The Press Box - Ben Smith, January 6 Anniversary, Ken Rosenthal, and More

Episode Date: January 5, 2022

Bryan and David are back and kicking off the new year with Ben Smith’s announcement that he is leaving The New York Times for a global media startup (0:22). Then they transition to the first anniversary of the January siege of the Capitol by discussing Evan Osnos’s New Yorker profile of radio host Dan Bongino (9:24). Then they touch on Ken Rosenthal’s comments that lost him a gig with the MLB Network (23:11) and the unfortunate release of a People magazine issue that highlights the great (and recently departed) Betty White’s 100th birthday (35:10). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline.  Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Bacari Sellers podcast tackles the most pressing current events through conversations and interviews with high-profile guests. Building upon his experience in South Carolina government and politics and his experience as a lawyer, Sellers will talk to his guests about all topics from the world of politics. Check out the Bacari Sellers podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David, we have some breaking news here in the new year from the world of media criticism. I love breaking news. That's great. Ben Smith, who wrote the media equation column for the New York Times, is leaving the paper for what's being described as, wait for it, yet another global news startup. What are your thoughts on the Ben Smith era?

Is it me? When you say a global news startup, is my mind supposed to go to like politico, axios, that sort of thing? I guess, yeah? I think of those. That's not where my mind got, I don't know. I think that those as domestic new startups would later acquired global ambitions. Or maybe we're harboring global ambitions all along, but let us know somewhere down the line that they were. A global new startup certainly seems like a gigantic deal.

Maybe an intergalactic new startup is what we really need in 2022. But yeah, I mean, that's on the one hand not too, right? I mean, I guess we're, it's sort of like the generation, well, I don't know, whatever generation is right before this one, it might have, it seemed a little bit more predictable that someone would, a Ben Smith stature would sort of retire into a New York Times gig and just sort of live a life of luxury, uh, doing that, you know, just writing columns until whatever, until they decided to do something else, uh, do even less. Um, but I guess it makes perfect sense that, you know, someone of his stature, of his experience, and of this, his generation would kind of be doing the New York Times thing as a stop gap until he figured out the next gigantic thing to do. It is a little bit weird because we discussed on the show a couple of times. He's his entire now, almost like his entire time of the New York Times was sort of clouded

by this ambiguously unethical, potentially unethical situation with his BuzzFeed stock options and he's sort of waiting for those things to, you know, vest or I don't even know what the lingo, what the appropriate term would be. So it seems like New York Times stood by him through this sort of like ambiguous ethical haze. And then as soon as the stock options vested, he's stoned to bigger and better things, which is I'm sure the people at the times are real excited about that turn of events. It really does color the whole tenure now that he just left rather than making the hard decision and then sticking in as media columnist.

I mean, it just shows where the priorities were, right? Yeah. I'm going to remember we always say on the show, people are trying to tell us something and it's up to us to listen to them. Yes. When he wasn't, you know, saying, hey, I might, you know, have to get rid of these options

for, you know, less money than maybe I thought I was going to get in order to write this media column. When he didn't say that, it was almost like, oh, maybe he won't be writing this media column for a really long time. Maybe he doesn't see this. the rest of my rest of my career kind of thing. Yeah,

that would have been a really easy sort of deflection if he had said that at the time. But that obviously wasn't the truth. No. I mean, you know, he did a column a couple months ago about Michael Wolfe. I think we even talked about it on the podcast.

And he was kind of looking at Michael Wolf. Here's Michael Wolf as a writer who had ambitions to be a media mogul himself. Michael Wolf who kind of cackles at conventional notions of ethics. And I was like, it's kind of interesting reading that now. because there's probably, you know, a lot more in common between Ben Smith and Michael Wolf than maybe met the eye at the time, you know, Ben has had his eye on, you know, I want to do, I'm going to do this column. We'll do a really good job at it, but really I want to go get that thing, right, which is to run something and to be a big player, a bigger player than a New York Times media columnist could be, even though that's a pretty big player. If you and I can hold two ideas in our head at the same time, there's the BuzzFeed options. part. And then there's the part of what he did as a media columnist. And it sure seems that he had as good a run as anybody in that chair at breaking stories and stirring the shit

week to week. I mean, that is that is not easy writing that column, I think. And, you know, I think often when we find not just media columnists, but really anybody, you can almost divide the group into good reporter and good thinker and writer. Yeah. I think. Yeah, that's right. Ben most weeks did both really, really well. It was a pleasure to read. It was well reported. He broke news.

