- 47:48Speaker 2: had a problem with this, rather than dealing with the
- 47:51Speaker 2: employees at the beginning of the season, he should have
- 47:55Speaker 2: let those coaches serve out the football season and then
- 47:59Speaker 2: fired their asses or brought them up on charges or whatever,
- 48:02Speaker 2: because now you're just screwing up the kids. And the
- 48:04Speaker 2: West Allis football teams, usually most years they're overmatched, not all.
- 48:10Speaker 2: Because they're a larger school, and they're competing against, often against,
- 48:13Speaker 2: there's realignment a lot of times here, but often they
- 48:15Speaker 2: compete against these larger suburban school districts, bigger facilities, bigger
- 48:20Speaker 2: practice fields, and all of that stuff. So these kids,
- 48:23Speaker 2: you know, they're up against it. They had to play
- 48:25Speaker 2: the first game of the season against the high school
- 48:27Speaker 2: I went to, Kaukauna, which historically is a pretty good
- 48:30Speaker 2: team from the Fox Valley, which is, right now, the
- 48:33Speaker 2: Fox Valley and the Milwaukee suburbs are by far the
- 48:36Speaker 2: two dominant areas of the state. The Madison area would
- 48:38Speaker 2: be third. Anyway, Well, they got pasted in their home opener.
- 48:46Speaker 2: It wasn't fair to the kids to do this, to
- 48:48Speaker 2: take away all their coaches this early on in the season.
- 48:51Speaker 2: But certainly, if the AD felt that this was insubordination,
- 48:55Speaker 2: and maybe it is, if he is your athletic director,
- 49:01Speaker 2: you can say, well, they were doing it privately. I
- 49:03Speaker 2: don't think a group text is private. I just don't.
- 49:06Speaker 2: Saying it aloud, would be private if you're just a
- 49:09Speaker 2: group of five or six people that are there. So
- 49:13Speaker 2: I don't think I would have fired him. It's probably
- 49:15Speaker 2: somebody that's got his nose out of joint. And maybe
- 49:17Speaker 2: I the athletic director at that school is only in
- 49:20Speaker 2: his second year so maybe he just he doesn't like
- 49:22Speaker 2: the you know he's made changes the staff there doesn't
- 49:24Speaker 2: like him so forth and so on but I think
- 49:28Speaker 2: to bring all of this up right before the beginning
- 49:30Speaker 2: of the football season was not in the best interest
- 49:33Speaker 2: of the kids involved but in the end the athletic
- 49:35Speaker 2: director can hire the coaches that he wants to hire
- 49:37Speaker 2: and if he thinks that the coaches that are working
- 49:39Speaker 2: for him are insolent and insubordinate, he certainly has the
- 49:43Speaker 2: right to get rid of them. Speaking of high school football,
- 49:48Speaker 2: I don't know if everybody all knows this, but you
- 49:51Speaker 2: know way more about sports than you let on. I mean,
- 49:53Speaker 2: what did you just tell me the other day that
- 49:55Speaker 2: was so obscure that it blew me away? You said
- 49:58Speaker 2: something that was just unbelievable. What? No, it wasn't just
- 50:03Speaker 2: Ray Rice, although I was amazed you remembered that. It
- 50:05Speaker 2: was something even beyond that. Anyway. Do you know who
- 50:10Speaker 2: Kingston Allen is? Oh, I got one on him. He's
- 50:16Speaker 2: a running back at Green Bay, Notre Dame. Notre Dame, obviously,
- 50:20Speaker 2: is the Catholic high school in Green Bay, and it
- 50:23Speaker 2: was a consolidated school. Years ago, De Pere had a
- 50:26Speaker 2: big Catholic high school, and Green Bay had a big
- 50:28Speaker 2: Catholic high school. So the Permanente was the Green Bay school,
- 50:32Speaker 2: and Abbott Pennings was the De Pere school. So now
- 50:35Speaker 2: it's the Catholic school that serves Broad area in northeastern Wisconsin,
- 50:39Speaker 2: Green Bay, Notre Dame, and they're very good. They make
- 50:42Speaker 2: the state playoffs, and they're better. There's a public school
- 50:47Speaker 2: that's just in the Green Bay suburbs, Bayport, that's very,
- 50:51Speaker 2: very good. But Green Bay, Notre Dame is a strong
- 50:52Speaker 2: football program. They have a running back, Kingston Allen. In
- 50:55Speaker 2: the opening game last weekend, he ran for 456 yards.
- 51:03Speaker 2: That's almost impossible. Ron Dane of the Badgers, I think
- 51:08Speaker 2: holds the Badgers single-season record. It might have been a
- 51:10Speaker 2: game that they played against Hawaii, my recollection, back in
- 51:13Speaker 2: his era. And he was in the several hundreds. It
- 51:17Speaker 2: was just, you know, Ron Dane, when he played an
- 51:18Speaker 2: inferior opponent in college football, just could not be stopped. Plus,
- 51:21Speaker 2: he had the advantage of running behind unbelievable offensive lines.
- 51:24Speaker 2: Kingston Allen ran for 456 yards. Now, Notre Dame's offense,
- 51:28Speaker 2: I recall, it seems to me they were in the
- 51:30Speaker 2: Division II title game last year, two or three, don't remember.
- 51:33Speaker 2: But they're one of those schools that runs at almost
- 51:35Speaker 2: every play. That's their offense. Anyway, he is a Wisconsin recruit.
- 51:39Speaker 2: He's four-star according to the recruiting services. And he's already
- 51:42Speaker 2: ranked as one of the top running backs coming out
- 51:44Speaker 2: of high school this year. He's a senior, but he
- 51:46Speaker 2: ran for 456 yards. So I have that one of you.
- 51:52Speaker 2: I know that. It was Rondane. Was it over 400? 339,
- 51:56Speaker 2: which again, for one college game is... It's just, you know,
- 52:04Speaker 2: the field is only 100 yards. And if you take over, say,
- 52:07Speaker 2: on the 42 and he runs it every play and
- 52:09Speaker 2: you score a touchdown, that's only 58. Plus, if you
- 52:12Speaker 2: run a lot, it's time-consuming. But it's hard to get
- 52:15Speaker 2: that many. But in high school, they played 12-minute periods.
- 52:19Speaker 2: And I don't recall if they– oh, they played a great–
- 52:23Speaker 2: not a great. They played a really good team. They
- 52:25Speaker 2: played Nina. Nina's very good, and it was just a
- 52:28Speaker 2: shootout game. I think Notre Dame won 56-53. Maybe Nina won,
- 52:32Speaker 2: but I think Notre Dame won. So it was a
- 52:33Speaker 2: case of both teams are just scoring at will against
- 52:36Speaker 2: one another. You're listening to the Mark Belling Podcast. This
- 52:45Speaker 2: is the Mark Belling Podcast. We need to comment on
- 52:50Speaker 2: the death of Dolly Parton. There are two groups of
- 52:55Speaker 2: people in the United States, people who like country music
- 52:57Speaker 2: and people who don't like country music. And the people
- 52:59Speaker 2: who don't like country music, you can't even, all you
- 53:02Speaker 2: have to do is start bringing up something associated with
- 53:04Speaker 2: country music and then just pipe in, I don't like
- 53:05Speaker 2: country music. My former producer, Paul, was one of those.
