Work together and live in peace, you know, that's what we need, you know, everybody to
work together.
It doesn't matter the race, the color.
I think all this war and stuff, it's really ridiculous, you know.
People dying for no reason, you know.
I got family in Baghdad.
I got family in Kirkuk.
No, I'm really proud to be part of history today.
If I can die today, I'll be the happiest person on earth.
And you're listening to radio station WBAR in New York.
That was an abrupt ending to the news.
And it's time now for Off The Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving.
Now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
On Dilly Bump or the Best Expect the Worst.
I hope that's understood.
On Dilly Bump!
This is my birthday, man.
I am here for you.
I'm here for you.
Celebrate good times.
Come on!
Let's celebrate.
There's a party going on right here.
A celebration to last throughout the years.
So bring your good times and your laughter too.
We gonna celebrate your party with you.
Come on now.
Celebrate good times.
Come on.
Let's celebrate.
There's a party going on right here.
A celebration to last throughout the years.
So bring your good times and your laughter too.
We gonna celebrate your party with you.
Come on now.
Celebrate good times.
Come on.
Let's celebrate.
There's a party going on right here.
A celebration to last throughout the years.
So bring your good times and your laughter too.
We gonna celebrate your party with you.
Come on now.
Celebrate good times.
Come on.
Let's celebrate.
Celebration.
Let's all celebrate and have a good time.
Celebration.
We gonna celebrate and have a good time.
And a very good February.
The program is Off the Hook.
Emanuel Goldstein here with you on this celebratory Wednesday here in New York City.
And wow, we have a lot of stories to tell as to what's been going on here in the wake
of probably the most historic event of all time.
And we have a lot of stories to tell.
But what happened in the village was basically, we were walking down St. Mark's, and what
happened was, I think it was fairly spontaneous, I was kind of expecting something fairly spontaneous
to happen.
We just kind of heard all this shouting, we heard fireworks, people high-fiving each other,
total strangers walking by in the street.
And then as we walked down towards First Avenue, it was just this massive crowd of people that
kind of took over the entire street, in fact, closed off First Avenue for a while.
And what struck me was that the police were completely letting it happen.
They were not interfering in any way.
And I just thought that was cool, it was actually peaceful.
And it's sort of very European-ish, what happens at New Year's, where people kind of just take
over a city, and the cops are just somewhere, you don't see them, and everyone just sort
of takes care of each other.
That didn't last, unfortunately.
It lasted for a few hours.
It lasted for a few hours.
But after that...
That's pretty good.
I'm impressed it lasted that long.
Yeah, I was kind of surprised.
I mean, they did try to break it apart several times, but what happened was you'd have a
crowd of policemen push everyone to the side, and then they would just fill in behind them.
Well, actually, you're getting a bit ahead, because what happened initially was that one
cop car would show up, two cops would get out, and tell this crowd of several hundred
people, could you maybe just move aside, so let the cars go through?
But the cars weren't even complaining.
We had people dancing in First Avenue, what, somebody actually got on top of...
I saw somebody on a bus.
They got on top of a bus.
And a taxi cab.
And the bus drove off while they were on top of it.
Yeah, they were still on it.
They were just like a parade.
You have a video of this.
I don't.
Someone has a video.
Who has a video?
You have a video.
You can watch it over your radio right now.
I took a video of this last night.
There was a guy, somehow got himself on top of an MTA bus.
We didn't see him actually get off the bus, did we?
No, he was on top of the bus while the bus was stopped amidst the large crowd, and then
finally the crowd opened like the Red Sea, and the bus sped off with a guy on the roof
just walking around it while the bus was going about 30 miles an hour.
I don't think the bus driver had any clue.
No, the bus driver did not know the guy was on the roof.
So we don't know what happened.
Wait, wait, wait.
I'm sorry.
Did you just say a bus in New York City went at 30 miles an hour?
That is much bigger news than anything I've heard tonight.
Well, maybe 20.
It was going at a much faster speed than I would want to be if I were on top of a bus.
Yeah.
Well, hopefully he got down from the bus at some point.
But the thing is, you know, that sounds horrible.
That sounds like anarchy.
But it was so cool.
It was amazing.
Everyone was just sort of just running around and having a great time.
And here's the weird thing.
There was so much flag waving, people singing the national anthem.
And it was it was I'm not used to that.
I'm not used to being in crowds like that.
But it was just this unbridled joy.
And people were just well behaved.
There was no problem at all until until the police decided that this could not go on.
They had to open up that vital block between First Avenue and Avenue A on 8th Street.
That absolutely had to even though nobody really wanted to go down there in a car.
They felt that they had to clear everybody.
And they came with that with the orange netting.
And that just put the fear of the Lord into me.
And then they started really pushing people.
In fact, they were pushing people while they were on the sidewalk.
And I was one of the people being pushed.
And it just really was not pleasant at all.
And none of us could figure out why they were doing this.
It was just such a such a mood killer.
I heard the lieutenant.
It's the billable hours, you know.
I heard the lieutenant who was directing about a dozen officers give his rationale why they
had to net these people.
What was the rationale?
There's people down there.
There's a bunch of people in there drinking and smoking marijuana.
Now there were a lot of people drinking.
I didn't see or smell anybody smoking marijuana.
But I mean, there was no nobody was getting hurt.
Nobody was complaining about anything.
No cars were even trying to go down that street.
There was no reason to wrap these people in net or tell them to go away.
It was like the great national sigh of relief.
These people were just letting out like eight years of stress over this past administration
or regime.
It was just like we commented, it was just like you see on TV about third world countries
when there's a regime change, like there's a coup d'etat.