We talked about the Aussie thing. His targets were not just Andrew Sullivan, but also like Ronan Farrow, right? So he wasn't just writing for Twitter. Mm-hmm. He did a really good job at it. Yeah, totally. I mean, he, I mean, also, I guess if we're looking back and, you know, trying to evaluate his motivations over the past year, you know, know, kudos to him for not just like holding that Aussie story in his back pocket until he got

to his next money making venture, you know, and through there are other journalists who would not have had the self-control to make that decision. But yeah, he did a fantastic job in that seat. And it took, you know, I mean, he's, he's become such a media figure in his own right that I think it's, I mean, not just the Times, there was time of BuzzFeed and everything else. I mean, it's easy to overlook that he's just a real good journey. You know, he's very good at his job and he's very good. Like you said, he's a very good thinker as well and a very good writer. You know, he's an incredibly talented person.

I remember, I mean, I think I've probably said this before. I remember when he got hired at BuzzFeed, I thought it was an odd fit, you know, or that he was, that he was, didn't seem sort of the archetypical kind of startup guy on the way in. And he sure proved me wrong. I mean, he'd just be redefined what a news operation like that could be. and going on to bigger and better things is something that he's earned in a lot of ways. So we talk about his new venture. And we really are at the point where you can't tell the new media ventures apart without a program. And I say this as somebody who was sitting here over our break with my hand right next to the button,

trying to decide whether I should subscribe to puck or not. I was like, do my, should I get puck? That would probably be good for the podcast. If I get puck, I'm just not, I just don't know anymore what I should subscribe to and what I shouldn't subscribe to. But Ben Smith, he is doing the new venture with the former head of Bloomberg Media. And I want you to listen to the quote he gave the paper about the new venture. There are 200 million people who are college educated, who read in English, but who no one is really treating like an audience, but who talk to each other and talk to us. That's who we see as our audience.

what? I'm sorry. Um, okay. I just, I think we should, you know, again, all respect to Ben Smith, but I think we have to celebrate the moment you go from media columnist who is taking the text speak and the, you know, the stilted press releases and the kind of image that everyone is projecting in the world and slices through it to somebody. who is saying something like that because I don't understand, I don't understand any of that. Yeah,

it's certainly not very clear. It's, I mean, and maybe it's, maybe it's that, you know, sort of deliberate obfuscation that everybody does sort of on the way

into a new venture, you know, the audience is enormous and we're not going to overly define it for fear that we, change our minds or change, you know, a change direction midway.

Or he's got, you know, it's, finger on the pulse of 200 million readers that are just really eager to read some stuff that's not out there yet. I'm very interested to see who these folks are. The closest media org I can get

to going after that audience is, in fact, the New York Times, which he worked for. But I, but I don't know. He may be surprised. Coming up on today's show, David, this is the one year anniversary of the January 6th siege of the U.S. Capitol. Turns out the siege isn't over.

it's just happening on right-wing talk radio. Plus Norman Mailer gets shelved. Baseball writer Ken Rosendahl gets ejected from MLB Network. There is a very unfortunate People magazine cover about the late actress, Betty White. Some notes from an overloaded football weekend and journalism advice corner. I bet that's going to go over well. All that and more on a loaded press box, a part of the ringer. Podcast Network.

Happy New Year media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, producer, Erica Cervantes here. Did you notice how I said loaded press bucks at the top there? I had this conversation with Rissillo the other day. Every sports radio show starts out with the host saying, we got a loaded one today. Huge show today. No one ever says we got a threadbare show.

What are we going to do today, guys? I don't know. We were looking at each other 20 minutes before this started, and this is just kind of what we came up with. We'll take some calls. We'll read the newspaper. I don't know. We'll get through it somehow.

This truly is a loaded show. There's honesty in advertising here because the big story of the week is the one-year anniversary of the January 6th seizure of the U.S. Capitol by allies of Donald Trump, who was trying to steal an election. David, we don't have to look forward for the media angle because the kind of talk that led to January 6th has been continuing day by day segment by segment on talk radio, as Evan Osnose noted in his new New Yorker profile of the radio host, Dan Bongino. It's a really good piece that puts January 6th in context.