- 53:10Speaker 2: He's a musician, he's a drummer, and he would just
- 53:12Speaker 2: always say, I don't like country music. All of it,
- 53:15Speaker 2: and then you get cracks and he'd acknowledge that certain
- 53:18Speaker 2: performers are really good, but he generally said he didn't
- 53:20Speaker 2: like country music. Dolly Parton Obviously, after she hit it really,
- 53:27Speaker 2: really big, transcended country music because she was no longer
- 53:31Speaker 2: just a country music star. She was a movie star.
- 53:36Speaker 2: Did a talk show. She was a major guest at
- 53:38Speaker 2: a lot of things. She became an American cultural icon.
- 53:43Speaker 2: But before that, and I could speak with authority here
- 53:49Speaker 2: because I was there. This was my prime of paying
- 53:53Speaker 2: attention to music years. Most people pay the most attention
- 53:57Speaker 2: to music in their teens and 20s. And that's when
- 54:01Speaker 2: Dolly Parton broke through and made it big. And she
- 54:07Speaker 2: looked like a caricature of a country music star. The
- 54:11Speaker 2: huge boobs, the big hair, all the makeup. I think
- 54:18Speaker 2: the turning point in her career when she went from
- 54:22Speaker 2: somebody that was enormous among country music fans, and this
- 54:28Speaker 2: oddity to everybody else, was the movie 9 to 5.
- 54:32Speaker 2: You know, 9 to 5 was sort of a, it
- 54:34Speaker 2: wasn't really a feminist movie, it was a comedy, great cast.
- 54:36Speaker 2: It was Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and her, and Dabney Coleman,
- 54:40Speaker 2: who went on to be considered one of the greatest
- 54:43Speaker 2: comedic character actors ever. He played the boss of the company. Anyway,
- 54:46Speaker 2: that's what it was. It was after that that she
- 54:48Speaker 2: sort of became mainstream, and she started doing duets that
- 54:53Speaker 2: were more crossover songs than country, and she did some
- 54:56Speaker 2: with Kenny Rogers and a few others. However, prior to that,
- 55:01Speaker 2: prior to her making it huge in terms of national recognition,
- 55:06Speaker 2: she had established herself as one of the most talented
- 55:11Speaker 2: country music stars ever. But to the larger society, she
- 55:18Speaker 2: was a joke. And remember, this is the 70s. Feminism
- 55:22Speaker 2: is all the rage. But she was now making it big.
- 55:28Speaker 2: I don't have the exact time of this interview, but
- 55:30Speaker 2: it was right around the time that 9to5 came out,
- 55:33Speaker 2: and she was transforming herself from country music star to
- 55:40Speaker 2: American superstar. And she was interviewed by Barbara Walters. Barbara
- 55:44Speaker 2: Walters made a cottage industry out of doing, like, every...
- 55:49Speaker 2: year she would do like four specials a year in
- 55:51Speaker 2: which she'd interview two or three celebrities. And they were
- 55:54Speaker 2: given prime slots like right before the Oscars and so on.
- 55:58Speaker 2: And Barbara Walters interviewed Ali Parton. This interview is famous.
- 56:03Speaker 2: So I'm going to play a segment of it for
- 56:05Speaker 2: you here. And I'm not trying to pass this off.
- 56:07Speaker 2: I just discovered this. This interview is famous. And the
- 56:14Speaker 2: reason it's famous is You know, Barbara Walters is as
- 56:18Speaker 2: New York as you can possibly be. And Dolly Parton
- 56:21Speaker 2: is as middle American as you can possibly be. And
- 56:27Speaker 2: this interview from Barbara Walters is so condescending. This was
- 56:34Speaker 2: an early glimpse in the 70s of what the cultural
- 56:39Speaker 2: elites thought of flyover country. The cultural elites, the two coasts,
- 56:46Speaker 2: New York, Los Angeles, the big media institutions there, all
- 56:51Speaker 2: of the opinion leaders. And they looked at this woman
- 56:58Speaker 2: trying to make herself look all attractive and so over
- 57:02Speaker 2: the top. What'd you do with the big hair? Your
- 57:04Speaker 2: boobs are clearly fake. Why do you have all the makeup?
- 57:07Speaker 2: Why would you possibly look like this? And the point
- 57:12Speaker 2: from Barbara Walters, it's so condescending. It's essentially, grow up, girl.
- 57:20Speaker 2: You don't have to do this. And Dolly Parton's responses
- 57:27Speaker 2: were so good. You know, the term that's been used
- 57:31Speaker 2: over the years for somebody who doesn't have a lot
- 57:35Speaker 2: of hangups is comfortable in their own skin. We're going
- 57:38Speaker 2: to play about a four-minute excerpt of this interview. And
- 57:42Speaker 2: I think that this was a glimpse of of what
- 57:46Speaker 2: was going to come decades to come of the condescension
- 57:51Speaker 2: that the elitists have for many of us in America,
- 57:56Speaker 2: which I think hit its apex with the MAGA movement
- 58:00Speaker 2: and the condescension toward anyone who would support Donald Trump. And, well,
- 58:05Speaker 2: I think Dolly was politically liberal. She never let it
- 58:07Speaker 2: really get out. I just sense that. In her own way,
- 58:11Speaker 2: she was similar to Trump. because Trump was also larger
- 58:15Speaker 2: than life and looked, you know, Trump has big hair
- 58:17Speaker 2: the way Dolly had big hair and so on. Anyway,
- 58:20Speaker 2: let's play this portion of that interview.
- 58:22Speaker 3: Dolly, where I come from, would I have called you
- 58:26Speaker 3: a hillbilly?
- 58:28Speaker 4: If you had of, it would have been something very natural,
- 58:30Speaker 4: but I would have probably kicked your shins or something.
- 58:34Speaker 2: No, actually.
- 58:34Speaker 3: But when I think of hillbillies, am I thinking of
- 58:36Speaker 3: your kind of people?
- 58:37Speaker 4: I think you probably are. The people that grew up
- 58:39Speaker 4: where I was were the ones that you would consider
- 58:42Speaker 4: the little Abner people, Daisy Mae and that sort of thing.
- 58:45Speaker 4: They took that kind of thing from people like us.
- 58:49Speaker 4: But we were very proud people, people with a lot
- 58:53Speaker 4: of class. It was country class, but it was a
- 58:55Speaker 4: great deal of class. And Most of my people were
- 58:59Speaker 4: not that educated, but they are very, very intelligent. Good
- 59:03Speaker 4: common sense, horse sense, we called it.
- 59:05Speaker 3: Dolly, did you look like this when you were a kid?
- 59:07Speaker 4: Not quite.
- 59:08Speaker 3: I mean, you didn't have the blonde hair. wig, but
- 59:10Speaker 3: when you went to school, when you were 11, 12, 13,
- 59:16Speaker 3: was it this about you?
- 59:18Speaker 4: Well, you mean the full... um figure yeah that's what
- 59:23Speaker 4: i meant yeah i thought that's what you meant well
- 59:25Speaker 4: actually i've always been pretty well blessed uh as a
- 59:29Speaker 4: child i grew up fast uh other members of my
- 59:32Speaker 4: family you know have done the same.