And everybody says driving on cars and waving out of their cars on tops of, you know, vehicles.
And it's just it was it felt like that.
It was an amazing sigh of relief.
It reminded me actually after RNC, after all the crap that happened during RNC 2004, when
people just sort of gravitated towards Union Square Park.
And basically, there was this amazing sigh of relief then because we found out that Bush
had left town.
And all of a sudden, the police pulled back.
And people just kind of relaxed.
But this was much better.
This was this was such a such a joyous occasion for so many people.
Not so much that because I don't really think people expect miracles to happen next year.
But just the feeling of empowerment that, wow, we did this, we actually made a change.
We actually taught them a lesson and kicked them out.
You know, and that's that's a cool thing to feel that felt more like, sorry, the grownups
are in might be in charge again, maybe or people at least who can string a sentence
together and know something about the rest of the world.
And this this happened all throughout the world.
In fact, we'd like to hear from our listeners tonight to tell us what happened in their
particular part of the world if there was something similar.
And you know, maybe maybe there was some angry celebrations or anti celebrations of McCain
supporters, who knows?
I thought it was really struck me also was yesterday, you know, it was a little crazy.
I'm jumping, I'm screaming, I'm happy.
And I like totally just ran right into somebody.
And I think any other day in New York, if you were just, you know, kind of bump into
somebody, they wouldn't take it very kindly.
But this person just grabbed me and gave me a big hug.
That was their reaction.
Yeah.
So I was really struck by that.
You know, you know, something else amazing that happened today, Bernie and I were walking
down St. Mark's and we went to went to this hot dog place that we like.
And they're giving away free hot dogs.
If you voted for Obama, they say you get two hot dogs and a soda.
And I had an Obama volunteer button on.
So I guess I qualified.
But we sort of we sort of messed it up because we confused them.
I don't know.
I still don't know what we did wrong.
But we only wanted one hot dog each.
So we asked for that.
But for some reason, that meant we couldn't get two sodas.
And we just got into this whole big discussion back and forth.
And we look, if we're dividing it in half, and they're giving it to us for free.
So we didn't feel right, you know, bickering about it.
But it seemed pretty logical that if we could get having to pay for one.
Yeah, if we could get two hot dogs and a soda each, then if we just got one hot dog each,
we should be able to get two.
But whatever.
You're trying not to be greedy.
No.
Spending money.
Yeah, you know, I would have.
But it was it was just a good feeling.
A good feeling overall.
But last night, after maybe an hour or two of celebration, as Obama was giving his acceptance
speech, we found some we ducked into some underground bar.
We got dragged into some bar.
I never even knew.
It was like an art space almost.
Yeah.
We got dragged into a bar.
And there was this auditorium.
And we were sitting there cheering, watching the speech.
It was like we were in the underworld.
Yeah.
All of a sudden, this place just materialized.
Yeah.
It was cool.
And the people were really well behaved in this big underground facility, watching on
the screen this acceptance speech.
And it was just people were just so thrilled to be watching something.
I got news for you.
They weren't out of hand.
People are well behaved generally.
You know, if you give them the opportunity to behave on their own, they generally will
do so.
If you treat them like they're not going to, then, yeah, you'll get all kinds of problems.
So did any of you guys all get emotional?
I was quite surprised that, I mean, I have real problems with Obama's vote for FISA and
where he is in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel and all that.
But I still having, you know, remember when I was a little kid when Martin Luther King
was killed and been aware of the civil rights movement and all the racial issues and problems
we still have in this country that I started, you know, weeping when during the acceptance
speech and every friend of mine I've talked to around the U.S. that I've called all said
the same reaction.
You know, what struck me, and Bernie mentioned this too, was the fact that probably the first
presidential speech ever to address gay and straight people, you know, in the acceptance
speech.
He said, I'll reach out to everybody and all these different categories of people.
But I mean, can you imagine Bush doing that?
Can you imagine Reagan doing that?
It's never happened before.
Never happened.
I mean, his speech was actually quite, I mean, I think he's a terrible speech deliverer,
whatever the word is, but he brought race into it like absolutely head on.
That's what he dealt with in his acceptance speech about the racial aspects of what this
meant.
And he addressed the people who didn't support him, which I think is a wise thing to do.
So yeah, no matter how you feel about where we're going to be in a year, you got to admit
this was a moment of history, it really was.
And I think it's worth noting too how last night came to be, all the efforts from millions
of people around this country that made last night happen, made this election turn the
way it did.
And it wasn't a foregone conclusion.
There were a lot of people, I volunteered in the ABABA campaign on and off for the past
couple of weeks.
And when I came up here yesterday on a bus to, you know, join and watch the returns,
there were a lot of people on the bus coming back from Philly who had originally come down
from New York to volunteer in Philadelphia, because New York was a foregone conclusion
as far as, you know, it was going to be a blue state.
But Pennsylvania was one of these battleground states where a lot of New Yorkers came down
to work on the ABABA campaign.
So a lot of us came back to New York last night, and it was just good seeing a lot of
familiar faces from the campaign.
Obama's campaign made a lot of interesting use of technology.
Yeah.
I'd like to hear about this.
Now you worked the phone banks.
Tell us something about how that worked.
Well, among other things, I worked phone banks.
The Obama campaign ended up renting hundreds of cell phones from a company called Metro
PCS, which has a no-contract deal, like you can rent them month to month.
Why did they rent cell phones?
Just because they were mobile.
We had drivers out there picking up people.
So it was good to have mobile phones, but also it was just less worry about infrastructure.