And also, I think for people like you and me, just answers a lot of questions about how that corner of the media works. I love pieces like this. This is Osnoses Money Line. Spend several months immersed in American Talk Radio and you'll come away with the sense that the violence of January 6 was not the end of something but the beginning. All right. First question. How familiar are you with the work of Dan Bongino? Whoa, it's a good question.

I'm familiar with him as a personality. I feel like I, you know, he pops up on social media in clips and I believe he still tweets himself on Twitter every once in a while. He seems about his present. He says like kind of a second, third tier presence in my kind of life as a secondhand right-wing political commentary consumer. No, he's a guy. I mean, listen, he's a, you know, I hesitate to say.

say it. He mean, he's just one of those sort of laughable characters, right? I mean, he's a radio guy, but he was sort of, I think he was doing NRA TV and got the boot from there when they shut or, when they shut down. He was an early investor in parlor and some other things when, and you heard about that most when they were not doing well, you know, and there was a point I remember where he was sort of publicly stressing his investments in those things. So, I mean, I, you know, I hear about him probably at times that he would say are not indicative of his, you know, strength or power or true abilities or whatever, but I'm, you know, somewhat familiar with him. Certainly, you know, to look at the numbers in Osnosis piece, you're never shocked anymore

at the reach of some of these dudes and ladies, but you're still kind of shocked, right? I mean, I certainly did not have him figured to be the level, have the level of sort of mass penetration that he does. Yeah, you probably knew, like I did, he was in the top 10, maybe, you know, whether you're looking at the Facebook shareable power rankings or talk radio or Trump media universe power rankings probably didn't know as high. There's this very funny moment in the piece where Evan Osnosed asked Bongino a question that I had wondered when I first saw the piece. Why did you agree to talk to the New Yorker at all? And this is the answer. At least I get my say in there. The reality is I've got a bigger footprint than you guys by 10-fold, if not 20-fold.

I don't want to be an asshole about it. There's nothing you can write that I can't write back even worse. It's asymmetric warfare. You'll never win. That's the quote. Some of the aesthetics, David, of the Dan Bongino program. This is from Evanosnos. Bonino records at a desk adorned with a boxing bell, a judge's gavel, and a carved stone nameplate with the message, be strong like a rock.

Triple exclamation point. I got an idea for the mass man show. We could do something just like that. Continuing here, Bongino at 47 is six feet tall and muscle bound with a Marshall Buzzcutt and Trimgoattee. Like others in his cohort, including the podcaster Joe Rogan

and the Info Wars host Alex Jones he favors a wardrobe of tight t-shirts. So is this the kind of muscular conservatism wing of the media? Oh, they meant that literally. I see, that's great. Yeah, right? I mean, it is kind of like, but I feel you do feel that vibe, right? I'm not just talking tough.

I am tough. That's part of the cohort of kind of the new media types that have risen over the last few years. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of ex-military. sort of yeah, I mean like literally muscular. I mean, that's, it is. There's a toughness and, you know, we kind of sit back and laugh at all the political ads that pop up every cycle of, you know, someone running for the state representative and

their whole ad is them like shooting, you know, an AR at the range or whatever and waving it for the in front of the camera. And we have, you know, congressmen and senators are doing the same thing. But, you know, there's a real appeal to it, you know? And there's a real, there's a real audience for that, obviously. like I said, you know, it might seem like sort of small beer from where we're sitting, but obviously the numbers tell a different story. Neither David nor I are wearing a tight teacher today, full disclosure as we record this podcast

and probably for the best. You talk about numbers that popped out at you, David. Here's one that Osnows has. For every hour that Americans listen to podcasts in 2021, they listen to six and a half hours of AM FM radio according to Edison research. Six and a half out. You know, I feel like what those of us who are in this world do all the time is just kind of forget old media and are so excited about streaming and podcasting and everything else as we should be. And you realize that stuff really does still have a lot of power for a lot of people.