- 59:33Speaker 3: My assistant asked me something and i'm going to blame
- 59:37Speaker 3: it on her because i wouldn't have had the nerve
- 59:39Speaker 3: otherwise is it all you.
- 59:42Speaker 4: Well i can't show you here right on television I'll
- 59:45Speaker 4: take your word for it. I get asked that question.
- 59:47Speaker 4: I always answer that because people are in awe of
- 59:51Speaker 4: the whole thing. A lot of people say I have.
- 59:53Speaker 4: A lot of people say I haven't. I always say
- 59:56Speaker 4: that if I hadn't had it on my own, I'm
- 59:58Speaker 4: just the kind of person that would have had me
- 1:00:00Speaker 4: some maid.
- 1:00:01Speaker 3: You don't have to look like this.
- 1:00:03Speaker 2: You're very beautiful.
- 1:00:04Speaker 3: You don't have to wear the blonde wigs. You don't
- 1:00:06Speaker 3: have to wear the extreme clothes.
- 1:00:07Speaker 2: Stop the tape. Now, this is the question. You don't
- 1:00:10Speaker 2: have to look like this. You're so beautiful. You don't
- 1:00:14Speaker 2: have to have the wig on. You don't have to
- 1:00:16Speaker 2: have these over-the-top clothes. Listen to Dolly's response.
- 1:00:22Speaker 4: No, it's certainly a choice. I don't like to be
- 1:00:26Speaker 4: like everybody else. I've often made this statement that I
- 1:00:29Speaker 4: would never stoop so low as to be fashionable. That's
- 1:00:31Speaker 4: the easiest thing in the world to do. So I
- 1:00:33Speaker 4: just decided that I would do something that would at
- 1:00:36Speaker 4: least get the attention. Once they got past the shock
- 1:00:39Speaker 4: of the ridiculous way I looked and all that, then
- 1:00:42Speaker 4: they would see there was fashion. parts of me to
- 1:00:45Speaker 4: be appreciated. I'm very real where it counts and that's
- 1:00:48Speaker 4: inside and as far as my outlook on life and
- 1:00:50Speaker 4: the way I care about people and the way I
- 1:00:52Speaker 4: care about myself and the things that I care about.
- 1:00:55Speaker 4: But I just chose to do this and show business
- 1:00:58Speaker 4: is a money making joke and I just always like
- 1:01:02Speaker 4: telling jokes.
- 1:01:03Speaker 3: But do you ever feel that you're a joke? That
- 1:01:06Speaker 3: people make fun of you?
- 1:01:07Speaker 4: Oh I know they make fun of me. But actually,
- 1:01:09Speaker 4: all these years, the people, you know, have thought the
- 1:01:12Speaker 4: joke was on me, but it's actually been on the public.
- 1:01:15Speaker 4: I know exactly what I'm doing and I can change
- 1:01:17Speaker 4: it at any time. I make more jokes about myself
- 1:01:20Speaker 4: than anybody because I enjoy it. I know, like I say,
- 1:01:24Speaker 4: I am sure of myself as a person. I'm sure
- 1:01:27Speaker 4: of my talents. And to me, and I'm sure of
- 1:01:30Speaker 4: my love for life and that sort of thing, I'm
- 1:01:33Speaker 4: very content. I like the kind of person that I am.
- 1:01:35Speaker 4: So I can afford to piddle around and doodle around
- 1:01:39Speaker 4: with makeups and clothes and stuff because I am secure
- 1:01:43Speaker 4: with myself.
- 1:01:45Speaker 3: Listen, tell me about this marriage of yours, this man
- 1:01:48Speaker 3: whom nobody ever seems to see. We heard that he
- 1:01:50Speaker 3: was here.
- 1:01:51Speaker 2: We heard that he was in town, but none of us.
- 1:01:52Speaker 1: Have seen him.
- 1:01:53Speaker 3: Pauline, you don't see him very much. You're on the
- 1:01:56Speaker 3: road most of the time. You've said, I know that
- 1:01:58Speaker 3: this marriage will always last. This man gives me everything
- 1:02:02Speaker 3: I need. How do you know?
- 1:02:04Speaker 4: Well, I need freedom. The man gives me freedom.
- 1:02:07Speaker 3: So why get married?
- 1:02:08Speaker 4: Well, why not?
- 1:02:10Speaker 2: Why?
- 1:02:10Speaker 3: I mean, if what you want most is freedom, why
- 1:02:12Speaker 3: have a husband tucked away someplace to see six weeks
- 1:02:14Speaker 3: a year?
- 1:02:15Speaker 4: But he has the same freedom. See, the thing of
- 1:02:17Speaker 4: it is, you don't find a person that you can
- 1:02:19Speaker 4: be happy with and that can accept you the way
- 1:02:21Speaker 4: you are and can share the things and the plan
- 1:02:24Speaker 4: for the future and to enjoy your home. We have
- 1:02:26Speaker 4: our foundation. We have our roots. We have all the
- 1:02:28Speaker 4: things that everybody's looking for, and that's happiness in a marriage.
- 1:02:31Speaker 4: I've got better things to do than to sit around
- 1:02:33Speaker 4: in my room thinking, oh, what's Carl doing tonight? I
- 1:02:35Speaker 4: wonder if he's with somebody and this and that.
- 1:02:39Speaker 2: Nope. That interview was about 50 years ago. So Dolly
- 1:02:44Speaker 2: Parton wasn't just, this is as I say, this is
- 1:02:46Speaker 2: right when she was going from, she was a country
- 1:02:48Speaker 2: music superstar from the beginning, from the beginning. But then
- 1:02:53Speaker 2: she transitioned over, and that's when she was this curiosity,
- 1:02:56Speaker 2: and then there's this interview. And the attitude of Barbara Walters,
- 1:03:00Speaker 2: I mean, it holds today. There are still today women
- 1:03:03Speaker 2: who dress and look like Dolly Parton, and they get
- 1:03:06Speaker 2: made fun of. And they get made fun of by people. Well,
- 1:03:11Speaker 2: that's not classy. That's trashy. That's not how you're supposed
- 1:03:19Speaker 2: to look. Yet you consider how so many of them
- 1:03:26Speaker 2: look and how now they're willing to embrace some guy
- 1:03:31Speaker 2: that shaves most of his hair and lets the remaining
- 1:03:34Speaker 2: portion of it go purple. The story in the Oshkosh
- 1:03:38Speaker 2: school district is a fascinating example of that. All of
- 1:03:41Speaker 2: that is a choice that's acceptable. In the meantime, Dolly
- 1:03:45Speaker 2: Parton created this image, and as she said, I knew
- 1:03:47Speaker 2: exactly what I was doing. I'm going to be so
- 1:03:50Speaker 2: attention-getting by my appearance that people are going to pay
- 1:03:53Speaker 2: attention and notice me, and then they're going to notice
- 1:03:54Speaker 2: your music, which is exactly what happened. But that condescension
- 1:03:59Speaker 2: toward her and her values and her part of the
- 1:04:04Speaker 2: world It's been going on forever. She had one of
- 1:04:12Speaker 2: the greatest ways, however, of refuting and explaining it. And
- 1:04:18Speaker 2: as I said, that interview is famous because, I mean,
- 1:04:20Speaker 2: you can't listen to the interview without believing that she
- 1:04:23Speaker 2: made Barbara Walters look like an idiot. Barbara Walters felt
- 1:04:26Speaker 2: as though she was going to, in her superioristic way,
- 1:04:31Speaker 2: kind of work Dolly into the actual now real stardom.