You just had a phone and you could just distribute them easily within the campaign headquarters.
There were a lot of landline phones as well, but the cell phones sort of filled in the
gaps when there weren't enough wire lines.
But also the other advantage of the cell phones was you could use text messaging.
So we had probably about 500 volunteer drivers yesterday picking up people who needed rides
to the polls, and they were dispatched by SMS messages to their cell phones, so a lot
of them had GPS things in their cars.
It was really well-dispatched, this whole getting people out to vote, people who couldn't
get to the polls on their own, and there were 500 volunteers throughout the city just driving
to pick up people.
It was pretty interesting.
Yeah.
I mean, just to follow up on the cell phone thing, if you think about it, think about
how much hassle it is to run a landline to any building, and so with the cell phone,
at least you have that opportunity to expand, expand, expand, expand if necessary.
Did that overload the system at all?
Well, sometimes we were calling certain targeted neighborhoods, registered Democrats in certain
demographic areas.
I frequently got central office messages from Verizon saying all circuits were busy because
we suspected the McCain headquarters were also calling those same areas, and there were
just too many calls going to these certain neighborhoods.
You have these poor people getting all these calls.
I didn't get a single call.
Because you live in New York.
Who cares who you vote for?
That's true, I guess.
I'm living in North Carolina, and I received five or six phone calls and was reading just
this morning about how they were able to, on the states where they had early voting,
the Obama campaign was able to keep track of, I don't know how they were doing this,
but they were able to instantly get the information on when someone voted, and then they knew
they didn't need to follow up with more calls to see whether you had voted or not.
Wait, they knew when you voted?
How would they know?
Somehow, the article was very short, and it mentioned that they knew, and then they could
follow up about every person who was registered but hadn't come out yet to make sure.
Bernie, how did the Obama campaign know when you voted?
It was pretty well organized.
We had teams of people, and I was on one of them, where we would call people to remind
them that they needed to vote, and we knew who was registered from the public data.
And then we would call to find out if they had voted yet yesterday morning, and we just
kept calling to see had they voted yet, had they voted yet, had they not.
We plugged all this information into this giant spreadsheet that was one of these Google
Docs documents.
It was a giant spreadsheet that we all shared online.
Wait, all the whole campaign, or just in your city?
Well, it was divided up into different areas.
So Philadelphia had its own spreadsheet for voters, whether they'd voted or not.
Okay, so a Google Doc, explain what that is.
Well, it's like an Excel spreadsheet, or any of the other spreadsheet programs, but it's
multi-user.
You could have a lot of people logged into it at the same time.
Can I log into it?
Well, we could try later.
I'm curious now.
I don't know if it's still online.
How did you get access to it?
Do you know the password?
Oh, yeah, I have that information.
Oh, really?
Oh, yeah, we're going to go out and do this.
Okay.
So what kind of information is on this Google Doc?
Names, addresses, phone numbers, whether they needed to ride to the polls or not, whether
they had voted yet or not.
Wow.
And if you hadn't voted yet, we would keep calling to find out if they had voted.
So that's where Mark would go.
Well, didn't that annoy people to keep getting calls constantly saying, did you vote yet?
Did you vote yet?
Did you vote yet?
Actually, a lot of people admired our persistence.
I admire the fact that you're calling me at all hours.
The polite ones, maybe.
Yeah.
Race in Georgia and it looks like under our bizarre little law in Georgia about most votes
Doesn't win. It's 50% plus one vote
And so it does not appear that at least the last I saw that that senatorial seat will be in a runoff
Wait, could you explain? Oh, you mean there's a runoff system unless you get 50% plus one
Yeah, you to win you have to get 50% of the vote plus one vote
Isn't that how it is in a lot of parts of the world?
In a lot of parts of the world, but I don't think in the u.s. I think that because it causes so many
Runoff elections in other states. They don't do that as much so
You know other states have figured out that this causes a lot of runoff
so there's a whole bunch of them where we have like six people up for a judge position and for one judge position and
So we're gonna have runoffs
For that and then they'll probably have another runoff from that runoff and then we'll have no
I mean they pick the top two and then that's the runoff. But but yeah, I was really surprised but my mailbox was
stuffed full of
Junk mail from these people. Well, then I assume you're here in New York now, but but you did vote. Yeah
Yeah, I voted or I did early voting. How did that work?
It was a little confusing in Georgia. We had well actually I
Advanced voted we had early voting which was
We have two in North Carolina, yeah two weeks prior and that's only at the
Election headquarters, okay for the each County, but there's 159 counties in Georgia
So that's a lot of counties more counties, but you can only go to your County, right?
But you can only go to your County
Advanced voting there was I don't know maybe 12 places in each County nine places in each County
Mine was I was lucky mine the one that's closest to me and I could go to any one of them
Mine was at a mall in a restaurant. That was defunct you voted in an abandoned restaurant in a mall. Yes
That's cool. And it was cool because everybody else's had to stand outside
I voted inside of what had formerly been a grocery store. Oh
Yeah, I voted inside a school. Yeah, I used to vote inside a church which is kind of weird
Wait, where'd you vote Bernie? I voted in a Union Hall the
steamship
Steamship workers Union Hall Wow. I don't know how many steamships there are in Philadelphia
I wanted to ask Lynn Lynn were there any interesting ballot initiatives in in Atlanta?