And the demographics may be what they are, but it's still really big. It's also interesting in the piece. There's an interesting change that's happened in talk radio. So Rush Limbaugh, whom we had a big. discussion about last year. Rush Limbaugh came on the air and was like, I'm really funny. I'm an entertainer, right? I'm a good radio host and my subject is going to be politics. No matter what you thought of him, that was his approach. Yeah. I'm going to be, I'm going to try to be a great radio host and I'm going to talk about politics. Michael Harrison, who edits the publication

talkers tells Osnos this about the new breed of radio hosts. They still want to be entertaining, but entertainment is not as big a deal. These are people who are doing political content on broadcasting platforms as opposed to doing broadcasting with a political aspect. I was interested to hear that. Because you know, like you and I watch Hannity sometimes, or research purposes. And I'm always like sitting there going,

where is like the broadcasting zest to this? Where is the moment where I'm like, man, I hate what this guy's saying, but I admit that he has a certain, amount of talent for the medium. And I just never feel it anymore. Yeah. And it feels like, no, no, this is just about a transmission of ideas, really, more than like an entertaining thing that also includes those ideas. Yeah. I mean, and obviously there's some correlation to sort of the podcast can see, right?

I mean, your people's favorite podcast, they feel like they know the, the podcasters, they know the voices. They have kind of sort of untangible, non-tangible relationship. with the people they're listening to. And obviously there's a direct correlation to radio in general, AM radio in particular. These people get on the air for hours every day and they become a staple in your life. You know, listen to hours and hours of it, apparently.

But you're right. I mean, it's a, it's just a, sort of an outpouring of, you know, this stuff that you and I probably encounter on Reddit and Twitter and everywhere else, right? I mean, it's, and like I said, often second and third hand, you know, people reacting to those things or, you know, meaming them. But they're out there, you know, reaching a target audience, which is why anyone else is paying attention to the things that they do. Several notes from Osnows about the continuing things being said about the last election on places like Bongino's show.

Here's something from July. This was what Osnonez describes as a riff about Silicon Valley. Quote, they're hiding information from you now about what happened in Arizona and Georgia. They disrupted the 2020 election and they want to do it in 2022. You remember Geraldo Rivera, you know, criticized Donald Trump about January 6th. Bongino accused Rivera of disloyalty, Osnosed, right, saying the backstabing of the president you're engaging in is really disgusting. Yeah. Also, Bongino's pod went to number one on iTunes, according to Osniz right after the election. This was on November 9th.

He had an episode titled Resist and he said, I've never been more fired up. We need a rally and we need the president at it. So not only is he talking about the election, his numbers go way up in this period after the election. When Donald Trump and his allies are saying, the election's been stolen, the election's been stolen, something needs to happen, right? Which leads us fairly directly to the events that would transpire afterwards. Do you want to hear about some of the techniques Bonino uses on the. the air. Please. This is Austin knows again. Bonjino, like other prominent supporters, seems to put increasing stock in what researchers referred to as blue lies, the kind of claims that pull believers

together and drive skeptics away. Quote, there were known issues with the election, he said in December, adding, we get that. Bonino is also adept at the accusation in a mirror approach, co-opting the language and strategies of his opponents. He often endorses, quote, defunding components of the FBI, not the police, the FBI, and maintains misinformation comes almost exclusively from the left. Let me just play the beginning of a show and you'll hear a little bit of that. Here is the beginning of the Dan Bongino show. Get ready to hear the truth about America on a show that's not immune to the facts with

your host, Dan Bongino. Not immune to the facts. That's fantastic stuff. You got COVID. You got the, you know, fact-based community. Right. Yeah.

Yes. I mean, it's the no spin zone for a new generation, you know? It's just sort of, you know, and there's a little bit of a, there's a little bit of a kind of a men corner aspect of that too, right? I mean, if you kind of get somebody in, if you get somebody in as far as the, the, the, we got the real, if they buy into the we got the real facts, then everything else is fair game. The New Yorker, because they care about fact checking, actual facts, sent over a fact-checking memo to Bongino.

Oh, no. He got on his podcast and said this, maybe have a little bit of personal dignity, you ass kissing Biden, surgically attaching your lips to the ass of the administration piece of garbage. To which I would have replied if I'd sent over the fact-checking memos,

are we all good? Was that just a general response to like a list of questions? I believe so. Wow. Well, it was on the podcast. I don't think it was a point by point rebuttal. Okay.

Now, he did say, as Nas knows, knows that the memo contained, quote, obviously false material, but he would not get into what was false. Just detach your lips. That is the end of my fat checking response. All right, David, let's do the overword Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same. time this year as you did last year send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received i have some news from christmas david okay i believe santa claus visited both of our houses this year it was an overwork twitter joke to share some bad news

santa has entered covid health and safety protocols and is listed as out for tonight thanks to kyle madson for that one uh in other news david strange scene at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers New York Jets game on Sunday. Uh-huh. Bucks wide receiver Antonio Brown apparently frustrated with something, took off his jersey and undershirt on the sidelines and then left the stadium and then left his team. It was an overwar Twitter joke to write. Antonio Brown is going to fight one of the Paul brothers before the year is over.