- 1:04:35Speaker 2: You can get past this country stuff. You're rid of
- 1:04:38Speaker 2: the hair and all of that. And she never did.
- 1:04:42Speaker 2: And by the way, her marriage did last the 50 years.
- 1:04:44Speaker 2: Her husband, Carl, passed away a few years ago. And
- 1:04:49Speaker 2: she never changed her appearance. If anything, she got more beautiful. Clearly,
- 1:04:54Speaker 2: there's a lot of work that's been done in there.
- 1:04:57Speaker 2: But a lot of people have that work, and they
- 1:04:58Speaker 2: end up looking terrible. The other part of Dolly Parton.
- 1:05:04Speaker 2: I posted an ex yesterday, and I frankly don't even
- 1:05:08Speaker 2: think it's controversial. Greatest country singer-songwriter, female country singer-songwriter of
- 1:05:14Speaker 2: all time. I can't say altogether greatest. That's a really
- 1:05:19Speaker 2: close call involving a lot of people. And I also
- 1:05:21Speaker 2: had to put in country. Is Carole King greater than
- 1:05:28Speaker 2: Dolly Parton? They're both female singer-songwriters. It's so close. And
- 1:05:32Speaker 2: there are a couple of others that would be in there.
- 1:05:34Speaker 2: But in terms of country music, yeah. I found her talent,
- 1:05:42Speaker 2: and again, I discovered her when I was listening to
- 1:05:45Speaker 2: a lot of music. And at the time I was
- 1:05:47Speaker 2: listening to a lot of music, country was not cool.
- 1:05:50Speaker 2: Country boomed. There was a turning point in country music
- 1:05:52Speaker 2: when it went from being so... The only guy that
- 1:05:57Speaker 2: anybody would pay any attention to when I was in
- 1:05:58Speaker 2: college was Johnny Cash because he sort of was, in
- 1:06:01Speaker 2: his own way, rebellious. Country turned its corner when they
- 1:06:05Speaker 2: made this movie, The Urban Cowboy. John Travolta, it was
- 1:06:08Speaker 2: his follow-up to Saturday Night Fever, and a lot of
- 1:06:10Speaker 2: country music moved away from the real twangy stuff to
- 1:06:15Speaker 2: very accessible. That's when all the outlaws came in, when
- 1:06:18Speaker 2: Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, the band Alabama, a lot
- 1:06:23Speaker 2: of those groups came on at that time, and that's
- 1:06:25Speaker 2: when country music had, I think, its incredible heyday. But
- 1:06:29Speaker 2: Dolly had it before that. And one of the things
- 1:06:35Speaker 2: that made her extraordinary is she didn't write all of
- 1:06:38Speaker 2: her own songs, but she wrote a lot of them,
- 1:06:40Speaker 2: especially early on. And the songs were not only incredible musically,
- 1:06:48Speaker 2: but so poignant and provocative and creative. Now, one of
- 1:06:52Speaker 2: the things we can't do on podcasts is play music.
- 1:06:56Speaker 2: I get asked this all the time. It has to
- 1:06:57Speaker 2: do with copyright. What I can tell those of you
- 1:07:01Speaker 2: who aren't that familiar with her music, which songs to
- 1:07:03Speaker 2: go look up. And Jolene is the one I would choose,
- 1:07:09Speaker 2: and it's the one that just about everybody would choose.
- 1:07:12Speaker 2: I think Jolene is one of the most incredible songs ever.
- 1:07:18Speaker 2: It's not only catchy. I can't think of hardly any
- 1:07:24Speaker 2: songs in which the protagonist of the song is so
- 1:07:31Speaker 2: willing to kind of expose her frailties and weaknesses. In
- 1:07:38Speaker 2: the song Jolene, which is clearly first person, and Dolly
- 1:07:41Speaker 2: Parton has said it was based on a real story,
- 1:07:44Speaker 2: she's begging this woman who's more attractive than her not
- 1:07:49Speaker 2: to steal her husband. And she doesn't do it the
- 1:07:52Speaker 2: way most songs have been done. You bitch, you hussy, don't.
- 1:07:56Speaker 2: You're so beautiful, you're so nice, I can't stand up
- 1:07:59Speaker 2: to you. And I remember that song, you're kind of thinking...
- 1:08:04Speaker 2: Just no matter what any of these elites would have said,
- 1:08:07Speaker 2: damn near any guy in the world would have loved
- 1:08:09Speaker 2: to have had Dolly Parton. Who in the world could
- 1:08:11Speaker 2: she be jealous? And as it turns out, we now
- 1:08:14Speaker 2: know the nature of her marriage. There's Carl sitting back
- 1:08:16Speaker 2: there in Tennessee most of the year. And Jolene was
- 1:08:18Speaker 2: a bank teller. And apparently she's making eyes, and she
- 1:08:22Speaker 2: wrote this song. It's an extraordinary piece of music. It's
- 1:08:26Speaker 2: not only very catchy, it's so inventive, and it has
- 1:08:30Speaker 2: such a vulnerability to it. And in the end, so positive.
- 1:08:34Speaker 2: She's got no resentment toward her at all. It's an
- 1:08:36Speaker 2: unusual song. She's told the following story a bunch of times.
- 1:08:44Speaker 2: I've discussed this in the past. I still don't believe it.
- 1:08:46Speaker 2: I just don't believe it. I don't believe it's possible.
- 1:08:49Speaker 2: Take that back. I think it's possible. I find it
- 1:08:52Speaker 2: highly unlikely. It's probably apocryphal. They were probably written close together,
- 1:08:58Speaker 2: but she has claimed that she wrote Jolene and I
- 1:09:01Speaker 2: Will Always Love You on the same day. There's no way.
- 1:09:06Speaker 2: Those are her two, I think, greatest songs ever, and
- 1:09:08Speaker 2: probably most people would agree with that. They're two of
- 1:09:10Speaker 2: the greatest songs ever. She said she wrote them on
- 1:09:15Speaker 2: the same day. I just I know, and I've talked
- 1:09:20Speaker 2: to songwriters, and I've heard a lot of them interviewed,
- 1:09:22Speaker 2: and they've said, you know, some of the greatest songs
- 1:09:24Speaker 2: you've ever done just came right out. I wrote it
- 1:09:27Speaker 2: in 15 or 20 minutes. And then there are other
- 1:09:29Speaker 2: songs in which the songwriter struggles over it for a
- 1:09:31Speaker 2: year and a half and knows that they have something,
- 1:09:33Speaker 2: and they put it in a drawer, and they go
- 1:09:34Speaker 2: back to it, and they labor over it, and so on.