We had three
For the state of Georgia and then one more and I think they all pretty much were no-brainers. It was like
40 million dollar bond referendum for parks in my county and
Protecting more forest land in South Georgia and stuff like that
So it was they weren't really exciting in San Francisco. There was a couple of ballot initiatives
Actually, there are three interesting ones
one was a ban on gay marriage which passed by narrow margin and then there was a
legalized prostitution
Ballot initiative which which did not pass and then there wasn't one didn't rename the sewer plant. That was that was genius
They wanted to name a sewage plant after George W Bush and I don't know why that was defeated
I don't I don't know if people thought that that it would be a sign of respect to him as that's why they defeated it
Or they thought it was just a little bit too much in San Francisco
Yeah, I think people might have been confused because I would have I would have gone for that George W Bush sewage plant
It was it was a brilliant proposition, but California did pass high-speed rail
Okay, what does that mean?
They're gonna have it or allegedly they're going to explore it
I mean, I'll believe it when I see it, but allegedly they're gonna have it now Mike
Where did you vote? What kind of place were you voted in a senior Center? Oh, really? That must have been fun
And I guess it was a very short line
I heard from people I met later in the day that some other people in New York City had to wait several hours to vote
But when I went there, there was just two or three people in front of me
It's not really it's not really up to you know, you decide whether you wait or not, right?
You can't go to a different polling place. You're pretty much stuck, but I've never had to wait
I didn't never had to wait we had lines in Philadelphia that were sometimes five or six hours
And we had we had what we had line called line watcher volunteers
We would dispatch people out to polls that had really long lines
To encourage people to stay in line because some people were going home that you couldn't wait any longer and we just would I know
I don't honestly get why there have to be lines
How hard is it to to plan for this to have enough access to polls?
Especially I think with the electronic voting people get so confused
They take so long that that's where the lines really develop
I mean in Virginia and North Carolina, they had to they had to
vote extra attention because it was raining and and and the the pieces of paper were getting wet and they couldn't scan them the
Turnout was was much greater in Philadelphia than and folks expected when I went I only had to wait like five minutes
But during certain times a day in certain polling areas people had to wait as much as several hours, but we had people
Standing there with the voters encourage him to not go home
Stand there and wait as long as they had to to get their vote in
Not Kevin, well the follow-up was weird places you voted my town held elections and it's a gift shop
And a gift shop your town has a gift shop. That's almost as weird as holding an election there
Well, I didn't there was no lines. That was a plus
Do you know what? I think was a nice thing about the election though
The fact that if you were watching any any network channel or you know, CNN or anything
They called Virginia maybe two three minutes before 11 o'clock
and then if you did the math quickly in your head you realized okay, well if he has this money now and
California has 50 then it pretty much became a countdown at that point to 11 p.m
Because you knew that the outcome was inevitable. So that was kind of nice. It made it feel a little bit like New Year's also
Not that right. Where did you vote? What kind of what kind of place? I voted in the school
Really? Yeah, small little elementary school. That's cool. That's that's exactly where I voted to the same kind of place
I had a line of five people five people five people. Yeah, I was behind one old lady now who voted for the first time
Your first time I voted before not for president
No, okay, not for president. Has anybody been to the polls for the first time ever? That'd be me
That'd be you not kevin. Yes. What was it? Like it was
Exhilarating. Yeah, all old mechanical machines. You're in new york. So you got to experience I can see these old mechanical machines. They sound cool
Well, actually the cover of the current 2600
That's a picture of a mechanical machine
A lot of people don't know that because I you know
I didn't know until recently that new york was the only state that had these anymore and a lot of young people
Never saw one. So that's what they look like up close
It was nice though that they explained it to me before I went in because actually my co-worker was saying he got in there
And he he freaked out because he couldn't um flip the levers to select the candidates because you have to
Pull the lever first to the right then you vote and then you pull it back to the left
And so if you don't know to pull it to the right initially, you don't know what's going on
It's very self-explanatory there's a numbered system that says one pull to the right two. Okay. Well, I didn't see that
There's rtfm instructions, yeah
Well, they told me before I got in the poll, which was nice. Well, jones, you're all the way back there
Uh, and you're from jersey. So tell us something about what the system was like over there. Uh, we have an electronic thing
Yeah a thing you sure I do x is light up beside it and it wasn't like these crazy like all electronic touchscreen things
But uh, it was certainly electronic but but still your vote doesn't go anywhere like there's no way to know what happens to it
I mean the same with the mechanical machines
There's no way to know where your vote goes
But but with the electronic machines, there's even less than no way to know where it goes
I mean you you put in all your votes and you hit the vote button or register your vote
And like all the lights go out so you're like wow
I hope that works yours doesn't have like a paper thing that it shows you because a lot of a lot of new machines will
Have this paper record that comes up and you and you verify the paper record first before you
They didn't have anything
I don't know if the machine has one in the back or what but you know
there was a thing behind the curtain that the lady hits the button to start it for you, but
They don't show it to you the touchscreen that I got to use had an actual
Paper roll inside the machine that went up that you couldn't you couldn't get to it or touch it
But you could see that your vote had registered also on a piece of paper
That supposedly was supposed to make it didn't really make me feel that much better though
But in georgia ours was the lovely
Debold machines
And you get no feedback other than the card spits back out at you that the card the smart card is in
Uh collected by the poll worker before you leave don't accidentally try to leave with the little thing
They get really hinky about it. They're like nope. Stop. You cannot leave. Oh, okay
Um, but you know the the thing is is that I actually called the secretary of state's office in georgia to ask
If they had fixed
The problems that our friends at penn state pointed out
At hope at hope this summer
and um ironically enough, they never called me back I called them back
and
they
Said that there had not been any complaints about the machines
Did you file a complaint or did you just accept this?