Next to Michael Taylor, Steve Hendrickson, Jody Canaday and many others. Even Brooks Kepka did that bit, by the way. Finally, David, we got a verdict in the Jislane Maxwell case. Jeffrey Epstein. Of course, you remember, died by suicide in prison. Maxwell has now been convicted of five counts, including sex trafficking. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. I guess Maxwell and Epstein really did finish each other's sentences.

Thanks to JW, if you put a caper on a gruesome slice of American history, congrats. You made the overword Twitter joke of the week. All right, time for the notebook dump, and I got some notes on a very big, big weekend of football. This was amazing. I sat down in front of the TV and at night I would just be exhausted even though I hadn't done anything because there were so much football. Yeah. The college fed into the pros, which fed into another day of pros, which fed into yet another day of pros or another night of pros last night. Did you catch any of the big college playoff games that were on New Year's Eve? Sadly, I did not. But, you know, I was celebrating a birthday. And

Oh, yeah, very special birthday, perhaps your own. College football, if people don't know, picks four teams to play for the national championship. The first round of the playoff was New Year's Eve. Final is next Monday. New Year's Eve, David, might have featured the strangest set of post-game questions I have ever heard. Okay. And as you know, I am a student of the genre. So game number one on Friday night, Alabama beats Cincinnati, very handily in the semi-fine.

final. Okay. This is the semi there are four teams, semifinal, and then you win the semifinal, you play in the final. Listen to ESPN's Molly McGrath on the podium with Alabama coach Nick Sabin. How do you want your team to finish out this very special season? Now that you've won the semi final, what result are you looking for from here on out? Well, maybe we could win the final. final. It's like if it's sort of like it's sort of like when you're a kid writing a book report or something and you're just trying to rephrase something that someone always is already written but

you know something from Wikipedia but try to make it sound really highfalutin you know I guess we couldn't just say so you want to win next week right but uh how can we we're trying to make it sound like a different question you know I always I was get on the get on the whole business of asking people like what is their journey like what do you have to say about the way your defense play tonight because I don't think there's a very good chance. Those questions are going to produce an interesting answer. This one, I just truly don't know what the answer would be other than, well, we want to win the next game, which brings us to the second semi-final of Friday, David, University of Georgia,

beats the University of Michigan, also handily. Here is ESPN's Marty Smith talking to Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett the fourth. You guys get one more shot at Alabama. What is this team? ceiling. Hopefully to win it. What is this team's ceiling? Okay, we just, again, just a reminder to anybody who's not a college

fellow fan, they have won the semi-final. So good. So our ceiling, unless there's just another game hiding somewhere later in January, is to win the final. How about that pause from Stets and Ben at the 4th going, uh, to win it? Yeah, we're trying to, you, you, you, overthink it, right? If you're like, so wait, why would he ask me that if the question is,

are you going to win next week, right? What's the team ceiling? I think we can get to 78 points. I don't know. Like, if we just got to keep playing together forever, we could break records and then scoring and definal. That's crazy. It's never good when you were perplexing the subject. What is this team ceiling? Elsewhere in sports media news, did you follow the Ken Rosenthal MLB network story from yesterday? I just saw the tweet or two about it, but yeah. So Rosenthal, Premier Newsbreaker for the Athletic, field reporter for Fox Sports. He lost a gig at MLB Network.

The New York Post Andrew Marshan reports because he, well, at least it came after he criticized baseball commissioner Rob Manfred over his handling of the pandemic last year. So he criticizes Rob Banffred. Now he is no longer an employee of MLB Network. What do we think about that whole transaction? Oh, well, I mean, it's a bad, it's a terrible look for the MLB network, I think more so than Rosenthal, but I think, you know, there's a, there's plenty of what did you think was going to happen to go around, right? I mean, it's a, you know, an interesting choice for a newsbreaker like himself

to be employed by, you know, something like the MLB Network, although he's certainly not alone in that category. You probably want to say more about that. But also it's like the MLB Network hired him. And we know how, and by the way, you know how these things work, right? I mean, there are lots of people out there who would assume that MLB would hire someone like Rosenthal to co-opt him, right? If he's someone who's like a heavy hitter, a serious journalist who might occasionally have