- 1:09:38Speaker 2: So I know. Particularly in country music where you're telling
- 1:09:41Speaker 2: a story and then you have, if she was writing
- 1:09:43Speaker 2: the lyric first, and usually they write the music first
- 1:09:45Speaker 2: and put in the lyric. I believe Dolly said she
- 1:09:47Speaker 2: wrote the lyric first. It may have just flowed out
- 1:09:51Speaker 2: to her and so on. But okay, you have this
- 1:09:53Speaker 2: incredible release, and you've just created this Shakespearean country music song.
- 1:09:57Speaker 2: You're telling me you then turned around and wrote I
- 1:09:59Speaker 2: Will Always Love You? The backstory on that, and for
- 1:10:02Speaker 2: those of you who don't know, that is the same
- 1:10:05Speaker 2: song that Whitney Houston turned into an epic. I think
- 1:10:08Speaker 2: it was Whitney's biggest hit, but the Whitney version was
- 1:10:11Speaker 2: a good decade after the Dolly version. The Dolly version
- 1:10:14Speaker 2: was huge in country music, and then Whitney Houston with
- 1:10:17Speaker 2: a very different kind of voice turned it into this anthem.
- 1:10:19Speaker 2: You know, when Dolly sings, she had that thin kind
- 1:10:23Speaker 2: of voice that had that sense of vulnerability. And when
- 1:10:25Speaker 2: Whitney Houston sang, it was like a female version of
- 1:10:29Speaker 2: God just pounding the whole thing out. She wrote, I
- 1:10:33Speaker 2: Will Always Love You as her way of telling Porter
- 1:10:37Speaker 2: Wagner that they were breaking up as a duo. Porter
- 1:10:40Speaker 2: Wagner discovered Dolly Parton. And Porter Wagner, I mean, Porter
- 1:10:45Speaker 2: Wagner is a guy whose style never became cool. It was,
- 1:10:48Speaker 2: you know, the country music stars of the 60s, a
- 1:10:50Speaker 2: lot of them would wear the cowboy hat and the, like,
- 1:10:53Speaker 2: stupid leisure suit kind of thing with the beads and
- 1:10:55Speaker 2: all of it over them, and most of them looked
- 1:10:56Speaker 2: just ridiculous. And Porter Wagner was the whole thing. He
- 1:11:00Speaker 2: has the blonde hair and he's got the beads all
- 1:11:02Speaker 2: over him. And he was a decent enough country singer,
- 1:11:05Speaker 2: kind of a poor man's Conway Twitty. Dolly Parton was
- 1:11:08Speaker 2: going beyond him. And she's sizing Porter up. And I can't,
- 1:11:12Speaker 2: you know, Porter Wagner had a TV show and Dolly
- 1:11:14Speaker 2: was like the sidekick because she would be like the
- 1:11:16Speaker 2: vocal sub-companion of him. And I got to get away
- 1:11:20Speaker 2: from Porter. I'm better than Porter. I got my own
- 1:11:23Speaker 2: career here. But she had this loyalty to Porter Wagner.
- 1:11:26Speaker 2: And she said that the only way she could break
- 1:11:28Speaker 2: this to him that she was going to dump him professionally,
- 1:11:31Speaker 2: they were never, you know, boyfriend, girlfriend, but dump him
- 1:11:35Speaker 2: professionally is I'd write him a song. And she said
- 1:11:37Speaker 2: that I will always love you was her way of
- 1:11:39Speaker 2: telling Porter Wagner that she's got to move on and
- 1:11:43Speaker 2: do a solo career. All right, let's transition. One other
- 1:11:52Speaker 2: point on this. I mentioned earlier the JS Online story
- 1:11:56Speaker 2: that has Tom Tiffany and his business taxes on page one.
- 1:12:04Speaker 2: Today's Journal Sentinel does not have Dolly Parton on page one.
- 1:12:08Speaker 2: It's stuck inside the paper. The Wall Street Journal got
- 1:12:10Speaker 2: it right. Page one of today's Wall Street Journal, almost
- 1:12:14Speaker 2: the entire half above the fold, is a giant picture
- 1:12:19Speaker 2: of Dolly Parton. Now, as I said, the last 40
- 1:12:21Speaker 2: years of her career, she was mainstreamed, and she wasn't
- 1:12:24Speaker 2: just country music. She was just an essential and American superstar,
- 1:12:28Speaker 2: but her years of greatest creativity, she's a country star,
- 1:12:33Speaker 2: and even as she got big, a lot of country
- 1:12:37Speaker 2: purists resent those that kind of, if not go mainstream,
- 1:12:42Speaker 2: sort of get bigger than country music. She was always
- 1:12:45Speaker 2: beloved by country music fans, and I think her fan
- 1:12:48Speaker 2: base is as loyal as that of any entertainer ever.
- 1:12:56Speaker 2: One of the incredible powers of the governor of Wisconsin
- 1:12:58Speaker 2: is every single judicial vacancy in the state is filled
- 1:13:02Speaker 2: by appointment by the governor. From the state Supreme Court
- 1:13:06Speaker 2: to the state appeals court to every county circuit judges,
- 1:13:09Speaker 2: they are all appointed by the governor. The person serves
- 1:13:15Speaker 2: until the next election. We do elect our judges, but
- 1:13:18Speaker 2: if there's a vacancy, It's filled by appointment by the
- 1:13:21Speaker 2: governor until the next election. And the reason that's so
- 1:13:24Speaker 2: important is most people appointed by the governor get reelected.
- 1:13:29Speaker 2: The only exceptions are a Democratic governor appointing judges in
- 1:13:33Speaker 2: a Republican county and vice versa. A Republican governor appointing
- 1:13:37Speaker 2: judges in a Democratic county. In Milwaukee County, however, when
- 1:13:42Speaker 2: Tony Evers puts a judge on the bench, chances are
- 1:13:45Speaker 2: that judge will be on the bench until they retire.
- 1:13:50Speaker 2: The only judges appointed by a governor that have not
- 1:13:52Speaker 2: been reelected were some Scott Walker appointees because, again, he
- 1:13:56Speaker 2: was a Republican governor and he was appointing good conservative
- 1:13:59Speaker 2: judges and the lefties didn't want them. So anyway, Tony
- 1:14:01Speaker 2: Evers has named two Milwaukee County judges. And I keep
- 1:14:05Speaker 2: telling the audience the importance of knowing who your judges are. Unfortunately,
- 1:14:09Speaker 2: in Milwaukee County, it's hard because there's about 50 of them.
- 1:14:15Speaker 2: Every time Evers makes an appointment for judge, it's a
- 1:14:17Speaker 2: bad one. And that's because he's a lefty governor, his
- 1:14:21Speaker 2: staff makes these decisions, and they're going to put in
- 1:14:24Speaker 2: place a lefty judge. Now, I can go through the
- 1:14:27Speaker 2: background here to get a feel for them, and in
- 1:14:29Speaker 2: the case of one of them, the background is much
- 1:14:32Speaker 2: better than most. So I hold out hope that maybe
- 1:14:36Speaker 2: we have a better one than normal here, and that's
- 1:14:39Speaker 2: Jay Pusek. And I think I pronounced that correctly. Quoting
- 1:14:41Speaker 2: from the story on JS Online, before attending law school,
- 1:14:44Speaker 2: Pusek spent four years as a police officer with the
- 1:14:47Speaker 2: Platteville Police Department, He began his legal career as a
- 1:14:49Speaker 2: prosecutor in the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office. It also
- 1:14:53Speaker 2: said that he spent some time as a public defender. Well,
- 1:14:58Speaker 2: he actually has police experience. And again, that doesn't mean
- 1:15:01Speaker 2: that he isn't going to be a lefty, but he
- 1:15:03Speaker 2: has at least some experience on the other side of
- 1:15:05Speaker 2: the block, so I hold out hope that he might
- 1:15:07Speaker 2: be okay. The other one is a classic Evers appointee.