I don't know that I had a real grounds to say that I had a complaint about you know
The machine and I I looked very hard
for any irregularities when I was at the polling place, but
um, you know, I pushed the button and it said that it
Voted for obama and I and everybody else that I voted for but for all you know
The machine could have been hacked and in a way that it would display that you voted for who you voted for
But the actual vote wouldn't have recorded even the printout systems where your vote is printed
And you can see who you printed that doesn't guarantee that that's what's actually registered in the system
So we really have no way of knowing right now, but I think that at this point either
Either you have to either say that either
obama's camp controlled it this time
or
It was so much of an overwhelming difference that it really didn't make any difference this time in other words
But it could they didn't stuff the ballot box enough, right?
That's what I think too is that i'm sure stuff went on to steal the vote in different states in different ways
But we may never know because it was such a landslide
There won't be that motive much motivation to really dig in and find out what happened to learn for next time
Yeah, I talked to a teacher from louisiana and she said that her machine was miscalibrated
uh in new orleans when she went to vote and um, and when she pressed for obama it clicked on mccain and she
Made a stink and they recalibrated all the machines. Let's move into our conspiracy mode here
Uh where we uh theorize as to what might actually be going on
Jim from paramus writes to us and says do you ever think that the republicans don't want to win this time around?
Uh bush has made such a mess of things. Why?
Would they want to uh, why would they want the job of cleaning it up?
Let the democrats get blamed for not being able to fix things. So, uh, yeah, you know, it's it seemed to me
McCain was falling on his sword an awful lot for during this campaign
If you tried to run an inept campaign, I don't see how you could do worse
I really don't it just seemed like there are so many bad decisions
He made so many things that he could have done better
And I think anyone in this room could have run a better campaign for him. I have to wonder
What is this intentional if you want suggestions for things? He could have done worse, you know
He could have had a sex scandal. There's all kinds of things. He could have done worse, but
McCain sex getting I don't think he could have I don't know or a no sex scandal anything, you know
There's all kinds of things he could have done worse, but he picked sarah palin
He he runs to washington to mess up the financial thing
That's you know that the grimaces during the debate that just all kinds of things that you know
You could do better
one thing that really struck me about mccain's concession speech last night is um
is how how much of the the old mccain seemed to come back like
The last two the last couple of weeks of the campaign has just been uh, it seemed it seemed hollow
It seemed like this guy really doesn't want to do what he's being forced to do anymore
but um afterwards there was uh, there was a glimmer of the guy who
Um, I remember from a couple of years ago who I didn't agree with much, but I did have some respect for
Yeah, I heard the same thing from a lot of people some people I know are saying they would have voted for him if
he had stayed that way through the
whole campaign
I just saw something on cnn how uh white voters, uh voted for mccain by 12 percentage points
So if if only white people in this country had voted mccain would be our our next president
That's kind of scary. You missed the statistic right before that where it said african-american voters was like 95 percent to five
Yeah, yeah, well, uh
I guess we have we have some bridges to cross as far as uh agreeing on a lot of things, but wow
That's uh, that's unbelievable. I I do still have to give mccain props for one thing in his
Concession speech he stood up to his supporters who were who were booing and yelling things about obama
And I I think that that it that at least has some class when last night or during the camp
He didn't do it during the campaign
He sure didn't do it during the campaign
But he did it last night when they started booing him and he said no no
No, no, no, but he had to say that no no no about five times. Does anyone here remember?
I remember when david dinkins did that with giuliani
Uh when when people were booing giuliani, he kept saying no no, no all the time
That was years ago, but that's like that's standard when you're conceding. Well, sometimes I mean during the campaign. I did see videos of him
Correcting people saying oh well for this reason or that reason. It's no he's not a muslim or no. He's not
You know, he's not an arab. He's a decent man. I mean like that. How do you mess that up?
That was horrible. That was horrible. He's not a muslim. He's a good man
It took days before anybody caught that it seemed they just kept showing it but no one tried to correct at least
their uh
Misunderstanding about him
Fallacy well again, so maybe whether or not he did it in the right way
But uh, it just seems like like they they messed up so badly that it was almost a foregone conclusion that that obama
Well, I think the email you just read is very spot on that that it's going to be
There's so many disasters are waiting to unfold because of what's been put in motion over the last eight years that it will all be
Blamed on the democrats. It's also true that I think
Big big big big business doesn't really like politic the political situation in america to swing too far in either direction, you know, probably you know
Bush and cheney and crew all went way too off the deep end one way, you know, and they really would we'd think no
We need to you know, we need to jettison those guys. This has not gone, right?
All right
I'd like to open up the phones to our listeners if they want to share anything as far as uh
What they noticed in their particular part of the world when uh when this election finally ended last night if there is uh
Any particular memorable event they'd like to share with us. We certainly had our memorable events last night
Uh in the east village and throughout manhattan
And i'm i'm sure other parts of the world had similar types of situations as well
I just have one question. Maybe our listeners can answer so about a third of new york, which is not a lot but you know
Still a couple million people voted for mccain. I haven't seen any of them since the election
Where do they all go?