negative things to say that they would. would hire him to prevent him from saying those things. But you and I both know that that sort of stuff almost never happens, right? The people making the decisions to hire on-screen personalities are not, are not sitting in smoke-filled back rooms with commissioners on a regular basis trying to figure out how to, you know, backdoor their detractors or whatever. No. They want to make their thing look good. They say, well, he's a talented reporter, so let's hire him to be on our network. And certainly it's the, you know, objective of MLB network NBA TV NFL network to seem like news outlets and not like, you know, Pravda or whatever, you know,

and they often, you know, do a pretty good job of separating Trician State. That said, you know, I'm sure there's a way that he could have criticized baseball MLB in a broader way that would have, you know, flown under the radar a little bit more. But if you go after Manfred, I mean, something. Sometimes, I mean, it's not shy. It's not, it's bad, but it's not shocking that, you know, someone took offense and that's what happened. Yeah, I think Kenny Rosenthal is awesome. And, you know, I've enjoyed the times I've gotten to interview him.

I think he's really, really, really does a great job at the athletic, which is, by the way, I should be clear where the criticism of Manfred emerged. This was not on the air on MLB network. This was in his columns and his writing. And it was very, very mild as criticism of a commissioner goes. It was not something very, very fair. It was not like he was lighting him on fire or anything like that. All of that said, and if there was like a, there's an entity called MLB network, I'd rather have really good reporters like Rosenthal working for it.

And, you know, it is really, really dumb to chuck him off the network. But I think it does, as you point out, remind us this whole thing of reporters working for the network that is owned or partially owned by the league has kind of gotten normalized. because these networks have been on so long, it's not normal. There's nothing about, there's not, it's not normal to cover the commissioner,

to be employed by the commissioner. And then have, you know, again, apparently somebody from baseball, if not the commissioner himself, say, well,

we don't want this guy to be on the network anymore because we don't like what he said. That's just, that's just, that's just, that's fraught from the beginning. Mm-hmm. It absolutely is.

and so I'm just kind of like, you know, I'm just like that is, that just seems. And again, they've hired lots of reporters. I know lots of people, they don't, maybe they lose a job. Maybe their day job becomes unstable. So that is the place where you can keep doing your thing. And I understand all that stuff. But the whole setup seems fraught from the beginning. And we've sort of forgotten that.

And I mean, if you look at, look at, I mean, like you said, look at the other networks, look at MLB network themselves. I mean, there's a lot of criticism, um, that, that goes around. There's a lot of very serious reporters, but I don't recall ever hearing someone badmouthed Roger Goodell on the NFL network, you know, or Adam Silver on NBA TV. I just, it's, it's, you know, I'm sure that they're very, very reluctant to draw lines. And there's some lines that they're just kind of inherently drawn. But and then you get yourself, everybody gets themselves in a really dumb situation, you know. newsbreaking is big on those networks because scoops about players injuries or transactions or coaches getting fired and stuff like that that becomes we've talked about on the show many times that becomes part of the entertainment yeah so they want they want that and the people they're going to get those are really good are good reporters right yeah so you have to in a way you have to have to have reporters on your network to get those scoops but as you say there's this whole region of stuff that you can't even talk about or if you can't talk about or if you can talk about or if you can

talk about it. You cannot talk about it in the way you would talk about it if you weren't on the league network. Yes. And by the way, I just want to be clear when I say a dumb situation, I mean, it's dumb that you get fired over something like that, no matter who you're working for, right? But I mean, it's like I said, I'd prefer that he were still, if this thing is going to exist, I would prefer that it include him because he's good. Well, and there's this whole sort of, you know, figurehead philosophy too. I mean, like I said, there are definitely, I'm sure there's a way he could have said that and not gotten fired by criticizing MLB, by criticizing MLB, by criticizing whatever, the decision-making process in some kind of general way.

You know, the Rob Manfreds of the world, this is part of the job description, right, to sort of take the shots. And yet, you know, that's the line that shift across to get fired. It's sort of dumb. You know, I mean, this is sort of a tangent, but years ago, not too many years ago, several years ago, I remember I was talking to some of the guys that were doing at Fox that were doing this WWE show, WWB backstage. They did like a studio show when Fox got the rights to Friday Night Smackdown and they tried to make it like a, you know, like a real sports news, like a studio show, like NFL show or like whatever.