- 1:15:12Speaker 2: And again, I don't know either of these people personally,
- 1:15:14Speaker 2: so I'm going off the background. Melinda S. Oh, one
- 1:15:16Speaker 2: other thing on Fusick. No matter how bad Pusek is,
- 1:15:21Speaker 2: he won't be worse than who he's replacing because he's
- 1:15:24Speaker 2: replacing one of the bottom of the barrel. A very biased,
- 1:15:28Speaker 2: very leftist judge, Glenn Yamahiro. There are very few of
- 1:15:32Speaker 2: these leftist judges that I lack respect for. Yamahiro, I
- 1:15:35Speaker 2: lack respect for. He presided over an investigation. This is
- 1:15:43Speaker 2: one of the investigations into the, I'm trying to remember
- 1:15:47Speaker 2: the name here, um, The former Wauwatosa police officer who
- 1:15:50Speaker 2: went at Mensa. One of the cases involving the prosecution
- 1:15:56Speaker 2: of Joseph Mensa, police officer who in separate instances shot
- 1:15:59Speaker 2: and killed three suspects. I felt in each case legitimate
- 1:16:03Speaker 2: police shootings. Yamahiro's ex-wife. was one of the attorneys that
- 1:16:08Speaker 2: was pressing for action against Mensah. Yamahiro clearly should have
- 1:16:11Speaker 2: disqualified himself, but he did not. Yamahiro's retiring. So Pusek
- 1:16:15Speaker 2: is taking over Yamahiro's seat. So Yamahiro does not have
- 1:16:18Speaker 2: to do much. It's kind of the opposite of the
- 1:16:20Speaker 2: Jordan Love situation. You know, Jordan Love's problem with Packer
- 1:16:25Speaker 2: fans is he's replacing Aaron Rodgers. So, I mean, Packer
- 1:16:29Speaker 2: fans have just been spoiled. He went from Favre to Rodgers.
- 1:16:32Speaker 2: I think Jordan Love is a top player. at least
- 1:16:35Speaker 2: 10 quarterback in the NFL. This guy on ESPN, Dan Arlovsky,
- 1:16:38Speaker 2: says he's right there with Patrick Mahomes as being the
- 1:16:41Speaker 2: best quarterback in the league. That might be overstating it,
- 1:16:44Speaker 2: but if you go to a team that has had
- 1:16:48Speaker 2: terrible quarterbacking forever, like your Bears, you're going to be
- 1:16:51Speaker 2: more appreciated more than somebody where fans are just accustomed
- 1:16:54Speaker 2: to almost perfection in quarterback play. So in the case
- 1:16:57Speaker 2: of Fusick, he's taking over the seat of a crappy judge,
- 1:17:00Speaker 2: and Yamahiro, the other one. Her name is Melinda Eskra.
- 1:17:06Speaker 2: I'll read her background from GS Online. Managing attorney at
- 1:17:10Speaker 2: the Milwaukee Office of Legal Action of Wisconsin, a nonprofit
- 1:17:13Speaker 2: law firm. In her work, she represents low-income individuals and
- 1:17:17Speaker 2: families facing civil issues, including access to housing, income, public benefits,
- 1:17:21Speaker 2: and employment opportunities. She was a clerk for the Eastern
- 1:17:25Speaker 2: District of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Court of Appeals before transitioning
- 1:17:28Speaker 2: to private practices. She's with legal aid. It doesn't always
- 1:17:33Speaker 2: mean that they're going to be bleeding-heart lefties, but it's
- 1:17:35Speaker 2: a strong tip-off. The issue of appointing judges is one
- 1:17:45Speaker 2: of the least covered aspects of governor's elections, even though
- 1:17:50Speaker 2: judges do so much good or so much damage depending
- 1:17:54Speaker 2: on their ideology, their sentencing, and so on. And finally this,
- 1:17:59Speaker 2: we have an update on the story. Update, update, update.
- 1:18:02Speaker 2: I told you it was one of the podcasts last
- 1:18:04Speaker 2: week about this proposal at Oconomowoc to put a bar
- 1:18:07Speaker 2: at a gas station. Remember that one? It was sometime
- 1:18:09Speaker 2: last week. It wasn't Monday, was it? Whenever it was.
- 1:18:13Speaker 2: Sometime last week. There's an application for a liquor license
- 1:18:17Speaker 2: in one of the BP gas stations at Oconomowoc. And
- 1:18:21Speaker 2: as I said at the time, I'm sure there must
- 1:18:24Speaker 2: be one somewhere else. I can't think of one that
- 1:18:26Speaker 2: I've seen in Wisconsin. And nobody brought up any examples
- 1:18:29Speaker 2: to me. Again, there must be some. And I don't
- 1:18:31Speaker 2: mean like where a gas station is part of a
- 1:18:34Speaker 2: big complex of things and there's a restaurant way down
- 1:18:38Speaker 2: the aisle in which the gas station itself is where
- 1:18:40Speaker 2: the liquor is where they have the bar. This isn't
- 1:18:47Speaker 2: even a gas station, which is a liquor store. It's
- 1:18:49Speaker 2: actually going to be a bar. And I thought that
- 1:18:53Speaker 2: it was rather just the kind of idea in which
- 1:18:58Speaker 2: it just seems to me that there's a reason why
- 1:18:59Speaker 2: we don't really have these. Well, here's the update. The
- 1:19:03Speaker 2: Oconomowoc City Council has rejected the application. One of the
- 1:19:09Speaker 2: Members of the council, he's one of the good ones,
- 1:19:10Speaker 2: Luke Kowalski said, that the denial is not a reflection
- 1:19:14Speaker 2: in how the BP has operated, but simply was based
- 1:19:16Speaker 2: on what the community desires and felt is needed, and
- 1:19:20Speaker 2: the community doesn't want it. I'll use this as an
- 1:19:23Speaker 2: opportunity to update a story, and this story is one
- 1:19:26Speaker 2: that I updated. I initially covered it when I was proposed,
- 1:19:28Speaker 2: and now it was rejected, so I felt the need
- 1:19:30Speaker 2: to tell you that it was rejected. The media so
- 1:19:33Speaker 2: many times will report something, development proposals. When somebody says,
- 1:19:37Speaker 2: I'm going to develop a such and such. For every
- 1:19:39Speaker 2: development proposal that's been made, maybe three out of ten
- 1:19:42Speaker 2: at most go forward. The longtime Milwaukee nightclub where I
- 1:19:48Speaker 2: was a regular because I'm a friend of the family,
- 1:19:49Speaker 2: Victor's in downtown Milwaukee, closed. Family dispute and so on.