I saw a lot of glum faces on wall street actually
But i'm not sure if that's because the market dropped 500 points. I don't know why that happened either
Um, I think they're actually upstate new york
I uh spent some time up there and there's a lot more republicans up there. Oh, yeah
No, no, okay, but i'm just saying in new york city
Obama won handily he got I don't know 80 of the vote
But there's still the other 20 of the vote who voted for mccain and they had they
Can't all just have disappeared into pubs in queens. No, they disappeared into pubs look inside and you might see I was it
People i've seen some neighborhoods in queens where they actually have um had um mccain palin signs all over the place
Um, yeah the signs I saw the sign. Yeah, but I mean they're in houses, you know in front of houses
So apparently certain neighborhood, uh neighborhoods in uh, outer queens and well other outer neighborhoods around the rim of new york city on long island
Last uh yesterday
I saw a lot of depressed looking older people sitting on benches and it just seemed like they were
Very afraid of the future and you know, I I hope they get over it
I hope they get over it because you know change can be a very good thing
Yeah, but you you see uh, sad looking old people, uh looking frustrated all the time on long island
Yeah, it could have been that too our phone number is 212-209-2900 now, uh mark, uh,
Any other show we would be featuring all the all the music and and creative stuff that you do
This is a special day
This is a special day, but I would like to just pay attention for a few seconds to something new that that you're putting out
This is a a piece. Um, i'm going to play a little bit of it
This this has a new record that came out from negative land just a few months
One of our most beloved presidents, uh, richard m nixon and uh, you want to tell us something about this?
Well, it's just a little you know, it's just a little uh,
A little wistful little nostalgia piece about about our wonderful, uh president. Oh, okay. Let's listen
If you'll join us in this song, I think you'll recognize it when I start it
Let me get a car
Always remember
Others may hate you
Those who hate you don't live unless you hate them
And then you destroy yourself
Richard nixon died today. That's just plain poppycock
And then you destroy yourself. I saw it on the news. They said
We'll see you again. Oh, I guess he was okay. Well, i'm not a crook
He was the president everybody
Because people have got to know whether or not their presidents are crook
Their presidents are crook. Well, i'm not a crook
And I don't dream about the president anymore
As a flower she grew
And all of my friends they say that they don't either
And as a very young flower
Today I saw it on the news. They said because people have got to know. Oh, I guess he was
I'm watching history
He went to a special place in heaven
I have never obstructed justice
As a flower
And as a fair young flower
Today that's just plain poppycock. We'll see you again
Wow, that is awesome
Yeah, he was able to make a lovely duet with him
Uh, just from some nice tapes taken off a television documentary and this is this is brand new
Yes, it is that is brand new even though richard nixon's been actually gone quite a long time
Well, he hasn't gone for a while, but uh, I was worried you guys might be gone
So negative land has a new record coming on. Yeah
Yeah
well
We put out a dvd collection of all of our cut up collage film work about a year ago and then this record came out
in july and it's gotten really mixed reactions because for some some people don't know what to make of it because it's
What's so weird about it is it's a negative land basically like a little negative land pop record
Well, we were all singing along to it. It's very catchy. Yeah. Thank you. I think it is very uplifting too
cheerful lyrics it's uh, um, yeah, it was our our we've done so much cut up noise collage stuff that it was a challenge for
Us to try and make a record that actually has one song after another kind of like normal record to do
I don't know if we'll ever do it again. But uh, yes, it was fun. It was well
You guys never do the same thing twice. We try not to that's our goal. Uh, yeah, so all right
Well, uh, thanks for playing that though. Thanks for bringing it in
yeah, and I you know i'm here in new york because I was invited to speak at new york university about what we do and
uh
Another thing we won't have much time to go into today, but I was in washington dc
It had a bit of a surreal experience. I sure did. I was in there is now an intellectual property
Advocacy group called digitalfreedom.org the digital freedom campaign and they brought me into
Dc and I was taken around to the offices of john conyers patrick senator lahey brownbeck from kansas like ultra conservative daryl issa
You know for the congressman from isn't that weird when they take you to the offices and you meet the people?
I mean, I met lieberman with kevin mitnick. It doesn't get any stranger than that
And that was before he ran for vice president
I was taller. Okay
Most people are but yeah
It was really strange because uh, I was there to talk about our our work and cut up and collage and appropriation
But not just our work, of course, but really to point out to them that that hey, you know this type of
Practice of making film and making our music and making art isn't just in the fringes anymore
This is millions of kids are all doing this
So you have a nation of supposed criminals and perhaps the the laws and business practices are really behind the times and behind the curve
And my other message was really to say
Hey when the raa comes into your office or the mpaa comes into your office and they trot out
You know, cheryl crow or elton john or somebody and say that it says these people speak for all musicians
I'm here to tell you they don't in fact, they speak for about one percent and that you know the future of all, you know
So I was anyway
Got to see up close and personal, uh how our government doesn't work very well on capitol hill
Are there any negative land listeners? Did you find any this was shocking?
There were some staff members who who told me they were excited
I was there because they listened to us in college and it also turned out that the president of the consumer electronics association
uh knew all about our court cases and the vice president of the consumer electronics association who took me around to the office as a
Guy named michael petricone. He owned a copy of our u2 single. Wow, and yeah, they they they said
Oh, yeah, all the staff at the cea thinks, you know, you're heroes to those guys, you know
You're heroes to all of our staff here at the cea. And of course the cea represents
Uh yahoo verizon google dell microsoft apple sony panasonic. So to say it was surreal is an understatement
Well, okay, uh, it's uh, it's great that and I I encourage people out there who may never have listened to negative land
And uh, go find some tracks negative land spell without an e
Uh some amazing stuff there. And of course mark, uh, mark harsley you spoke at at hope a couple of hopes
Yes, great panels there
Uh, but we we really don't have time. We have to take some phone calls. I just want to know
What is the title of the new cd? Oh, i'm sorry. I'm so i'm so bad at self-promotion with uh, uh, yeah, it's called figma tactic
That's what it's called. How do you spell that t-h-i-g-m-o-t
Yeah, okay, you know what I can't even spell but uh, yes
And I just I just wanted to say one last thing that um
I I went I went to dc one reason was just for the sheer
Bizarreness of getting a chance to do this
But I really I wanted to see what it would be like and could I could I manage to stay true to who we are?