And there is a sort of lengthy ongoing discussion about how straightforwardly they could address that wrestling was fake on this show, right? The wrestling was stage. The wrestling was like predetermined. How were they going to be able to talk about, like acknowledge the truth on a show about a show that was sort of inherent. you know, winking at the audience or, you know, handing out blindfolds, whatever. But this is not the same thing and yet it is sort of the same thing, right? You get in these sort of like laborious discussions or like, you know, philosophical debates over what is appropriate to say to handle, in terms of speaking honestly about what you're covering, you know, why you're there. And,

And I'm sure devolves to the point of inanity, even if you're not talking about, you know, K-Fabe or whatever wrestling term you want to talk about. The key phrase is why you're there, right? We know all of us, Rosenthal and everybody else, when you're working at an outlet like the athletic or newspaper or something, you know why you're there. You have a very solid definition of why you're there and what you're supposed to do. And when you sort of pass over that line and go into the league own media, I think everybody would say, what am I here to do?

Right? I know certain things I'm here to do, but there's certain things that I'm not sure if I'm here to do. And I'm not sure if they even want me to do elsewhere, even if I'm here, it turns out. And yeah, the whole, just again, when the whole, when the job description starts to get fuzzy, that's where I get worried. David, did you see the People magazine cover gracing newsstands this week? Yes. but only, yeah, I mean, not, not at a newsstands. I didn't see it on the newsstands, but I saw it, yeah, I saw it on social media.

You weren't picking up a peri match and other things at the international newsstand near you. New York Times compared this to Dewey defeats Truman. It may be the Dewey defeats Truman of celebrity fluff. Betty White turns 100, says the cover of People magazine dated January 10, 2022. Just one problem. Unfortunately, Betty White died at age 99. Oops. Last week before this issue hit newsstands.

So we're left with somewhat unfortunate to cover. Now, look, if you like Betty White, if you love Betty White, who doesn't love Betty White, I'm sure you will enjoy the magazine. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Listen, I'm sure it's a beautiful tribute to her unwittingly, even, I mean, just the way it is. there's a Betty White tweet sent before her death, my 100th birthday.

I cannot believe it is coming up. And People magazine is celebrating with me. The new issue of people is available on newsstands nationwide tomorrow. People editor Dan Wakeford tells the New York Times or said in a statement, I should say after White's death, we are deeply saddened by the news of Betty White's passing. We are honored that she recently chose to work with people to celebrate her extraordinary life and career. I have another headline for you too.

That one got all the attention. This got a lot of attention in our sports world. Ben Rothelisberger, quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers played what is probably his final home game last night. Oh, no. Pittsburgh Post Gazette did one of those rappers,

which I guess was somebody, somebody called the Tall family, did a thank you, Ben, rapper on the paper. It looks like newsprint has a big picture of him, lists all of his accomplishments. The one issue was they put a sticker on the front of the paper.

And I don't know if anybody subscribes to newspapers like I do, you were constantly peeling stickers off the newspaper, which are ads. This is another thing. The sticker went over the name Ben. So it just says,

thank you, and then the Ben is obscured. That was kind of funny. But then somebody posted another one where the sticker was over T-H-A-N and thank you. So it just said, blank you,

Ben, exclamation point. Probably not the message the Oh my gosh. Tall family was interested in conveying. I'm excited and eventually, sooner rather than later, I hope, reading the oral history is the decisions for both of those covers. I think the oral history to people, to people, the staff of people magazine uncomfortably joking about whether Betty White would die

before the magazine came out, I'm sure it's going to be just must read when that finally sees the light of day. You found like a loose email, Slack message. Yeah. Or maybe the concerned person, right? like this is an awesome idea. I'm glad we have the exclusive with Betty White. We coordinated with her to tweet out something about the magazine,

if they in fact did that. But I just, can I just raise a concern here? Can I just, just in case we all want Betty White to live forever? But a couple more items for you, David. Norman Mailer is in the news. I didn't think I'd say that sentence this week.