- 1:19:55Speaker 2: A year and a half ago, they closed New Year's
- 1:19:57Speaker 2: Eve of 24. And Somebody bought the property and the
- 1:20:02Speaker 2: media reported a number of months ago that the new
- 1:20:06Speaker 2: buyer had leased the space out and they were going
- 1:20:08Speaker 2: to operate it as a bar. The liquor license application
- 1:20:13Speaker 2: from that operator has been rejected by the Milwaukee Common
- 1:20:16Speaker 2: Council because of almost unanimous opposition from the neighborhood. First
- 1:20:22Speaker 2: of all, they've turned the street that Victor's was on
- 1:20:25Speaker 2: into an extremely residential street. There is... a major high-end
- 1:20:30Speaker 2: apartment complex two blocks south. There was a brand-new apartment
- 1:20:33Speaker 2: complex straight across the street. In addition to that, almost
- 1:20:37Speaker 2: all of the street parking has been taken away because
- 1:20:39Speaker 2: the city has put up these bumpo curves and the
- 1:20:41Speaker 2: bike lanes and so on. There was just no desire
- 1:20:46Speaker 2: to have a club, especially if it was going to
- 1:20:47Speaker 2: be a middle-of-the-night club with a newbie operator that was
- 1:20:50Speaker 2: in there and the attorney for the people who are
- 1:20:55Speaker 2: applying for the license, and I don't know any of them,
- 1:20:58Speaker 2: Some guy who's the president of Poblaki owns the property,
- 1:21:01Speaker 2: but it was going to be a different operator that
- 1:21:03Speaker 2: he was going to lease the space out to. And
- 1:21:06Speaker 2: the manager was somebody who runs a few other bars.
- 1:21:08Speaker 2: And the guy who was going to be the owner
- 1:21:11Speaker 2: of the club, not the owner of the property, but
- 1:21:13Speaker 2: the owner of the club, I never heard of him.
- 1:21:16Speaker 2: But there was overwhelming opposition, not only from the neighborhood,
- 1:21:19Speaker 2: but all of the institutions nearby, including Milwaukee School of Engineering.
- 1:21:24Speaker 2: There's a couple of great, there's a high school, St.
- 1:21:26Speaker 2: Joan Antita, that's in the area. department developers, and so on.
- 1:21:30Speaker 2: And there was a belligerent attorney who represented the people
- 1:21:33Speaker 2: that were applying for this, almost saying that you have
- 1:21:36Speaker 2: to approve this. And he said that it'd be racist
- 1:21:38Speaker 2: and sexist if you deny it. Well, the good news,
- 1:21:41Speaker 2: it was denied. That area has changed then. Short of
- 1:21:45Speaker 2: operating something as maybe an early evening supper club, I
- 1:21:49Speaker 2: don't think anything's going to happen. The reason why I
- 1:21:51Speaker 2: bring this up is the media, right and left, all
- 1:21:53Speaker 2: head stories of victims is going to reopen. under this
- 1:21:56Speaker 2: new name and so on. I didn't see, I'm not
- 1:21:59Speaker 2: saying nobody, I just didn't see any coverage anywhere that
- 1:22:02Speaker 2: the application was rejected, which is just classic of the media.
- 1:22:07Speaker 2: Usually they'll get a press release that something's going to happen,
- 1:22:10Speaker 2: but actually covering the governmental action afterwards, too lazy, too incompetent,
- 1:22:16Speaker 2: and too many people that aren't from town in the
- 1:22:18Speaker 2: media to do any of that. You're listening to the
- 1:22:21Speaker 2: Mark Belling Podcast. This is the Mark Belling podcast. I'm sorry.
- 1:22:28Speaker 2: There is no way my podcast isn't going to cover
- 1:22:33Speaker 2: the Jeb York story. He's the principal owner and the
- 1:22:37Speaker 2: president of the San Francisco 49ers. He lives in Ohio
- 1:22:43Speaker 2: because that's where the family is from. He's a relative
- 1:22:47Speaker 2: of the DeBartolos. First, the old man, Edward DeBartolo, who
- 1:22:51Speaker 2: made his money, I think, at shopping centers. He owned
- 1:22:54Speaker 2: the team, and then his son, Eddie DeBartolo, ran the
- 1:22:57Speaker 2: team during the glory era, Bill Walsh and so on.
- 1:23:00Speaker 2: And then there was a daughter, Darlene, that was involved.
- 1:23:02Speaker 2: And now Jeb York's like, I think, the grandson of
- 1:23:05Speaker 2: the original DeBartolo. But they all still live in Ohio.
- 1:23:10Speaker 2: He's been arrested in an undercover sting operation in, of
- 1:23:14Speaker 2: all places, East Palestine, Ohio. I think, was it West
- 1:23:19Speaker 2: Palestine where the terrible train derailment was? Oh, it was
- 1:23:23Speaker 2: East Palestine, so it's the same city. What was I
- 1:23:27Speaker 2: thinking west? Well, if there's an East Palestine, maybe there's
- 1:23:29Speaker 2: a Palestine and an East Palestine. Maybe Hamas runs the show.
- 1:23:34Speaker 2: I don't know. Anyway, East Palestine. He answers an online
- 1:23:40Speaker 2: ad placed by a hooker. As it turns out, it's
- 1:23:45Speaker 2: a sting. The local police in that community placed the ad.
- 1:23:51Speaker 2: In the ad, it says that he responds to the
- 1:23:56Speaker 2: ad and they tell him that he's supposed to go
- 1:23:57Speaker 2: to this trailer park. First of all, this guy runs
- 1:24:01Speaker 2: the 49ers. He's got to be in the tens of
- 1:24:04Speaker 2: millions of dollars, right? Hundreds of millions. Normally, people who
- 1:24:14Speaker 2: have that kind of money... Don't respond to a personal ad.
- 1:24:18Speaker 2: Usually they're traveling in the world of the high-end escorts.
- 1:24:23Speaker 2: You know, and there's a whole industry of women that
- 1:24:25Speaker 2: for $ 500, $ 1, 000, in some cases, several thousand dollars a night.
- 1:24:30Speaker 2: And they're more presentable. They, you know, they present themselves
- 1:24:33Speaker 2: as I can, you know, stand up in a social situation.
- 1:24:36Speaker 2: I can hold a conversation with you. And it's usually
- 1:24:39Speaker 2: guys like this too. responding to an ad is one
- 1:24:43Speaker 2: level above picking up a hooker walking the street, which
- 1:24:46Speaker 2: would be the lowest level of prostitution. This is one
- 1:24:48Speaker 2: level above. So the ad, which was from a fake hooker,
- 1:24:54Speaker 2: was actually the police said, go to this trailer park.