And keep our integrity and and our and our ideas and message, you know, and and but still you know
Go into that environment and I think I did I think I did. Okay
Okay, let's uh, take some phone calls two one two two zero nine two nine hundred. We're talking to people about
uh this historic day and
Last night being a historic night and I'd like to know what uh, what other experiences people around the world might have had
So, let's see who is out there two and two two zero nine two nine hundred and good evening. You're on off the hook
Um, yeah, I had a uh comment about the uh, majority wins voting system the 50 plus one. Okay, go ahead
um, basically, I just wanted to make the point that uh
It cuts out third parties
um
Normally if you want to vote for a third party and you don't want to have your vote get thrown away
A runoff system is a good way of uh, you know, not throwing it away. That's true. That's true. That's all. Thanks
Thanks. Uh, thanks for that comment
Um, let's take this call
Now good evening. You're on off the hook
Yeah
What's on your mind?
Um, yeah, I have a comment go ahead turn down your radio. Sure
Hello. Yes, go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Um, I've um
like one comment about the voting system and I also want to um,
Um, you know just give you guys I don't know, um, probably you might have heard um,
Do you guys know that it's a national holiday in kenya in kenya?
Yes, you know, I wish it was a national holiday here
In fact, uh election day should be a national holiday like it is in many countries
But maybe maybe someday it will be
It is uh, and and um, that's that's what takes me to my second
Comment about the voting system. I think
It's high time that uh, you know the present federal government take a fresh look at the voting system
And uh, maybe introduce a kind of you know, unified system all over the country. I think the statewide system is just
Creating so much of a lot. Yeah, a lot of confusion many of us agree with that. Yeah a lot of confusion
You know, I I think with this early of the early voting that's uh been going on
Uh that more people are getting involved and that we see the first major change in the way
Elections are being held in this country in a very long time
Speaking of national holidays. I'd just like to quickly wish our listeners in the uk and elsewhere a happy guy fox night
Guy fox. Yes, that's right
Uh, okay. Good evening. You're on off the hook
Hi, my name is quad. What are you calling from? Uh from riverdale bronx. Okay, what's on your mind?
Uh, am I live on the radio? Yes, you are. Go ahead
Oh, yes, look and i'll give it to your show
And I want to say the most poignant part of my evening last night was I could take my one-year-old
To um to go vote with me
And then as we left there to go watch the elections, it was so surreal to see
how um
Blacks and whites got together, you know on one stage
Um, you had two people I mean in the past like a good 40 years ago
King and of course kenny that died because of this
And it was very moving to see how everyone on 121st street in the village everywhere else was on television
And how much that we've grown as a country?
and
It was a more of a surreal moment, you know as I sat down and I saw
Uh, even on stage and of course brock was on stage with you know with joe biden
And I was like wow, this is really a turning point in america that we should all be proud
Um of one another and hopefully I wish you know for things to stay as much as we're proud today that we're all proud
Whether or not whoever lost the campaign won the campaign, but it's a face that we have now seen
That there is possibility that we all come together
Throughout the years of fighting or whatever has happened and um, and I'm a black american and you know
You know every time a lot of people talk about black americans
We did go through a lot but the same reasons and tokens that whites also in civil rights did lose their lives also
And I think sometimes we forget that
right, so I just want to
Pretty much say on your show that I hope that everyone as much as I just said the love that we have today
You know, I don't care what race what your gender whoever you are. I kind of feel that through all across
You know boundaries and everything. I hope that you know, of course continue on
Um, and that's pretty much I want to express, you know, I hope that my daughter actually gets older when she hits 15 16 she understands
How far you know we have gotten and where she was at and where everybody was at, you know, of course this historical night
All right. Thanks. Uh, thanks very much for those uh thoughts those sentiments
And yeah, I think what I saw last night was just this overwhelming feeling of pride
I mean seeing people actually waving the flag and singing national. I mean, it's just so unusual to be in crowds like that
It's just very uh, very weird. I cannot remember the last time people were out in the streets taking the national anthem
I mean even after the mets win or something like that that doesn't happen. It never it was I know they never win either
Yeah, it was it was great
It's like we're taking back the proper definition of the word patriotism now
And I just have to wonder that the other people that that hijacked the nation for so long what they're feeling now
They must be uh, really, uh confused and maybe maybe bitter the uh, the feeling I got
Um last night listening to people singing repeatedly singing the star-spangled banner in unison and waving god bless america
You know the melody of our national anthem was stolen from an english drinking song
Do you know that negative land has a piece that details that quite a bit?
There you go intellectual property borrowing has been going on a long time
But but I I got the feeling that that all the patriotism we saw last night was not really a nationalistic jingoistic type
Patriotism it had a different feeling to it. Right? Absolutely. This this was this was real. This wasn't uh,
uh something that uh was was I don't know had an agenda behind it was just spontaneous people just
Coming out into the street. I've never seen anything like it and uh
Once in a lifetime, I think really I'd like to hear if other people around the world experience the same thing
Let's go to this caller. Good evening. Yes. Hello. Yes, you're on off the hub from the bronx here. How you doing redford park?
and i'd like to say that
Uh last night the crowd should have been singing happy days are here again
Yeah, that would have been a good song. In fact, maybe uh, maybe some people were singing that maybe a maybe you can play that
In the uh in the studio if you have that, uh, well, we'll we'll file that request and i'm sure somewhere anyway
Anyway, I'd like to say that
A lot of people are hoping
That the economics get better and we get back on the road to recovery
Instead of going slipping and sliding down that slippery slope fire fight bad financial, uh
Disaster well ending some wars, uh investing in infrastructure
Cutting down on the deficit those things and in other words in other words then mr. Obama or president obama now
What he could do to um
to sort of
lessen the war in the mid east
would be
To to try to negotiate with egypt to buy a major portion of the sinai peninsula
And to and to create more work
To create a homeland for the palestinian people who have been victimized all these years
For one reason or the other one or their own making
The idea the idea would be to to create a new country and leave the territorial
Territory of israel intact. Okay. Well, sir, are you getting just a little bit too?