A piece by Michael Wolf in the ankle. I'm going to read it. I'll read you at the top sentence here. Norman Mailer's longtime publisher, publisher has recently informed the Mailer family that it has canceled plans to publish a collection of his political writings to mark the centennial of his birth in 2023, confirms the film producer Michael Mailer,

the author's oldest son. The backdoor apologies at Random House include as the proximate cause, a junior staffer's objection to the title of Mailer's 1957 essay, a psychosexual druggy precursor. model for much of the psychosexual druggy literature that became possible in the 1960s. You're always our book publishing explainer guy. So what's going on here? Oh, I mean, this seems like so far as these things go, a sort of like perfect storm of

issues that don't quite rise, the level of necessary discussion. Listen, is Norman Mailer's work and is his self very problematic through the lens of 2022? Yes, indeed. He exists in a sort of, you know, gated community of literary lights that have not, no one is quite deemed necessary or fit to cancel over the past several years. years. I'm not sure that it would be worthwhile or interesting or particularly interesting or or they would actually achieve anything positive to do so. But, but certainly that's just been, you know, people have mentioned them, mentioned people like him over the, over the past several years. And in some ways it's sort of low hanging fruit. In some ways, it's sort of off limits.

And, you know, that sort of goes without saying whether or not they were, I mean, this specific case just sort of feels like, you know, is it, should they, I mean, well, for first of all, we have a, we have a, we have a means of dealing with this sort of issue in the modern world, which is you publish a thing or in this case, republish a thing, and you can publish a forward or, you know, a preface that sort of takes on the issue that everybody, I mean, that might rise the level of offense, right? That wasn't, apparently not on the table. or, I mean, if it was, it wasn't mentioned in that piece. Listen, is it okay to, like, not publish something because it's going to be,

it's going to be potentially seen as offensive? Yeah, should you publish it? I mean, it's totally fine. Yeah, you shouldn't. You probably shouldn't publish it. And especially in the case of, you know, republished book of essays that are presumably already available from Penguin Random House, but certainly available online or wherever you want to find them, you know?

I mean, this isn't, like, knocking something out of publication. The question is whether or not we're going to, like, celebrate a, knew a writer that's certainly going to raise all these questions, whether or not a person at random house, a junior staffer really had anything to do with the cancellation other than just sort of raising, you know, the alarm, which we've seen over and over again, people in positions of seniority or, you know, just seems sort of as a rule unable to see these sorts of alarm bells themselves. Whether or not that person got the book canceled, that seems sort of impossible and sort of beside the point regardless, there's a piece.

in the New York, sorry, in the New Republic by Alex Shepard that calls into question whether or not that was the real sequence of events. And I'm not saying their, Pinguin Random House is lying about whatever to the state to get out of publishing. I don't know what the situation is, but yeah, someone could be offended by it. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be published. The publisher's certainly within the rights to publish it and there's certainly within the rights to not publish it. But in this case, it doesn't really seem like anything of significance was lost. and more than anything else, I don't think that Penguin Random House

would hesitate to publish to republish Norman Mailer if they stood to gain a ton of money from it. I think this is probably a financial decision on their part, not that they're going to lose money, but that whatever stood to be lost by opening the doors to this conversation outweighed what stood to be gained.

I mean, I think it was a commercial decision on their part. And I think kind of clouding it around the sort of cancel culture or whatever just as a, It's a misdirection. It's time for David Shoemaker, guess is a strain pun headline. All right.

Last Monday's last time's headline about a review of the movie Mother Android was how to protect what you're expecting. The first strain pun of the new year, David, comes from Johnny C. It's from the New York Post. The latest victim of Amicron fears, David, is the Westminster Dog Show, a.k.a. that thing that kicked wrestling off the air once a year. Quoting here for the New York Post, the 22 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show,

slated for Madison Square Garden has been postponed due to soaring COVID-19 cases in New York City. The decision to push the event back from late January to later in the year was made on Wednesday by the club's board of governors. That's all you got. You got a lot of dog puns here. Every dog dogs don't have their day in this case. Dog day afternoon.

To the dogs. Remember, it's not canceled. It's merely suspended. See you later, dog. Just temporarily. We're putting it off. Let's just slow down here, people. Wait.

Let's just take a breath. Pause. Oh, pause. Oh, right. Okay. Um, pause. Uh, you got it. Dog show is on pause. Oh, on pause. All right. That's great. Dog show is on pause. Simple, effective tabloid writing. We love it here at the press box. He is David Schumaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Savantis. We are back later in the week. David and I are back next week with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you in then, David. See you later, Brian.