- 1:24:56Speaker 2: First of all, I give the cops credit. This totally
- 1:25:00Speaker 2: seems acceptable. By the way, the price is $ 160. So
- 1:25:04Speaker 2: if you see that a hooker is advertising herself for $ 160,
- 1:25:08Speaker 2: wouldn't that she's living in a trailer park just seem
- 1:25:11Speaker 2: to follow for you? So he goes to the trailer
- 1:25:14Speaker 2: park and he's arrested in a sting operation. They didn't
- 1:25:16Speaker 2: charge him with prostitution. And I don't know if that's
- 1:25:20Speaker 2: because of who he is or if there wasn't yet
- 1:25:23Speaker 2: an exchange of money. but the guy's now humiliated and
- 1:25:27Speaker 2: the story is being widely covered in the media. I
- 1:25:32Speaker 2: have just two comments on this. The first, I'm not
- 1:25:35Speaker 2: going to pass too much judgment on York here other than,
- 1:25:38Speaker 2: my goodness, I mean, I know that with the data
- 1:25:44Speaker 2: breach of Ashley Madison and all of that stuff that
- 1:25:47Speaker 2: you might not want to do it to the internet,
- 1:25:48Speaker 2: so simply responding to an online classified by making a
- 1:25:52Speaker 2: phone call or sending something in might be perceived as safer,
- 1:25:55Speaker 2: but This high-end escort business is all over the place.
- 1:25:59Speaker 2: It would just seem to me that if you own
- 1:26:03Speaker 2: the 49ers, you're going to need, I mean, an online ad,
- 1:26:09Speaker 2: you don't even know what she's going to look like
- 1:26:11Speaker 2: when you get there. You don't really know that there
- 1:26:13Speaker 2: isn't going to be a boyfriend with a shotgun waiting
- 1:26:15Speaker 2: for you and you're going to be robbed. It just
- 1:26:18Speaker 2: seems to me that this is the cheapskate way of
- 1:26:20Speaker 2: finding somebody to go have sex with. Secondly, I am
- 1:26:29Speaker 2: somebody who has demanded consistency from the media and authorities
- 1:26:35Speaker 2: when it comes to matters like this. I think we
- 1:26:38Speaker 2: have a very similar situation from only a few years ago,
- 1:26:43Speaker 2: where they damn near tried to ruin someone's life. Robert Kraft,
- 1:26:48Speaker 2: the owner of the Patriots, his wife had died a
- 1:26:50Speaker 2: couple of years earlier, probably lonely. He arranged in Florida
- 1:26:56Speaker 2: for a high-end hooker. And he was caught. And the
- 1:27:01Speaker 2: story was all over the media, and there were discussions
- 1:27:03Speaker 2: about whether or not the NFL should suspend him for this.
- 1:27:09Speaker 2: Players do it all the time. But Kraft was disliked
- 1:27:14Speaker 2: by the media, and a lot of people didn't like
- 1:27:15Speaker 2: the New England team. Kraft also was perceived to be
- 1:27:19Speaker 2: tight with President Trump. So if they were going to...
- 1:27:25Speaker 2: Whatever treatment... Kraft received is the treatment that York should receive.
- 1:27:33Speaker 2: And that's the point that I've tried to establish at
- 1:27:35Speaker 2: all of these things. You lefties set the rules on
- 1:27:38Speaker 2: what's outrageous and what's terrible and what's unacceptable. So it
- 1:27:41Speaker 2: needs to apply to everybody, not just the people that
- 1:27:46Speaker 2: you dislike still. 160 bucks.
- 1:27:49Speaker 4: Ugh.
- 1:27:51Speaker 2: I mean, I'm guessing that the price probably, see, I'm
- 1:27:53Speaker 2: guessing that a woman who's placed in an ad and
- 1:27:55Speaker 2: lives in a trailer park, that she would probably charge $ 160.
- 1:27:58Speaker 2: That seems about right. The fact that the owner of
- 1:28:00Speaker 2: the 49ers is trolling around in that price range, you
- 1:28:04Speaker 2: also wonder, and I'm kind of thinking, no, does he
- 1:28:08Speaker 2: do this sort of thing all the time? I'm thinking
- 1:28:11Speaker 2: he didn't because if he did it all the time,
- 1:28:12Speaker 2: he wouldn't be going to a new one, right? Wouldn't
- 1:28:14Speaker 2: you already have your network of hookers that you already have?
- 1:28:17Speaker 2: This is probably some, I don't know if he's married
- 1:28:19Speaker 2: or not, but I Why? He just got divorced. So
- 1:28:23Speaker 2: this is similar, but he's not old. Kraft was in
- 1:28:25Speaker 2: his 70s, I think, and his wife had died. So
- 1:28:27Speaker 2: he just got divorced. All right. By the way, East Palestine,
- 1:28:32Speaker 2: this is near Youngstown. There are many zillionaires in Youngstown.
- 1:28:37Speaker 2: I actually know a guy from Youngstown. Yeah, it's interesting.
- 1:28:40Speaker 2: what I'm saying. I knew a guy from Youngstown. I
- 1:28:43Speaker 2: still know a guy from Youngstown. Youngstown's not even Cincinnati
- 1:28:50Speaker 2: or Cleveland, and it's certainly not Chicago. But this guy
- 1:28:57Speaker 2: must be one of the biggest catches in the state
- 1:28:59Speaker 2: of Ohio. I mean, if you're a single woman out
- 1:29:02Speaker 2: there looking to marry into the good life, what better
- 1:29:04Speaker 2: than an NFL team owner who's worth tens of millions
- 1:29:06Speaker 2: of dollars? You wouldn't think that this guy would need
- 1:29:09Speaker 2: to have to pay for companionship. Now, my guess also
- 1:29:12Speaker 2: is he realizes he's got a target on his back.
- 1:29:14Speaker 2: And every female shark that thinks that this is going
- 1:29:17Speaker 2: to be the guy that I'm going to sink my
- 1:29:19Speaker 2: teeth into is after him. So he's looking maybe to
- 1:29:21Speaker 2: just get his sexual jollies without any problems. Among the
- 1:29:31Speaker 2: reasons not to do this is the potential of being
- 1:29:35Speaker 2: a national. I don't have any particular desire to pay
- 1:29:39Speaker 2: $ 160 and go to a trailer park and see a hooker.
- 1:29:42Speaker 2: But even if I had that, can you imagine if
- 1:29:45Speaker 2: I was caught? Look at the coverage of poor Yorkers
- 1:29:47Speaker 2: getting everybody in Milwaukee. I couldn't be seen in public.
- 1:29:54Speaker 2: That's generally the deterrent to all sorts of stupid behavior. Oh,
- 1:29:57Speaker 2: my God, what if somebody found out responding to an
- 1:30:00Speaker 2: online ad by a hooker at a trailer? First of all,
- 1:30:03Speaker 2: even if it was a legitimate hooker, what, she's not
- 1:30:05Speaker 2: going to have a camera up there? She's not going
- 1:30:07Speaker 2: to take pictures and blast them all over the Internet?
- 1:30:09Speaker 2: And here's Jeb York? What is he thinking? I didn't
- 1:30:15Speaker 2: know the divorce part, so we just got divorced. No,
- 1:30:19Speaker 2: they filed, but they filed before this happened, you're saying.
- 1:30:24Speaker 2: Earlier this year. Well, maybe he did it. Did they
- 1:30:26Speaker 2: state why they broke up? Maybe he did it before
- 1:30:29Speaker 2: in West Palestine or North Palestine or Southern Palestine or
- 1:30:36Speaker 2: in Gaza or something. We're out of time for today's program.
- 1:30:43Speaker 2: Another one coming out tomorrow. Bye.
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