You're getting a little bit too deep for us right now right now
We're just sort of focusing on on the the celebration and what happened and yeah
Obviously these things are going to have to be addressed and a lot of thinking is going to have to go on and policy changes
And the next few years we're going to see some historical changes. Excuse me, sir. One more thing very quickly. I like to say that
as for
mccain
McCain should have done
jimmy durante
and said
Good night, mrs. Calabash wherever you are and whoever you did vote for
But personally speaking, I believe that you better trade it to me. Yeah interesting
Thanks so much for your call and uh, let's see if we can squeeze in one or two more
And good evening. You're on off the hook. Yes. You're talking about barack obama today
We're trying to or talking about the election
I I voted for barack obama because he's going to get gas prices down. Okay
uh
And you think he will?
Well, he's going to get the trips out of iraq
He said he's going to get the trips out of iraq to get gas prices down
okay, i'm not sure if that's exactly how he said it, but uh
Uh, i'm still going to go around to gas stations and actually change the signs. That's how he gets the
Okay, that's amazing. Let's go to another call. Good evening. You're on off the hook
Thank you so much for taking my call no problem i'm running away from radios and television good good
What's on your mind down first in bronx, new york 58 euro african-american mail
Every single call is coming from the bronx tonight. Wow. Yeah, we're hooked in
Uh, it would be interesting to be able to oh, first of all
Could someone take a look into two things one?
Is um, senator obama president elect yet? My understanding is that you don't get the title until after the electors vote
That might technically be true. But uh, it's a poor guy
Across the board everybody's saying president elect president elect president elect and my concern is once again
Um, the electors can do what they want
It's just like electing your congressperson. Yes
Yeah pledge to however, do you really think that that could happen in any universe right now?
I'm, just saying i'm just throwing it out right people are aware because I think part of the the whole process is
People are not aware of how the process works
Yeah, and what it is that we do
The other thing is could could you all take a look into good search as a way to raise funds for 501 c3?
Especially wbai good search. I don't know anything about it. Okay good search is a search engine
Um, it's founded by the ramberg brothers and what you do is you put a charity in
um
When you before you do your search and when you do your search, it's a yahoo search
um the
Revenue part of the revenue from the website goes to the charity of your choice usually about a penny
And wbai is registered. So anybody who has a 501 c3 take a look at good search.com
Okay, thanks for that information. Of course here at wbai we can use all the help we can get to keep this amazing place going
Thanks so much for everybody who uh who called in any any last thoughts because we uh, we do have to get out of here now
No last thoughts well if our listeners have last thoughts oth at 2600.com is uh, our our email address
And wow, we have so many people here tonight mark. I want to thank you for coming by uh, and uh
Sharing your negative land magic with us
A teeny eeny weeny little bit. Yeah, I do. I I have one sort of last thought which is that um,
one problem sort of danger right now is that is that uh,
This huge sigh of relief after eight years means that people stop uh doing the work of holding obama's feet to the fire
I don't think that's going to happen. I think people are going to be very careful
I almost think he's kind of asking for that
He's I think he's almost literally said if I get elected you people
It's up to you people to keep letting me know what it is. You want me to do? Yeah, and and
I hope he keeps that enthusiasm. I sure do i'll make sure to tweet all of my requests to him on twitter
You would you were twittering quite a bit last night. I was I was trying to although they seem to change their system lately
And I noticed that any tweet I had with a swear word in it actually got filtered. It didn't really yeah
Wow, tweet is uh, twitter is becoming family oriented bernie. Uh, very briefly. Yes fiber optic was at this last night
Yes, he was with us and he pointed out something a good observation that uh,
He hopes that the uh that obama puts the solar panels back on the roof of the white house
I can't that ronald reagan tore down after jimmy carter stepped down
So it'll be interesting to see if that and let's hope there's more high-speed rail in the in the in the works because biden
Now he rides. I don't think he'll be riding amtrak much anymore being vice president, but still he he remembers it fondly
Okay, we are we are out of time leno. I thank you for coming all the way up from uh from georgia
Thank you very much for having me and everybody else. Uh names too numerous to mention. Uh, it's it's been it's been fun
And we'll be back
We'll be back next week
uh with another action-packed edition of
Off the hook and uh, we have a special once again phone related. Um,
Outro to go with uh, this one actually you'll hear the 2600 hertz tone
At the very beginning of it. It's from a group called the revelations. We'll see you next week
We only had a moment the briefest time to share where angels fear to tread
Us fools don't care
It was too good to last beyond a day or two
But I'll take that day over a lifetime without you. Yeah
If I called you
Would you
We hardly knew each other and still you mean so much
Who could understand the magic in your touch? I cannot help but wonder
About what might have been I guess you never know
Why what you mean to me? Yeah
If I called you on the telephone, would you pick it up if I called you would you be alone?
If I called you on the telephone, would you pick it up?
Yeah, whoa, that's really interesting